Many of you who have experienced the Great Airports of the World - Heathrow, JFK, Dubai, and Belgrade's own Nikola Tesla - will know already what I am talking about. This is a subject, in fact, which is so well known to frequent fliers as to be superfluous to set to pixels. It is a level of luxury which we have come to expect, but it is not for the uninitiated...

"Oh, it says Architecture, but really it's not."
"I can see that. But people will not look for it here."
"This is Biography, Journals, and Autobiography."
"But it says Architecture."
"It says that, but it is not."

Case Study: Same-sex Marriage. It is not acceptable anymore to merely accept this and generally agree with it. The Socially Acceptable Model is to "celebrate" it. We must loudly proclaim our most underscored, emphatic, and rainbow-painted glee. We must show Vindication and Exaltation. Otherwise, we might be mistaken for a Scalia-style dissenter.

And God forbid we actually do dissent...

While America is reeling and holding its head at the thought of Donald Trump as a possible 45th President of the United States, so too is Serbia biting its nails to see who will come out on top of the extraordinary one-party elections coming soon to this country.

I think you see where I am going with this...

Far from being a reference to Portugal (whose song I thought was lovely by the way), the moment of reflection is now descending on Belgrade. Eurovision has come, exploded, and drifted off in the direction of Moscow. And the question which I am left with is what does it all mean?

The hype of this watershed event for Serbia and Belgrade has already been subsumed in the day-to-day guesswork about the next government. The organization of Eurovision in Belgrade seems to have been superb. The flooding of the White City streets with thousands of visitors caused no problems around town, the atmosphere was lively, and no ugly incidents (usually to be expected with so many bodies in one space) were splashed across the headlines.

The US election will get underway in several hours as I write this and will surely be done and put to bed by the time you are reading this, but I feel that I have legitimate gripe to make NOW before even I know the outcome of the elections (and before I go around paying out on my bets for John McCain).

I have been, as most of the US and a big chunk of the televisually linked world, keeping up with the presidential campaign through the most readily accessible means available to me: CNN. And each day I switch it on, I have been getting progressively more angry at them.

The implication of this cryptic phrase is that after the elections in Serbia, people will be able to make decisions and everything will get back to business as usual. So we sat through the "campaign" and through election day and night, and patiently awaited the great Results which would shape the future.

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.

We are getting back to work after a long and protracted holiday (even if we did not take one, everyone else seems to have done so). Streets are busier. Shops are crowding up slowly again. Supermarkets may even begin to stock the shelves once more. The fall season - in a way very different from the burgeoning of spring - is all about new beginnings. Schemes

After all, once we elect a parliament and they choose a government, the entertainment values drop rather dramatically in a politically stable environment. During the pre-election period, it is exciting. We get promises, wild accusations, insults, mud-slinging, and the very best of the Human Condition under pressure. But then the votes are counted (and recounted and contested), the names are read out and after we have laughed and cried and jumped for joy and sunk into despair, and we just have to get back to work and hope RTS and B92 come up with something equally entertaining for us to watch.