may 1985.
I spent time, frequently, with Mika Fišer, mostly around computers. We were incompatible, of course, him having a Commodore 64 and me a zx spectrum, but then we learned a lot from each other's boxes. He also employed a few tricks, like cutting out a slot in the sleeve of the 180Kb 5,25" floppy, so the other side could be used too (which we called "flip the pancake"). He also bought a dongle with a Z80 processor and a few other bits, which made his C64 into a double machine, so it could boot into CP/M, which was a miracle and a real operating system, capable of handling real disks. We studied the thing as thoroughly as we had the time, well mostly following instructions from some magazine, and eventually wrote an article for the slovenian magazine "Moj mikro" ("my micro", which was always taken as a joke, nobody brags how his is small), and it got published, in the september issue. Which was about the end of this cooperation. He was still trying to finish that machine engineering, don't know if he ever did.
The family was sort of weird. His dad, an old doctor (he "found" tuberculosis on my dad, decades ago), was probably retired at the time, looked a bit older and worn out. There was no mother in sight, but there was always some aunt, or maid, and they'd sit in one of the rooms we'd have to pass. The house is also weird, at a corner in one of the backstreets surrounding downtown. This particular street is a dead end for a number of years now and serves mostly for parking (and later became popular among small businesses which can't afford main street). The entrance was from the yard, as it's one of those hollow square jobs which were so popular in XIX century. So you go through the ajnfor (Einfahrt or Einführ, never knew which) and then enter some kind of corridor, which also doubles as some kind of sitting space - there's a small table, a couple of chairs, one of the aunts knitting by a table lamp, because this never had enough light, then pass through some more of space (windowless this time) and enter the street facing main room, which is huge. The ceiling is at least 3m high, and the room feels like 5x5 or more. BTW, these women that I kept seeing in the house, were probably the most silent I ever met - in perhaps a dozen visits I don't remember hearing more than just a couple of sentences altogether.
Around this time I was teaching a course, or more of a discussion club, at Dom, on microcomputers. Now the gang of perhaps dozen guys would gather on wednesday afternoons there, and we'd perhaps bring a box and find a TV to plug it into (mostly not), and discuss a lot. I know I once came soaken wet, because the rain caught me a couple of blocks before arriving there. About half of the guys stayed with this, went on either into becoming programmers (one or two went to study it at petefi, which was then enrolling for teachers of informatika, as the new addition to the curriculum was called - which probably didn't start until about 1990); one or two I met professionally in the following years, and a few turned to be mostly gamers. They'd get an Amiga and bang on it.
During this school year I had one student with surname Kujundžić. He was semiliterate, as most of them were, but had the trouble of having a dž (jay) in his surname, so the first written work he got an ace (see school levels) which he would have gotten anyway, but I told him it was because he was unable to write his own name - he wrote Kujunđić. Next time, Kujundjzić. Third, Kujunđžić. Fourth time he got it right, finally. A week later I see in the logbook that he was listed among the absent, by a colleague who was a machine engineer, as Kujunđzić.
School's fame under the new name wasn't growing at all. Still everyone mentioned it as mašinska, or under some version of previous acronyms. One day two cops came, near the end of the first shift, to check some student's alibi, as he claimed he was at school at the time of the event they were investigating. It just happened that I unlocked my bike (which I kept in the so-called windcatch, space between outer and inner main door) and pushed it out as they were leaving, so we walked the dozen meters to the asphalt together. I asked them whether they knew the name of the school. Nope. „I knew that not even militia knows that“.
Don't know when did the idea come to me to found a computing sekcija in the mašinska, but after the success of the points committee, and a lecture on home computers I held for the staff room (not that they understood anything, but they've seen the enrollment be done in thirty minutes twice already, and the points were also done on the zx spectrum) it came. The money was somehow not a problem, I kind of nailed it there, it seems it was always there but nobody tapped it, because that would require extra work. So I got permission to acquire five (!) zx spectrums, five blackenwhite television sets, a tape recorder with a deck of cassettes, one serial interface and a printer, so I may for once play with it, buying it for myself being unaffordable. The procurement went fine, the television sets and the cassetteer plus cassettes we bought from some shop (Čelik?) in Lesnina, it's the zx spectrums that were the problem, they're not made here. Not sold anywhere either. They could be bought in commission stores, which was a way for the state to still make a dime and to have 'second hand' stuff sold somewhere regularly, can't do all of that via classified ads. The larger half of the assorted goods in these shops were contraband, which the state tolerated, as long as it stayed small, may the people feel the relaxation a bit, better do that than beg or steal.
The problem was the dealer in Belgrade (because the komision in Zrenjanin didn't have a smuggler of such calibre) didn't have five eaches* at once, so I got three of them, the serial interface and the printer (finally seeing those in my hands!) right away (paying by, I guess, letter of guarantee, meaning bill the school and they promise to pay), and the remaining two arrived next week, via classic method. The guy would call to say he just passed the package to the driver of the bus which leaves at 14:00, which meant I was at the busodrom at 15:30, told the driver that I was expecting the package of given description, and I'd get it, all done.
The sekcija went fine, I always had up to ten guys who loved to come, and even I got some dime, scoring on the time it took to maintain this. Which was less than an hour of lecture in a class, perhaps by half, but those were in limited supply anyway. The scoring system was per hour, not per each*, and the total number of hours per month was limited, there was no overtime. So if you score on something, you lose on something else, and I guess that's where everybody sacrificed the fable „preparation for class“, which nobody really ever did, at least not in the standard amount. And it would be also interesting to measure that for me, who did the same thing in four classrooms, and for someone who held four courses.
Somewhere I got the Beta Basic for zx spectrum, did those points in it, and this time I did the enrollment for real, more comfortable and smooth than the previous two years, it could save its data, and even had some graphic looks. I got it to print too, took the interface and printer home, found out that the original driver covered only its original thermal printer, and this one connected via the serial, RS232C port. Some discussion of that is under september 1985.. I found the listing of that driver, but found this one more interesting, this is what the enrollment program looked like... nowadays I barely understand half of what I did there :). The next month, when the enrollment occurred, the guys from sekcija and I have entered all the data - names, scores, desired occupations - into this program, and within half an hour after closing of the stalls where the paperwork was submitted, and within thirty minutes posted the printed lists of enrollment, per occupation. Which nobody saw until the next day, it wasn't announced (and couldn't be, we had no idea how long would it take us), the paperwork was always sorted out the next day, and in those thirty minutes everybody packed and left the building, except us and the cleaner ladies.
When the schools were reshuffled two years ago, our electro division went with the construction (from 13.) to make a new school (elektro-građevinska, aka -građanska, civic), and part of the staff went there to, namely the electric engineers and also the old secretary. She was replaced with a new girl, or maybe not so new, she could have been in the other oour, but I never had any business with her. She was kind of cute, and often managed to arrange her slightly-below-knees skirt in almost fuckappealing way, specially if she'd sit and cross her legs. Which she did when she came with me to the computing cabinet, a small room of 2,5x5 - in a school that's small - to keep me company. She was bored, such is secretary's job. I saw she was n good mood and we were locked in - you don't do anything in your cabinet when you have an empty class slot, unless you make sure no student would just barge in, trying out the door - the key was in the lock, she could leave at will. But no, she was attracted to this, me being younger and crazier among the lot and thus more interesting. I viewed the picture, internally gave her 5.2 for artistic impression and didn't take the bait. I may be horny (zagoreo - burned up, like a frying pan) all the time, but not on the job, specially not knowing what she may make out of it later, and not my type anyway, and the stark red flag there - her husband a cop. Not even crossing my mind. And even that nutty geographer noticed that she was buzzing around me, said „dangerous are those unimpregnables“. Ow, that'd make it even worse, what if it wasn't her who was the cause...
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* komad = piece, but taken as an unit of measure, also when displaying the price, which is in english „apples, 0,25$ each“. Discussed elsewhere in the larger text.
Mentions: 13. april, september 1985., Čelik, Dom omladine, Lesnina, MPSŠC (mašinska), oour, petefi, Radovan Fišer (Mika Fišer), school levels, sekcija, ZX Spectrum, in serbian
21-XI-2020 - 17-I-2026