standing still for moving

i would just like to say that i am sort of exasperated with the state of transportation in this city. that there is no shortest route anywhere, as long as it makes use of any bus or tramvaj, is absurd, especially when it means that i am intimately embroiled therein/thereon for at least 3 hours per day.

arrived, late (as lividly usual, this time because the tramvaj simply didn't stop at the one i needed—or the next one, so i had to walk back to Tijana's house), to language class. then, left in a terrific thunderstorm, the effects of which slightly dampened my enthusiasm. namely: all tramvaji had stopped running, even as their tracks turned into tiny roaring rivers. it took me an hour to get across the Sava. let's just say that at times like this, the "charming lurching" becomes slightly less so. it's a complicated structure of complaint and gratitude that functions in my head at time such as this: i love the rain, because of itself and because it washes down this city that breathes its grime relentlessly, but i don't appreciate how it paralyses everything that inhabits the filth. i'm thankful that there *are* buses and tramvaj, that they don't run on a twice-per-hour schedule—except for when they, in essence, do.

destination this afternoon was the "chinese market" down in Blok 70 to search out a decent but cheap replacement for the alarm clock that i'd managed to entice into service earlier, which has since become extremely unreliable. today i began to doubt that my good fortune (related to waking on time) shall hold and decided to take action.

obviously, this was the place to go for the satisfaction of so many longings: cultural anachronism, untold (and later revealed) stories, [escapable] masses of humanity, objects of the neither-need-nor-want and exactly-right variety often associated with (monetary and material) cheapness....

the story goes remotely like this (ah, Google, in my hour of need...):
Milošević and Mira (Marković) go to China in 1997. it's unclear whether something formal and sinister (Slobodan handing out Jugoslav passports so as to boost his voter basis) or casual (Mira wondering about a Chinatown in Srbija) came to pass, but in any case, suddenly there was a massive influx of the following magnitude: "The entire population of the Chinese village of Jincun in Zhejiang province has moved to Belgrade, specifically to Blok 70 in the suburb of Novi Beograd." that would be a quote from here .

i found a clock/calculator with many many functions, some of which i don't need (these seem to be the ones i cannot disable, such as the beeping every hour from 6am to midnight (at least it has that Asian politeness built in)), after opening and peering into the battery case of many many boxed up models to find one without seepage. now i simply cannot wait until another pressing need for worldly goods presents itself, so i will have an excuse to head back to chinatown-in-a-building. oddly enough, i happened to be wearing my "bicycle" torn (and mop bleach, and general state-of-disrepair-and-ill-repute, favourite pants)—which i hadn't dragged all over the streets since i was in New York's Chinatown. cardboard boxes with instructions in kanji, flattened after being shipped too far and too filled with multiples of the same plastic novelty, and fruit smashed into the mud created by dense feet: by these we shall know where we are (not in China).