Yes, I am still in Motovun, and it appears that I will stay here indefinitely, but I spend more and more of my time in Zagreb, where my beloved lives. Year after year, I am spending more than fifty percent of my time there. Mind you, I keep a reasonable record of my whereabouts as of late, and the percentage of my time spent in the Croatian capital keeps growing.

Concerning your thoughts about Croatians, I quite agree with you. Surly is the word. Most of them tend to judge newcomers in petty ways, and envy is the chief emotion they feel toward those who are better endowed and better educated than they are. People like you or I are thus best advised not to get too close to the so-called locals.

Years ago, I got too close for comfort to people in Motovun for my own silly reasons, and now I am doing my best to extricate myself from their clutches. Beside my beloved, Zagreb attracts me mostly because I know very few people there. In fact, I am closest to waiters and waitresses, which suits me fine at this stage of my life. Suffering fools is not my forte.

These are my brief thoughts in response to yours, but my writings are piled high with my complaints against the locals (www.residua.org). And I am not exaggerating. Thousands upon thousands of words are my witnesses. As you can imagine, I often feel lucky that few of them have sufficient command of English to follow my writings. Alleluia!