grasswire

I just bought three tickets for our second leg at the axis of evil today. Yes, we are leaving for Iran on November 9th to spend two great weeks with our friends and to roam around the country a bit before it gets liberated. Must admit it did feel a bit unusual - to buy three tickets :))

On Friday, we drove to Brda to visit my PhD adviser to discuss my thesis. The visit was delightful but it did drastically refocus my thesis. It’s not that I will have to discard any written pages but my “pet project” – Orientalism, was dethroned from the central position it had from the very start. It’s sort of like this pic that illustrates the outcome – turned on its head (click here for normal view). Not that I complain about it – the whole thing is now more coherent etc. but it still feels a bit strange :)

Brda were also, like always, a relaxing feast for our eyes, the straight lines of vineyards lining the gentle hills and trees in the orchards slightly bending in the wind. The rain only seemed to intensify the cornucopia of colours, the greens of the grass, the yellows of vine leaves, the browns of the branches and blacks of the trunks.

And because the Friday trip was more of a friendly visit and a day off than work, I had this weird feeling on Saturday that it was already Sunday. It’s good that it was not the other way around.

You haven’t seen one of these for a while on grasswire so there you go, a super sturdy 1930’s concrete “tiling” from a picturesque but decaying building of Bohinjska Bistrica railway station complex. It deserves a post of its own.

After a wild culinary morning and a wonderful lunch, we headed for Bohinjska Bistrica to “get” the birthdays present for Dragana. And while she enjoyed her chocolate treatment, me and Tamara were photo-strolling around the place. It was refreshing – a tiny town where life runs at a slower pace and everybody says “hello” to everyone. Including me. I always enjoy going to small towns on working days and feel the slowness of their pace. Since this is a tourist place, the off season feeling added another layer of slowness as did some slowly decaying buildings. Here are three pics that don’t tell much about the place:
- sleepy Tamara doing what she shouldn’t
- beware, cows 500m above
- found still-life

And since the day was dedicated to the best 1974, here is a link that shows the worst (via Designsponge).

It is still amazing to me how much you can be in love with a small creature like Tamara. Today as I was playing with her before her bed time, she came over to me and put her pacifier into my mouth. And started laughing :)
“I was melting of joy” would be a funny direct translation of a Slovene phrase that gives a very accurate description of my feelings at the time.

Was just biting my biscuit in the library and I remembered I saw this germ calculator the other day. Knowing some of you are tech guys (some might even have “the knack”), I thought this link would be perfect for you.

I am a bit skeptical about such calculators and calculations but still, it gives you something to think about. So how many toilet seats are you typing on? My germ score of 2,247,000 is the equivalent to the number of germs on 449 toilet seats.

The pic is an add from Istanbul airport.

The title of the post could just as well be cardamom cake part two – as the pic shows, the cake Dragana made today was more than delicious, only traces of it in the icing sugar remained after the visitors left. The thing that you can’t see from the pic is the spillover of my cooking experimentalism. I love to cook and especially, to experiment with new spices, flavors etc. Am also notoriously not sticking to recipes, perhaps only the first time around but then creativity gets the best of me. And fridge content. Dragana is less experimental but sometimes there is an apparent spill-over of my culinary creativity – like today’s carob cake with apples, spiced with cardamom (brought by Natalia who from time to time makes all those diplomatic and provocative comments and whom we are now waiting to email us her phone number(s) so that we can call her).

Back to the post title – we had presidential elections today and our present location revealed all the unbearable lightness of democracy. We knew who we’ll vote for as soon as the names were announced, skipped all the pre-election debates and campaigns and voted by the way (me on the way to the grocery store and Dragana while taking out the trash).

Am really a bad person and will definitely go to hell. Well, I’d be going there anyway due to my socialist/communist convictions but… As Tamara got a bit of a cold, we had to change our plans and stayed in Kamnik for the weekend. So Dragana’s mother and sister came over and brought along a cake (it was sister’s birthday). My mother in law is really an excellent cook, but when in comes birthday cakes, she is the worse. So during the afternoon craving for something sweet (soon after they left), I decided to “upgrade” the bloody thing, keeping only the spongecake base, soaking it with coffee and amaretto and wrapping it in chocolate coating with a touch of Egyptian cardamom that our wonderful friend Natalia brought from Iran. And for the final touch, some hot berries on the side. Now that was more like it. Am definitely going to hell, he he…

A photogenic Friday to you my friends. Tomorrow is the world toy camera day so grab your beauties and do some shooting. Or buy one today and get ready. Or click here to read what this is all about.

For some reason I can’t publish a photo to go with this post so try clicking here if you are interested in seeing one.

like this sign, falling into the abyss of theories on collective identities, which you shouldn’t go about calling with such improper terms as “identity” anyway. Grrrrr! Can’t wait till I’m done, big drinks for everyone sometime in 2008…

On the other hand and side of the globe, my high school classmate appears to be far from despair, currently holding sixth place in the crazy boat race across the Atlantic. Go Kristian, go!