Jelena Lukic, reporting from UsiceName: Jelena Lukic
Location: Usice, Serbia
Age: 32
Own blog: www.jelenalukic.com
If you would be able to export a characteristic of your people/country, what would it be?
Our characteristics can be recognized in these popular sentences:
In a café: “What you drink?”
In front of a door: “Do you want to come inside? Lunch with me and my family.”
In life: “I will find a solution…”
Everywhere: “It is my wife/girlfriend, and I will fight for her!”
If you would be able to ban a characteristic of your people, what would it be?
Our bad characteristics can also be recognized in these popular sentences:
- “I will learn or work tomorrow, or next year…”
- “How much money do you make? I want to know everything.”
- “My boyfriend is not mafia, he is just a businessman.”
- “I don’t listen folk music, I am a fan of alternative music. (While I keep my folk collection in a secret place.)”
- “The national soccer selector doesn’t know anything, I would make a better and more representative team!”
- “Nobody can pay me a little as I can work a little.”
- “I will buy it for 10 euros, but I will sell it back to you for 30.”
In general: laziness, “I know it best”, paranoia, covert racism and other consequences of isolation.
What is your image of Holland?
When I was seven years old and asked my mother what “Nizozemska” meant. (Nizo-zemska is a Croatian name for Nether-land, the Serbian name is Holandija). She explained me that a level of the country is under sea level. So I pictured a small lid on the bottom of the sea, and after you open the lid you see a whole country! Like a treasure chest. It was my first picture of Holland. I more or less still believe that you must have that lid somewhere. I imagine a country where the scent of tulips is scattered over the meadows by windmills.
What national politician do you want to interview, and why?
The best Serbian national politician, Zoran Djindjic, the Serbian prime minister from 2000 to 2003. He was murdered in 2003. Or the worst Serbian national politician, ever, Slobodan Milosevic, who died in 2006. So, I don’t really have a lot of choice. All the rest is imitation.
What are you doing ten years from now?
The same as now, but probably I’ll be thinking that my life will be better in the next decade. Twenty years ago I was sure that I would win an Oscar for the best screenplay. I rehearsed a speech in front of a mirror, and a bottle of dish liquid served as the statue. My stupid secret is that I still believe in that. I suppose that I will be equally ambitious and just as stupid. I hope to have at least three children and a house, several dogs, enough space and long days. At this moment, I live in a building, I have one child and I don’t have an Oscar.
