--Friday, 01 December 00--
I walked to the CFA only to find a line waiting at my door. It was non-stop for two hours. No chance to go to usual meeting with Matt at the BPK.

Around 6:15, I walked over to Xhemi [Jemi} and Ariane's apartment and arrived at 6:30 on time but no one was there. Later I called and Xhemi was apologetic. He and Ariane will come to my place tomorrow evening or is it Monday?

Met the Aussie at the Kukrie and told the Kukri's owner, John Foreman, that he should check out my web page to make sure I was not causing security problem for his bar man who is Serbian. He said he would get back to me on it.

While at the Kukri I happened to hear two expats talking about their company. One asked the other what a fanatic and a their employee have in common. The answer, he said was that "having forgotten their goal, they responded by redoubling their effort." It seems to me I have worked for such places more than once in my career.


--Saturday, 02 December 00--
The Kalishnikov guy "going postal" in the market, the bomb in the parking lot, the shooting of a close Rugova advisor. All recent and all unpleasant to think about. One wonders how stable things here really are.

In a bad state all day both psychologically and physically. The top left side of my torso aches for no apparent reason. Deep breathing bring brought pain.

Had lunch with Jose at Parliament where we had a fine American quality cheeseburger and chatted about attitudes to local governments in Kosovo. On the walk back to the CFA building we found the street between the Grand and the BPK was blocked by police tape. An officer on the scene told me that a person was killed on the street and we would have to walk around to the right.

Later, I met Mingles told me that a police officer was killed directly in front of the Grand hotel at about Noon and the killer got away. He went on to say that there are many Mafia people here, apparently connected to Albania.

Later still, I heard that there had been a gang shoot out in front of the Grand, that no one was killed and the police had done nothing. Later, i heard that days before an Albanian police officer had witnessed a woman being stabbed and had done nothing and that today a relative of the woman had shot him. Later I heard that a police officer had interfered with an attack on a woman and now he had been shot. Later I heard that the dead person was a Serbian police officer. Later I heard that the victim was not dead, not yet.

This is more than usually disturbing and confusing. How does one sort out fact from fiction?

The violence that was directed at Serbs now seems to be slowly redirecting itself at other Albanians.

Smile called me tonight. He seems enchanted to have a phone in his new apartment -- perhaps for the first time. He calls me in the morning and the evening. In the background Kimeta asked is there was a beautiful woman here and I told Smile, "No woman, no man, nobody." Smile chuckled.


--Sunday, 03 December 00--
Smile to come by at one PM or 7 PM. He will be moving his furniture to some kind of storage so if if he does not come by at 1 PM, I am to walk to his house and take pictures and he will come by at 7 PM. A no show as I expected.

Yesterday Ramadan had told me that it was my turn to call him but I didn't since I wanted to stay in and go to bed early. This morning I was feeling guilty so I decided to invite him over for a cheddar cheese omelet

He was interested and came over and we had a pleasant breakfast and then walked to the restaurant out Germia for a coffee. He told me that it was the longest distance he had walked in years.

Took the No. 4 to the Hospital and, bought some beer and coke for the workers, and walked to Smile's new home. As he had told me the first floor ceiling had been completed but to my surprise no one was on site. I attributed the absence of workers to the minimum waiting time for the concrete to set. I looked around and took some pictures.

Back in town I read the weekend edition of the HT at the Kukri but didn't see John so I got no feedback on my web page.


--Monday, 04 December 00--
In a funk today as well. The weather was a deep, icy fog that made the streets and sidewalks just slippery enough to make you worry a lot.

Jemi and Ariane came by this evening and we hand another 90 minutes of tortured conversation. Fortunately I showed them the CDs I had bought and Jemi said that he liked Frank Sinatra so we listened to some of his greatest hits.


--Tuesday, 05 December 00--
Still in a funk. The weather was only warm enough to eliminate the ice.

Electricity went off around 9:40 PM and I had to type with two candle power for an hour.

Joe