21-VIII-2001.
On 18th Nina tried to pass the drivers' exam, having already done the course at school, as is normal here. But no, she can't have one while on a H4 visa. Well fuckit.
Then we went to the busodrom to await Go. The station is smallish, but the waiting room is spacious, airconditioned, has lots of seats. We waited for quite a while, so found entertainment upstairs, where they have the vending machines, lockers and pinball. Real classic pinball. I didn't even try to resist the temptation, just had to play a few rounds, just to see how far out of shape did I get. Haven't played one since, probably, seventies. And, well, I wasn't so bad. No token, insert a quarter.
Later (2018) I wrote about this on suština. Here's the most of it. This photo was the base of the article.
For one, not everything is bigger in America. Their bus stations are disproportionally small, in our sense of measure, in relation to city sizes. This one takes space of about two regular houses and takes no more than eight buses, three of which have to huddle in the back of the yard until there's a free concourse (counting the oil stains is misleading, looks like there are more than five). It has bar-like desk to sell tickets, i.e. no glass barrier, no windows. Upstairs there are some pinballs and vending machines for soda and munchies. It doesn't have a restaurant.
A bus station without a restaurant sounds impossible in our mindset, but so it is here. It's not that there's no waiting; if you fail to catch the connecting ride to where you travel (engrbian: destinacija, serbian: odredište), it's not that you'll just probably have to wait a lot, but you may also need a place to sleep. Because the station will close and you will be kicked out. The station is not a public utility, it's a business and it won't pay staff for the late hours when the business is thin on the ground, almost nobody there. The same reasoning applies to the lack of restaurant - there's not enough passengers to pay for it.
Because for a few hundred bucks one can buy a driveable clunker, doesn't matter how bad its gas mileage may be as the gas is two or three times cheaper than here (even with distances being larger), and the driver's exam is as difficult as that for a moped over here. So the demand for bus rides is rather low, only the poor and those who still don't have, or have already lost their licenses take the bus. Which explains why in a country where you can chose between twenty companies when you want to get a new phone line, there's about one intercity bus company. I've seen another one, but it has its own stations. There are dozen others, but they don't run bus lines, they are for hire - for school field trips etc.
Back to the house on the picture. From what I can see of the entrances and white pipes on the roofs (rooves?), this should be three apartments. But who's crazy enough to live next to the busodrome? College students. There's barely 2km to the university proper, some parts of it are even closer. Too much noise? Doesn't matter, we'll turn our own music louder.
And these pipes... where they're paired, it's probably kitchen, one for the aspirator and the other the sewer vent. I see some roof windows, which is simply not done in Virginia, attic space being just unbearably hot. Unless you rent it to students and you don't care how much power will their AC consume. And where's the AC? Well it's central. There's no wall-mounted type, there's the outdoors unit all the way left, and te inside unit is probably in the backroom next to it. Two mushroom-like blobs on the roof are probably attic vents, if there was any attic left after remodeling for rent.
And a final detail: the windows are all the way up to the ceiling. We are used to have a supporting beam above the window, then one row of blocks over it, then the encirclement (aka serklaž) on the top of the wall, and then the ceiling over that. Here there's no brick, no encirclement, this is all wood. To carry the weight of anything above the window, a simple 10x10cm wooden beam will suffice, so stick it all the way up, why not.
Only now I see that the fence wall ends in a jagged line and doesn't reach the chainlink fence... seems to be one of the buses once successfully toppled it. Tight is the station.
And so Go came, and stayed with us for a few days, and we had a cake and celebrated our birthday(s) together. Just didn't make any shots.
Today's email to Rick
I was promoted, at least one would say so, judging by the size of my office. It means I'm alone in the big room :)
Mike2 has gone to college, and he was the last one in the big office, so it's mine now. UScrew is done with, and it seems so is the Zero.There's about 2% chance that the company will survive, and everyone is pretty much behaving as if it's already down the drain.
Too bad, because we've finally done some things - the new thin Hossy works well, most of it) in Texas, and the new People and RAP stuff was getting redone in the new framework (what the yugos made based on your classes). But some important butthead in one of them Dakotas threatened he'll sue, and that was enough for the investors to back off. Zero was fed by spoon for quite a while, anyway.
So this is the state of affairs. Zero will probably end owing me about 8 grand, and my chances of squeezing that money out are rather low, because the money doesn't exist. At least I'm getting a VFP7. Ford was downloading it for me and himself.
As of today I started sending out emails to whoever on UA has any connection with various job offerings around the site (there's really no shortage at this moment). I don't know how long will the address @Zeroware exist, so I'm writing from this one.
How are you doing? Have you completely taken over the business? Kids?
When's the third supposed to come?
Mentions: Allan Robin (Ford), engrbian, Gorana Sredljević (Go), Hossy, Nevena Sredljević (Nina), Rick Netter, suština, UbiquAgora (UA), UScrew, yugo, Zero Distance (Zero), in serbian
21-III-2017 - 5-VII-2026