16-XII-2022.
On fourteenth she bought two pots in detelina - stainless* steel jobs, smaller ones, of 2 and 3 liters. The enameled ones from Metalac just don't last; actually one of them fell on the floor as she unpacked it, and the enamel cracked right away, by sheer luck not on the vessel itself but on the handle, where it's mostly irrelevant. By now it just wore off on the inside of the bottom.
On sixteenth, concert of Darko Rundek.
The evening before I set with Borko where and when, and it turned out as planned. I first swung by the gas station by Lidl to fill Joda. It eats five tanks a year, for what I drive it. Then called him, as we set it, and he was supposed to come down and wait in that little street between 25. maj and his novogradnja. But the trees are big, even without leaves they make shade, pavement is dark, his eyesight isn't too good, we didn't see each other. He told me to park on the entrance to the garages, but the nearest one was already occupied, so I took the next. Waited a few minutes, and then someone wanted to drive up the garage roof, so I moved the car back, then the next guy wanted to go behind the garage, so move forth again. I saw he wasn't at home, his windows were dark, except kitchen. But he's not in sight. Then my phone buzzes (didn't ring, still haven't fixed that). He calls, waiting at the first entrance...
Left the car on the parking behind gimnazija, they also changed their system, no more slips with timestamp, just make sure your front tags are clean so it can read them. Leaving the lot I hear someone calling me by full name**. Look, it's Škrba's wife, with kum and his wife... didn't see them since 2012 in Niš. Well, got company now. And where's Škrba? Well he thought he'd make it, but there was another rush job, and then their server crashed... don't dare say anything to him, he knows it already and fumes inside. But he's sticking to his regime, walk, diet, got 20kg down already, that's about 10cm up front. And he said he can't do anything else about the house, he's no good with tools, doesn't know masonry, he's most usable just sitting and making money.
I saw lots of symptoms that he may be a burnout soon, and that he'd better cool off for a while, but then I don't know how competitive his branch may be, and it's not programming, where you just solve it and it works, and nobody knows how fast you can do it, he's a translator, it can't be done shorter nor faster, you must produce the amount of text. I told her I provoked him into talking about it at length, to ease it out, about the house and all around it, but can't do that every month, would become obvious.
From the known folks in the audience I spotted only Zorica, with another girl (okay, both grannies, I'd say).
We caught good seats, Borko and I 2nd row, the rest behind us, but the third isn't elevated much above the 2nd; the heads of those in the first were level with our knees; our heads were level with the knees on the scene, perfect. The concert was... exactly what I expected, except it was better. Of course there's nobody from the old gang, he gathered some new kids, and they're all good, specially the slim chick with the saxophone (and synth at times, and once on bass too), she's not over 50 kilos with the bed, and she navigates the scene very slowly, as if wary not to topple anything, but she's smashing the saxetophone, in several numbers I think she's way above the original. I made videos of some seven songs, counting on eos70 being very good with sound recording, and I was right, it sounds even better than live. I love it loud, but then there are times when I can't make out the words when everything slams in, full assult. On the recording, however, I hear it all.
There was an interesting moment when Rundek asked the audience to turn off the mobile lights and use real lighters, who has one. There were about a hundred, not bad, about one seventh. I thought there were fewer of us left. And he himself lit one on the stage, under the excuse that it's not for himself, it's his role in „Šejn“. That's when it dawned on me that he remained the theatre director, that each of his songs is a scene from an imaginary movie that he performs on the stage.
On the way back, Borko's older daughter hitched a ride, she was arround somewhere and just called, so why not.
The chick on the above shot somehow attracted my lens, and I later understood why. First, she was the only one in sight with something in color on her. And her presence and silhouette was identical to my lovely as of 1975 - face I didn't see much and there was something there that I didn't quite like. The chick on my right I didn't really notice, the scene was to the left, but I memorized her perfume, something almost sharp and somewhat rotten, yet just a little bit above the right density, not unpleasant either. What bothered me was that I've spent three hours in her cloud.
Then we two sat with a shot (ok, three) of apple from unknown year - the only cask where that datum is missing, fuckit, it's good anyway. She liked the perfume too, enough of the cloud stuck into the fabric of my jacket.
On sunday evening I called Dragana to see about monday, and she allowed me to talk her into coming, though she said she wouldn't stay that long - can't sit in boots for so many hours. What do you need the boots for? Those 20m to the cab? Take something lighter and more comfortable. Okay. She already talked with Borko, and he did try to call me, but... in this order: 19:30 I tried to call her, as usual, but she was in the bathroom and couldn't limp to the phone fast enough. I sent her a message that I'll call her again after dinner. While I was eating, 19:40 he tried to call but the phone was on the charger, didn't ring (still haven't bothered to fix that). Then I called her at 20:05 and she said to just message him, he's in a movie theatre, watching „Avatar 2“. Did as advised.
On 19th we thought to play a pretend st Nikola, she wanted to fill a carp, but there's no way to find one big enough, specially on that day. Back to plan A, I called Bob's brzožder (v. house dictionary) but they were full until 19:30, which was too late for us. So we'll do it ourselves. She doesn't like the new brzožder by the community [center], uses gas not charcoal, so roll our own.
So we went through Lidl and Roda to procure the necessities. I reduced the list of suspects to just two chicks there - one of them had that same perfume, and now I'm already calibrated to spot it. It kept coming to my nose the next evening as well, I guess from the few stray molecules in my jacket.
She pushed for starting the fire at 17:30, but I prefer that it's served still hot, so I launched the operation at 18:00. The fire was very slow to start, as the kindling I brought from the basement still wasn't as dry and the gas in the burner was cold, temperature was zero, so it took a while. I stubbornly avoided using any paper in the kindling. Eventually it all turned out right. Linda and Sanda came to take part in the event, played around the terrace. It's easy with them now, grown up enough to not try to go out, as I crammed the barbecue right out the door, partly under the eaves. I hung the extra light, to see what I'm doing. And it all came out well and exactly on time for the 89th frendz parti.
We drank cherry (tested last week, and assumed that the second bottle from the same cask will be just like the first one). She spread out the delicacies - a smaller oval with dry meats and cheese, fresh projica (corn bread with young cheese, muffin shaped), and the barbecue stuff as soon as 20:30, still wasn't cold. For salad only russian and some roast peppers, i.e. she skipped a few of her trump cards that we tried out last two weeks - stuffed tomatoes, pickled/fermented green tomatoes (though she put these into the russian instead of pickles, nobody noticed the difference... well, I did), chutney with dry cherries, dried plums, red peppers and more green tomatoes... And the pancake cycles had it so that they'd stay ignorant to the charms of pumpkin pekmez. But okay, can't [have/do/make] all [of it].
Dragana was limping pronouncedly, said she wasn't leaving the apartment for two weeks - her nephew lives right above her, her sister was bringing her meals - she'd barely drag herself to the bathroom, but this time she invested the effort, didn't even moan much. Didn't move either, she didn't even go to the bathroom - in previous years she'd always go to wash her hands first. Not this time.
Borko's subject for the day was AI and he went on and on about how we're all gonna end up jobless and with nothing to do and probably nothing to eat and what then. Well no, I said, that's not caused by technology, it's capital and generally the philosophy behind the automatization. When we started business in the eighties, the idea was that we'll write code to relieve you of the 90% of repetitive and dull work, so you get the time to do the screwy 10% problems humanely, without rush. And new these neolibs write code which does the 90% of the routine work, then fire whomever they can, and the remaining 10% of the case they don't solve at all, they won't do that, it brings 2% revenue and the workforce for it costs 2,1%. And I remembered the story from 1982, when it was „and why should we allow import of personal computers to raise a generation of programmers, when in a couple of years they'll have computers which program themselves“ - and 40 years later, where are these computers?
Dragana loosened a bit, so we didn't split at eleven, stayed until after midnight. Then she called a cab and sure enough the guy was waiting for us 100m down the street - using new house numbers... of which we still aren't informed but their maps (and my phone) are. So Borko walked to tell him.
Fell asleep nicely, then woke up under pressure, then took a while to get to sleep again, but then had an interesting dream. First, that a sznotrág (a snot rag, which Raja uses from time to time) was actually a hungarian word, rhyming with nadrág (trousers).
Then dreamt that I was investigating its ethymology in hungarian and failing to conceal that I was only faking it, for kicks. Told myself that I better dream something else, because I wouldn't know how to tell about it. I immediately start retelling the dream, live (though the action in the first line actually stopped, but I dreamt that it was still going on), and then in third voice told myself that I've entangled myself, nobody will believe me that I dreamt that in a dream I retold a dream which was parallel with the retelling. Three voices was enough (um, and the fourth me who was listening to all that?) so I waded out of it. Vasa on burundi paid kudos to this, I guess because of the recursion level, and then started telling his one about eating boiled baklava in dutch mountains...
Someone on UA needed srPosition, which I wrote on 04-VII-2006.. Whodathunk.
Above the hill in the yard this swarm of some flies is hovering over the same square meter, between the clothesline and the vegetable frame, for two or three months. All day, every day, didn't check the nights. I shot this on 21st. On 26th they suddenly vanished.
On 23rd, talked with Lena (via Telegram on gugolj) - now on the new job. Said she likes it, the company is owned and run by engineers, so no lifecoaches, no woke comissars, no trannies watching over your every word, no agenda and on top of it no endless meetings. They have two meetings a day, one hour each, but so far each ended in 30 minutes. Efficient and to the point. She'll be visiting there in january, somewhere in Arizona - not exactly Phoenix, but nearby. And she's quite happy. Her previous employer is falling apart - her whole team was fired, three more key programmers have quit, yet all the managers and, ahem, advisory staff are still in place. Except one manager is now switching to coding. They already planned, a couple of months ago, to scrap one important feature, because nobody present still knew how it was written, the knowledge has left the building.
Their apartment is still not quite finished, but they decided it's finished enough, and scheduled the move for 29th. Hired a moving company - there's no way they could move all the stuff by themselves, they were accumulating it for six years.
On 24th, Nina and the kids had a long video chat with Fayes and Rein. I just appeared onscreen for a couple of seconds, waved and vanished upstairs. Can't stand all this krismisi bullshit, and specially the cartoon cat voice she uses to talk to her grandchildren. But at least I got Nina's plans spoken out loud (okay, this time we did know them in advance) - the twins' passports expire on april 26th, so by that time they should be home. Nina is gradually handling the paperwork with the embassy. They don't take phone calls anymore, it's email or nothing, and they do respond, it's just so much slower, because she learned the ropes: ask one question at a time. If you ask more than one, they will reply to the first one and pretend that the other questions never existed. Every time.
Milk will be 120 dinars next month.
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* wrong, they are not rusting; they still can acquire stains.
** nobody calls my name, everyone knows that it doesn't respond.
Mentions: 04-VII-2006., 25. maj, burundi, detelina, Dragana Vitas (Dragana), eos70, frendz parti, gimnazija, Gradivoj Škrbić (Škrba), gugolj, house dictionary, Jelena Sredljević (Lena), Joda, kum, Linda Sredljevich Aquilla (Linda), Mališa Borkovski (Borko), Nevena Sredljević (Nina), novogradnja, pekmez, Reinaldo Aquila (Rein), Rosanda Aquilla (Fayes), Ryu (Raja), Sanda Sredljević Aquilla (Sanda), UbiquAgora (UA), Zorica Škanata, in serbian