The day before yesterday, Boyana called me to come over. She lives with a roommate, so we were in her room. There was a princess balloon inside, stuck to the ceiling, slightly deflated. From the slightly open wardrobe, a bag with the label “Women’s Secret” was peeking out. Simply Red was playing on the music system.
I don’t quite understand what’s happening between us. We’re always together. She told me to find something on TV while she poured us some juice. I turned on the TV, and there was a movie, where two people were on a secluded beach between high rocks, when Boyana came in with two glasses on a tray and a carton of cherry juice.
“They’re having a good time there,” I said.
“Yes, but maybe we’re having a better time in this little room,” she replied.
I told her I knew of a place where we could also have a good time. It’s outside the city center, on Temerinski Road, called Cubismo. On the top floor of Cubismo, there are two rooms. One is furnished like a living room, with sofas and ottomans. The guests seem to be sitting together, all of them in the same living room. The other, bigger room, was simpler, with regular tables and chairs. Musicians or small bands often played there.
We went there the very next day. Two guys were playing the piano and guitar. Boyana went silent when they started playing “Kiss from a Rose” by Seal, and she was watching the musicians. When the song ended, she turned to me and said that somehow I had gotten under her skin in a short amount of time. She said it as if I had done something wrong. I thought about how I didn’t really know how I had done that. Max would probably say that she must have seen something in me that doesn’t actually exist. Fortunately, I didn’t say anything out loud, as I usually would. I just looked at her. Had I said something, I probably would’ve ruined the moment.
I think this was the most spontaneous and relaxed evening I can remember. When they brought us wine, I used Uncle Milan’s saying: “With wine, everything is fine.”
Maybe this is flow.
My thoughts about the previous two evenings were interrupted by Max. He sent an email to the entire team about a code review. We wondered if what we were writing was any good. Around us, there were computer science students, but none of us knew an experienced programmer. We knew there were three or four software companies in Novi Sad, but we didn’t know anyone who worked there, and we didn’t know of any company that made games. There probably wasn’t one in town. My uncle gave me the contact of a more experienced programmer, Viktor. He was born in Sweden, where his parents moved. He comes to Banja Luka every year and knows my uncle. We sent Viktor our code, and he replied yesterday morning. He said the back-end part, written by Elena, was excellent. He couldn’t believe that a student did it, but he didn’t evaluate our Flash part because he doesn’t have experience with Flash.
Max also sent me a separate email titled “Ellena e lla.”
“Is it possible that Elena is really that smart?”
I replied with, “It seems so,” and scheduled a meeting with her to explain the entire logic behind the back-end we worked on. I wanted to learn that too, especially since that part was so good.
During our communication, I noticed that the signatures in Max’s and my emails had changed. Under my signature, it said, “I will code HTML for food,” and under Max’s, it said, “Court translator for Klingon language.” This was definitely Elena’s revenge for the pranks. We had worked together a lot, so she had access to our emails. I need to change that now.
I had a small issue with the code review. My uncle figured out that Viktor could help us when they met in Banja Luka, so I spoke to him on the phone and explained what we were doing. During the conversation, I realized that he makes a lot of grammar errors when he speaks and uses some archaic words. He didn’t inspire much trust in me because if he couldn’t learn grammatical rules, how could I trust him with software that has quite a complex logic? I know Elena thinks the same, but my uncle said we should definitely trust Viktor because he’s a proven professional.
When his report arrived yesterday morning, it was written quite irregularly. I fixed the grammar and forwarded the corrected version to everyone to avoid any doubts about the quality of the review. Given the content of the document, we all breathed a little easier. One less worry on the list.
After reading it, Max asked how many frames per second our game was running. I said twelve, which is the default setting in Flash, and we hadn’t changed anything. He said it had to be at least twenty-four, or the animation would be choppy. I told him that it was causing a problem because we linked some calculations to the frame change, and now those processes would run twice as fast. He insisted that we had to do it, and I told him he should have mentioned that right away. I understand that the quality of graphics is important, but this was done without planning. My eye hadn’t noticed the problem with the animation. This week, we won’t be making any progress; we’ll just be fixing the calculations that have already been made.
