Literally a Metaphor

My boy, Johnson serves up a great column on an oft-misused word.  Since most words are, by their very nature, metaphors (e.g. "clean" as a verb refers to an effort to produce a state of tidiness), they require a leap from reality to comprehension, and "literally" must be taken to mean "not figuratively or allegorically" if it is to be properly understood. The word itself is a metaphor.

It's Getting Hot in Here....

It is quite warm in my office. I opened the window this morning, and I'm still baking, in a light cotton sweater and a t-shirt.

A colleague told me that he would show me how to turn the radiator in my office down. When he went to do so, he noticed that it was off.

He told me that there is central heating in Belgrade, and that the heat is part of the fees that everyone pays for utilities--i.e. you get the temperature that the government decides is right for you.

"Everybody keeps their windows open in Belgrade in winter," he told me.

Not sure that is the best way to do it.

A New Theory on How Your Brain Works

Fascinating article in the Atlantic about how the four different cognitive regions of the brain contribute to personality. It's a little more complex than the System 1 and System 2 set out by Daniel Kahneman, which is reason to both reject and embrace it; I buy the idea that neural function is complicated, but part of me needs a simple, more elegant answer.

Anyway, it's fun, and there's a free personality test.  It would appear that I am a "situational stimulator," which means I plan ahead, but have a hard time adapting on the fly. That doesn't sound quite right, although I need to account for confirmation bias, I suppose.

Zemun

I had tried to visit Zemun earlier this summer, enticed by the promise of fish restaurants, a charming village and an Austro-Hungarian tower with a killer view. I took the 83 bus from Slavija Square to the end of the line, and when I got off, looked around at a bunch of nondescript stores selling auto parts.

I retraced my steps along the main road for about 45 minutes, until I was back in the main part of town, but I still didn't really see anything of note. I was about to give up, when I saw the river, and what looked like  a small park a few hundred metres away. I followed it, and soon discovered the walkway that follows the river, along with what looked like a few restaurants on the horizon.

I found the village, and wondered around the cobblestone streets, but I didn't find the tower, nor did I stop to eat at any of the cafes, as that was scheduled to come after the tower. After about an hour, I found myself, back in the area where the bus had dropped me off, and I called it a day. Not entirely unsuccessful, but disappointing nonetheless. And as I recall, it was very hot.

My colleague Milan asked me yesterday to join him, his wife and their 8 month old baby, Simona on a walk through Zemun, where Biljana grew up, and they now live. As I stared out the window of my apartment, watching the rain beat down, I wasn't sure that this sounded like such a great idea. "Still on?" I texted. "Sure," he answered. "Bring your umbrella."

Great. I walked over to the main square and waited for the bus. I had arranged to meet the Nikolic family at the post office, which was right in the heart of town. I got there a few minutes early, but Milan arrived shortly after, and we met Biljana and Simona at the car, which was chock full of all the necessary paraphenalia.

The sun came out a little and we strolled along the Danube, chatting about, what else, the baby, who went through the procession of "pick me up," "put me down," "feed me," "I hate my life" "this is the best day ever" familiar to all parents.

After about 45 minutes, mother and daughter left us, and Milan and I climbed up to the tower, built to commemorate the spot where a brave Austro-Hungarian held off the Ottomans. Yep, that's it. Nice view

After that, we went to a well-known restaurant, Sharan, and had a nice lunch of fish soup and an entree, fried perch with pindzhur for me, and smoked trout for Milan.

When I had asked the waiter to recommend something, the key decision point appeared to be fresh vs. saafter the meal, which was new to me.

lt water fish, a distinction that was confusing to me. We also enjoyed the Serbian tradition of a glass of rakia to start and a glass of white wine

After lunch, we walked the twenty minutes back to Milan's new apartment (Grandma lives upstairs) and had a coffee and some cookies, while Simona
struggled to figure out how to crawl, which was alternately frustrating and fascinating.

The Nikolic family was then scheduled to meet someone else for coffee, and invited me along, but I decided to head for home. They dropped me back on the main street, just as the bus was pulling up. Perfect.

R.I.P. Blockbuster

I had forgotten how huge it was, and how it was a part or everybody's daily life. I was never a hardcore user, but I had a card in my wallet for almost twenty years. The economics and logistics of renting videocassettes will be harder to explain to future generations, I suspect, than the record store. I'm glad it's gone, but it's worth noting.

http://www.grantland.com/blog/hollywood-prospectus/post/_/id/91969/blockbuster-video-1985-2013

All Around the World, Same Song

One of the nice things about the power surge in Cairo that fried my hard drive and rendered me musicless in 2005 was that I discovered podcasts. And my favorite is the old school funk and hip hop show out of Mcgill known as WeFunk, which airs from Midnight-two a.m. on Friday nights.

The latest show has been waiting for me on Saturday mornings before I head off to the CSA, the YMCA or SpinMasters, and I've discovered a host of great music thanks to the knowledge of Professor Groove and D.J. Static.

I always try to support the annual funding drive, and this year, I asked for a special shout-out. My boys did not disappoint me.

Going Back to Skopje

Worldwide and I spent 1997-1999 in Skopje, our first experience in international development and a harbinger of what would follow over the next fifteen years. I was eager to return, to see my dear friend Nena, who is now running the judiciary strengthening project that was nurtured by my office, but also to see the changes to the cityscape. I had read about these efforts in the Economist last year, and I was curious to see for myself. "You won't believe it," more than one of my colleagues told me.

I looked into a bus trip, but the length of the trip, along with a cheap fare available on Air Serbia (The airline formally known as Jat) persuaded me that plan was the preferred method of transportation.

I took the always reliable A1 bus from Slavija Square to the airport on Friday afternoon, and by 3:30 I was on the tarmac at Alexander the Great Airport. Nena met me, and we stopped at a new hotel for lunch, the first in a never-ending series of meals and snacks. The restaurant was decked out like a hunting lodge, with various animal skins, and it also featured an impressive selection of local wines, the results of privatization efforts in the industry.

But I was thirsty for a Skopsko, and, because I had eaten the ham and cucumber sandwich provided on the flight, I wasn't hungry for anything more than some appetizers.

After lunch, we stopped at the Ramstore, a slick new supermarket and shopping mall. I remember how thrilled we were when the Greek Supermarket opened in 1998. You've come a long way, baby.

Then it was back to Nena's new apartment, for conversation, and a lovely dinner of salmon and salad. I learned about the status of friends and colleagues, of which a surprising number had moved on to new lives or locations.

I was still a little jet lagged from my whirlwind trip to Gananoque, so it was early to bed. The following morning, we went out for chocolate croissants and espresso at a local cafe, which, like virtually everything i saw, had not been there in 1999.

After that, we parked in the Trgovski Centar in the main square, and from the first floor, I rode the escalator that had not worked for one day during my two prior years there. Then it was out into the main square, where the small plaque in the pavement that commemorated Mother Teresa's birth, has been replaced with something a little more grandiose, a gigantic statue of, who else, Alexander the Great. But it did not end there; not hardly. The national hero was flanked by huge statues of his mother and father, as well as just about everyone who could be deemed a hero of the Republic.


Many of the government buildings in the area have also been replaced with garish, baroque edifices, and a walk across the old stone bridge afforded an excellent view of the new Stonebridge hotel (note the picture of the hard working businessman, and his, um, assistant on the home page), as well as one of  the three replicas of Noah's Ark that have been placed along the Vardar River.

From there, we visited the National Museum of Macedonia, a museum consisting almost entirely of huge paintings and mannequins detailing the struggle against the Ottomans, and, to a lesser extent, its time as part of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. One would think, after visiting, that the Krucevo republic, 10 days of short lived independence from the Ottomans in 1903, was the most important thing in the history of the region. The mannequins, despite the struggles they were embroiled in, were all extremely well dressed and good looking.


From the museum we walked through the old town, which looked more or less the same, and I bought some Parachute Cookies to bring to lunch at Nena's mother's later. We also stopped at the Green Market to pick up a few things that Olivera had asked her
daughter to get.

After that, it was up to Vodno, the mountain we had hiked so many Saturdays. The rustic trail has been paved over, and you can now take a funicular from the parking lot up to the Millenium cross, which seems to
have been built to remind Albanians that they remain a minority.

We had a cup of tea at the hiker's hut  and walked around a little, noting the trail to Matka, a monastery a few miles away that we had visited many times.

Then we took the funicula back down and drove to Olivera's apartment, the place that Nena had originally moved to in the early 2000s. She laid out a spread of stuffed grape leaves, pindzhur, salad and roast pork, complemented by Rakia and local red wine.

After lunch, we walked around Skopje some more, admiring the new pedestrian zone, the monument to
Mother Teresa and the many new cafes and restaurants. The new buildings, including the huge arch, were ablaze with light. We enjoyed a cup of Spanish-style cocoa in the Caffe di Roma, and finished off the evening with a whiskey at the Irish pub, which every major city in the region now seems to have.

The following day we drove out to Matka in the morning, and I noticed that a restaurant and hotel has now been added to the facility, and that it was hosting a wedding party. From
there it was back to Skopje for a lunch of delicious grilled beef liver and pork, washed down with a cold Lasko, which is apparently angling to become the country's most popular beer.

Then back to the airport and home, buoyed by the warmth of good friends and by the information that Nena's daughter, who we knew as a 13 year-old lover of Gran Prix racing and the Backstreet Boys, but now a Harvard graduate and London-based World Bank economist, will be coming to Belgrade in December to begin a consultancy with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.