Future

My future will be decided very soon...

Not much in my hands anymore. Too many variations, too many players, too many possibilities for different ending...
Of course, I will continue to fight for the best solution to win, but some things I simply cannot influence...

If I only had the crystal ball...

In Belgrade

God, almost forgot how much I missed this city...

In about 18 hours I will see her... My lady...

Wonderful - World's Strongest Dad

From Sports Illustrated, By Rick Reilly]

I try to be a good father. Give my kids mulligans. Work nights to pay For their text messaging. Take them to swimsuit shoots.

But compared with Dick Hoyt, I suck.

Eighty-five times he's pushed his disabled son, Rick, 26.2 miles in Marathons. Eight times he's not only pushed him 26.2 miles in a Wheelchair but also towed him 2.4 miles in a dinghy while swimming and Pedaled him 112 miles in a seat on the handlebars--all in the same day.

Dick's also pulled him cross-country skiing, taken him on his back Mountain climbing and once hauled him across the U.S. On a bike. Makes Taking your son bowling look a little lame, right?

And what has Rick done for his father? Not much--except save his life.
This love story began in Winchester , Mass. , 43 years ago, when Rick Was strangled by the umbilical cord during birth, leaving him Brain-damaged and unable to control his limbs.

"He'll be a vegetable the rest of his life;'' Dick says doctors told him And his wife, Judy, when Rick was nine months old. ``Put him in an Institution.''

But the Hoyts weren't buying it. They noticed the way Rick's eyes Followed them around the room. When Rick was 11 they took him to the Engineering department at Tufts University and asked if there was Anything to help the boy communicate. ``No way,'' Dick says he was told. ``There's nothing going on in his brain.''

"Tell him a joke,'' Dick countered. They did. Rick laughed. Turns out a Lot was going on in his brain. Rigged up with a computer that allowed Him to control the cursor by touching a switch with the side of his Head, Rick was finally able to communicate. First words? ``Go Bruins!'' And after a high school classmate was paralyzed in an accident and the School organized a charity run for him, Rick pecked out, ``Dad, I want To do that.''

Yeah, right. How was Dick, a self-described ``porker'' who never ran More than a mile at a time, going to push his son five miles? Still, he Tried. ``Then it was me who was handicapped,'' Dick says. ``I was sore For two weeks.''

That day changed Rick's life. ``Dad,'' he typed, ``when we were running, It felt like I wasn't disabled anymore!''

And that sentence changed Dick's life. He became obsessed with giving Rick that feeling as often as he could. He got into such hard-belly Shape that he and Rick were ready to try the 1979 Boston Marathon.

``No way,'' Dick was told by a race official. The Hoyts weren't quite a Single runner, and they weren't quite a wheelchair competitor. For a few Years Dick and Rick just joined the massive field and ran anyway, then They found a way to get into the race Officially: In 1983 they ran another marathon so fast they made the Qualifying time for Boston the following year.

Then somebody said, ``Hey, Dick, why not a triathlon?''

How's a guy who never learned to swim and hadn't ridden a bike since he Was six going to haul his 110-pound kid through a triathlon? Still, Dick Tried.

Now they've done 212 triathlons, including four grueling 15-hour Ironmans in Hawaii . It must be a buzzkill to be a 25-year-old stud Getting passed by an old guy towing a grown man in a dinghy, don't you Think?

Hey, Dick, why not see how you'd do on your own? ``No way,'' he says. Dick does it purely for ``the awesome feeling'' he gets seeing Rick with A cantaloupe smile as they run, swim and ride together.

This year, at ages 65 and 43, Dick and Rick finished their 24th Boston Marathon, in 5,083rd place out of more than 20,000 starters. Their best Time? Two hours, 40 minutes in 1992--only 35 minutes off the world Record, which, in case you don't keep track of these things, happens to Be held by a guy who was not pushing another man in a wheelchair at the Time.

``No question about it,'' Rick types. ``My dad is the Father of the Century.''

And Dick got something else out of all this too. Two years ago he had a Mild heart attack during a race. Doctors found that one of his arteries Was 95% clogged. ``If you hadn't been in such great shape,'' One doctor told him, ``you probably would've died 15 years ago.'' So, in a way, Dick and Rick saved each other's life.

Rick, who has his own apartment (he gets home care) and works in Boston, and Dick, retired from the military and living in Holland, Mass. , always find ways to be together. They give speeches around the country and compete in some backbreaking race every weekend, including this Father's Day.

That night, Rick will buy his dad dinner, but the thing he really wants to give him is a gift he can never buy.

``The thing I'd most like,'' Rick types, ``is that my dad sit in the chair and I push him once.''

Wonderful - World's Strongest Dad

[

I love JAT Airways!

And how can I not?

I was supposed to travel Belgrade by bus, which is 14-17 hours trip... and that`s only because I thought that if I buy a plane ticket in Belgrade it will be much cheaper (because of all those student discounts, euro<26, isic etc)...
So anyways, I had to move the date and leave on Saturday instead of Thursday, which screwed up my bus plan, so I had to buy a flight ticket... And that`s where the coolest system comes in place...

Sunday: Checking prces online - 250 EUR;
Monday: I`m calling to reserve the ticket and the lady tells me it`s 230EUR and no student discounts whatsoever;
Tuesday: Calling to re-schedule and lady tells me that`s fine and the new price is 196 EUR;
Wednesday: Happy me going to the agency to buy the ticket, and the nice lady hands it, takes 200 EUR from my hand and returns 35 - new price again, now 165 EUR!!!

I will never understand how this worked out (since JAT is well known for never changing the prices and especially not lowering them :)), but I do hope this will continue...

Hand-made condoms!?!?!?

when you are coming from a small eastern european country, and especially from one that is not perceived so well in the world like Serbia is (so basically that little that people usually know about us is crap), then you are not surprised about different steretypes and prejudices people might have about you or your people.

- Some of them think that Serbs still live in communism (most of them don`t know that even when we were a communist country, we were in far better situation then other countries from the "eastern bloc");

- Some of them think that Serbia is still completely destroyed from bombing and that we still (!?) have occasional gunfights in Belgrade (I wonder whom did we try to shoot at in Belgrade - unless they think about WW2);

- Some of them think that we hate everything and everyone, especially muslims (a guy from the dorm where I live here in Istanbul actually asked me why I came to Turkey if we hate Muslims so much that we hunted them in Bosnia and Kosovo!!! - I laughed and told him to watch not to turn his back to me, or else... :));

- At the airport in San Francisco they checked me thoroughly and even used those little papers (which are used to determine trails of gun-powder in your luggage - usually by rubbing your suitcase) on my hands!!! - it`s ok if they think that we are a terrorist threat to the US, but do they really think we make bombs with bare hands? we have technology, dude! :D

anyways, I could go on listing all the stupid things I heard about my country and my people, but I guess you get the idea already... What this post is really about is what I heard last night from one german trainee here in Istanbul...

So, her friend was traveliing Eastern Europe and he told her about this weird thing Serbs have - old ladies in the streets are selling "hand-made, self-knitted" CONDOMS! And not only that he heard about it - he actually saw it! Well, WOW! I was trying whole last night to imagine how "hand-made, self-knitted" (whatever this means) condom looks like, and no luck... (can you imagine coming to an old lady in the street, taking off your underwear for measuring, then choosing the model from the catalogue etc. :D)

But good to know that my country is not only famous by Milosevic, Karadzic and Mladic, but condoms too... Durex, beware of the Serbian Grand-moms!

Libya to buy 1.2 million laptops for school kids

NEW YORK - The government of Libya has reached an agreement with an American nonprofit group to provide inexpensive laptop computers for all of the nation's 1.2 million schoolchildren, The New York Times reported Wednesday.

With the project scheduled to be completed by June 2008, Libya could become the first nation in which all school-age children are connected to the Internet through educational computers, Nicholas Negroponte, chairman of the One Laptop per Child project, told the newspaper.

The computers will run Linux and have wireless access... We`ll finally be able to see if Linux solution is good enough to remove Microsoft from one whole market... I doubt, but let us see...

Full story here

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Guca Film - Trailer

From thisisthelife.com: "Forget Glastonbury, Reading, Burning Man and Cochella: the wildest music festival on earth is a cacophonic and crazy brass band festival that takes place every summer in the tiny Serbian town of Guca (pronounced “Gucha”) in the western region of Dragacevo. What began as a small competition for the Dragacevo Assembly of Trumpet Players back in 1961 now attracts nearly half a million people every year. Given Guca’s population is 3000 – it’s some party. For an entire week the sound of thousands of blaring trumpets rends the air, playing everything from traditional Serbian folk and gypsy music to songs by the likes of Goran Bregovic. Grilled meat washed down with potent plum brandy keeps you and the delirious crowd going, and don’t be surprised to see Bregovic or legendary filmmaker Emir Kusturica turn up with his band. " Also, a documentary about it has just been released. I found only this short teaser on google video, so go to www.gucafilm.com and click on Trailer to see the long and much better one.