Dr. Filomena

My grandmother Amalia, a.k.a. Malka, has been through a lot in her life. As a young girl, she risked her life on numerous occasions in the nation’s struggle to fight off first the Italian and then the German occupying forces during WWII. As so many other young Slovenians, she helped rebuild the country after the war, even taking part in the youth work brigades all around the freed Yugoslav territories. All of that to the point of total exhaustion.

So perhaps it should not come as a surprise that yesterday, when power was cut off in her building, she would not let this stop her from voting in the Presidential elections. Aged 85 and not in the best of health, she walked down 9 flights of stairs in pitch black dark she had to illuminate with her tiny battery light, cast her vote and walked back up. Not too many ladies came from that same mould, huh?

Rather interesting that the electric company should choose a Sunday and an election Sunday at that, to replace a transformer in a neighbourhood predominantly populated by old pensioners, mainly of the same basic political persuasion. Without prior notice except on the Internet and one local radio station. For an added bonus, reportedly, one of the buildings affected by the blackout is home to one of the presidential candidates’ parents. Perhaps even more interesting in the light of the tighter results than anticipated.

You can read a more detailed account of the elections and a commentary on the issue of the mysteriously hard-working electricians on an election Sunday by Človek Lubenica in Slovenian.

but box your vote. I just did 😉

EDIT (21 Oct 07 @ 10.30 pm): For results and updates, I recommend you pay a visit to Pengovsy’s blog.

In a surprising turn of events, Peterle is getting a much lower percentage of votes than predicted. It seems he bled them to the left who bled theirs to Jelinčič. Gaspari and Türk are in a surprisingly close race for the second place so it seems likely that the second-round candidates will be decided by the ballots coming in from abroad sometime by the end of the week.

Two DJs in foosball championship.

Go vote!

This text really should be in Slovenian as it’s meant for Slovenian citizens due to cast their votes in the presidential elections tomorrow, but since this is my standpoint regardless of the time and place of elections, here goes: it is one’s right and duty to go and cast a vote.

Never ever let me hear you say I am just one voice that cannot change a thing. The total of votes cast is but a sum of all individual votes whereby yours is worth exactly as much as the next woman’s (or man’s).

I care much less about who you vote for tomorrow than whether you vote at all.

If you’re still wavering, thinkg about what a long struggle it was to secure the Right to Vote to so many. If you’re a woman, think twice as hard.

So go ahead, exercise the right that you have thanks to the fight of so many before you and go fulfil your civic duty.

Vote!

PS: No particular reason to feature the green dragon. I just like that photo. Taken this summer at the “Dragon Bridge” in Ljubljana.

Ljubljana market.

EDIT: I still need to figure out this mobile blogging thing. It started snowing at the market while I was there around noon and I wanted to post this entry… Had to cut way back on the text and it still wouldn’t go through. Then it went through a couple of hours later. The photo is so much nicer and larger than the one from the castle… strange. Anyway, will figure it out somehow.

On the glorious occasion of the Ljubljana VideoCard making it to Michael Manske’s famous Best of Slobs at carniola.org I hereby post my first mobile entry… Live from Ljubljana castle. Thanks, Michael!

I kid you not.

Source

If you drop by at Mala Galerija, Slovenska cesta 35 in Ljubljana, or at Gallery NOEMA between 15 October and 15 November 2007, you will have the chance to wonder at an exhibition featuring records of the following brave expedition:

“This year on 6 August, atop Mount Triglav, three artists – intermedia artist Janez Janša, director and performer Janez Janša, and visual artist Janez Janša – realized the action Mount Triglav on Mount Triglav.”

Sure sounds like team work!

(Click here for the presentation in Slovenian.)

The project is supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia, the Municipality of Ljubljana and the European Cultural Foundation.

Go Team!

EDIT: I suppose I might do well to mention that a Janez Janša happens to be Slovenia’s current prime minister and that Mount Triglav (literally: mt. three-heads or the triple-headed mountain) is the highest mountain in the country as well as one of its most prominent symbols, e.g. featured in the coat of arms, which also happens to be included in the national flag.

Reading Pengovsky’s post on the new party, Zares, I remembered having written a post reporting from one of this group’s events at the very start of the blog, before it acquired the whopping two or three readers it boasts now so I thought why not recycle some of the old posts.

Here is one I’d originally posted on 28 June 2007:

For a change of pace from the serial killer night I accompanied my university professor aunt to a debate in Cankarjev dom held by Društvo Zares on the topic of proposed changes in Slovenian legislation pertaining to higher levels of education. Društvo Zares literally translates to the For Real Club and is a group of people planning on forming a political party soon.

I will make no comment other than that I found the group of the present people to make for an interesting combination and that I was most impressed by the representative of the Institutum Studiorum Humanitatis. Oh just one remark, though. Everyone seemed to listen attentively except when the speaker happened to be a student. Humm.

Added note: That’s the new party’s new President Gregor Golobič on the left in the bottom photo.

Several of us have been trying to figure out how to define the meaning of “anal retentive”. Now granted, we could have always looked it up in Wikipedia, but why bother when debating the issue can clear up so much (whoops).

I think I’ve just cracked it, though (whoops no. 2). Thanks to David, I learned that that an Austrian baker actually made his staff pay for the time they spent in the toilet.

The owner of the bakery in Eisenstadt, capital of Burgenland province, recorded toilet visits on a computer and took the value of the bathroom time off their annual holiday bonus. No either this guy is anal retentive or he wants his employees to be such… or both.

No doubt, Sarkozy’s alleged pending divorce will be all over the media in the days to come so why not mention it here. The guy does sometimes seem to fit the bill as far as this post’s title goes, right?

Speaking of retention, ahem… Financial Times reports that banks’ debts threaten growth. Big US commercial banks have seen $280bn of new debt come on to their balance sheets since the credit squeeze, threatening to undermine economic growth by inhibiting their ability to make new loans. Large bank capital – represented by net assets – had reportedly declined by $40bn since the beginning of August. European banks are said to be facing similar pressures with many observers expressing concern at the ability of some smaller lenders to handle the potential strain on their balance sheets. Perhaps time to re-read Pengovsky’s two cents’ worth on the subprime-lending-induced crisis?

Hank Paulson, the US Treasury Secretary, warned yesterday that the downturn in the nation’s mortgage market would burden the economy “for some time” as several big banks, the largest homebuilder and a major construction equipment maker all highlighted the growing impact of the housing decline. (Source)

Cheer up, though. If not by other means, then by checking out the Cartoon Quiz

Cheers from Tweety!
(Humm, I think I saw a Pussy Cat!)

Slovenia: It’s S’Lovely

Found at another blog (source, thanks Adriaan): Condé Nast Traveler asked six designers to each rebrand a country of his or her choice for its September issue, and Paula Scher selected Slovenia for her effort.
“I’ve been to Slovenia twice and loved it. But most Americans don’t know what or where it is, which is something I wanted to address” says Scher. By highlighting Slovenia’s proximity to Italy, she made the country appear both physically accessible and “like it has great skiing and great food, which it in fact does.”
Although, as she commented in the article, “I don’t think countries should have logos. Logos are for corporations.”

While it may be difficult to shake off the feeling of being categorised as Italy’s appendix and the “love” bit of the word Slovenia has been used a zillion times in various similar solutions, do take a look at Paula’s other ideas at the source.