MPJ

The start of the second world war in the Balkans was known as the "April War" that lasted no more than 10 days in the operation called "Führer Directive No. 25". The swift conflict ended on April 14th in armistice based on unconditional surrender of Yugoslav military forces. My grandfather was a 22 years old corporal in the former Yugoslav army when he was transferred to a war camp in Germany in mid-April 1941, along with other 30,000 surrendered soldiers. He spent next four years in Nazi military camp leaving behind his young wife and 2-year-old son. I am sure it was not easy for him to cope the entire time of imprisonment and captivity, especially in the beginning, but considering all the horrors of the most cruel encampments of Nazi Germany, unconditional surrender of the entire Yugoslav Army came with negotiated terms and agreement of fair treatment of all the prisoners during captivity in various labor camps in the following years. Perhaps the main trauma for a...

Thrillers. Books perfect for the summertime. Even though they were not exclusively tied to the beach, in my case, of all occasions, somehow sand and Kindle went along hand by hand the best. Every time. As with default definition, thriller stories and novels engage all your senses and trigger right level of entertainment and all kind of emotions during those couple of days of intense reading. Also, they alway successfully keep away your thoughts from your job, your daily issues and raw reality from your mind. In previous couple of years (mostly summers), my stock of thrillers piled up significantly, so I decided to create a recommendation and small glimpse into stories of five different styles of writing and with that many main characters stored in the similar background of political or fictitious conspiracies. And all that in familiar form of classic 'villains vs heroes' storytelling with the hero winning the girl every time. Cliché, I know, but I love it and enjoy it all the s...

Some years are more memorable than others and there's no doubt that this is one of those subjective feelings if we are looking to the past solar cycle from individual point of view. Some are forgettable and disappointing by using the same perspective. If I had to judge about 2016, I would say its one of those forgettable ones. Perhaps not really because of what happened badly or poorly during past twelve months but rather of what didn't happen again. Perhaps it was me, who once again made a mistake and had higher expectation from the humanity and ended in sort of letdown once more. Obama & Medvedev at Ray's Hell Burger in 2010 Actually if we want to get into disappointment fast, it's easy, the only thing we need to do is to have a glimpse or two to the worldwide politics and worldwide affairs. But it wasn't always like that. Every now and again we got ourselves into illusion that things can be perfect, or better to say the least. Ever since Barack Obama...

Do you have that strange feeling when you are about to visit new city abroad and little afraid of what you would stumble to when it come to simple things? Like how to use metro line or how to buy a bus ticket or how to identify your next destination? Or how to book your flight back to your home? Or how to handle a simple dilemma of should you exchange the money to the local currency or is it wise to put your card in every ATM or any other 'slot' machine on your way? Hello™ at Microsoft Campus Days, 2014 Ericsson, a Swedish multinational provider of communications technology and services, has the answer for you. And me too. Last week, I took my entire family to the trip to Copenhagen for both, business and pleasure hours in the Danish capital. During my previous visits I didn't have much time for tourism and any off work activity for that matter. So I took a little research this time and Ericsson's " Networked Society City Index " helped a lot. Within t...

In short it goes like this: "There's a cat in a box... That has, like, a 50/50 chance of living because there's a vial of poison that's also in the box. Regular physics would say that it's one or the other. That the cat is either alive or dead, but quantum physics says that both realities exist simultaneously. It's only when you open the box that they collapse into one single event." This quote is me paraphrasing James Ward Byrkit, writer and director of the movie "Coherence" I've just watched. Although Erwin Schrödinger back in 1935, when he first wrote his famous thought experiment, invented pretty complex radioactive trap for the poor cat inside the box, I think that "vial of poison" and James' full description in the script is one of the best interpretation of the quantum paradox there is. The quantum weirdness is one of the most intriguing areas in science, that is still buzzing our minds for about a century now. I wrote ab...

I am wondering is it possible to combine, in just one blog post, a short story about one country, one modern IT business, several great friendships, air flights, professional challenges and friendly people everywhere you look? I know the answers is probably no, but I will try anyway. Let's start with a easy puzzle - if you thought of little mermaid and Hans Christian Andersen, quantum mechanics and Niels Bohr, famous Hamlet's "To be or not to be" in Shakespeare's old play, amazing cuisine with cookies, pretzels, Carlsberg beer and Legos? The answer, for a very few of you who didn't guess is of course Denmark. One of the top developed country of European Union. According to the United Nation's first ever World Happiness Report from this year, Denmark has taken the top spot followed by Finland, Norway and the Netherlands. When I first read about this I was skeptical since happiness is a relative thing and I am sure all people in the world are equally happy ...