03-I-1999.
On 2nd, Ford wrote to Greg: „The only crisis here is that his dad's rakija sells have been going better than expected and he is running low on reserves. The reserves are across the river, and the ice is too thin to walk on but too thick to take the boat. News at eleven how this crisis is solved.“. He also wrote that we need to get an english tutor for the three musketeers, to which Greg replied „If the wages for English tutors are anywhere near programmer or Cica's wages - go for it. (Just tell the tutor we want a warranty - if all three can't spell antidisestalishmentarianism within 6 weeks, we get our money back. Tell her they also need to define it for us.)“.
Ford and I went over Evals in the morning. Lots of details to cover. Had trouble with ICQ, because the fat fibre somewhere in Netherlands got broken 3-4 days ago and all of Europe is connected to the East coast using spare links (satellite and who knows else). Once you get connected it flows kind of ok, but it seems to have to negotiate routes for almost everything, so I sorta gave it up for a while. Now with this new digital switch, I think it will just log in to mirabilis a bit slower, and work OK once it gets connected.
The digital switch - I boxed it out with G.M. from Beotel (where we were the technical support) to get my phone line to go through the new Alcatel switch, instead of the old Iskra by Lesnina (from 1975), so I finally had tone dialing and decent speed. Cost me a kilo of dad's loza, but I'd prob'ly get it for free just the same. G.M. was a chick and a half, a good friend of Dragana (worked in the same building, actually same company - Beotel was part of Beobanka). She died of cancer in 2017.
In the evening of 4th, dinner at Brlja's. His wife outdid herself, it was a real feast. On the other hand, they knew what they were doing - they had to muster their best for this one evening, shoot all of their guns at once, while we had to feed the five of us plus Ford, who (we didn't quite understand how much) loves to eat a lot. He's got a real beer belly. So we fed him what we ate, he was just the sixth person at the table for eight days, while these guys made it one big shot to remember. This paid in the long run.
On 5th, another pizza & beer at the same pizzeria. We're almost becoming regulars there - Brlja, Pali, Joja, Ford and I. Plans are going wild, the boys are getting their hopes high.
The rakija crisis got solved (as late as on 6th, because it was raining meanwhile) by taking the fregata to the vineyard (dad, Ford, Nina and I), leaving the car on the left bank levee, then trying to break the boat out of the ice, which didn't work, that bank is in the shade and the ice was at least 20cm thick, that boat won't move for weeks. Luckily, another neighbor came by, and his boat was free, some 20m downstream. The trouble was in the distribution of weight - there were five of us, three of which were overweight, and the neighbor's boat is lighter and yaws more. There was some wind and the water was choppy. To make things worse, Ford has no clue about keeping balance in a boat, so we put him at the farther end of the boat, where he'd sit in the middle and wouldn't rock the boat too much. The rest of us are experienced in this, and now also had two oars, which helped us get across much faster.
I was shooting with the Lindenblatt that Greg brought last time, and the tele lens. Dunno why I didn't mount the old 30mm that I had since 1976, it's the same M42 thread. Forgot why it didn't fit.
In parallel, discussing what to do when I get there and how will she manage with the kids until we reunite the family on the other side. Perhaps get a car for her - she could get quite a decent one for 2500$. Also, a method of passing money to her, because it's near impossible to send any decent amount regularly. The one batch that we got, some 250$, Ileš brought some time ago. He also said that the best way to handle this is a regular checking account in a hungarian bank. Then she may use a card (which may or may not work here, depending on location and shop, and the exchange rate may be bad) or simply go to Szeged and get cash. Using a card in Hungary to get forints is bad, there's a fee when bank converts dollars into forints, then the forints need to be sold here, and that's possible to do only with the small set of smugglers, who'd extract a lower rate, another loss.
She is getting a new passport; I got mine in two days.
The peaching in of Bill Clinton is still in the works. He may or may not be kicked out. As we said in october, if they catch this guy again with his fly open, we'll get bombed.
Mentions: Allan Robin (Ford), Dragana Vitas (Dragana), fregata, Goran Staković (Brlja), Greg Reubenthal, Ileš Notaroš, Lesnina, loza, Nevena Sredljević (Nina), Pali Bodor, rakija, Slavica Urdulj (Cica), Voja Marski (Joja), in serbian
23-V-2023 - 10-XI-2025