it was not gonna be a "glorious" day from the beginning: it was freezing outside, ice-covered roads made proper walking very hard, and the construction on our newly radioactive town square had yet to finish. Academics and academic societies were beamed on tv screens as they blabbed about the importance of yester-day. not knowing what to do, we went to the cinema to see the Albanian-produced movie, "Mao Ce Dun". I don't know if it is a true story, but everything in that movie was true for Albania during the dictatorial reign of Enver Hoxha. Just from the title you could easily tell that the movie's setting is in the 80s, when communist Albania invited all the people of China people into their homes (reason: Chinese and Albanians were brothers back then. hard to imagine). The movie starts off by a woman giving birth to a son that would serve as a tool to have his father mingle with the people in the higher up (in the Government). Living next to a river, in a plastic-tent camp, with mud up to the knees, the charismatic and witty Hekuran decides to name his 9th son (from his second wife, Sulltane), as the Chinese great leader - Mao Ce Dun. As a simple nobody, dead-broke, and with nothing but raki, singing and dancing as his qualities, the Albanian communist party is delighted to hear that one of its citizens has named his son Mao Ce Dun. Even the Chinese Ambassador to Albania comes to visit him at his new apartment, which the communist party gave to him as a way to impress the visiting ambassador. It gets a lot weirder as the honest, quiet, and quite smart man twists and uses (without any intention) the benefits that the party suddenly grants him. Hekuran (Mao Ce Dung's father) sells the furniture of the apartment three times, and the stupid party members cannot do anything to him (except jail and torture their own members). The movie shows the fragility, superficiality and the big loopholes that the system created. It also showed how a man, without a single working day in his life, benefited a whole lot by just naming his son as the great Chinese leader. But as these systems work, you get all the benefits you request, then conspiracy theories about you start to circle (people at the Albanian communist party thought that Hekuran, the father of the famous boy, was conspiring against the great Albanian socialist nation and was backed up by the USofA, or Russia - the arch enemy).
As they sang and danced, the security came and took Hekuran away, with him not knowing why was he arrested, or why was he even given new clothes and house. Sulltane knew this was coming.
Then it was Creme de la Creme, for a glass of home-made wine and some good music.
"One for all, and all for one"- Hekuran used to say in the movie. He had such a Robin-Hood like figure, but he was a bum and a good-hearted guy who was really sharp, and knew how to get stuff from idiots from the Albanian Communist party.

It was a good way to spend your 28th day of November.
Today, Yugoslavia celebrates its day. Wherever she is.