may 1977.
Nothing much to remember, except the computing related courses were off and we had fewer classes. So no more theory of algorithms and automata, no more elements of computing machines, but at least they kept the numerical methods and the numerical methods of linear algebra, aka numela (the name stuck, even the professor took to it).
The pinning the centerfolds and other larger photos on the walls of our room went on. Here and there we'd add some drawing of our own, or even a photograph, but the first order of business were the pretty naked girls. Periodically we'd do an inventory - how many cunts, tits, butts were visible, and it soon became such a chore that we'd usually toss a coin or bet on something, the loser gets to count them. The numbers ran into hundreds. The tally would be posted on yet another piece of paper by the coatrack. At the time this was shot, we had only undergone the process twice; when enlarged, this shot shows something like 343 tits, 172 butts, 79 (or 19?) cunts*.
Slave and I once had some internal chat amongst ourselves, probably about what to drink tonight on whatever budget we had, and Borko overheard some part of it and wanted to know more. The first thing that crossed Slave's mind was to blurt that we're sort of employed in the elementary school in Petrovaradin, holding, as a tezga, a few lessons each every week, second shift only. That's when he got curious to know more, but we quickly hushed him with more imaginary story of how this was strictly off the books and that we were asked not to talk about it. This spread quickly, of course, everybody was curious to know how we pulled this off, but then knew better than to pry and ask questions, as we'd pull this confidentiality clause and refuse to answer.
We experimented with photography to an extent. While he was better versed in practical matters around the house - he even cooked a few times, it wasn't all just ready meals and reheating of stuff from home - I had more knowledge in photography and few surrounding issues, so we sort of complemented each other. We somehow managed to plug his portable cassette recorder through a record player loudspeaker and supply power to it from some battery charger (perhaps the one for my calculator), achieving perhaps 4W altogether, which was far better than what the recorder itself would have provided. Don't remember much of what other music we had, except „Weather report“. We had lots of that.
There's a better shot than this, of her and me, but it didn't focus properly on reshooting. This was shot by flashing twice, i.e. we flashed each other. The oil heater served as the tripod for the praktika.
We were asked for ID few times this month, and I guess a cop came once to talk with us, because we were seen in „Zemun“ tavern near the village center one evening, actually still in daylight. The tavern is exactly the same as the one on 25. maj - bare walls, vinyl asbest floors, echoes, metal chairs and looks more like a mess hall than a tavern, but is then proportionally cheaper and on our way, we just have to get off the bus one stop earlier. Which we'd do anyway if we needed anything from a supermarket. The reason for this overall alert, including thousands of such talks and ID checks, this month is the case when a kiosk robbery got interrupted, and a cop (or two?) got killed. There was very little trace, except the bullet itself, and killing a cop is nowhere forgiven, so they took to solving it like programmers, by method of brute force. Couple of thousand cops were on the case, they even recalled all 9mm weapons for „a technical check“, firing thousands of bullets, trying to match the barrel with the bullet found in the body. The case was solved a couple of months later; meanwhile, every guy of kiosk robbing age was suspect, including us, simply because we were seen that day, even though in totally different area.
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* there's a note in Notes about this
Mentions: Notes on grammar, spelling and other witchcraft, 25. maj, Mališa Borkovski (Borko), praktika, Radovan Tomić (Slave), tezga, in serbian