Boban and Dunja

Frantisku took a picture of Boban and his daughter Dunja when he was in Holland two weeks ago. We are going to stay with Boban and his two beautiful women (his wife Lidija and his daughter Dunja) in May for a week or so and I am really looking forward to it. I haven't seen Dunja for almost a year and I am emotionally prepared to be surprised by how tall she is now. The only problem is that she does not speak English/Cantonese and I don't speak Serbian. Czech is close enough to Serbian so Frantisku should have no problems.

Boban is a great friend who appreciates my general knowledge as plain and as deep as lines like 'one thing leads to another'. I pronunced that line as a deep thought yesterday and he crowned me the title of 'wittiness dispenser', however mockingly, I took it as a compliment. We used to live in the same house in Leiden during my first year in Holland. Being foreign, poor and bored, we often played Chinese checkers in pubs after work over a glass of beer for him and a cup of hot tea/hot chocolate for me. I also remember playing 'just a minute' (a BBC panel game which one has to speak for one minute on a topic with no repetition, deviation and hesitation) with him and Mark (another housemate) in the house one evening, when we had nothing to do but were just staring at each other in the very quiet living room. When we first moved to that house, we got no furniture and we did not want to spend money on it. One day when we were sitting at home, we saw our next door neighbors throwing out chairs, beds and tables. We went to pick them all up and after that day, our living room was furnished. We were all very delighted. Boban, Mark, Veronique and me also went to Paris in November 2001. I remember that trip only very vaguely because I was drunk (having wines all day long) and sleepy (only 4 hours a night max, and very cold) the whole trip. Boban said I was really nice to hang out with in that state, as opposed to when I am sober and awake. Those were real good times.

Joanno

A visit to the optometrist

I went to my optometrist today and had lots of fun. My optometrist is a girl, who I think is a few years younger than me. It might be a bit premature to call her my optometrist since that was the first visit, but I would book her again next time just for the laugh. Right in the beginning, she asked me whether my eyes had any problem, so I told her about the lasik surgery last July, the higher order aberration on right my eye and the recent inflammation on my right eye. She then wanted to know whether I saw flashes. I told her only if I turned my head very quickly in the dark, then I saw flashes. She just smiled, which could mean anything. But I was happy that someone was paying so much attention to my problems. Anyway, what I really wanted to ask her is whether she thinks it is a good idea to do an enhancement surgery on my right eye again, due to the higher order aberration, considering my vision now. It is in fact quite hard to describe one’s visual problem, as you are the only one who can ‘see’ it. Instead of describing my vision, I told her that when I look through my fingers or small holes, I see a lot clearer. When I cry, my vision is also much better. She said when less light would be admitted, the vision is better. That is probably true, if you think about pinhole glasses. I refrained from telling her the time I tried to clear my tear duct by cutting onions. I also did not tell her when I am upside down my vision is better. I can’t explain why I was upside down in the first place. After all, I wanted to appear to be normal to someone who has my personal details. At some point, she was trying to test my peripheral vision and was holding up different fingers at the side of my eyes and asked me to guess how many fingers there were. It was so hard not to cheat and by looking sideway, but I managed to discipline myself. It was very fun. I think kids would love this. There was also a point where she had to check my retina and asked me to look at her ears (not at the same time, but left first than right). The thing is that the room was quite dark and she had such small flat ears (they did not stick out), so it was very hard to focus on them. I felt my giggles bubbling up then, but I stopped them.

All in all, the visit was nice. The only bad news is that there is a part of my retina that is too thin, common to people with myopia (-9 for me), so there is a risk of a detachment. I guess I will need to burn it with laser. But since this does not involve cutting me open, I am not too worried.

Joanno