november 1989.

This is about the time when DBA moved from Dom to Students', which is about 400m up the... well, lake. Used to be the river there. We moved most of the stuff in the yugo, but we acquired the big desk which wouldn't fit in it, so we carried it on foot, taking shifts. That's actually why I remember that it was november, the weather was dull, no sun in sight, cloudy but dry.

It's an old building, legacy of Mihajlo Pupin, with proper ajnfor etc, just how the houses were built then. We got the big room at the end of the corridor, which has some sort of pantry to it, where we put Carp when we hired him, so we now had our own hardware guy. We also had a smaller room next to it, used that as our warehouse. We were only seven at the time - Vanji, Sale, Brata, me, Grgi, Nena and Blaža. Next came Rade (this winter, before spring), Fefi, Gradek, Carp, Milka, Števa.

As any other office would do, we'd have coffee regularly, but it came from the cooperative's canteen, and for a while they did our accounting too, until Milka came. That's what pulled us out, the rumor was already ongoing that we were done with, as our books were in chaos. These girls couldn't cope with our amount and diversity, weren't used to it, they had their routine of many years and weren't up to our stuff.

We also took sandwiches from that canteen, they had no barbecue. The sandwiches were rich, almost the rank of what Zora from tech college did, and when the professor there became new dean of PMF, he dragged her along. The only problem was that they applied everything copiously, specially the mayo or cream, so if it misses the beard or sweater, carpet it won't. By then I alredy knew the ropes and knew what to take on a sandwich and what not; the carpet thing happened only once, when Milka lost count and brought one extra, so I took it lest it go to waste. And I did order for myself at times, specially before a farther away field work, because even if the customer takes out to lunch, that lunch will happen later in the afternoon, or at supper time, when we finish the job.

We had to have travel orders. Not that the cops would yank us too much if we didn't, but just in case of a fender bender or something more serious, it would make it clear that the vehicle was in official use and not someone's joyride. The fuckup was that each travel order required three signatures - the person responsible for issuing it, the person greenlighting the vehicle technically, and the driver. It was already trouble to gather the first two signatures, because nobody would be bothered to interrupt the work and sign it, so we managed. My trick was to sign first as myself in latinic, then as Fefi (his signature was just one wavy line, anyone could sign as he), third time in cyrillic. Or I'd do the first signature by left hand.

When Gradek came onboard, I had to do that on her, something like a rite of baptism by fire, I gave her a filled travel order and asked for a donation of a signature. She started looking left-right, what's going on now, it's my first hours on the job and I already have some responsible duty here. To calm her down, I just told her „come on, we did this to everybody“. Of course, I didn't say what „this“ meant, so she nearly shat herself, where's the catcu now. We left her to simmer for a couple of minutes, and then explained that I meant literally „asked for signature“, and that the signature itself means nothing, irrelevant completely, we all sign and nobody looks at it.

Theoretically, spent orders should be archived, which in some fashion was exactly what occurred, only the archive was the yugo itself. It had old orders everywhere, in the doors, on the shades, under the seats. It once happened that Rade and Fefi took a trip eastward in an early morning, with sun beating straight into their faces, and the one behind the wheel began lowering the shade, and the other one stuttered, said „ww...ww...wwat“. The first guy already lowered it, and a shower of at least twenty old orders fell into his lap. „That's what I wanted to tell you“.

We didn't have our own toilet, had to use what their staff used, and that one was locked, so the students would use (and mess up) only their own one. We had a key to it, and the key hung at the coat rack by the door.

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Mentions: 19-IX-1991., Aleksandar Raskov (Sale), Blagoje Vrbović (Blaža), Brata Avramov, DBA, Dom omladine, Ferenc Farkaš (Fefi), Ferenc Gereg (Grgi), Gradinka Peretić (Gradek), Milka Petrov, Nevena Žaja (Nena), Rade Peretić, Stevan Garaj (Števa), Students' cooperative, Tasa Radenkov (Carp), Vilmoš Baranji (Vanji), yugo, in serbian

11-VI-2021 - 16-V-2026