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