Remember Bobby McFerrin, the world famous author of “Don’t worry, be happy” song?

Well, if you are aware of him and his work, you also know that he is more then just a singer. His style and approach is very unconventional and his music cannot really be put under any of the genres, which makes him unique and which brought him 10 Grammy awards, invites to play with most famous orchestras in the worlds etc.

But not only… Recently he got an invitation to participate at the World Science Forum and its Panel “Notes and Neurons – Search for the Common Chorus”, which aimed to find answers on questions like “Is our response to music hard-wired or culturally determined?” or “Is the reaction to rhythm and melody universal or influenced by environment?” as well as to illustrate “music’s note-worthy interaction with the brain and our emotions”.

And he did it in his own way. They told him that not everyone is musical. His answer was to show the power of pentatonic scale:

See full coverage of the panel here.

Now, this video is fun to watch for anyone, but if you think a little bit about it, it’s much much more. It shows how wrong and limiting our education system is… Imagine if education was there to really support your creativity and not to limit it within the curriculum made in 1960. or whenever… Imagine if teachers were talking to us instead of lecturing us?

I’m not really sure who’s fail this is, as I don’t like pointing finger at anyone and am quite sure that all players in this chain have “logical” explanation, but in the bottom line, it is Toshiba’s responsibility and definitely deserves attention as a great example of how a great company can fail in customer focus/relations/centricity.

So, what happened was that a friend bought a Toshiba laptop with Windows Vista pre-installed and with a free upgrade to Windows 7 Home Premium Edition. A free upgrade sounds very good, especially since Win7 is far better option then Vista, easier to use, faster, more secure etc…
And doing the actual upgrade should be really easy, shouldn’t it? I mean, the year is 2010, even in Serbia a lot of people have a good internet connection and downloading the upgrade file should not be a big deal… Or the company itself should offer free upgrade service to it’s clients. Not a big deal really…

However, it is not that easy as it sounds, apparently… He was told that he will be contacted regarding the upgrade and 2 weeks later he was contacted by DHL and gets this:

If you can’t see it properly, it’s a ~77 EUR bill, and it came with an information that you additionally have to pay customs, VAT and if you don’t have your own carrier, they will use their daughter company (or something) and will charge you extra 5.000 RSD (~50 EUR).
Simple math told him that this “free” upgrade will cost him around 14.000 RSD (~140 EUR) which is 2.000 RSD (~20 EUR) more then buying a Full Home Premium version od Win7 in Belgrade. Just how stupid and illogical does this sound?
Of course, he sent them an e-mail to return the shipment…

I don’t know anyone in Toshiba Serbia, but would be cool if this post somehow reaches someone there, and would be even more cool if that someone contacted me to get this friend’s contacts and actually tried to fix this problem (regardless of who in the chain has actually failed).

(Funnily enough, this example came just in time when a company I work for is pointing out customer centricity as one of our major focuses, so I’ll use this as a very good example)

I was thinking what should I do with my 200th post on this blog… Thought it should be special or something…
And then a good friend of mine, that used to be one of my favorite bloggers, has sent me this text.
A very special one.
About a very special thing for Serbs.
Thing they say die the last when you are passing away.
It’s about Hope.

The text has been written long time ago… then updated some years later… and then updated again couple of days ago…

No further due, but this text has moved even the most optimistic myself.
My apologies to my readers that can’t understand Serbian – the text is originally in Serbian and I don’t feel really competent to translate it myself. However, you can still use http://translate.google.com.

Nekad i sad
by Bojan

Volim more. Valjda zato što sam rođen u gradu na moru i što sam imao tu sreću da svake godine idem tamo. Nikad se nisam navikao na grad na reci niti zavoleo reke kao što ih ljudi vole. Ali, ako već moram da biram, onda mi je Sava draža od Dunava. Pitomija je a i bliža je mom kraju. Uvek sam imao fobiju od mutne vode, od toga da ne vidim šta je na dnu, po čemu gazim i ka čemu ronim. More me je uvek smirivalo i držalo me spokojnim da sam bio u stanju da zaronim kao u Big Blue i nikad ne izronim. Taj grad, ex Yu grad, iako u njemu nisam proveo mnogo godina, mi nedostaje ponekad. U stvari to je čisto projektovanje za »onim« vremenima. Kao SFRJ dete koje se rodilo, živelo i vaspitavalo u tom duhu, nikad nisam mogao do kraja da se ubacim u nacionalistički trip busača grudi.

Uvek sam na to gledao kao na nekog ko je živeo u državi New York, a onda su jednog dana došli neki likovi i rekli da ja više nisam Amerikanac već Njujorkanac, da moram da mrzim iz dna duše sve Teksašane, a posebno one iz Kalifornije. Da sam prodana duša i izdajnik svoje državice ako slučajno i maštam o letovanju na ostrvima Key West ili ne daj Bože zimovanju u Koloradu. Da u svoj rečnik uvedem reči ubi i zakolji, mrzim i narod sa neba. Da u životu svom mi ne padne na pamet da pustim neku dobru jazz ili blues muziku, već da skakućem po nekoj pijačnoj tezgi uz neki dobar folk. Samo tako mogu da budem IN, da ostanem među ostalim Njujorkancima i da budem proud to be Ali kako? Do juče sam bio ponosni Amerikanac koji je se naježi svaki put kada čuje Star Spangled Banner, koji lumpovanjima po gradu proslavlja svaku titulu i zlatnu medalju, kome je bilo normalno da živi i radi u NY a da letuje i zimuje diljem lijepe naše. Ne. Sada je samo, najbolje a naše uz neke nove, čudne Star Spangled Banner i uz sve češće prizivanje onozemaljskih sila, jer smo mi, jadni mali Njujorkanci ipak narod from the sky. Nekako, nije mi ulazilo u glavu zašto sad ja moram da idem tamo negde u šume i močvare Misisipija i pucam na neke tamo koji mi ništa nisu skrivili u životu. Zašto ja više ne mogu da pređem ni kanadsku granicu bez bar kofera papira i dokumenata? Zašto me svi gledaju čudno na svakoj toj granici kao da sam masovni ubica i kao da mi iz usta viri nečija krvava lobanja? Zašto? Šta je falilo mojoj Amerikici? Ništa. Naprotiv.

Imali smo sve i bilo nam je super. Laže ko kaže da nije bilo tako. Nije bilo krvi, nije bilo mrtvih, silovanih, zaklanih, spaljenih kuća, izbeglih, ludih, nije bilo straha, nije bilo osećaja nesigurnosti i bede. Nije. Nije to bila ni kapitalistička zemlja a nije ni bila gvozdena zavesa. Bila je neka malo tvrđa sredina, ali sredina. Radiš, živiš, putuješ, uživaš, mirno spavaš. A onda su došli neki bolesni umovi i rešili da to više ne može tako i za čas posla je sve nestalo kao balon od sapunice. Koliko je zaista lako nešto uništiti i srušiti. Izgleda da niko toga nije bio svestan. A možda i jeste.

Te godine, godine nove Amerikice, su bile nešto što samo može da se zaboravi i da se gurne ispod tepiha. Da se izbriše gumicom i da se nikad više ne priča o tome. Samo nekoliko godina ranije, podsećanje na prethodnu godinu bi izgledalo ovako:
Nova godina u Rimu, prolećni šoping u Veneciji, leto na Hvaru ili Braču, zima na Bledu ili Jahorini.

Kola na kredit i plata na vreme.

Poslednjih godina to je izgledalo ovako:
Nova godina uz sveće i ćebad, prolećno dovlačenje kobasica i toalet papira iz Segedina, leto na Adi, zima uz sveće i ćebad. Kola u kvaru ili u redu za benzin. Plate nema.

I sad, ne znam kako neko može da kaže da u »ono« vreme nije bilo dobro. Ja možda zvučim previše nostalgično, ali mislim da je to samo žal za NORMALNIM životom. Za spokojnim i srećnim životom, za nasmejanim ljudima i za jednom globalnom opuštenošću. Opuštenošću u svemu. Muzici, filmovima pa i knjigama. Vesela muzika, vesela garderoba, vesele frizure, veseli filmovi. Kakvo je vreme na globalnom planu dovoljno je da se pogleda neka Top 10 muzička lista spotova i to je to. Neko reče, a gde je nestao Nick Kershaw iz naših života. Da, zaista. Sve to što se desilo je palo na nas kao giljotina, užasno brzo sa užasnom preciznošću da ni bol ne može da se oseti. Bol dolazi kasnije.

13.03.2002.

Šta da kažem? Dokle sa tom NADOM (lažnom)? Ja zaista ne vidim ko može sada posle svega da sjebe ta govna. Neću da kažem da je kasno, ali mi sve to sada zvuči suviše licemereno i patetično. Nisu znali prekjuče ko je odgovoran za silna ubistva i ostala sranja a danas znaju. I ti likovi sa kojima su se oni talili 5. oktobra da ovi ne krenu na narod, talili se oko šverca pljuga i svega ostalog, sada će isti ti likovi da se bore protiv svojih polu-ortaka. Izvinite, ali meni je gospodo to jako smešno što pričate. Ko? Čedomiri, Mihajlovići, Živkovići? By the way, gde se tu pominje surčinski klan, zvezdarski klan, dorćolski klan, gde se tu spominje Mirko Marjanović, Dragan Tomić, Mira Marković sa decom, Gorica Gajević, Ivica Dačić i još hiljade onih imena kojih ne želim ni da se sećam. Gde su svi oni ove 3 godine? Pa utalili ste se sa svima njima a sad kad su vas uhvatili za jaja glumite neki holivud i Ramba, kao sjebaćemo ih sve. Nije nego. Meni je sve to tragikomično. I tužno i jadno i bedno. Ne mogu da verujem da njega više nema, znam da je muljao sa istim tim krimosima, ali ga pravdam da je morao na finjaka sve zbog naroda. I sad posle svega da se nadamo da će se Srbija očistiti od te stoke. Daj Bože, ali ne verujem. Ja sam od juče izgubio svaku nadu, i osećam se da su moja nadanja zalivena armiranim betonom i prelivena čelikom.

Znaš, starije generacije su imale nešto od života i danas neko bledo sećanje na lepa vremena, a moja generacija se vraćala u plastičnim kesama kući. Stražario sam sa praznom puškom ’92/’93 na granici sa Bosnom u nekim šumama iznad Drine i nadao se da ću preživeti. I jesam. Neki nisu. Najbolji ortak mi je po povratku ’92 završio u Lazi, ortak iz kraja se vratio u limenom sanduku. Onda smo se nadali da ćemo preživeti ’93. I jesmo. Neki nisu. Pa je došao novi dinar ’94, pa smo se nadali da će biti bolje. I bilo je malo bolje. Nekima nije. Pa onda Knin i traktorske kolone, pa protest ’96/’97 gde su nas prodali, sedeli kod onog majmuna na kanabetu i utalili se. Jebeš 3 meseca smrzavanja, jebeš prebijene ljude i zatvarane, jebeš sve, zaboraviće ljudi. Nadali smo se da će možda i biti nešto od toga. Pa bombardovanje, pa nada da ćemo preživeti. Preživeli smo. Neki nisu. Kako je onima u Aleksincu, Kuršumliji, Prištini, Kosovu? A onda 5. oktobar i nada da će svi oni govnari završiti kako dolikuje, na banderi na Terazijama. A kada sam posle par dana video debelo, klempavo govno kako nas obaveštava da ide da se odmori sa unukom Markom shvatio sam da je tu samo još jedan tal i deal po sredi. I da će pre ili kasnije isplivati govna na površinu. I jesu. Žalosno je mnogo. Sve.

I mi od toga sto znamo da je ono GOVNO u Hagu krivo za sve nemamo ništa. Krivi su i ovi, i to je fakat. Krivi su sto su ispali sise pa su se talili misleći da nije to tako strašno, da će svako da uzme po parče već očerupanog kolača i nikom ništa. Ali kad su videli da je vrag odneo salu i da ovi sad hoće mnogo veći deo nego što im pripada onda su se usrali. Ne znam, samo se pitam koliko ta NADA ima života više i dokle se više nadati u prazno. Svi su potkupljeni, od portira na ulazu do sudija i predsednika. Svi. I gde naći nekog ko će dići vojsku i policiju i iskoristiti ovo stanje da se sjebe što više govana je moguće. Iskreno ne verujem uopšte u tako nešto, ali se i dalje mazohistički kao pravi srbin NADAM. Jedino što ja imam tu “sreću” da posle 11 godina svih sranja i posle svega što smo tamo proživeli, prvi put pratim tako nešto sa distance od 5000 milja.

A najgore mi je od svega što shvatam koliko smo mazohistički narod, i da bez obzira što se osećam da NADE više nema, imam neki mali crv u mozgu koji mi govori biće nešto. Mada, tako mi je govorio i onih 10 godina pa je bilo jedno veliko ništa. Nisam imao tu sreću da me mama i tata naprave sredinom ili krajem 60-ih. Imao sam nesreću da pripadam jednoj od najnesrećnijih generaćiji u istoriji. Jer, ovi klinci pamte samo sranja, sancćije, prazne prodavnice, ratove, tako da je njima sad sa 17-18-19 godina do jaja, njima je ovo najbolje okruženje u kom se živelo, oni za bolje ne znaju. I njima je sve to normalno, a da li znaju šta znači normalno? A šta je nama bilo normalno i do koje granice smo savijali kičmu i trpeli sranja.

Normalan život nam je postao ako stignemo na red za hleb i mleko.
Normalan život nam je da imamo struje bar 5 dana u nedelji. Normalan život nam je da primimo platu.
Normalan život nam je da švercujemo kobasice iz Segedina. Trst? Rim? London? NYC? Šta to beše?
Normalan život je da letovanje otplaćujemo pola godine (u nekoj vašljivoj sobi na vrh brda) a o zimovanju samo maštamo. Normalan život je da se voziš smrdljivim GSB-om i da si srećan do jaja ako sedneš.
Normalan život je da ako jednom u 5 godina odeš na koncert do Budimpešte ti si bogat čovek.
Normalan život je da ako možes da popiješ dva piva (strana) u kafiću mora da si dobio na kladionici.
I onda mi dođe neko i kaže, pa dobro, nemoj da si pesimista, bar imamo struje.
Da li mi znamo sta je normalan život više? Imali smo kartu da se bar nadamo da će jednog dana biti nešto od te nesrećne zemlje, i postalo je normalno ono što i treba da bude normalno, da ima struje, hleba, mleka, benzina, prevoza. Vraćalo se (fakat, sitnim koracima) u neku kakvu-takvu klimavu normalu. Bez sranja, sankcija, da nas ne gledaju kao poslednja govna, da nismo kao Burkina Faso ili Nikaragva.

A šta sad? Šta? Samo da mutavi mutanti, kilavi, spori, mlohavi, dosadni i staromodni “neobavešteni” demagozi ne preuzmu stvari u svoje ruke. Oni neka se vrate u svoju rupu iz koje smo ih mi izvadili. Za bolje i nisu retardirani mutanti.
Ne znam. Znam da mi je mozak tiltovan i da bi valjda trebalo da budem srećan što sam ovde. A sedim sinoć na terasi i ubijam pivo da smirim živce da bih mogao bar malo da odspavam, i čekam da čujem neke sirene, neko pucanje, nasmejem se i pomislim, pa jebote, ja sam u Americi, nisam u Beogradu. Smešno mi a plače mi se. Ne znam više, mozak me boli.

Neka bude. NADAM se (zvanično poslednji put) da će ovi (ko god to bio) očistiti ona govna i oterati ih u tri lepe jednom zauvek. NADAMO se, to nam je jedino i ostalo U suprotnom ako se to ne desi nije potrebno imati mnogo mozga da se skapira sta će biti dalje. Biće šljiva i jedan srbin ispod nje, koji se pita šta se to desilo i NADA se.

U internet knjizi zalosti sam upisao: Hvala ti sto si postojao i sto si doneo sunce u ovu zemlju…

6.5 godina kasnije

A onda je jednog lepog septembarskog dana Tuluz gostovao u Beogradu…

Sada znam… da nade vise nema, niti je bilo.

Tacka.

Ad Acta.

Dunno what to say really… I feel awful, ashamed, terrible…
There are not many things that can be said in a moment like this, at least not in an articulated way…
In just a few days, Belgrade has lost its biggest pride – to be the safest city we know about… I’m travelling a lot, and I mean a lot, but never ever do I feel so safe like when I am in Belgrade.
Not anymore, though…

Bunch of products of the social situation in Serbia in last two decades, products hiding among football fans and usually ultra-right organizations, encouraged by completely corrupted and screwed up system, have again shown how easy it is to misrepresent the majority on good and hospitable people of this country…

They cowardly attacked and beaten up to death this poor guy, which will, I still believe and hope, become a symbol of the time when Serbia finally said NO to hooligans of any sort. That’s the least we can do at this moment.
RIP Brice – you will not be forgotten…

I think Adam has put it together very good in his post at http://www.balkanfile.com/belgraders-say-no-to-violence.

See you tomorrow at the Republic Square…

Belgraders, Say NO to Violence
Sep 29th, 2009

by Adam.

28-year-old Toulouse football support Brice Taton died this morning in a Belgrade hospital. Brice was critically injured on 17 September while sitting with other Toulouse fans in a cafe in central Belgrade when a group of some 30 hooligans/cowards attacked them unprovoked. This incident, along with a series of other attacks on foreigners over the last 2 weeks, has shocked Belgrade and her citizens.

No words can describe how terrible this is. This young man came to Belgrade, a city which has been recently gaining a reputation for being a safe, friendly and welcoming city, to support the team he loved, to spend time with his friends and enjoy himself, but he died at the hands of cowards who need numbers and weapons to carry out their pointless violence.

The police arrested and detained a number of young men and intended to charge them with attempted murder. Now they’ll be facing charges of murder and I hope they receive adequate sentences for their involvement in the death of this visitor to Belgrade.

You may be thinking, “what’s the big deal? Football violence and tourist attacks happen all the time in other countries.” Yes. It does. But it does not happen in Belgrade. Foreigners who have made Belgrade their home go on and on how it  is one of the safest places they’ve ever lived. That’s why it is so shocking for us who live here. I’ve never felt threatened in Belgrade – I can’t say the same for the time when I lived in the UK.

The people of Belgrade need to denounce the violence that has taken place on our streets over the last 2 weeks. There are hundreds of condolence comments on Serbian news websites, but Belgraders need to go out and show the world that we will not allow thugs and hooligans to threaten our amazingly safe city. And you know what, I think they will.

The Serbian Ministry of Human Rights has called on citizens to light candles and lay flowers tomorrow, Wednesday 30 September, at 11.30am at Trg Republike (Republic Square). Also, a Protest Walk Against Violence will take place on Thursday 1 October at 5pm, from Plato to the Victor Monument in Kalemegdan Park.

I have been thinking about writing about Generation Y for almost 2 months already, and still am thinking quite a lot about the topic, especially when it comes to analyzing GenY in Serbia… I promise I will write my comments about it very soon, and ’til then enjoy this fantastic text that Sandra shared with me today.

If you are not familiar with what the term Generation Y stands for, do click here first.

The text below is originally found at http://management.silicon.com/itdirector/0,39024855,39405160,00.htm

Five ways Gen Y will change the way you work
Don Tapscott on Millennials: ‘Show us the wikis, not the money’

By Nick Heath

Published: Thursday 26 March 2009

The Millennials are coming – armed with Facebook accounts and netbooks, the latest generation of young workers are entering the workplace ready to raze traditional touchstones of business to the ground.

Web 2.0 evangelist Don Tapscott – author of tech titles including Wikinomics and The Digital Economy – is forecasting a “big conflict” in the office, sparked by the generation of 11- to 30-year-olds who are determined to reshape the workplace in their own image.

Talking to silicon.com about his latest book Grown Up Digital, Tapscott laid out five “generational firewalls” that bosses need to tear down if they want to attract the brightest and best of Generation Y.

“We do the opposite of what we should be doing, which is learning from this culture,” he told silicon.com.

“The whole paradigm that you train, you supervise, you compensate and you retain – all of those are wrong.”

Here’s Tapscott’s top five ways to embrace the Millennials’ working culture.

Don’t supervise

Understand that in their age group there is a new culture of work: the social network is the new operating system for business.

The way that they work is by using networks like Facebook and Twitter to create a new nervous system.

If you have a great collaborative environment, that is going to be way more attractive to them than paying them lots of money and tightly controlling the way they work.

I’m talking about using wikis, blogs, social networks and collaborative filtering in the workplace.

For example, US electronics retailer Best Buy has a social network for employees called Blue Shirt Nation, with 70,000 people at the electronic water cooler every day who are coming up with great ideas that are being implemented.

You always see the same argument: ‘Why should we embrace this new thing? The old ways have always worked.’

It results in better performance and better innovation in business – that is why we should adopt these practices, because it’s good for us.

That also means giving employees freedom of work – having the ability to work at home and to set their own hours – and allowing employees to have custom job descriptions – as they do at Deloitte.

Dead as a Dodo – the tech that Gen-Y will sweep away

Email

“Young people see email as good for sending a thank you letter to an aunt but not much else.”

Websites

“The internet is increasingly about building community, not providing content – it offers a way for people to self-organise to create communities. That is why Facebook beat Match.com, why bloggers are beating CNN.com and why Wikipedia is beating Encyclopaedia Britannica.”

Datacentres

“They are going to move into the cloud, in much the same way that electricity companies moved away from the practice of having their own power plants onsite during the early days of electricity.”

Fixed line phones

“They will be replaced by mobile devices.”

The personal computer

“They will be replaced by small always-connected devices with a high degree of mobility. The personal computer was always an oxymoron for me, it’s like the idea of personal sex. The purpose of computing is to communicate.”

Traditional data processing

“This is headed for the ashcan of history. Everything in a report will have an XML tag called eXtensible Business Reporting Language.” [This provides an identifying tag for each piece of information which is computer readable so the machine can understand what data it is handling].

Don’t train

Rather than spending so much on training people, why not invest in increasing the learning and collaborative components at work?

It’s called knowledge work, where work and learning is the same activity. Why shouldn’t work be fun?

The training department at my company nGenera is that everybody must blog on a regular basis.

Why isn’t every job like that? Where working and learning are the same thing, you increase the learning component for day-to-day activities, so you get both better learning and better work.

Don’t retain people

There are all kinds of new ways to harness human capital without it being inside your boundaries at all times.

The talent does not have to be inside: at Procter and Gamble half of its innovation team are outside the company.

There is a case in Grown Up Digital of Denis Hancock, who is running the Wikinomics blog – I will have hired him five times by the time he is 32.

I am creating an alumni network I can draw on, it’s so good to have Denis but I don’t try and retain him.

I communicate with Denis on a social network and occasionally he shows up at the office. I’ll take him anyway I can get him.

It’s about how you architect a corporation and about rethinking how you orchestrate capability.

Don’t hide behind security fears

At their fingertips employees have these powerful tools of social networks and what do we do with them? We ban them, we ban Facebook.

There’s no security issue that you can’t handle – for Pete’s sake, the CIA have a social networking wiki, called Intellipedia, the way you get better security is by opening up and sharing information.

I heard the same arguments 15 years ago from people who did not want the internet in their company because they were afraid there would be security violations and people would be wasting time.

These are called implementation challenges, they are not reasons to not do it but things that you need to take into account.

Don’t recruit

Instead, initiate relationships with your potential employees at an early age using social networks.

A corollary of that is don’t spend money on advertising for recruitment – it’s a waste of time, better to get a big pile of money and burn it.

In Serbia, we say Dobar dan (Good day), but those 78 days of NATO dropping shitloads of bombs on our heads, we used to say Bombardan… Traditional Serbian humour – the darker, the better…

So it’s been 10 years since NATO started what they called action “Merciful Angel” “Noble Anvil”. This angel used 1000 airplanes and 38000 “combat missions” and dropped  who knows how many bombs that are either old (with depleted uranium – cheaper to drop in Serbia then to destroy) or very new and experimental (special bombs that destroy complete electrical network etc) or just against humanity (cluster bombs – aimed at killing as many people as possible).

And it’s been 10 years since they admitted that only by bombing 10 million people they can take care of Milosevic. That was, as they said, the reason for bombing…

And even 10 years later, they are still killing us… Depleted uranium is a very serious thing and many young couples are afraid to have children nowadays… Read more here – http://arirusila.cafebabel.com/en/cbtag/191033

Bombing itself was meant to be aimed at military targets and infrastructure, but this was not really true, as they were hitting anything that moves (buses, trains, refugees in the road, whatever) and other important targets like Hotel Jugoslavija and Chinese embassy (both in part of town where there is absolutely nothing military kilometers away). Here’s a short list of “mistakes” that BBC made – http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/340966.stm

Not to be too subjective, here’s what Noah Chomsky thinks about it:

Then even better – General Lewis Mackenzie, Canadian dude that commanded UN troops…

To conclude – check out this awesome documentary by some Serbian guys. It has been made during the bombing and, in my opinion, in a true Serbian way:

I believe I wrote something similar somewhere once already, but nevertheless:

There is a saying about Serbs, that we always forgive but never forget and this is very true… For most of us, the war and the hatred towards the West ended with the last bomb that fell in Serbia (or even before, as a guy in the last movie in this post states). We come back to this and many other events every year, to remember the fallen and drop a swear or two on our miserable lives, but that’s pretty much it… We don’t hate, we don’t have terrorist groups trying to plot a nuke in Washington or whatever (I wish we are able to be so organized like that Serbian terrorist group in the Season 1 of 24 ), we just continue rebuilding quickly where we stopped. Quickly, as you never know when the next war will happen (someone said – only in Serbia there are 5 seasons: spring, summer, autumn, winter and war)…

So, what makes us so calm, in peace with the situation? I think it’s history… Actually, am pretty sure about it… We subconsciously know that this is just another “great empire”, another in a row, so to say…let’s just see if this one falls in our lifetime or a bit later… and if the next Great war will start somewhere else and not in this unlucky area…

what a fantastic project!

I was at their exhibition at Grand Palais in Paris yesterday, and was stunned not only by the idea, but how it was done too!
will put some photos online later, but until then go and check out the project at http://www.6milliardsdautres.org/

The only bad thing I noticed about it was the poor translation from time to time… and it was a very important mistake that their translator has made – a Bosnian dude is saying that “he was afraid that the war will never stop” and they translated it that “he was HOPING that the war will never stop”… jeez…
it almost ruined the whole experience, but I still believe that this project is amazing… Am writing a note to the project manager though…