10-IX-2016.

The annual parastos of IV_5pp, again in Klincaid. majstor Mile hasn't quite finished everything, was actually taking a break while the walls in the front part of the house get dry. Two days ago I came to clean up as much as I could, at least the kitchen, gonk and the rear shed, now ceremoniously renamed into terrace. It has three big openings to the rear side, with a rather panoramic view of... presently, huge piles of šut (i.e. building junk - broken bricks, roof plates, slats etc). Well, mason's stuff was everywhere - even on the terrace itself there was his cement mixer, wheelbarrow, few sacks of cement. The guests had to navigate the path I dug between the piles of sand.

Dragana and Staša came first, and they were the only to see the missing wall. The others came soon (Jasmina, Žara, Mjedac, Mandža, Baki, Bajlo, Čombe). Then when the first batch of food (pork neck steaks, me on the b-que) was just about ready, Sredljak came - which was a surprise, he usually promises to come but doesn't.

Nobody aged a bit since last time. All looking good. I had to paraphrase the lyrics of Arsen Dedić (from "Ne daj se, Ines", recited by Rade Šerbedžija, which was a very well sold hit single... imagine, one actor reciting a poem over some sentish music, being a top selling single): "I will not have anyone to grow old with if you all stay young".

For drinks, I got four 2l bottles of Zaječarsko beer (so if there's anything left I can drink it too - the standard Lav or Jelen are just fodder), 2l of fine Žilavka wine from Mostar, a sixpack of 2l minaqua mineral water (rather generic but nobody expects anything extra, and anyway this is Serbia, where there's an excellent source of mineral water in every tenth village) and, as she told me to finally do (sometimes wives have good advice), I pulled out the milfovača which Boća brought two years ago. It gradually vanished over time.

Unfortunately, most of the time I sat next to Baki, who kept pouring into my glass whenever it was half full. He's got about 30kg on me (I presently got 84 though my belly looks big and I have some padding on the hips, but the rest of me is rather trim) and he's at least 110, by the looks of it. I didn't get quite drunk, but wasn't sober either, and wasn't just right either. I was a couple of notches above that. I remember making passes at Dragana, not much above the usual innuendos we all made when we were in class, and she responded in the same manner, so it was all good. Meaning that at some point she came to sit at my end of the table but there weren't any free chairs nearby, so she sat on my knee, and stayed so for a couple of minutes. Nothing of it, except Bajlo managed to grab a shot of it, though a bit late, as she was already getting up, but it was still clear where from. Just in case, I erased that photo, nobody ever saw it. Don't feel like explaining that nothing really happened.

He kept pestering the good doctor Mandža, as usual. While the girls took on themselves to make coffee, so he was at least spared that, Baki somehow managed to persuade him to get on the ladder to hang a half full plastic bottle on the beam. Allegedly the vibrations from the music resonate in it in such a way to ward off the flies. Which is, off course, bullshit. Five years later, that bottle is still hanging there, so anyone who comes and asks about it gets the story.

The food was first some cold toothpick stuff I bought in the morning - kulen, dry neck, pečenica, trappist cheese (the only item of which most was left uneaten). Around noon I fired up the barbecue, the pork necks boneless first. Then Bajlo took over with the fish, and much later, perhaps around 16, I came back to roast the ćevapčići.

I really got drunk when they left and I actually didn't drink for perhaps half an hour. It seems that as long as I keep talking and walking around it doesn't quite get me, but when I stop it kicks in. As if I didn't know that already. So I did my usual thing, sat and watched the slideshow (the old gugolj and the old speakers hooked to it were the multimedia show, as usual, and I kept them running all the time).

Around 23:00, when I was just ready to go to sleep in the kitchen, Mića appeared - the brother of Donald, whom we thought was lost or at least still staying with Lenka and hers. Came to keep me company.

This is the first time we ran out of drinks and food. I was suprised to see that everybody left at 21:00, never so early - usually they stay until 23:00 - but when I saw the empty fridge, I got it. Then again, four days later when I was processing the photos, I thought it really was 23:00 when they left, but then something didn't look right. Jasmina's son and bride left around sunset, and the timestamps show after 20:22... which is completely wrong, sun should set around 18:00.

Eventually solved the mystery. Linux seems to treat the times on the SD card as UTC, so it adds 1 hour for the timezone and 1 for the daylight saving. After this I simply kept the camera time on UTC and that was it - no adjustment by end of march or october, linux will do it.

Mentions: Božidar Sokolović (Boća), Branislav Rade (Baki), ćevapčići, Donald, Dragana Vitas (Dragana), gonk, Gradivoj Raža (Žara), Gradivoj Sredljev (Sredljak), gugolj, IV_5pp, Jasmina Vlajin, Joško Čobzanin (Čombe), Klincaid, Lenka Dimijan, majstor Mile, maturski parastos (parastos), milfovača, Nenad Bajlo (Bajlo), Slavoljub Mandić (Mandža), Stanoje Serdarević (Staša), Živko Mjedenica (Mjedac), in serbian

19-X-2016 - 25-III-2026