There are times when we accumulate so much information a subject that it must needs burst forth and splat onto the page like squashed blueberry. The following is not a public service announcement or message. It is just overspill.

5,000? Really?

There are two reasons for this. The first is that, having done what I do over a considerable time, I have become adept at it. But another reason is that it is more acceptable from a societal point of view to establish continuity and therefore predictability in my persona.

A banker’s first and best duty is, of course, to extract all the money from your pocket, mattress, closet, or left shoe and lock it up securely in its vaults.

Never mind all of the advertising you have seen to the contrary telling us about FREE CASH, NO INTEREST, SWISS FRANCS, and Gosh-my-bank-wants-to-buy-me-a-new-house! In the end, your dinars must wind up on the other side of the teller’s counter, ostensibly waiting for you to collect them later, otherwise we would have a lot fewer bankers clogging the arteries of Belgrade with Mercedes, BMWs, and Jaguars.

(If I were a banker, I think I would be the guy in the Astin Martin.)

The world's legion paranoid masses announced the end of the world for May 21. I am not sure anymore why the world had to come to an end seven months ago, but it seems this month we will get another shot at putting our cosmic lives in order and getting ready for the New End of the World on December 21.

I am away from my desk and unable to read my mail.

In fact, I am very far away from my desk and the city of its construction and even the country in which it is currently located.

It is the System. It is what we blame when things go horribly wrong and when it is not the fault of any one individual. It is a force to be reckoned with in Serbia, but it is equally powerful in all corners of the world.

When anyone deals with public administration and its inherent bureaucratic labyrinths, we blame the System. When anyone is admitted into a public hospital and is treated like a piece of meat on a slab, we blame the System. The System is most often used to explain away the arcane and the unacceptable and most usually pertains to the large behemoths created by big government and big business.

When a driver struggles and attempts to parallel park five times on a busy Belgrade street, he may also wave to the accumulated traffic. As if to say, "Thanks for being patient and not killing me."

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.

For many years, I have been looking for an adequate explanation for traffic in the White City. I have wondered why it was ok to come to a stop at a red light and then step out of your car and go get a coffee.

The question of right-of-way was fairly easy to figure out - everyone has it. At the same time. Especially at a four-way intersection with six ancillary roads leading into it. Why waste time trying to figure out who has priority when the answer is obviously me? And when you need to transfer (quite suddenly) from the far left lane to the far right, you just do it. Everyone will always get out of the way.

And they will greet you with friendly honking as you go.