Your dreams made real

Everybody has a dream. Mine is to introduce the guy on the label of Jagodinsko pivo to the guy on the label of Birra Moretti. Vlade Divac aims a bit higher than me, and wants to use his new foundation to secure homes for people who are still living in refugee camps (might he have an object lesson for his younger colleagues?). And some other people's dreams may be better left alone.

Neither sleet nor snow

Bless their little hearts. The Home Office, after being informed by me that the claim that was made in their previous communication with me could not possibly be true, sent me this corrective note today:

Dear Applicant, Your documents and letter were actually sent back to you by airmail on the 28th of August. Please allow up to twelve weeks for delivery.
Regards,

Twelve weeks to receive a letter! What dread postal service dogpaddles off Albion's shores?

The sporting life

The NCAA proposes the following nine indicators of "good sportsmanship" (their definition is hardly free of solipsism, but is nice and concrete):

Good Sportsmanship Indicators:

1. Respect for officials - student-athletes raise hand or arm to signal a foul.
2. Student-athletes shake hands before and after the contest.
3. Unsportsmanlike behavior violations are addressed appropriately.
4. Inappropriate conduct by coaches has consequences.
5. Appropriate recognition when competitor gets injured and is forced to leave the competition.
6. Fans, coaches and student-athletes are held accountable for negative behavior.
7. Fans are enthusiastic supporters of their teams but respectful to opposing teams and their supporters.
8. There is a respect shown by all competitors for the opposing team.
9. Gamesmanship by coaches or players is frowned upon.

One of the images that appears frequently in the list is that of the "student-athlete." In that spirit, here Darko Miličić applies, in his explanation of his team's dismal performance, what he has learned in his courses on obstetrics:

Continuing to hold

More fun in communication with the Home Office. Although they did not respond to my request to confirm that they had received my application, they did inform me over the phone (no, they did not call me) that my application was refused. But they did not inform me of the reason, which would matter because it would determine whether I am able to appeal or have to submit a new application. Today they informed me, sort of, that an official notification was mailed to me over a week ago. In this message, they told me that the letter had been sent to me "in the envelope you provided" (I did not provide an envelope), and gave me a tracking number (which was the tracking number under which I had sent my materials to them). This leaves me in a dilemma as to whether it is worse that the Home Office 1) fails to provide information, 2) provides incomplete information, or 3) provides inaccurate information.

Holding pattern

I expect to be back with caustic comments about news stories written by other people fairly soon. In the meantime, I am out of my old job and office and not quite into the new one. Nothing will happen there until my friends at the amusingly named "Home Office" (do they eat chicken-fried steak there?) come through with a visa.

Why a complex visa application instead of a simple work permit application, you ask? I would happily answer that question, if I understood the reason. And just how complex? Well, that I can answer.

They want the originals of my undergraduate and graduate diplomas, which means pulling them out of their frames and devising a way of sending them to Sheffield. They want paycheck stubs covering an uninterrupted twelve-month period, with a calculation of the value of earnings over that period in colourful UK currency on the date of the last paycheck stub. They want a letter from my undergraduate institution certifying that courses were taught in English. This is a partial list. How secure do I feel sending this pile of documentation to a post office box in Sheffield? Let's just say that earlier this year they lost the passport of a dear friend of mine, and that even on request they will not acknowledge receipt of my documents. Perhaps it could be objected that a week is not sufficient time to acknowledge receipt of a package, or that two days is not sufficient time to respond to a simple e-mail inquiry. A number of other premises could be viable here. How often has it happened that people who appear to be inept are in fact merely bashful about their competence?

This may be something of a rush introduction the joys of UK bureaucracy. In any case, my Balkan friends seem to be delighted that "they do this to Americans too." They do!

I have meanwhile come to terms with the prospect that I will arrive at my new job late, and remain trusting that I will arrive at all. In that spirit, the office I never believed would be reasonably clean is now wholly empty, and today the car is getting its last bit of loving care from our mechanic, after which I will wash it and sell it.

And readers will forgive me, perhaps, if I seem a little distracted?

Letnji raspust

Observant readers will have already noticed that I have not been posting here much of late. The reasons for this are nothing unusual: I have been pretty busy here in Belgrade, and the preparation for my new job and our move is fairly intensive. So this has not left a lot of time or energy for posting.

This tells me that it may be time to give East Ethnia a well deserved rest. I'll be leaving the site alone until at least September or so, when I will be resurfacing in a new location. It is also possible that I may put some time into conceiving another type of web presence, after three years of this blog. Keep your eyes open, I will either reappear here in the same format or announce something else.

Lazy person's guide: How to walk your dog in Belgrade

1. Go down stairs to the kafić that somebody very thoughtfully put in the space between your building and the one next.
2. Release dog.
3. Order coffee, chat with neighbours.
4. Order another coffee, chat some more.
5. Repeat as necessary.

Za stan spreman!

Last week it was a prominent ex-legalist who was inviting folks to a fancy new Serbian-American war in Kosovo, if you recall. And who is willing to come with him on his wild ride? According to a survey by CeSiD (press release downloadable here, item as reported by B92), "around 70 percent of respondents are not willing to enter any kind of armed conflict over Kosovo, while 12 percent, most of them housewives and pensioners, consider it necessary to enter into war with the Albanians or with the international community." This core of support should not be underestimated.

Toothbrushes with celebrity

Prokleto dobro znam that I have not been updating much in the past several days, apologies to those resilient readers who keep dropping by here nonetheless. I cannot claim to have as good a reason for closing up shop as the ones offered by a fine Greek deli which offers outstanding toast in Minneapolis.

Most of the time here has been spent in gentle work. A little bit of preparation for my fabulous new arbajt, a bit of hanging out with the very beguiling Palestinian-Israeli conflict transformation group that has begun its visit to the region, a bit of writing, and a lot of the intense warm-weather research activity that goes by the name "sitting around drinking beer with friends."

Last night I made an arduous trek by wild Ikarbus to visit a dear friend in distant Žarkovo, beyond the mountaintops of Banovo brdo. Among his guests was a charming young fellow who knew every lyric, every incident, and every detail of the life of Bob Dylan, which put me in a position to try to dream up answers to questions like "who is Mr Jones?" Surprisingly I found that I had reserves of knowledge of which I had not been aware, or else a good capacity to make stuff up.

As far as I can remember, I have never felt that kind of relation to celebrity. But it may be time to pick it up.

U boj! U boj!

Atta boj, Koštunjavi.

Return?

Perhaps we will know on Thursday, and perhaps we will not. Either way, RFE/RL is carrying the rumour that Feral Tribune could be returning through the good graces of, of all corporations, the prodigal monopolist WAZ. That would be half-good news, I suppose.

Update: Turns out the rumour is half true -- same story, different sponsor.

Shorter version: Responses to Tadić's apology

More responses here, here, here and here. Also check out Viktor's response.

DS: Isn't our boy well mannered?
DSS: President of the Republic, who's that?
Center politicians in Croatia: That was sweet.
Right politicians in Croatia: Maybe, but he's still from Serbia, isn't he?
Serbian NGOs: He's starting to get good at this.
LDP: More, more.
SRS: If that stuff was so bad, why were we so well compensated for it?
SPS: If only we had known about this guy earlier.

A week without Feral

Amidst all the responses to the demise of Feral Tribune at the hands of selective application of tax policy, Boris Dežulović corrects a few errors (as we know, the last number was not the first to fail to reach the kiosks), and offers a short history of the paper and its rotating cast of enemies. And he concludes:

"If tomorrow for the fifth time Feral does not make it to the newsstands, and if there is no Feral next week either, or ever, Croatia will not be the same -- that could be a pathetic obituary for Feral. But we all know that is colossal foolishness: Croatia will be exactly the same, only there will be nobody to tell it."

Report from the pijaca

Fresh ginger root: yes! Coriander: yes, but you have to ask Milanka a day ahead, or perhaps come on a Saturday. Everything else: in scads. Even the fish situation appears to be in a state of constant improvement. I do love me some Kalenić pijaca.

Strawberry field

There are few things as pleasant as a good coincidence. Much to my gratitude, the daily reading in the tazbina includes Novosti and Press (one day I will find out just how they knew to switch from Kurir at the opportune moment), and perhaps my campaign to get them to include Pravda (the domestic edition) may one day succeed. So today's lunchtime discussion included an overview of the lik i delo of Dragan Marković Palma, including an account of this revealing interview in which we find out why Chopin never came to visit him. Then a bit later in the day a friend sends in a fine defense of the honour of Svetozarevo in the form of this notable Discipline kičme cover by Jagodina's own Crni lilihip. Better than the original? I don't know, but not bad at all.

Department of foregone conclusions

If you want to know who murdered Slavko Ćuruvija, spend the next couple of days keeping an eye on the airports, train stations, bus stations, and cash payments for rented apartments in Novi Beograd. An unnamed informer in the office of the special prosecutor decided, by way of Novosti, to tell those of the killers who have neither left the country already nor are protected by occupying a high position when their arrests are supposed to take place.

Večnost

All right, there may no longer be a Manjež, but there will always be a Nick Lowe. Courtesy of Szalonna magazine, here is a piece of his new nosilac zvuka. Call me an umoran starac if you must.

Obituary

Eighty eight years after it first became possible, Kurt Waldheim has died. His legacy will be an inspiration to liars, necrophiles, knaves, twits, hohštapleri, whelps of underachieving cattle and Nazis everywhere.

A short detour into tragedy

No big drama. Last evening I drop by to see a friend, we sit a while, at some point we think we might get something to eat. And where to go? He suggests Manjež. I say, oh, is Manjež working again? He says yes, I say well, you can always go to Manjež.

Historically this last statement was true. You could always go to Manjež. It was the sort of place where you would go if you didn't know where to go. If you were walking in the area you would swing by, because the probability that some group of your friends would be sitting at the tables on the sidewalk in front was reliably high. The place was always dirty, its WC like a scene out of Trainspotting, and their food would always just barely cling to this side of average. The beer was BIP (a local acronym, BIP = Bedna Imitacija Piva). But it was cheap, the crowd of people mixed and welcoming, and before you sat down konobar Draško already knew what you wanted. Manjež was a rare reassurance that whatever else was going on, something was always right with the world.

Last year the place was closed down for remodelling, and the people who did the job could have done a lot worse. They did not fill it with neon and chrome, or turn it into a casino, or stick fountains everywhere. It seems like there was a serious effort to recapture the atmosphere of what Manjež may well have been at some time, a beokafana period piece of the kind in which the characters in an Alfred Hitchcock film might dine while waiting to shuffle onto a train full of hidden murder weapons and a vaguely menacing border guard. They did not raise the prices much, and the food was just fine.

All the same, Manjež is no more. It has never happened before that on a pleasant summer evening, I sit with a friend at a sidewalk table and we are the only people there. Nor that opera arias waft gently though the windows. Nor that we are not repeatedly approached by the local stray cats (what did they do to them?). Konobar Draško is nowhere to be seen. People: Manjež is not Manjež without konobar Draško. More than this: Belgrade is not Belgrade without konobar Draško.

There is one more unremarkable spot in the city, and the world is just a little bit poorer.

Advice you can't really argue with

Ah, so pleased to back in my palatial beogradska garsonjera. Everything is just as we left it except for one thing.

There is a colorful new sticker in the lift advising children on how to behave while sampling that high and frequently operational technology. Next to the useful instructions on how a child should, in case of emergency, phone the gradsko stambeno preduzeće using only an oversized teddy bear, comes this piece of indisputable advice:

A boxing match in the lift?
The lift will be a severe referee!

It's true, I think.