Yet another presentation arranged by another friend from sezam, and no more nor less than in the directorate of the railways, on the square just across the main station in Belgrade. The guy was an interesting character, and we exchanged many emails later when he found himself in Canada. His surname was something short, with a vocal r, Grbić or Srdić or some such, which he had to convert into -er- or else them poor devils over there would be having open fractures of the tongue, trying to pronounce it.
Now since the place is in the old town and the streets are rather congested, it was quite a miracle that Brlja and I managed to find a slot to park the lada. Of course, not by the entrance, but rather behind next corner. The machine we carried had an upright housing, aka tower, not too heavy but unwieldy. The monitor we carried the largest we had, because projectors still didn't exist and the elsydee screen we had nine years ago was nowhere [to be lost or found] anymore, so we brought the biggest we could, to better show what we had.
Then we hauled it up to the third floor, and I can't remember that the old building had any elevators at all. And we found the chief accountant, and we reminded her that we had a scheduled presentation. To which she said yes, here just let me get the directors and department heads around the tables. And she gathered them and we played our piece. There was a neat glint in her eyes when I explained the automatic binding, it seems to be the perfect solution for her long standing problem, this would fly like a song. I saw she got the hots for our apps and rooted for us, she even inserted extra questions and was satisfied with answers, and she aimed them in such a way to make us look even better.
And then those directors and heads dispersed, and she left with them, then came back into the room while we packed. Said too bad, too bad, I'd so like to have what you offer, to work with that, but we're only a service within a larger state run company, we don't have any say in it, least of it myself...
I heard that song and knew all the lyrics, but still we had to play this out, regardless of knowing it was in vain, just to show somebody in Belgrade that they don't have all the smarts under their šinjel, there's more of that elsewhere.