18-IX-2023.
Finished brandy yesterday, only one barrel with mixed pear and apple remains for around friday. The pure pear is finished.
It finally got a bit colder this morning. As I'm wearing jeans since thursday (which was more of a measure to preempt any problems at the bank, who knows whether they allow shorts), today indeed I had to wear a jacket when I pedaled to the community [centre] to pay the bills and get ćevapčići for Raja and Violet. While paying at the fastmunch and detailing the small money that I had in [my] pocket, I managed to gather the exact amount and the fastmuncher said „excellent that... how we all here [in the dozen kiosks around the community [centre]] suffer the lack of small change, nobody has it... the other day I went to the bet joint to break a few large ones, and the girl there opened the safe and they had a heap of small ones, all of 10, 20 and 50 dinars, few hundreds... that's where the small money goes“.
Had I died yesterday this'd never even cross my mind. I kept thinking they won't even talk below a thousand in there.
Dropped by Čankovo in the afternoon, she picked tobacco, I pears. Lately she started adding some of our tobacco into cigarettes, and we grew to like it. Only kentucky at first, now virginia too. Not much, maybe five percent, but that much means a lot. Not that the dealer supplies us with bad stuff, on the contrary, but with this addition it smacks exquisitely, as if switching from 57 to Winston or Chesterfield (which we nicknamed Vinčika and Čestika back then). As if I started enjoying smoke only now, after 48 years.
The next day Lena reported that she landed in Paris and was waiting for a bus to Caen in Normandy. She'll go bicycling along the tour de France route. Next tuesday, when she flies back and we know she returned, we can take our annual trip, this time Sokobanja again. We just like the place. It's the highway that's become boring, so I asked on burundi about a more scenic route and got told to stick to the highway. So I picked one route over Pančevo, Paraćin and Rtanj, which takes only a bit of highway.
The water heater croaked in the afternoon. Just when I messaged that Šuljagić guy to come take a look, overyester, but nope, he didn'tt respond. This time I called him and he promised to come on saturday or so. That got me thinking - he just needs to clean the fan's fins... well, my guy can do that. Dialed Zdravko and he came in 20 minutes. Turned out the fan was clean, it was other stuff that wasn't, so he went and brought a compressor and blew everything out thoroughly. As for the fan, he said „hear this sound“ ... „bearing dying? As Carp would say, one drop...“ „of šivanol, of course, exactly, there's no better, I have a ten liter canister of it at home“. And then the heater still didn't work, because there was no gas. The gas did return, it only took one long yank on the membrane by the meter, which he did, and there it was, running as ever. Messaged Šuljagić that we had a false alarm, were out of gas.
Later in the afternoon I made a few calls around the mathematicians' meetup, called the couple in Kikinda, tried to get a couple more numbers for the colleagues who worked in MPSŠC, but though it was about the time of the 5th class, nobody replied - probably the number was in the secretary's office, will retry in the morning. Called Dragana then to get her to connect me with Duca, who isn't responding to the one number I have, and by extension her kuma, who is married to that blonde guy from the fourth division in Zmaj. Small town, all of us in two adjacent burroughs (aka local communities). Also wanted to know what happened with Bilja and the funeral. No clue, she said, didn't call her at all. She saw the funeral announced in the local paper (so the old comrade died before wednesday, when the weekly issue is closed) so it was on saturday, but what did Bilja manage to get done in that one day we may never know - our estimate is that we won't see her again. Well I'll hear about that from Mima - nope, she said, Mima had a kid's birthday that day and probably couldn't attend. Well then, the mystery has all the chance of remaining unresolved.
On 20th we distilled the last three stills of brandy - one pear, one apple, one mixed. Somehow the apple yielded much more even though it had less fruit, the last still was 5kg short. The season's total was 78 liters, the purchased pear making 33 of that, not bad enough.
The day before a guy from Jeptel* (nee Telenor) left a leaflet with the offer to hook into optical internet connection through them. While I was on the last still, I called him and ordered, just internet with no phone (had their mobile number, they screwed me a few times) and no television (after fourteen years without, why go there again), and it will cost some more than now, but we'll have 500 megabit instead of current 18,5. In bosnian, that's hhyooy, the diffr'ns. Let's see that miracle.
And then also found a message from Dragana - she caught up with Duca, who will attend. Asked about Bilja and what happened with the funeral, said she has no idea, didn't call her while she was here.
On twonnyfirst, after a few phone calls, the Jeptel team rescheduled the installation for 15:00 of the same day instead of noon of the next. Better so, the kids are getting restless and we eat around noon. Linda and Sanda take turns to scream and yell when a game loads too slowly. Having thee phone in hand, I tried MPSŠC again, nobody lifts the headset off the hook, so called Mima instead, to see about this colleague's number. She's got that, will send me. Asked about Bilja and what happened with the funeral, said she has no idea, didn't call her while she was here. And she couldn't attend because she promised to be at her niece's birthday in the other village at the same time. I said that's Bilja, sometimes she exchanges emails, messages, bunch of them for a month or two, then ceases all communication for a number of years. She had the exact same experience. If we compared the periods, I guess they'd overlap exactly.
And the guys came and installed it all. I offered a kilo of brandy if they also connect the outlets in the walls, but nope, no clue, they never did that, nobody asked for that, nobody had UTP cables around the house, they don't know how that goes. So no brandy for them. They actually waited for the third guy, who does the UTP connections, but male plugs only, while I went to Tišma's [shop] to buy the outlets (which I already bought ten years ago, but wrong ones, for phones), and a wire brush to scrub my still. For starters, I connected cimet to the wireless, then zmajček to the wire (they did provide plugs for the lower end) and then reconfigured the network to be called povratnix like before. We had to turn off the wireless first on the old Telekom's router, to disentangle them (same IP) and then I had access to the setup at will. The kids' tables took off immediately, all the speed we were waiting for, I hope the screaming's over.
The remaining issue are the playstation and Raja's box, wired - still plugged into the old router via wire. I do have two cables by zmajček, but the other cable is also with a male plug and too short for this. So next day, late in the afternoon, near their closing time, I went and bought a switch. I thought the switches were a matter of the past, a stopgap measure from the 30 years ago when routers were expensive, but no, it's now that they've gained popularity and became quite cheap. I replugged zmajček, playstation and Raja's box into it, unplugged the old router - all so quickly, that the Netflix movie which played on the playstation didn't even get interrupted. My fiddling with the cables was shorter than what it had in buffers. So we have a fast internet now, 280 megabits instead of 18. Though the contract says 500, not 300, a snafu at installation time, I complained and they said they'll fix this.
Lena regularly sends photos from her biking tour of France. She and her slanted eyed friend (she could be anything from the Thailand to Koreas range) pedal some 60km a day. Reached destination on friday afternoon, then on saturday should return to the starting point, to return the bikes, and then have a few days to relax and have fun.
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* Officially Yettel, which the Norwegians sold to some Bulgarians and these to some Arabs. „Jeptel“, as I pronounce it, sounds like ellided „jebete li“, „do you fuck [someone/something]“. This form implies object; the form which would imply a partner needs an extra „se“, the reflexive pronoun.
Mentions: Biljana Lajković (Bilja), burundi, cimet, Čankovo, ćevapčići, Dragana Vitas (Dragana), Dušica Tošin (Duca), Jelena Sredljević (Lena), kum, Linda Sredljevich Aquilla (Linda), Merima Tabarski (Mima), MPSŠC, Ryu (Raja), Sanda Sredljević Aquilla (Sanda), šivanol, Tasa Radenkov (Carp), Violet, Zdravko Lakatoš, Zmaj, zmajček, in serbian