The inviters for the war came, as they do, very late in the evening, hoping to catch me just before I go to sleep. The usual strategy was that I wasn't at home, and that was it. I was on a business trip, to be back in a few days.
The next day we discussed this at an internal meeting at DBA, and Rade told us of his experience of the previous year's war in Croatia, where he was somewhere on the Danube, probably around Ilok. Said the greatest danger was accidental friendly fire from all the live ammo and alcohol that circulated. And something about being forced, at gunpoint, to volunteer for some forces across the river.
The decision was to fly below the radar and, if anyone asks about me, I'm on a trip.
On sezam, I was looking for more zx spectrum games to load into the emulator which ran on atarist, because Go had measles. Had the dreaded "Tape loading error" on "Penetrator", "Cookie" would freeze after first level, and in "Atak na batak" (drumstick attack, aka "Attic attack"), "Knightlore" and "Alien", all using the same engine of sorts, couldn't use the Z key which would collect various items in the game.
On the other front, she managed to insinuate herself into the top ten list for blockout, the out-of-control level, with 155000 (and the best published result so far was 103000). We did push it to almost 300000 over the next few years.
There was yet another protest downtown. Returning from work, I joined. I had the mouthpiece from a block flute (aka recorder, funny name) to add to the noise. Met Toza there. I'm not satisfied with the mouthpiece's capacity, it may be loud in a room, out on the street it's barely heard.
Next day, about Milorad Pavić:
"Tastes are not disputed, but I enjoy reading Pavić. Hazar dictionary is the first toy book, labyrinth book and yet and above all a novel. I read a dozen pages every couple of months. The book is always the same and never the same. Let's bet a beer in fifty years he'll be mentioned in a row Joyce-Borges-Pavić...
Though, I doubt the beer will be good after fifty years."
I uploaded most of my SF stories, to share them with the gang. Later this saved my butt, because they vanished from my disk... or the disk just went away - perhaps this was one of the times when my home machine was sold when I was in the field; the guys from DBA would just come and get the box and take it away. Whatever I didn't back up on floppies would be gone. So I downloaded my own work from sezam, thankfully.
Around that time, we (and a couple of other folks from the office) got the word from Nada, who worked at a shoe shop on the main street, that they'd be selling some. Most of the time the shops were empty, what wares they had weren't on display, and there was just one dežurni clerk in the shop, with the duty to just be there and hold the fort and tell anyone they're closed, under whichever excuse - inventory, inspection, remodeling. So at this particular afternoon we came and bought ourselves decent boots. Mine were of orange-like soft leather, which fit me perfectly and were my main winter footwear for the next six years at least, practically until the sole unsewed by the inner edge.
We paid this in three checks, which would be released one a month. With the current rate of inflation, this was economical suicide for the seller. Who knows what happened this time, and why did they do this - perhaps they urgently needed some cash, and to do something for their own staff - so they allowed for a limited quantity to be sold like this. We just grabbed the opportunity.
17-X-2020 - 16-V-2026