Author: Sofija Mijalkovic

1.   Croatia

I’ve been to Croatia two times- in Rovinj in september 2017 and in Samobor in june 2019.

2.   Greece

My brother and I go to Greece, Citonia almost every summer with our dad, but with our mom and stepdad we went once. We stayed in Neos Marmaras and visited Petralona in august 2015.

3.   Italy

I’ve been in Italy many times. First time I’ve ever been there was in Milan in june 2009. After that we travelled to Lago di Garda in july 2014. Then in november 2016 we went to Napoli and visited Pompeii and Rome. In august 2017 we went to Venice as a part of the trip to France. In june and july 2019 we went on a trip through Italy and visited: Samobor, Vicenza, Gardaland, Milan, Genoa, Santa Margherita Ligure, Marti, Pisa, Pietrabianca, Florence, Elba, Venice and Trieste. Here is the presentation describing the trip.

4.   France

The first time I’ve been in France was in Paris in november 2015. The second time we went on a trip from Belgrade to Marseille and we made a stop at Venice and Cannes in august 2017.

5.    Austria

In Austria I’ve been to Vienna in august 2016 and to Graz in october 2018.

6.   Germany

In Germany I’ve been once in november 2017. We stayed in Berlin and visited Leipzig for a day.

7.   Belgium

In Belgium I’ve been to Brussels for only one day. Here is a presentation describing the trip. 

8.   United States of America

I’ve been to the USA two times. The first one was in late april and early may 2019 and I went on a trip Los Angeles, Pasadena, 29 Palms, Calabasas, Ojai, Montecito, Santa Barbara, Santa Monica and New York. The second time I went to Miami Beach, Florida and stayed with the family of Nikola’s friend, Blakey. Here are the presentations that explain the trip to California and Florida in more detail.

9.   Russia

In Russia I stayed for a few hours only because we were only waiting for our flight to Los Angeles.

5.   The Big Lebowski

Directors: Ethan and Joel Coen

Description: Jeff “The Dude” Lebowski, mistaken for a millionaire of the same name, seeks restitution for his ruined rug and enlists his bowling buddies to help get it.

This is probably my favourite comedy film ever. Almost every scene had something funny that would make your stomach hurt from laughing.

4.   Forrest Gump

Director: Robert Zemeckis

Description: Forrest, a man with low IQ, recounts the early years of his life when he found himself in the middle of key historical events. All he wants now is to be reunited with his childhood sweetheart, Jenny.

This movie is also a comedy and although I think that the “The Big Lebowski” is funnier I love the idea of this movie so much more. It says that you don’t have to be a genius in order to succeed and be happy in life.

3.   A Clockwork Orange

Director: Stanley Kubrick

Description: Alex, a psychopathic delinquent, is imprisoned for murder and rape. In order to reduce his sentence, he volunteers for an experimental therapy conducted by the government, but it goes wrong.

I really love this movie not only because of it’s interesting story but also because of the twist at the end. As we were nearing the end of the movie we could clearly see Alex in a hospital beaten up and unable to move and everybody would think “This is it. This is the end. He got what he deserved.” but he didn’t. He ended up being one of the most powerful people in the country.

2.   Once upon a time in Hollywood

Director: Quentin Tarantino

Description: Rick, a washed-out actor, and Cliff, his stunt double, struggle to recapture fame and success in 1960s Los Angeles. Meanwhile, living next door to Rick is Sharon Tate and her husband Roman Polanski.

I love almost all of Quentin’s films but this one is definitely my favourite. I love the meddling of the main characters with famous people like Bruce Lee and Roman Polanski and them changing the history after saving Polanski’s wife, Sharon Tate.

1.   2001: A Space Odyssey

Director: Stanley Kubrick

Description: The Discovery One and its revolutionary supercomputer seek a mysterious monolith that first appeared at the dawn of man.

This is definitely my favourite movie of all time. I love everything about this movie. From the story, to the cinematography. I could watched it every day and not get bored.

A few years ago my family and I started setting goals for myself at the beginning of the year and I tried to achieve them during the year.

Here are a few goals I achieved:

1.   I did an aquathlon.  24. september 2017.

2.     Wrote a story.  22. june 2018.

3.     Designed a T-shirt.  10. july 2018.

4.   Did a half marathon.  14. april 2019.

The goals I hope to finish this year:

1.   Ride a mountain bike on the track through the forest Kosutnjak.
2.   Write 20 posts on my WordPress site.

Today almost everyone uses an email, for work or for personal use. This set of rules will hopefully help those who don’t know how to write an email.

1.   Write the email of the recipient or recipients of the email. Besides the “To” you can also put the email address under the “Cc” which means Carbon Copy and “Bcc” which means Blind Carbon Copy. The difference is the recipients put under the “To” have to answer the email while the Cc and Bcc only get the copy of the email and they don’t have to answer it. Bcc can’t be seen by other people who get the email, but the Cc can be seen.

2.   Write the subject. It’s usually just one sentence or a few words explaining the theme of the email. The subject is important because the computer can group emails by the subject and the recipient can see what the sender asks of him before opening the email.

3.   Write the body email. Firstly write the name of the recipient. You can also put the adjective “dear” in front of the name but that isn’t necessary. After the name put a comma and continue writing the email in the next lane. This isn’t a real rule you have to follow but I think it would help. Before you write the email you write what the email is. If you want to ask somebody something you write question or if you want to inform somebody about something you write information or if you want to give somebody a task you write task.

4.   If you want to send a link or an attachment or a photo you can use the icons at the bottom of the email.

None of the emails in the post are real.

In my last post I covered the protests in Serbia and how the media didn’t investigate it well and ended up covering just a tiny part of the whole story.    So that brings me to the question, can we trust the media? Can we be sure that what we hear on the news is correct?

Of course not. We can never be sure if the media is lying on purpose because it doesn’t want us to know the truth or if the media didn’t investigate the story they were covering well enough or if the media is telling the truth. But if the topic truly interests us we can always find out the truth. If the events are near you, you can go and check them out and see what is going on with your own eyes. Today the television isn’t the only source of news. A lot of people have a lot of social media and a number of people that are partaking in the events would probably be filming it or live streaming it, so if you don’t want to go personally to the event, but still want to see if the media is lying or telling the truth you can simply check that out.

What I’m trying to say is that whether the media is telling the truth or is knowingly or unknowingly lying that shouldn’t stop you from finding out the truth.

Form july 8th 2020 until july 16th 2020 people have been protesting on the streets of Serbia’s capital city Belgrade. An international television Deutsche Welle sent a reporter that didn’t have much knowledge on the topic and reported an unfinished story, so I just wanted to clear up the misunderstanding.

The protestors are protesting against the government and the president because they aren’t happy with the voting results and believe that the president mitigated the quarantine because it was the time of the year for voting and he didn’t want to reschedule it. I personally don’t think that that is true and that he mitigated the quarantine because the number if Covid-19 cases was decreasing and the strict quarantine wasn’t needed anymore, but now after the protest the numbers of Covid-19 cases has greatly increased.

In an interview with Deutsche Welle the reporter didn’t cover the story to the whole extend and ended up reporting just a tiny part, but in the second interview he explained the situation much better with a lot more detail.

The interview with a reporter reporting on Serbian protests for Deutsche Welle

The interview where the reporter admits to not reporting the full story 

There are two reasons why everybody works, has hobbies or just does actions that are needed to be done in order to survive.

1.    Survival – In order to survive you have to do a number of actions that guarantee your well being like sleeping, going to the bathroom, working to make money, to be able to pay for food, house, taxes, etc. You don’t have to love these actions and they don’t have to make you happy, but nevertheless you still have to do them.
2.    Happiness – Everybody wants to be happy, and we are happy when we do  actions we love and want to do. These actions don’t have to be necessary but we still do them because they make us happy. Happiness isn’t the same with everybody, somebody might like and be happy when watching movies and somebody when cooking. Let’s say Mark’s hobby is reading and he reads a book every three days, but he doesn’t do it because he has to, he does it because he loves reading and it makes him happy.

Of course you can’t be happy all the time. You’re going to feel as much sadness, anger, envy, fear as happiness, and that’s perfectly normal. All we have to know is how to get back in our happy mood and that is very easy – just do what you love.

Hegelian dialectic is a method to help people realize the problems that were a consequence of an event and help them come up with ideas that can solve the problems.

It consists of three dialectical stages:

1.  Thesis that gives rise to the reaction or let’s say a problem
2. Antithesis which contradicts or negates the thesis
3.  Synthesis which resolves the tension between the thesis and antithesis

The simpler way to look at it is to change thesis-antithesis-synthesis into problem-reaction to the problem-solution for the problem.

An example of the Hegelian dialectic:

Although it is called the Hegelian dialectic, Hegel did not come up with this dialectic as we know it today. He did come up with something similar but not exactly the same. He didn’t use the terms thesis, antithesis or synthesis but the terms: abstract, negative and concrete. The flaw in that formula is that it is too abstract and lacks the negative of trial, error, and experience. Heinrich Moritz Chalybäus was a german philosopher who thought of the formula for the Hegelian dialectic as we know today (thesis-antithesis-synthesis)

Hegel had ascribed that terminology to Kant. Continuing Kant’s work a german philosopher Fichte greatly elaborated and popularized the synthesis model.

Social media are websites and applications that enable users to create and share content or to participate in social networking. There are three ways to use social media: 

1. You could be a publisher and share the content you make or repost on social media,
2. A consumer and just look at content made by others without making your own original content,
3. Or you could be the person who does both.

A lot of people, especially teenagers, use social media, but are they using it properly? There are two most important rules that everybody should know.

I’m going to count movies from the late 60s,  70s and 80s as the movies from the past and the movies from the 90s, 2000s and 2010s as modern movies.

It’s hard to compare those movies,  let alone say which ones are better because they are so different and better at different things. Modern movies have much better special effects while the movies from the past have a lot more classics.

I think whether you like the past movies and the modern movies better also depends at which time you were born. A lot of times movies use a lot of references popular to the time of the movie so if you are younger than the movie you just might not get it and not enjoy the movie as much as someone who does get it.

Let’s compare the movie from the past and the modern movie which are the same gender.

2001:A Space Odyssey and Interstellar. Both are sci-fi/adventure movies about going to space and meeting aliens. Interstellar obviously has better special effects but I think that 2001 has a better, more complex story that has a bigger impact on your way of thinking.

Personally I think that a lot of modern movies are made with the intention of relaxing the viewer and that more movies from the past focus on making the viewer think, be it about life or about aliens. I’m not saying that all the modern movies are dumb and don’t make you think or that there are no relaxing movies from the past, but there are more modern movies that are made to be relaxing and more movies from the past that make you think. So if I want to relax while watching a movie I will first search for modern movies with better CGI and if I want to watch a complex movie I will search the older movies.