With you occasionally

Okay, here's the deal: my trusty computer has reached the point of no repair. This means that updating here will be highly limited, at least until Mrs Ethnia arrives in town with her computer next week. Points to Marshall McLuhan for observing many years ago that we tend to become dependent on those things that are invented for our convenience.

In the meantime, there is of course much to report from the country I am in, a different one from the one I entered although I have not gone anywhere. But I am following daily events less than I might, since I have been fortunate enough to get access to the archives of one of the popular daily papers, and am instead spending my days reading newspapers from years ago and scribbling their contents onto index cards.

Unfortunate things, aside from the ones that you might expect, include the weather -- heavy rain more or less every day, and the one sweater I brought along (at Mrs Ethnia's insistence) is getting heavy use. This has also been a sad year for restaurants globally: first with the closing of the best Chinese place in our neighborhood in Boston, and now with the surprise closing of Manjez, the last remaining nonšminkerski place in the center of Belgrade (aside from Proleće). News is that the famous and much admired konobar Draško has moved to Orašac on Bulevar Revolucije, or whatever forgotten personage they are calling that street after now.

Good things in Belgrade: Disciplina kičme, last night at SKC.