(I really like Storify.com - helps make Twitter a little bit less of an abyss and a maze...)

It took Vimeo forever to process these seven minutes of the cacophony outside, filmed from inside our room in the early afternoon, with a couple of windows partly open.

The quality's awful, but - just for the record.

I know that no sane person will have the energy to watch this thing, and I've no energy to edit it, or to explain what they are yelling about Yulia Tymoshenko, her gas deals with Gazprom, her debts to Russia and other evils - after a day like this, I can't really hear myself think.

As for the music, at first, there's their idiotic anthem, which I must've heard at least 50 times today and as many times yesterday, and then, at the end of this video, there's some Volodymyr Ivasyuk with Ya Pidu V Daleki Hory from the pro-Yulia camp - and some beautiful Ukrainian signing from the anti-Yulia camp - but they both sound predictably horrible when played simultaneously...

Finally, I've opened the windows and recorded a little bit of the sound that has been coming non-stop, from around 9AM to around 8PM, seven days a week, since early July or so, from the anti-Yulia and pro-Yulia camps right across the street from us.

Nearly five minutes of Oleh Kalashnikov's recurring pre-recorded speech (and here's a rather cute picture of him) and his organization's anthem - and some Ukrainian choir music in the background, from the pro-Yulia camp.

Enjoy! :)

There's a little shop up the street from us, and its elderly owner is an unfriendly woman whose face is like a fist with unsmiling lips, unsmiling eyes and a potato of a nose on it. We were buying ice-cream from her a few days ago, and she tried to guess where we were from by the language we were speaking.

Czechs?

No. Well, not really. Ukrainians.

At some point, I told her how lovely Croatia was.

She spoke Croatian to us, but I understood her response: yes, it is beautiful, but it is hopeless here, no opportunities.

I tried to protest: but Komiza is such a wonder, a paradise on earth, raj na zemlji.

And she said, with muted anger: right, come here in winter and see - there is nothing.

And I said that I understood exactly what she meant. Because, somehow, I did. Though I would still prefer to spend my winters here, by the sea, than in our part of the world, no matter what.

And then I thought that perhaps it was winter, not all those idiotic politicians, that was actually to blame for so many of our problems.

And I also realized that I would've probably heard the same desperately gloomy opinions on winter from the locals of the Aegean Coast of Turkey - more than once, during the three or four of our wonderful summer visits there - had it not been for the impenetrable language barrier between us.

Too tired to write much now, but I really wanted to share these photos of the lovely place that we are staying at here in Komiža: Insulae Apartmani (the Facebook page is here). We spent the month of July here and have just returned after two weeks at another place for the rest of our time on Vis. It's the coziest and the friendliest place in the world!!!

For the first month in Komiža, we stayed at Insulae Apartmani, a wonderful place run by wonderful people. At the beginning of high season, we moved to another place, just a couple minutes away, and now we are about to move back to Insulae for the remaining three weeks here. Packing and moving isn't too much fun, but change is exciting, especially for Marta. Below are some pics from this second place, which is also very, very nice:

Keep forgetting to mention that Marta now has a photo blog - Marta on Otok Vis: photos she's taking here, selected and posted by me.

:)

We are still on the island, and I'm too far behind with posting photos.

To jump-start myself, I've compiled images of the island's lovely doors, windows and miscellaneous dwellings:

Misha and I got married on July 15, 2005 - and the last time I saw my father was on July 16, 2007.

July 15 is supposed to be a very happy day, and I was doing my best to feel happy yesterday, tried very hard to fend off the sadness, to postpone it for just one day.



Today, a swallow flew into one of our windows in the morning, crossed the room, nearly colliding with me, and flew out of the window on the other side of the room. It didn't seem to panic - maybe it wasn't the first for it here - and I thought it was a good sign, because birds are cool.

I went for a long walk in the afternoon, up a mostly narrow path high above the sea, where the hot air is filled with the amazing smell of rosemary and pine trees, and the views are incredible, and there are no people around.

The two-hour walk was both exhausting and invigorating. I wish I didn't hate hats and wore one on this walk. But I never do. That's my only regret.

I kept thinking about papa, about his long last walk somewhere in the forest and in the fields, in the summer heat, lost, four years ago.

I kept thinking of how good it was to know where I was and where I was going to and why, to know the way back, to know that Marta and Misha were waiting for me at the beach, to have my cell phone with me, just in case. It was good to remember that I had the keys to our apartment with me, and that I had to turn around and walk back eventually because of that. It was good to know exactly who I was, to remember my name, age and all, as well as today's date, despite some lightheadedness caused by the heat.

I felt grateful for all this routine knowledge that kept me safe during this walk.

And I hoped, the way I always do during my marathon walks, that my father was somehow there with me, in awe of all I was in awe of.

Komiža - July 5, 2011

Komiža, July 3, 2011:

The wonderful town of Vis, a 15-minute ride away from Komiža - no way to walk there, though, because of the mountains:

To get used to the language, I watch Croatian TV every now and then, and, also every now and then, I understand some things that are being said.

I've already seen two broadcasts from the Croatian Parliament (Hrvatski sabor), and, boring as it may be, I've still caught a few interesting things.

During today's session, for example, they were voting for something, and I really liked their procedure: the speaker (or his deputy or whatever) stood by the microphone, calling each MP's name - and each MP present then responded with a loud "za" or "protiv" (for/against). There was no sound from those who were absent, obviously - though when ex-PM Ivo Sanader's name was called, there was a cheerful, noisy reaction from some MPs (Sanader has been in an Austrian prison on corruption charges since Dec. 2010). After the vote was completed, the speaker read the names of those absent once again, to make sure they were actually not there. And then they counted the votes.

Such a lo-tech, uncool procedure, right? But so much more efficient than the relatively hi-tech one that we have in Ukraine, which allows our assholes to cheat like crazy (see this GV text by Tetyana Bohdanova on one really embarrassing episode of cheating, witnessed by a Polish delegation - and the video of it is below).



UPDATE: A local friend has just explained to me that this lo-tech voting system is normally used in special cases, while the routine voting is done electronically, just like everywhere else.

Yesterday's vote for changes in the war veterans' rights legislation failed - they needed 102 votes in favor of it, but only 101 MPs were present - and there was no space for them to cheat in, even if they wanted to. (An item about it in English is here, with a mention of the laughing caused by Ivo Sanader's name being called.)

Meanwhile in Ukraine, they've passed the pension reform, and the voting was done the usual, backasswards, way, of course. Here's what LEvko of Foreign Notes wrote about it:

Today, [Friday] laws on pension reforms which will directly affect the lives of every Ukrainian citizen, were passed in parliament. Now every Ukrainian will have to work several years longer before achieving retirement.

248 deputies voted in support of the motion even though it seems only 143 deputies were actually registered to vote in the parliament building.

Multiple voting by deputies is a blantant contravention of the country's Constitution, but takes place with numbing regularity. [...]

LEvko also wrote about Yanukovych's reaction to being told that his son had been caught voting for other MPs:

[...] Also today, President Yanukovych, who is 'Guarantor of the Constitution', was asked at a press conference why his younger, parliamentary deputy son, Viktor, had voted in the past in parliament for other deputies in their absence, thus contravening to the Constitution.

His reply? - "When children are picked on - this is something else. I assure you I am not ashamed of my children, my family....When children are dragged into this dirt into which you are trying to drag my children, my family. You could pick on my grandchildren, the oldest is 11 years old - come on, let's go after them too." [...]

Here's the video of Yanukovych's son doing the multiple voting thing:

A few bunches of last week's pictures, from Split and Komiža (no time to write anything):