We have now drifted into the third year of GFC (that is the Global Financial Crisis and specifically NOT Going For Coffee) and everyone is STILL nay-saying the economy and waxing gloomy about the prospects for this year.

What do you think for this year? Do you see any signs of improvement? Do you think we are out of it? Do you think it will continue? In the questions we should see the answers. The point is that nobody really knows, and everyone seems to be turning to friend, neighbor, family member, and random guy on the street waiting for the light to change to see if the light will really be changing or not.

Yesterday I woke up knowing that I would face the mountainous terrain of Serbian bureaucracy in order to finish the establishment of my branding agency. It is mountainous, full of crags, hairpin turns, and impasses due to rock slides, and while

So said Boris Tadic this week, reminding us of our obligation to vote and thereby give voice to our dissatisfaction and bitterness that we all feel because we are not president of the republic.

Hm...

The effect is meant to demonstrate the machine's power by generating enough noise to drown out any other urban man-made sound within 10 kilometers of the blower.

It also

But now, after trying to go virtually every day (and managing three or four times in reality) since the beginning of this month, I find that I am not going to be disproven. My original hypothesis, which I have been propounding for as many years as I remember, seems to withstand the experimentation phase.

I do not like the gym.

We need a bridge that will suspend our doubts about ever having enough viable bridges. We need a bridge that will suspend our disbelief about the dangers of travelling over the Gazela Bridge.

For the next several days, I will be ensconced behind the Great Firewall of China and untouchable by Facebook, Google, YouTube, and 2,700 other websites which the People's Censor has deemed to be unbrowseable.

Iran, Vietnam, and North Korea are also on the list of blockers, but I think it is just me-too-ism.

The ongoing crisis in Serbia, the devastating effects of flooding on countless homes, buildings, people, and animals over a very large part of the country, seems to have brought the humanitarians out in droves. More than 3,000 able-bodied men and women marched on Sabac to shore up the floodwalls. Humanitarian aid to the victims of the floods poured in from around the country and from abroad. People have donated their time, their money, their clothes, their food, and their Facebook pages to the humanitarian effort.

I just spent three days and nights billeted at Buvljak, the flea market next to Vero in New Belgrade, and I have come away with the following inventory:  One t-shirt, a plastic box with no apparent function, one cd of dubious and unnamable origin, a bread box, four unassorted pillows, a toilet seat, and a hub cap. None of these items, of course are on my list. And none of the items on my list are checked as being obtained.