Taxi drivers are allotted 150 liters (about 35 gallons) of gasoline per month. "That's enough for me to eke out a living," one cabbie said, "but not enough to pay the taxes."

"Maybe they'll defer or forgive the taxes in wartime economy?" I suggested. "That'll be the day," the driver replied skeptically.

The stores are also full. You can buy just about anything - from imports, to locally produced goods. Long gone are the days of the U.N. sanctions which emptied the store shelves and peoples' tummies in 1993-1994. In fact, the Serb defiance has also been complemented by bustling entrepreneurship. There are hundreds of street vendors selling newly produced TARGET or other anti-NATO T-shirts, buttons, records or other graphical designs.

Daily concerts at the Freedom Square in downtown Belgrade are continuing. They usually start at noon and last till 4PM. Yesterday (Sunday), a group of young dancers, all girls - probably under the age of 10 - delighted the crowd to the tune of rock music. But Las Vegas recruiters had better not rush to sign them up. For, these young stars' performance was a part of the protest against, not compliance with, the glitzy part of the "American culture."

One thing this writer noticed, however, was that some people in the crowd at the Freedom Square carried photos of Slobodan Milosevic. To foreigners who have not spoken to as many Serbs as this writer has during the last five days, this might have implied that the Serbian people are defying NATO in support of their "Saddam."

Nothing could be further from the truth. After all, just over two years ago, hundreds of thousands of these same people demonstrated for democracy and against Milosevic for over three months - in the dead of winter! Most Serbs I spoke to expressed their outrage that a few Socialist Party members have brought to the protests pictures of their leader, at a time when all other parties had set aside their ideological differences for the sake of national defense.

And the peoples' message seems to be getting through. When this writer spent some time at the Freedom Square today, shortly after noon, there were no Milosevic photos in sight; only Serb flags and other national symbols. So is there anything abnormal about life in the Serb capital, besides the nightly explosions and AAA fire? Plenty... Schools and universities are closed. They have been closed since the war started on Mar. 24. There is some talk now about opening the universities later this week. But elementary, junior high, and high schools will remain closed for the rest of the school year.

The reasons are obvious. NATO has already hit (however inadvertently, if one is to believe their spokespeople) dozens of schools across Serbia. Had there been children and teachers in them, the casualties would have been much higher than they are.

Another anomaly is that the stores are told by the authorities to close at 4PM. Most seem to heed that suggestion. But private convenience stores stay open till all hours of the night, just like back home in the States; some even right through air raids. Last night, for example, this writer bought a piece of bread and a sausage at a convenience store near Brankov's bridge at close to 10PM.

There are also long lines at some points in downtown Belgrade, but they are not what you think if you listened to some of the western media reports. I was told (I have not seen or heard it myself), that the western media have shown pictures of these long lines with commentaries suggesting that these people are now having to line up for their daily bread.

When I first saw one of these long lines which snaked around a little park in front of Radio Belgrade building for several hundred yards, I asked a colleague, a local journalist, what this was about.

"Cigarettes," he replied.
"You're putting me on."
"No, I'm not."
I still wasn't buying his explanation. So I walked up to some of the people in the line and asked them: "What are you lining up for?" "For cigarettes," one woman replied.
"And all these people (hundreds of them!) are smokers waiting to get their daily fix?", I said, with an obvious look of incredulity on my face. The woman returned a look full of disdain, implying silently: "It's easy for you to make fun of us when you're obviously not a smoker." Turning to my journalist-friend, I said: "Hurray! NATO is finally doing something beneficial for Serbian people. Forcing the nation to cut back, or give up, smoking!"

There is another good thing that NATO's bombing has also done. It has weaned the Serbs off the American junk food. Both McDonald's restaurants in downtown Belgrade are closed, with anti-NATO graffiti sprayed all over them. Yet the McDonald's management posted some lame message about how it was supposedly closing down the restaurants in solidarity with its Yugoslav customers.

A walk up and down Belgrade's main streets and avenues also reveals that most NATO embassies have been trashed, with graffiti, often vulgar, testifying as to extreme anger of the local population. The German embassy, for example, has the German flag still flying on a mast above the door. But the flag has a NATO crest-shaped swastika in the middle. Perhaps the worst for wear is the Canadian embassy. The newest among the western embassies, it has a modern design. It also used to have a lot of windows.

The American and French cultural centers in downtown Belgrade have also been demolished. By contrast, however, embassies of other western countries not involved in the conflict are intact. This morning, for example, this writer walked passed the Australian and Argentinean embassies, which are a stone throw away from the destroyed American and French cultural centers. Both embassies were intact, with ambassadors still on board.