03-VII-1982.

Couple of days ago I went downtown to have a drink (probably again with Morkec) but also to get an airplane ticket home.

This morning I was scouring the dumpster (not really a tin can type, but rather a few cubic meters of space enclosed by concrete walls on three sides) to find the ticket. Somehow it got thrown out there while we were cleaning out the office. Found it in two minutes, it was still in the top layers, with other recognizable paper trash.

Took the last batch of pictures, including the one where I'm holding the neon tube leant to the antenna cable, and it's lit in my hand. That's what I was doing several times a day last six months. If it doesn't come up this bright, then the power is going wrong way, recheck the dials. If it shines like this, most of the power goes through that cable and the elsctromagnetic field around it is strong enough to arouse the fluorescence. Just dial the guys in the valley and tell them they have a connection.

The cuboard behind me is the fabled airport transmitter, aka booze hiding place. It used to work once, so we heard, don't know, neer saw it do that. These two were most frequently in use; the fourhundreder and the black trophy cabinet we turned on perhaps weekly, just to keep abreast with those devices. Though, who knows how thorough or even correct was the transfer of that knowledge went from soldier to soldier. I don't remember that either sargeant ever explained anything about them to us in any detail, nor that they ever messed with them themselves. We were, allegedly, supposed to have learned all of it during training, where we never saw any of them. Down in the barracks we had one similar, a twohundreder, in the truck, but we never saw it turned on, let alone operated it.

The books and the calculator are mine - I brought from home all that I had on the subject of programming, in russian of course... and then in „Start“ magazine they ran an introductory article about zee ex eighty (or was that later that summer... can't be, as a civilian I'd never buy Start, the student years are long past), and from that article I learned more than from all of those books.

The key switch on the desk is a typical training issue, nobody used it. There were new ones out there, with left-right operation or two prongs, thumb the left one for lines, finger the right one for dots, keep pressed for as many of those as needed.

The boss aka senior corporal had rabbits in one bunker and hens in another (third was a warehouse and the fourth was a club downstairs and our photo lab upstairs). While we never ate any chicken, we did get fresh eggs at times, and now it was the time to eat some rabbit. A couple of months ago we thought the big male ran out, so we chased it and forced it into the pen. Then it turned out it wasn't our rabit, it was a wild one who just came to eat, perchance to fuck. The boss said to keep it, the big one was getting old anyway.

So this day he said to kill the big old one and we'll do barbecue tomorrow. The other cook wanted to prepare a marinade, knowing that old rabbit can be tough (hey, he's a schooled cook, a pro, he should know), but no, the boss said just hang it to lose blood. Eh, those cases when chain of command chains the expertise.

The next day we went with a tent wing (i.e. a 2x2m tarp, but that's what it's called; there's a trick how to combine two or four of them into a tent, but we never saw that done) down the slope, not far, just beyond the 50m perimeter which was kept barren, and picked a bunch of pine cones, and very little wood. And me being the oldest, i.e. with fewest days left. I got the honors to be the barbecue majstor (but we have a schooled cook! ...eh, nobody listens). The cones make a fierce fire, hot, and I had no tongs, just a fork. I lost hairs on thumbs and next two fingers on both hands - half of those decided to never grow again - and the meat was awful. Tough, hard to cut, not to mention chew. Smelled nicely, though, smoke is smoke... should have done that marinade behind the scenes. Among the ten worst meats I ever tried.

My colleague Niševci, an Albanian from Kosovo, guess he was teaching sociology or marxism, noticed that I stopped shaving. Well, I said, I'll be a civilian in three days from now, and as a civilian I wear a beard. Well how can you, impossible, a professor wearing a beard, you're kidding, it must be just during the summer... Well, no, really, here, look. And I pulled out the photos of me with my class in 13. last winter, look at this. And he looks, disbelief oozing, doesn't fit into his head. Looks again, shakes [his] head, how's that possible... Suffered a cultural shock.

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Mentions: 13. april, Damir Molnarec (Morkec), majstor, in serbian

4-X-2013 - 23-VI-2026