Officially, the first day of the war. Or the bombing (which began the evening before), as it was politically rectified by unspoken agreement of both sides. The girls didn't go to school, schools were closed, as announced the same evening.
We gathered in the offices of Avai, had some coffee, then went out into the yard while there was the alert. When that was over, perhaps 20 minutes later, we went back to finish our coffee and have a chat among us owners - that'd be Vanji, Brlja and me - and sat to consider what to do while this lasts. There was a possibility that we'd have to close the shop, so Vanji pulled out the secret stash of german marks and split it among ourselves - our only real profit. Wasn't much there, maybe a few hundred. Some capitalists we were, trying to make a living on just our own labor (can't say we exploited our workers any more than we exploited ourselves). Decided to not work for a couple of days until we see how it goes.
So I went home and then online, to gather as much info as I could. The coverage on sezam was really good, people went online even during the overflights, and reported the hits and misses within minutes. The management added 10M of email quota to everybody. Their cafe on Skadarlija will close at 17:00 until further notice.
Netscape (aka nescafe) 4.51 was out, and yes, it could be downloaded from their server, and yes, that's what I was using.
Sent this email to a dozen people, in response to Morton Ericsson's „hearts and prayers“ email.
Thanks, Mort
I'm posting this to as many people as I could remember, because I don't know for how long will I be able to stay connected. We've had a rather sleepless night, though nothing specific happened in my town. My elder daughter is studying in another city, and we heard her on the phone, about 4am when they came back from the shelter. The bombing seems to be rather precise (if anyone can trust state-run media), so it actually destroyed the buildings which were already abandoned. We heard the planes flying above us, though, but saw nothing, though the sky was quite clear. I didn't go out to see, I sat online all the time, in a chat with old friends on sezam BBS - there were 20-30 of us in the average, including couple of old friends who are now in USA and Canada. Everybody supplied as much news as they could. I was reading Washington Post updates (they came in regularly), others were watching CNN or Sky or just through their windows, so we had a rather complete picture very early.
This morning, we're having immediate fuel rationing - no gas nowhere; the water is also shut off. Phones are crazy - depending on what you dial, you may get connected right away (luckily, this includes my ISP) or dial endlessly and maybe get connected after 5 or 35 retries. There's no bread, but I got the milk and cheese. Everybody's probably trying to create some reserves - the only crowds you can see anywhere is people waiting at the shops for bread to come. We've had an air raid signal this morning at about 10am, and most of the people went home. There was no big traffic crowd, obviously we were not in much of a hurry so I drove home when most already left. Nobody seems to be too much alerted, there's no panic, but everybody's worried.
I'll try to keep you updated as often as I can.
The recipients, apart from Mort, were D.B. from Australia (who hosted solitaire for a while), Burt, Beatrice, G.T. from Atlanta, Nancy F., Michelle C., M. McM. (with whom I later parted ways, he turned out to be a ultra right wing, bomb-them-to-stone-age nut), V. Š. from Russia (later Canada), P.V.T. from Romania (also later in Canada), J. Leonov (a Belgrader, now in Canada), Greg, Ford, Emmy, D.F. (the CFO of Zero), N.N. (Russian in Canada), James.
A friend on UA posted this on my behalf:
Based on some *CCs* I have received and replies back from Gradivoj, it seems several of us have sent e-mails to him regarding the situation in his country, Yugoslavia. While there is considerable anxiety, he is still able to check in through his ISP and reply to our e-mails. While this capability is tenuous at best, he has expressed his gratitude for our concern for him and other UT members from that area.
They were getting information from a radio station there, B92, but that has since been taken off the air. They are still able to get information from that web site, B92. As of this posting that site was still operative and many articles are in English.
If interested, you can go to the Reports sections and look at the Country Repartitions for those countries to see all those who are members of the UT.
While I am not sure if Gradivoj really wants this, but I am including his e-mail address here for convenience. I know we all hope for the best for all in our world-wide community.
In other news, got emails of support from James, Ford ("We did not seem to get anywhere near the news coverage as we have had with the Gulf Wars. The media warned us of this possibility, I think that they determined that sometimes the coverage by the media was better than that of the opposing forces.")... some quotes from others:
"Politically, it sounds like most of the NATO allies have mixed feelings about the military action. And certainly the UN Security Council is divided. Our news (interviews with Cohen) tells us the usual noncommittal information about duration of the bombings. There are a lot of mixed feelings and divisions here in the States, too."
...and, believe it or not, a work-related message from Emmy.
In my reply to Ford,
Just like Burt said yesterday, "I guess nobody talked on the phone with their friends in Germany or Vietnam" - but now we have the Net. One difference is that there are no Iraqis on the net either... but we're there for several years now.
Go came home today - the schools and universities are dismissed until 2nd of april. She did have to wait for the bus more than a hour, but she eventually came. She called at 4am when they returned from the shelter. She was OK, but it was cold down there. She saw a couple of explosions, from a distance. We're cleaning up the basement. We didn't bring anything to read. I abused the vacuum cleaner to turn it into something bearable. During the raid alert I went up a couple of times, to check the news on sezam.
Let's hope that Milosovic will compromise before this turns into true madness.
No way. He's back in the saddle with this. This is what he hoped for - to have a real outside enemy, to unite the people around himself. He shut down independent radio right away, so there are no other sources of information except the state-run media and the net - but only about 1% of the people have access to it, if their ISPs and phone lines are working*. I'm lucky with this new number - the new Alcatels are working fine and connecting right away, but I had to redial 20-30 times to get to talk with my mother. Dad is in the vineyard :).
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* to differ from the period up to 1996, when some moron in Austria thought the sanctions include cutting off the internet connection (which wasn't on the list), this time there was some mutual agreement to keep the net untouched. Both Nato and Sloba counted on some advantage from that being open - counting that the truth is on their side and will prevail.
1-XI-2012 - 30-VI-2024