Keeping in Touch

On Sunday, I’ve had kind of a crappy day. In line with my bourn-again-student life, I work in a restaurant. This is certainly not as stressful and demanding as my “serious” job back in Belgrade, but nevertheless it can be exhausting, especially in combination with all the work I need to do for school. Basically, I haven’t had more than 3 hours of absolute free time in the last couple of months. But Sunday was a particularly bad day at work. A gray rainy day, when everyone wishes they had stayed in bed and a restaurant terribly overcrowded with demanding customers amount to cranky colleagues, a charged atmosphere and a lot of shouting all around. If I ever have to make another skim-milk decaf cappuccino in my entire life it will be an eternity too soon. On the way home I also managed to get hit by a bycicle while talking with Ivan on the phone, which left a big scratch on my right knee.

When I got home I checked my e-mail. Nobody wrote. In fact, nobody has written in several days. In my grumpy mood, I started to get irritated. Most friends, when they do write, begin with : “Where have you guys been” or “Why don’t you write” and my letters similarly contain a version of “Sorry I haven’t written in so long but… (good excuse)”. Well I don’t want to apologize any more. I don’t want to sound like some sort of victim, as I am not, but it’s my life that has been turned upside down. It is I who has to adjust and cope every day with unknown situations in a new environment. All my friends and family and everything I know have been carried away by the planet, rotating away under my airplane. For those still in Belgrade, only one person is gone, their lives go on as normal, and still they manage to criticize this one distant friend, who’s probably too busy to write as he’s spending his millions in fancy NY nightclubs (I wish).

Anyway, this is all in the past. Like good Diaspora Serbs we picked ourselves up that Sunday evening and went to a new friend’s belated allegedly slava-related dinner party. Had some good food, drank wine. On top of that I am now beginning to discover the charms of Facebook, so no more criticism. Now I only have to explain how come, contrary to everyone’s expectations our life is just so ordinary and normal.