10-III-2003.
Got to the office with the rest of folks - had to take the car because it's a few miles on the other end of town. Jake turned out to be crazier than me in several ways. First the wisecrack sentences printed on sheets, and then the ambience of his office. His desk was in the center, but then two more walls were also desk. All of it mostly covered with more papers and stuff. One of the sentences was „I learned to say 'fuck them if they can't take a joke' in six languages“.
He had a Herman Miller 1500$ swinging office chair (which I declined, I already had my leather five-lever chair from Berix; opted for some L-shaped desk and a small filing cabinet instead) and he seriously swung in it while talking (and when not), which made it hard to concentrate on what he was saying. The office, of which I got one corner for the week, was a creative mess. It was fully compliant with my planar axiom („each flat surface tends to become a heap“). The memorable detail was a standing lamp in a shape of a woman's leg on high heel and in fishnet stocking, with a regular lampshade on top.
Once, gathered around the coffee aftamat*, we arrived at the matter of how many languages do I speak, and someone asked about greek. Well, „it should be in order that I'd learn that once, they are out fucking neighbors“. To which Jeanie said „and how do you say fucking neigbors in serbian“, i.e. they wanted to know whether we curse** at all, and which words do we use... Ended up with explaining how „fuck it“ is not a curse, it's a verbal crutch, and cought Sloba's speech when opening the stretch of the highway Feketić-Palić (where someone inserted the one time when he was recorded saying 'jebiga' in about twenty quite appropriate places in the speech).
(the preceding paragraph I found in those june emails with Škrba, and there also this: „Whoever thinks that this is the road to Subotica, is screwed - once we did (during the hungarian phase) venture thataway, at night, trying to cross at Kelebija, because they had better choice of cigarettes in the free shop, and couldn't possibly find where's the exit to Subotica. Well, it's nowhere, unless one is in the mood for night rambling on field roads. Once we found ourselves in Palić, the rest was easy.“)
At one such gathering I wanted to have a notebook, and I was pointed to the ground floor toilet, which was right there by the coffee machine. Didn't know that, Jake's office was upstairs. Nono, I didn't mean toilet paper, I need something to scribble notes on - dang, after so many years I still get lost in translation. Turned out it wasn't misinterpreted - the paperware storage was in the toilet. The toilet was simply too big, garage sized, so the other walls were lined up with shelves, and there it was.
I was given a Sony Vaio leptop to use for work, called it Nebojša (after serbian translation of Sonny Boy from Foghorn Leghorn cartoons), and on it I kept the TotalCmd (then still wincommander) in hungarian. Just so I wouldn't get lost, i.e. to know which machine am I looking at :). Because if it's hungarian, it's on Nebojša, if slovenian, it's my homebox.
The CEO's desk, next door, featured a model of NX-01 Enterprise. He's a trekkie.
The work is OK, nothing I haven't seen before, or at least not much (but I did pick a few neat tricks). First thing I got was to replug a bunch of reports to use datetimes instead of dates, and specially in the dialogs when the period is selected. Automated some of that, using my builders.
Got fox 8 from Jake in an email, installed on my new office laptop -- a Sony Vaio with very good monitor and otherwise powerful too, including the extra numeric keyboard (which I use a lot), switchable with a floppy (never used that) or a subwoofer (puny as it looks, paints the sound considerably). This machine was soon nicknamed nebojša
After work went for a drink, just four of us (Jake, Emily, Joanne) somewhere near the bachelor's pad. Had a whiskey - first time since in the US, never occurred to me that I should try that as well. Not too bad but doesn't taste right. I'll understand five years later why is that.
Then the big dinner in some mexican outfit with just about everybody, not bad but nothing much to remember. Then more long talks in the bachelor's pad. The guy on the left is my geographically nearest, from Rhode Island, and the baldie is... dunno, perhaps the guy who was on South pole, dunno. He didn't last, never saw him again.
Email from my dear
Nice of you to have to sacrifice yourself and lay in a first class seat. Life is hard, has no mercy upon those who aren't used to luxury. Of course it's a fair compensation for the delay.
K's mother gave Lena a ride home and we had a bit of a chat on the street.
tomorrow Lena has the writing test for SOL and next they the rest. They didn't get much homework, so she's playing with tMrvica now.
The envelope you left for Berix I put into the mailbox and I hope she gets it by the end of the week.
Yesterday it was warm so I painted a bit on the terrace. I also tried out that new paint I bought last time in Big-gloc(1). The painted pieces look like they were made out of a piece of a trumpet(2). Today the yarn arrived via UPS and now when I finish this message I go to štrik(3) (not outside so the old man doesn't call the police).
(1) Big Lots, but we pronounced it "big glotz", from "glockati" - to nibble.
(2) The "trompeta" is our local german derivative, specially given the family heritage, we frequently have such words in circulation. Yes, it should mean trumpet (serbian: truba).
(3) An inside joke: to knit, we say "štrikati", from german "stricken" (strick - string). However once Rudolf asked "where's she tonight" - "štrika" (she's knitting) - "at this weather!?" (he pretended that I meant to say she was streaking).
----
* as this was from an email to Škrba, and we long switched from saying 'automatski' (automatically) to 'aftamacki' (ahftamahtzky), the banatian way
** the verb is 'psovati', and literally means 'to say bad words to someone with equally bad intention'. To curse is to wish bad things to happen; there are other similar words in english which try to do this, but only as a second job, their primary meaning is always something else.
Mentions: Cecilia Roxbury (Berix), Emily Hoss, fox, Gradivoj Škrbić (Škrba), Jake Bauer, Jelena Sredljević (Lena), Joanne Stunter, Mrvica, nebojša, Rudolf Ochsner, TotalCmd, in serbian
27-VI-2017 - 10-II-2026