05-X-2023.
And finally the big mathematicians' gathering at the Elmont.
For lunch we skipped the sarma, our scheme is 1-2-4, third day we eat something else. She made some čorba from her cubes and orange tomatoes, just an excuse to exterminate the one habanero that was nicked on one side, so to save of it what saved can be, and fried those hakes. And then they say that you can't get your fill on just fish... nope, it's that you can always have more of fish.
And of course, I had a nap, just long enough. Woken up by them twins, they didn't eat čikine nogice (v. house dictionary), so baba chided them for ordering five and eating only two, she'll never make them again, the cats don't deserve such good food, and then they begun such a whine, coordinated and in unison, that the art of it woke me up. Right on time. I picked up the eos70, phone, cigarettes and took off. I intentionally took the shortcut behind Eva's, because I didn't go that way for at least the last forty years, so to see what does it look like now. For one, the clay pit by the railway was filled long ago and there's an acacia forest on it, the Chineses pee there. Second, the old yardhouse, where once D.K. from VIII2 used to live, there's yet another block of novogradnja. That house (v. 01-I-1970.) is still standing, in different states of repair. The dozen owners maintain their pieces separately, and this is how it looks now. Back then it all looked like this right corner.
I got there exactly as promised, at 14:30. Sweat broke through my new banja shirt in several places, the sun beat as if it was the beginning of september (or would it be „a beginning“?). Called Borko, said he's coming in 20 minutes. Yeah right, 400 meters to go. And he came as he said, and then soon after him came Duca, Mima, R.S.
There we realized we were exactly the four of us (except Borko, who took this shot) who used to work in MPSŠC, so we took this special shot. Then others started coming - Staša with his wife (also a colleague), three guys from the '54 generation, Momir (with freshly scraped nose, bad landing when he was kissing the concrete, tried to protect his recently broken shin and overcompensated), V.A., more or less the gang who was there at the first gathering of ten years ago, and the next two. V.G. arrived with the last car. I failed to recognize only two of the folks, Borko's kum and the guy from Trbnjevo, who worked there until he clocked 40 years of staž, and flatly refused to work some two months more to get a full retirement, retired on the spot and lost some percentage, just not to see them any day longer than he had to. The reason for both is the fattening on the skull, lost any similarity to the bony guys I remember.
First two or three hours I spent chatting with M.D., who was twice a legend. First, for failing the analysis one [aka calculus 101, a serious misnomer] because he had to leave the written part at half, didn't remember to pee before. And then the next five times that kind of task wasn't on the exam and he gradually gave up. The second was when he was berating his son for not graduating already, which he got back „if it's so easy, why didn't you?“. „Is it so? Okay then“ - and he went back to college and graduated this time. Turns out he was also doing cobol first and then fox, so we badmouthed m$ in full agreement with each other, exchanged hunters' stories („and when it gets to index more than 23767 records, it starts overwriting indexes of the zeroeth, first etc record, forgets what was there before“, and he slaps his brow). He did that for quite a while, and at tax authority at that, but got screwed by too many things there and eventually quit it all, formatted his disk and went on to do something completely different. He asked whether that was me, said there was a company from Zrenjanin who came to tax authority in Novi around 2006 and offered double pay to any programmers who'd come do fox for them. Nope, I was abroad at the time, but it could be the time my partner's son inherited Avai and moved it to Novi. So not me, but some of mine. During the conversation I mentioned „serekeš“ casually, not even noticing, so V.G. had to jump in and translate, he didn't know what the thing meant.
He and at least three more people commended me for remaining the same as I was. Except the big Živana, who got surprised, because she remembered me as not just crazy and weird, but also as antisocial, staying away, or at least that was her impression then. „That's because I already had a girlfriend and didn't go bothering you girls“. The little Živana, the one we met on 07-IX-1999. at the embassy, had such a schedule that today was her only day off, which we adjusted to. She somehow seems to have gotten old the most.
I've heard a bunch of stories, including a few from MPSŠC, topped with a fresh anecdote about Đole (on a popravni he gives a kid a pass while not even taking a look at his work - just takes the paper, crumples it and throws it into the waste basket, „so none may see it“). Even sat a quarter of an hour with Duca, we didn't do that for more than fifty years, simply sit and talk about anyhting, including the lives of people we both knew and also one former customer of Avai („I don't know why folks think she's some chick, here even my Joška finds something in her, must be that she kept wearing minis* and high heels for so long and nobody ever looked above and didn't notice how stupid she was... We see her almost any day crossing the street from their house to the shop, poking the blacktop like a hen... and he ain't much better, and they were heavily poor when they started.“).
From M.H. about a guy who refused to wear a tux and necktie for the tablo photos (this would need an explanation... somewhere in the spring of 1974), and despite hours of persuasion, he flatly refused unless presented with some written regulation where it says he must. So he had none of that on his shot, but then the principal refused to vet the tablo with his picture like that and there was the impasse. The solomonic solution was to cut his picture out, and display it separately, about 10cm in front of the others.
Maca (once the best chick on the group, still has that pussycat smile, just grew large now and achieved that it doesn't matter) asked me at some point „who is Paće?“. Well, that's me, that's my nickname since elementary... and there I spilled out a minced version in three sentences. It must have been Borko who forgot that nobody out of town knows me by that nickname, so he routinely mentioned me a few times, and it reached her.
We split around 20:15. Staša drove me home. His wife asked for extra instructions on growing the bolivian hot peppers.
The gugolj was slowing down, so I took a look, it seems the stale codecs made playing yoochoob videos use some workaround method which was suffocating the machine, which it duly reported. Let it get a full update, didn't do that in a while, and the next day when she tried, said it slides, flies. We then sat to exhaust the tutifruti left over from the weekend in the banja.
In the morning I processed and distributed the photos. Come to think of it, the feeling I had at times, that I'm some kind of impostor in the guild (because I never solved my thousand integrals and dozen other must does), is finally dispelled, we're all the same. I even had the pleasure to tell how „...someone tried to flatten the ninetythree inflation curve, tried all possible tricks and eventually when he logarithmed it twice, got a graph straight as an arrow. Fuckit, man, it's been years since the last time I could tell something like this and not have to explain anything.“
----
* found it somehow, mentioned on 03-VI-1997.
Mentions: 01-I-1970., 26-V-1986., 03-VI-1997., 07-IX-1999., Avai, bager, čorba, Dušica Tošin (Duca), Đole Beljanac, Elmont, eos70, Eva, fox, Gradivoj Sredljević, gugolj, house dictionary, Joška Rac, kum, Majkrosoft (m$), Mališa Borkovski (Borko), Merima Tabarski (Mima), Momir Hadžipopov, MPSŠC, Novi Sad, novogradnja, popravni, sarma, serekeš, Stanoje Serdarević (Staša), staž, Trbnjevo, VIII2, in serbian