soundbytes from serbia

this story reminded me of my PR career and how the same story can have a different tone and meaning depending on who tells it.

this morning, a colleague was telling me how another colleague went skiing and kept falling, in particular, he could not stop at the time he saw that he was going to bump into a small girl, and therefore, fell to the side in order to avoid the crash.

later that day, the above-mentioned colleague from the skiing story retold the story from his point of view, where he was the hero - he saw a young girl standing in front of him, and in order to let her pass freely and safe her from the crash, he jumped to the side on purpose, and he called himself a hero for avoiding the accident. :)

eye of the beholder, right? :) the glass is half-full, or half-empty…?

Last september, McDonald’s launched its breakfast in Serbia. Yup, this service was not available before last year. It’s strange, eating hamburgers for breakfast, but somehow the usual McD’s breakkies was not available. In fact, this offer is only at selected McD’s in Belgrade, for a trial!

Shortly before the launch, I met a geek friend, who informed me of this offer. Here’s an excerpt from our conversation, which I find enjoyable, and giving an idea of what kind the other person is like (i.e. curious, interesting and fun):

he: “McDonald’s will launch its breakfast soon.”

me: “How do you know that?”

he: “I wrote to them.”

me: “Huh? Really? You wrote to them? Did you get a reply….and what did they say…?”

he: “I just wrote `breakfast?` in the subject line and I got a reply from McDonald’s saying it’s starting in Sept. I was thinking they will offer me a free trial for a while, but not pushing my luck.”

me: “Hehehehehe… excellent…. ‘breakfast with a question mark’….nicely done, simple and direct…” still giggling as I parted ways with the friend.

at the moment, i have FOUR post-work events lined up for this date! wow, seems like it’s an auspicious date, as my chinese friend would say. or just that people want to reunite before end of the year. and there is also a bunch of corporate events on that date too that i know of (which leads to thinking that there’s budgets left over hehe). here’s the list of tentative activities (in order of importance to me), can’t make up my mind which one to go to yet.

shanghai window - a gathering for china fans 

open coffee - a gathering for IT fans

repats happy hour -monthly get together for returnee to serbia

humanitarian/student party - a friend is organizing, and there will be some celebrities

for me, the goal to attend just activities is to network. not hard-sell, name card swapping, but just to meet interesting people, hear new ideas, to expand my knowledge a bit but also to have fun. hence, the above order of things.

my friends the other day were convinced that i am wrong in such thinking, and had a whole different theory on deciding which event to attend by asking a very simple question: where can you meet more guys? :) watch this space, i’ll let you know which event i go to in the end! :)

A colleague referred me to this funny website - njuz.net. It’s Serbian version of The Onion, sort of. It’s slogan is “news in mirror”, and the stories are very black humor-y. Some of the titles include “New research results - practicing sports leads to hair loss” (in view of recent Davis Cup win, where the boys shaved off their hair to celebrate), “Serbia is first country to herd elite cows” (that give milkshakes, chocolate milk, yoghurt), and my favorite “Belgrade citizens spend three hours per year on avoiding street vendors”.

The articles are very cleverly written, in a news-like fashion, some read in a very authentic way.

I love it - very witty, clever and intelligent humor!

standing in front of arena, waiting for gotan project concert, it’s raining. bumped into a friend who also lived and studied in china. after the usual catching up, here’s an excerpt from the conversation.

me: “will you be going to china again?”

he: “hm, not likely.”

me: “so you sticking around here?”

he: “not sure, probably not. brazil! brazil is the place i am heading to, man! that’s my kind of place!”

me: “oh nice! it’s kind of like my bond with brussels. that’s my kind of place.”

he: “you mean, you like this kind of rainy weather every day….?”

this is the reason i love repats so much, they have such a happy-go-lucky approach, are not burdened by the heaviness of daily life, and generally have an attitude - if i am not happy or if i don’t like it, i will change. people who have lived abroad generally have a sense of what kind of city/place suits their “style”, their sensibility, their “qi”. for the friend above, it’s brazil. for me, there are a couple of places. i am still observing and listing to myself, feeling the pulse of belgrade…

few weeks ago, i joined a tour to the royal palace in belgrade. it is organized by tourist organization of belgrade, and the tours are held every weekend in sept & oct. when i reserved six seats for my friends and family (it was sort of a take-your-mom-along, mother-daughter bonding idea), we were the only visitors on the list. but on the date of visit, the group was full! mostly visitors from slovenia, who are still nostalgic about yugoslavia days and like to visit belgrade.

once we entered the royal complex, it was a nice walk along the gardens and the guide was very professional, providing us with lots of facts and stories to bring the palace to life. it was nice to see the decorations and the old furniture, since each piece has a story (either unique place of origin, or gift, or artist, or usage). however, personally for me, it was not so interesting, since i’ve seen a lot of more extravagant items in vienna’s schoenbrunn palace. fair enough, since serbia is a small and modest country, it’s only fair that exhibit items are also small and modest in comparison. in addition, a lot of work needs restauration. for example, there was a painting “a boy with blue eyes”, and when i walked up to double check that his eyes were blue, since they appeared black on the painting, the guide mumbled: “yes, the painting needs a bit of restauration, the eyes are not blue anymore…”. i discovered, and enjoyed, a lot of work by french baroque painter poussin, there is quite a large collection of his work. there were a lot of paintings generally and sculptures by a famous sculptor ivan mestrovic. i like his work a lot, the sculptures are very realistic and look like they can come alive at anytime.

however, my enthusiasm significantly grew when we reached - the basement! this is where the true magic of the royal palace tour happens. there is a whole city under the building, with its own story - here are only a few of my favorites:

• the ceilings and walls were decorated as an homage to russian art by russian workers who were living and working in serbia
• “whisper room” do discuss important matters, with a small fountain so to prevent eavesdropping
• private movie theater for tito (a famous marshal and historic icon of yugoslavia)

at the end, even the prince himself came to meet us and took photos with us, and we could ask him any question about his life! my mom was curious if his boys like belgrade, to which she got an affirmative answer.

serbia is always like that. when it tries to be grand and compare to others, it leads nowhere. but when it shows the visitors some rugged, charming, quirky sides of its life, then it leads to many pleasant surprises. (…aren’t we all like that…?)

coffee break french - easy to understand french, situational french, useful and nice “warm up”. the show finished at 80 episodes, the ones after 60 are more interesting.

louis from daily french pod - nice “stretch”, louis is great and fun, always has some funny and current situational french, for example, a couple running a wine cellar, discussing the world cup, going on dates. it’s using french to explain french, which is a good way to learn.

the world’s fair podcast by urso chappell - discussions on shanghai expo taking place now in china!

cc chapman’s managing the gray - been listening to cc from the start, love his show

dire straits

pescanik - serbian show and commentary on current affairs, mostly political and economic insights

yesterday i went out to lunch with a colleague. as we were walking along the very crowded street, she inquired about my life and romance. i told her: “rest assured, from now on i will only take advice from my happily married friends like yourself”. at that moment, a guy in front of us turned around, hands still in his pockets, and said: “great idea, those women should know!”! then, he turned left into another alleyway and was gone! the two of us laughed and laughed and i had another confirmation why life in belgrade is fun - because people can be direct and personal and friendly, while still it remains a big international city.

this past weekend, like everyone else around me, i headed over to grandma’s to roast some peppers. this is a traditional custom to get ready for winter. the peppers are grilled, skinned of the black skin, then can be eaten as a salad with lot of garlic or used to make ajvar or other dishes, during the winter. the whole city had the smell of peppers these last few days. whenever i sms-ed friends or spoke with colleagues today, it was hilarious to discover that we all had the same busy weekend preparing the peppers!

before…

after…