August 31, 2007





P.S.: bardhi's exhibit poster coming real soon.


August 30, 2007

i needed a english premiership football team i could cheer for, because it sucks not having a favorite team. roni said i should chose everton. i did

boots.to.the.moon

there are times when movie makers think the atmosphere is ripe enough to put another installment to their latest movies. that's the same thought-pattern our foreign friend Joscef Castor is following. i guess. or not. anyways, the things is that BOOTS TO THE MOON will play his second show in Prishtina, Kosovo. this time, he will astonish the crowds at TUKS cafe. prishtina loves you joe. PEOPLE! if you happen to be in prishtina on august 31st, come to TUKS /near Strip Depo/ at around 22:00 and see boots.to.the.moon. i know that i am going.
(poster design: Nita Salihu).

August 28, 2007

August 26, 2007

pizza boy ron/sick boy joe

+It was no surprise that our foreign friend Joe's stomach was not feeling his usual self today, because last night our foreign friend joe was super tired and did not go to bed early. me, Joe and Bardhi were gonna go to Ron's house to eat Ron's self-made pizza's and watch soccer, but Joe could not come. see, that's what happens when you don't listen. thankfully, the Castor got better with love and paracetamol. we felt relieved because the word did not get out to the press about this international incident. because if it did, we would have american troops invading out lands. wait, we have US troops here and they did not invade us. we asked for them and they liberated us. I lov-e e US-A freedom!

+Even though Joe could not come, me and Bardhi decided it was better to go to Ron's house because he had already made two pizzas. cannot let two pizzas go to waste! this is Ron with his final product. Quite frankly, I was surprised of Ron's culinary abilities. the pizza tasted good, not great because "I did not give my best" was ron's excuse. but we love him anyway. Bardhi did not stick the official Pizza Club Poo Poo'd sticker on his door, but after leaving Bardhi left the sticker in Ron's room. left it, not stick it! Arsenal FC won the match, which is important for Ron, and we had a great time with Riniii and Eedn after the lunch session. thanks for today Ron. we owe you big time!

+Ginger Embargo, the sole book/CD store that really has great books and CDs, started playing movies on weekends. slacker was the movie that they played tonight. i heard that it was a great movie and i just recently read about it's influence and role on the independent film making in america. we were only four people watching the movie. i would watch it again and again. the lines were amazing. /along with the whole plot - which did not exist/. if you happen to be in Prishtina, i would highly recommend that you visit Ginger music/book shop (located at Qyteza Pejton)

photos follow.

Ron's culinary abilities

Ginger movie nights / Slacker

August 24, 2007

BACK with a big K+

back from the tri-country trip, /macedonia/albania/montenegro/ and back with the blog. i missed my blog and i'm glad the blog missed me. will continue posting from now on. be sure to check out our exciting adventures in Kosovo and the region right here.

July 22, 2007

dear bardhi/joe, welcome.

it's almost two days before Bardhi and Joe land in K-Land /bardhi holds the full right to the last word/. i am super extra excited! i can't wait actually. +this heat is making this wait even worse. oh, the 5 hours of water disposable + the bush fires make this waiting EVEN/EVEN worse. but anyways, forget about that.

Bardhi and Joe are bringing a car with them that they will sell for $1,000, and bardhi will bring a lot of money because that's his staunch duty as a fellow countrymen: to help his dear old K-Land. hey, all the other expatriates are doing it. they bring money and cars from Austria to Germany to other places of which i have no clue about their license plates. But yeah, Bardhi's bringing money alright. a lot of money. he better be, or his fellow countrymen/women will kick his /llatin/ ass real hard! oh, not to forget the car with big shinny spinning rims.

thanks bardhi. thanks joe. you're great friends.
i'm meeting you very soon.

July 18, 2007

office /plant flower/ work

while washing my hands at the bathroom, i noticed that the red Domestos /kills all known germs/, had a piece of paper attached to it. they were giving away free flower seeds, isn't that neat? they kill germs and then they give you flower seeds. anyway, i took them and planted all of them in our small back-garden at the office. dug a hole /with some help from merita/, and put them in. i repeated this again.

the label read that they were chinese /karanfili/. i want them to water them and hope they'll bloom into beautiful flowers. i named the flowers. "/nii/". mhmm.

July 16, 2007

draw or i'll draw mine and shoot.

i found this blog /http://www.ironicsans.com/ that is quite amazing. it has some quite interesting posts and the one my curiosity could not let go was this one about the "terrorist organizations logos". this sure does give terrorists more attention, but i could not help it but post some of the logos.


they've even put UCK /KLA/ logo in it. this generated some angry posts from some of our fellow albanians living in the US. i wanted to post a more moderate response, but after seeing that there are enough posts about why KLA's logo is among other terrorist organization logos, i decided that it is not worth it. really.


there were striking similarities in the logos of the Palestinian armed movements /the hand+Kalashnikov grip/. who knows under what pressure are the /designers/ of these logos. they probably have a gun on their head as they draw/create these logos. i would also assume that there would be no competition or logo-selection committee, or even a complaint committee for that matter. such ruthlessness. great collection though. nice blog. ironic sans.

July 13, 2007

nita's new friend. not the coolest,
but it beats going back to her
office after work.



July 11, 2007

July 04, 2007

nita was preparing edgesoup for uploading in edgesoup.com, i was goofing around and listening to panda bear's bros.



July 03, 2007

vetevendosje v3.0

another attempt. this time the crowds were modest, but at least there weren't less people than the last time. this is my second time i was present at such "gathering". what differed this time was the "more artistic" label tagged to this protest. the organization pulled off some pretty well-thought and provoking stunts. i sort of liked them. of course, not that i was really behind them when chantings like: down with unmik, were shouted. i do not want to be down with unmik, because you cannot be down with them. i am down with our government. so, so down. [pictures courtesy of nita. 97% of them]



People were not that angry, but they sort of followed this flow. there was not real anger or anything, but these old people that time forgot kept chanting spit-combined slogans like: freedom is freedom. and this guy continued all the way, without dropping dead even once. that's what i call self/determination/vete/vendosje. funky police pose and colorful walls.

July 01, 2007


come on man! not the name-stamp telling us you are the Chief executive! we know that. this is just enough already. this guy should get an ad a publish his name 10 times if wanted to. he could do that because he has money and power. oh, wait a minute! he got this promotional thing going on all of the newspapers, where he showcased his achievement (becoming part of the Publicis Network) by posing head-to-head, legs crossed, leather chairs sideways, with this guy that works for Publicis. I thought it was cheesy, but it worked because i still remember that dumb shot. i just think that he uses his name and takes credit more in his name; not his company's. it annoys me, but so what. it's his thing. (disclaimer: i have nothing against the guy. he is sweet, he is the regular ice-cream man at the office, and does not pay interns for their work).

June 28, 2007

tue kapercy ylberin/book reading at Ginger Music


tonight me/nita/ went to Ginger's Open Library Book Reading. nita had some friends there, and i hope that ron and edona would be there, but they weren't. Diana Berisha-Mahmuti, the author, was to read. 19:00 was the original time for the reading to begin, but it went on to start at 20:00. I was totally fine with it. People got to hang out in the Ginger Music Shop and some even bought DVDs/books. Nita told me that the backyard of the shop used to be piled up with trash and people used to pee there. For me, it was okay: no trash and no funny smells. It was adaptation at its best: out of 12 chairs, only 2pairs were (probably) the same; grass was covered with small/sharp stones, so as to remove the stains from the trash (probably); there were tables that almost tore my bag pack with their sharp surfaces; there was enough room to pack 25 people; almost no lighting and this dog kept wandering around. but i never felt so good and so out of touch with Prishtina. after it was all finished i thought i was somewhere else. people were good, not many. the owner of the shop had to ask the next cafe to close the windows because of the noise they were making.

the author was nice and very descriptive and happy. her book "Tue kapercy ylberin/Crossing the rainbow" is (as she confessed) a self-depicting autobiography of some sort, recalling the events of the decades of the '70, '80', '90, and now. The book expressed the perceptions of the author, and i liked it because the language used was not completely "standard" albanian/tosk, but it had some variations of the gheg dialect and some slang (there was a mini-debate about what people perceive as slang, and this book did not use slang language as people classify it). Making loud noises with your frying pan, meeting an ecuadorian woman who looked more like a gypsy than anything (named her sons Kujtim and Driton by the way) at the refugee camps at the macedonian border, and some personal accounts of the events that unfolded in 2002, and up to now, make the pillars of this book. The design/layout/page cover was made by Rrota/bresta/, and you got the feeling that it was a collaboration between bresta and diana.

i also did some translations for this guy (Serbian), who was sitting next to me. he looked like a cool guy, middle-aged, red-framed, wearing glasses, cool tie-less shoes and a friendly attitude. it became dark and the author had difficulties reading. they brought in a lamp.

the owner of Ginger told us that the space was "public space", so anyone with an idea could use it. we asked him if it was okay to stage a small gig for a friend of ours and he said yes. we have to check it if it's suitable for other things as well. this is such a great place, can't wait to use it.




June 22, 2007

the mitch show+anthony rother/


a rare occasion. it was a weird night from the start. i got up three mins. to eight, and had to taxi-taxi drive down to the ODA theater. the mobile phone network went bust, and i could not find nita (incidentally, i was almost 30mins late for our scheduled meeting). luckily i found nita at the theater and made it in time for the show. prishtina had two consecutive events that night and we wanted to see/hear/ them both.
++//
the show itself was nice. i read something about mitch and then saw his movies. they looked kind of simple and not so entertaining. or maybe it was just the theater setting. anyways, me and nita participated in this dance routine as volunteers. i thought that he might give us free badges for that, but he didn't. darn it. but it's cool that he came to Prishtina.
//++
i had no clue who anthony rother was until the night he played. http://www.myspace.com/anthonyrother. he came here as part of his the show was open-air and i did not get all smelly/smelly. agon and armelina joined us for glasses of beer, raki and half-qyftes, before we went to see anthony. he had a lot of cables for his performance, but he created some really nice sounds with them. it turned out real nice. wish they could have started on time, and not wait for the huge delay (because of anthony rother's equipment problem at the border with our neighbor - Serbia) .

June 18, 2007

in skopje. finally.

saturday. after a couple of months, me and nita finally made some time and visited one of our neighbors (who incidentally are willing to accept us an independent state). note: we wanted to do this a week ago, but I couldn't. This made nita want to throw me off a cliff (and into a garden rose with mermaids all over. or not). so here are some moments from our nice adventurous, 5 hour walk, trip. here's what we did/saw:

pink VW beetle green kangaroo

it reads: death to VMROists (political party)

close resemblance. or just my luck.


this was our kick-ass return bus. it had A/C. simply pure summer luck.

June 10, 2007

Dielli Open 2007 comes to an end. again.

It is six years now since the first "Dielli Open" tennis tournament was held. To almost everyones surprise, it kept on happening year after year. This year the tournament happened so fast, that I only managed to see a few matches. but it was real fun. I am most probably a member of a club that never got to win a big tournament, and i am so lame that i never got past 2nd round.

Here is the draw, with my and my brothers name on it. I never even played because of my ankle injury, and my brother lost as well. We did not manage to get past even in the first round.

This is Shkelzen Domi (aka Xena, aka Xenini.com). He sure loves that trophy, and worked really hard for the tournament (in fact, it was because of him that the whole thing happened)

Of course, my brother (left) and Gzim (right) helped with the organizing part as well. My brother (from now on called in his rightful name: Shkumbin, - Bini), was the referee for the final, and Gzim was the match commentator.

The media coverage, provided by the ever-so professional RTK crew. they seriously need new pairs of camera-people (avoiding the sexist -man, ending here), new commentators and definitely new places to put their cameras - not to get on the court where the game is played.

our military force, the NATO Alliaance, provided air cover for the tournament. thank Ju nato!

the winner's trophy. safe and sound.

a bit of german support. das leckere wurste.


and people power.