08-VII-2002.
On fourth, dad writes how his vineyard pal was pouring concrete... well, for some „girl in years“ who works at KuPro, fixing the swing frame into a slab, and the edges of it went very near to the flowerbeds. When the concrete set, he went to remove the planks, and forgot that there are cacti among the flowers...
Then he reports how the dollar fell, from once 70 to 63 dinars, which is still more than this time last year. Told him that „this is all a consequence of Reagan/Thatcher deregulation, i.e. revoking the government control of stuff and reverting to unleashed market. Which led to weakening of state control, and the big capital gradually fell under its own influence. Which is what caused the fall of several big firms, including Enron, Worldcom - the institutions (including the non-government, independent) which were supposed to control the business have gradually became dependent on those they were supposed to control. So it happened that these firms were deeply in red, while reporting solid black, legally at that (because they bought enough congressmen to get a law which would allow them to not report certain transactions as cost). The big honchos got their millions selling their shares on time, before the squash burst - and the investors lost confidence in big corporations, and they lost it in small ones two years ago. Of course dollar fell.“
Đuđa is the CEO of her son-in-law's firm again, for the duration of their vacation in Spain. She should be paid this time, last year she got hollow nose up to her eyes*.
The temperature of water in the pool is, recalculated from Fahrenheit, 31°C. As if stepping into čorba. We're tanning fine. Though, re temperature, I wrote to dad „out of water it was 90F yesterday, which should be around 31, though I think it was more. What they publish, they measure at the airport, where it's a meadow and there's at least some breeze; here on the hilltop we only get the hot air off the blacktop crawling up the slope. The water mellowed down yesterday, to just 32°C :). Some kid said there's no telling which is water and which is air. BTW, the main fun now is playing football in the water :). Of course, it's all slow motion, but we get honestly tired and stretched out.“
We postponed the barbecue, as we hit the grocery just at the time when the guy was unloading crates of perfect bell peppers, nice big and juicy, so filled peppers it is, for three days.
On fifth and sixth, exchanged few emails with Nina. She tried to visit Avai, but Cica is on vacation, and she has no clue where they others would be. They already moved the office from Bangro last weekend, I think it's at Vanji's place now, he's got extra space there. We agreed to move her to Richmond only when she gets here, so we don't forget any thing she'd want to have with her. The accomodation will be same street, next building, rent by the same guy, only 2nd floor instead of 3rd, and larger.
Today Nina reports that she's in Belgrade, with Danilo. The bus from Zrenjanin was chock full so she was standing in the aisle with the bunch of other people. It eased down only in Borča, when there was less than 10 km left - but then that's half an hour, as the bus has to navigate around the Terazijski ridge and the fortress. She got to pay 65$ to the US embassy, to get a visa extension (can't do that in the US, for extensions you need to apply abroad). The embassy moved, it's not in Kneza Miloša anymore, too busy and too downtown.
For quick messages we used ICQ and NetMeeting, though ICQ didn't work for me since the last disk change, but the web version did. In emails we scheduled it for her 20:00 on NetMeeting, planning to include Go too, if we manage to make sound work.
NetMeeting was an interesting piece, despite being owned and operated by m$. Of course, they didn't make it, they bought it. Anyone's contact info was freely available, and while it didn't attract much spam at the time, it got you interesting people who'd find you somehow. There were regular crazies, some perverts, curious teenagers, folks asking about their kind of music (which fit mine in almost two cases), and chatting with them was interesting for a while. But then it became first a distraction, then a nuisance and finally the reason to ditch NetMeeting. m$ also ditched it a few years later.
Now there's a mystery - I found eight shots from Agfa, where the EXIF info inside says that they were taken today. And I left them in today's directory**. The previous day with shots was 5th but that was from the tiny camera; from Agfa was on 6th of june, the rainbow. The next shots are on 24th of august. But then the filedate says these (mostly showing Mrvica) were shot on 13th of march and I see we're both wearing long pants. I'm leaning to the latter as being correct, as the poor gadget would lose the date if the batteries were left in the charger overnight, and then when setting the time I wasn't always accurate, I could have overshot by a few months. Perhaps I thought the date was american while it was normal or vice versa.
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* i.e. nothing
** sorry, i wrote folder first, but corrected myself. The zmajček was running windowses then, so directory.
Mentions: Agfa, Avai, Bangro, čorba, Danilo, Đurđa Rođanović (Đuđa), Gorana Sredljević (Go), KuPro, Majkrosoft (m$), Mrvica, Nevena Sredljević (Nina), Slavica Urdulj (Cica), Vilmoš Baranji (Vanji), zmajček, in serbian