23-V-1975.
Recruitment II, the medical. I'm fit, they say. And yeah, the guy who takes blood samples is hamhanded. Give me the nurses from the transfusion anytime, I'll donate as much as you allow me, just get this moron off my vein.
They don't tell me what specialty I'll get. It probably depends on whether I keep on studying or drop out.
Location: the small ambulanta within the barracks. Rather dark, surprisingly. Expect all those military-medical places to be sparkling white with large windows. Well, well. Anyway, not being drafted yet, have a chance to graduate first. Until age of 27, and I'm not 20 yet. So, later.
Three days later, in Novi, verified attendance to 2nd semester.
On 1st and 2nd year everybody had a subject of... an extension of predvojnička, with a nebulous name, something like „fundamentals of generally-popular defence and social self-protection“. The professor was at least an interesting guy, seems to have been in partisans as a youngster, but didn't make too much of a point of it. Did actually talk a lot about world politics, theory of war etc. Anyone whom he remembered attending the class (which was optional) would get at least a 7 at the exam. To get a six, you'd need to know the exact name of the course.
He set one afternoon in late may for anyone who wanted to get this exam out of the way before the main rush of other exams - his regular term would be in mid june. Few of us took it. I read the book once, and of course he knew me from the class - with my weird beard and long hair I was an outstanding member of the audience. Got a ten. Good start.
One other colleague got a nine, because... „I seem not to remember you from the class“ „I had a beard“ - didn't ring true, though it was. Except the guy came to the class three times - once in the beginning, and twice to get a semestral signature. Sometimes with a beard, sometimes without.
Can write this here, as it happened often these years, when I'd get the škodilak from dad for the evening, when I see her home and on the way back drive by the špiritana. There's a T crossing, and when I'm sitting in the car at the lights, I'm facing the house the basement of which hosts that piece of industry. This traffic light was some early attempt to regulate the traffic in an intelligent way. The brains were under the pavement. The road from Kikinda being far less busy than the other one, they decided to give green to that side only when there's someone waiting for it. And how do the lights know whether there's anyone? There was a magnetic sensor installed under the asphalt, about 3m from the endline. And then it happens that nobody's over the sensor, because the lights were rather high, and someone with a fića stops farther away to see it better, the upper edge of the windshield being low. Then I just walk out of the car and knock on his window, tell him where to be to activate the sensor, or else we can wait another ten minutes.
The better case was when someone with a bicycle was on the sensor, with a spade on his shoulder, probably returning from out of town garden. The bike doesn't carry enough metal to activate the sensor, so the guy misses several cycles when he could have got a green but didn't. Annoyed at the wait, he unshoulders the spade, lowers it on the road, it activates the sensor in two seconds, and the guy quickly shoulders it again, cursing and taking down all the saints very loudly.
(The picture was made on 02-II-2012.. The light on the left was added meanwhile, perhaps in late eighties.)
Mentions: 03-VI-1997., 02-II-2012., fića, Novi Sad, predvojnička, škodilak, špiritana, in serbian
23-XII-2019 - 16-VII-2026