iG.STUDiO: Ilya I. Gerasimenko

It looks like I haven't posted anything for a year. Apparently, nothing to say. How about some music, then? Leaving Manhattan —bossa-nova @ 130 bpm, by yours truly, written sometime in the fall of 2010, after we stopped pretending being rich and moved out of the shoe box size studio on West 95th Street. Technically we didn't leave Manhattan, just the Upper West Side, but the new neighborhood feels quite different... miss the easy acces to Central Park dearly, so the tune is a bit sad. Like 99.9% of all my tunes, really. This particular version came alive with the help of Pat Felitti (piano), Ian Pellow (bass), Raul R. (drums, percussion), all @ kompoz.com. I play tenor sax and EWI. Leaving Manhattan by iG.STUDiO

I do hate the annoying gnome, but that's not the reason. We (my wife and I) just had a very strange and unpleasant experience with online booking through Travelocity. It started in a pretty normal way—on Friday she booked a flight for her father, who doesn't have a computer, so she usually does it for him, I printed the e-ticket, put it into an envelope, mailed it to Cincinnati, where he resides, and we went on with our life. That wasn't it, though. Next day, in the evening, my cellphone starts ringing, I cross the room to pick it up, it stops. Missed call. From... let me see... a person named "0050". Not that I know anybody by that name, and no voicemail message left. Whatever. Back to dinner. Three hours later I go to the computer to check email, to find three messages from memberservices@travelocity.com First message - at 6PM (about 24 hours after original booking): 1."...For the protection of our valued customers, all reservations are subject to review by...

There is no US Embassy in Minsk, Belarus. As a result, people who need to go through an interview for a green card, like my mother, need to go to the nearest city which has one. In good old communist times it would be Moscow, the capital of the whole USSR. The trip there would entail overnight train Minsk-Moscow, spending a day in a city, and overnight train back. No visa required, naturally. Today, despite the fact that old Soviet Union fell apart and old Soviet Republics are separate states, the trip to Moscow would go pretty much the same way. But the wizards at National Visa Center came up with a different plan. Everything my mom needs is done in Warsaw, Poland. Why? NO IDEA. May be it's closer. So my mother had to pay for Polish visa, go through the medical exam they require, wait for ten days to get the visa, go to Warsaw, and all this just to find out that the medical form for her green card is not in a correct format (which was never specified, by the way), and—this is my ...

Campaign Worker: "Is there anybody from 13th district who is voting republican?... we, err... have a 13th district machine stuck on "republican", so if you are, you can just go ahead of the line and pull the lever... may be it will unstuck..." There were actually two brave ones who responded to the call... Made my day =), even though they sent us registration confirmation letters marked "district 15", and we are, as we now know, district 19 (we had to stay in line twice to find that out). Whatever, I voted in a morning, Eva had to return after work to cast her ballot. We did what we could. If McCain wins, we most likely will have to move to Manitoba.

Sometimes you just know what's going to happen, like, when flying Delta to Moscow (happened some years ago, flight was cancelled due to horrible weather, then they decided to send us there through Amsterdam, then changed it to Paris), at that vividly remembered moment, when we just checked in our suitcases to the Amsterdam flight and someone comes and says "no, they are going through Paris" and we are sadly looking at our luggage being slowly dragged by the conveyor belt to that Amsterdam flight we are not going to board anymore, and we say "what about our luggage" and they say "don't worry, it is going to be taken care of" and you just know it is not true. And it wasn't, and we landed in Moscow in a middle of a snow storm, and most of our warm clothes were traveling to Amsterdam and back and it took them three days to finally reach Moscow. Sometimes you just know, and now I am having another déjà vu moment, different curcumstances, same feelin...

Neither there is anything to do on the way there, and, frankly, not much to busy oneself with on the way back. And if not for the hurricanes, we wouldn't even consider going there on our 25th wedding anniversary—and we hadn't, we actually bought a cruise to Bahamas, and even booked two shore excursions—but NCL just took us to Bermuda instead. Well, things happen and people have to deal with them. It would be, however, much easier, if the overall cruising experience aboard Norwegian Spirit left nothing to wish for. Unfortunately, it did. When it comes to cruising, the entertaining elements of a trip normally fall under three major categories: food, drinks, and shows. Those are supposed to compensate for an imminent boredom of being trapped aboard 13-story floating hotel for several days without even being able to marvel at the occasional car wreck down below from your room window. I did expect a lot from all three, since Evelyna (and Dar) were on a cruise once, and came back...

Sounds a bit like a movie title, doesn't it? Or a book... So many things happened since my last post, it's difficult to even start. In short, we moved again (like-we-did-last-summer... no, actually, it was the summer before last, when we escaped Crown Heights in favor of Briarwood, small neighborhood on the edge of Kew Gardens). This time we decided to go for the gold, so we moved to Upper West Side, and Dar and Cassian—to Brooklyn Heights. Wow. I am still not sure if we are going to make it, but both areas are really nice (doh... location-location-location, as they say... almost makes up for our can-you-please-take-dogs-for-a-walk-I-need-to-open-the-fridge-size apartment... and Dar's is a basement burrow even smaller than ours...). It was about time for us to move, though. Life in Queens was a definite upgrade from our year-long Brooklyn survival experiment, but still quite far from a dream, considering a hefty commute on a barely working E/F trains (for Eva and Darya, and...

Something's telling me that there will be a lot of posts with this name, that's why I made up a special label for them. This post's issue is taxes, and the thing I don't get is: why if I dutifully put in all my dependents in my W-2 form, and then repeat the process in my 1040 form, I end up owing taxes? And I am not saying hundreds of dollars. I am saying THOUSANDS. The time for taxes is, of course, passed, and all I owed is paid, but why? I was naive enough to actually expect a refund this year, and that refund would help A LOT. Darn it, I am still not over. In addition to that my daughter's taxes, which I prepared with TurboTax, are proved to be wrong at least on the state level (the state of New York apparently disagrees with TurboTax on the matter of who can claim child care expenses as a deduction—long story short: my daughter and her son were both my dependents for the year of 2007, but she paid for the child care institution, Cassian goes to, and according to...

I feel sooo old. Somehow, when Microsoft announced the end of support for the Internet Explorer for Mac at the version 5.2, I didn't feel that weird, but I always was a bit of a fan of NN—just to stick it to the man, I guess—, even after I switched to Firefox a couple of years ago and made it a primary browser on my Windows machines, having Safari rule my Mac environment. Surviving a web browser may not be a life-changing experience, but it does make one ponder...

I must admit that I am severely spoiled, when it comes to public transportation. Having lived in Moscow for half a decade and spent nearly three hours a day commuting, I grew accustomed to the impeccable logic of the one of the world's largest cities' "metro". There are, as I see it, two major rules, which the builders followed through the whole process, and oh, boy, they work; they really do. Rule one: there is one line per physical track . If you got on the train in a hurry you don't have to worry about what train you are on, A, B, C, or E, and whether you have to get off on the next stop and wait for your train, because this one ain't the one you need. It always is. Rule two: the platform is always between the tracks . If you spaced out, fell asleep, or for any other reason missed your stop, all you have to do is get off, cross the platform, get on the train and go back. It is simple and it works like a charm. Overall structure is simple as well; one circu...

It's been raining for the last two days, and the glorious city of New Your smells like sewage and dog pee. And it's hot. The Internet connection in the office is very flickery, which really screws up my writing flow, but it feels like the events of these few days somehow should be documented or at least reflected upon. So... My desk is sterile with the exception of a few things I still plan on using today: headphones, Palm, half-pack of chewing gum and an antique* Maxwell House coffee mug. My ailing Windows box is cleaned up of all the stuff I kept in it during almost two years I had it. My coworkers are conspiring to take me out to lunch (I, of course, already bought one in the morning, because initially the gathering was supposed to be a short run for a beer after work). Darn. Will have to take it home along with the antique mug. The office of congressman just called. Apparently, my case is not showing up anymore anywhere in both organizations, so I have to re-file. I don...

I think, I've found a place, where I can hang out for a while. Roth's Steakhouse on the corner of West 93rd and Columbus has jam sessions on every Friday night from 10 pm to 1 am (allegedly, that is, the real time was from 10:30 to 2, and the jam part started around midnight), starting with a set, played by hosts, as usual. First set was actually very good, nicely and tastefully played by a minimalistic piano trio (the drummer had only a snare, a kick drum, a hi-hat and a ride cymbal), the only inconvenience was the location of the stage, which can't be really observed from the bar, so I had to stand for an hour in order to see the musicians: the drummer, the bass player, whose instrument looked like it survived a small hurricane, but was a time or two used as a floating device, and the pianist, working on the weathered upright, seemingly held together by the wall, it was leaning against, and some duct tape. The repertoire was diverse enough to get my hopes up, just a righ...

Can't wait. Silly, but feels good and strangely optimistic. Haven't had that in a while... and this is just a week long trip to Catskills.

 Just having a good day. Happens to us, too.

...generally, when the amount of money in my savings exceeds a certain number (and that's not a large number), mainly, because I expect various unpleasant events to take place. Usually, the car breaks down. Sometimes I hit something, but sometimes it breaks by itself just as well. This Tuesday I came to work, parked my Jeep, spent 9 hours at the office, went back to my Jeep and turned the ignition key. Nothing. The lights are on, though, radio works, too - I have power. So it's a fuse, or starter. I checked the fuses (found two which claimed responsibility for the starter operation), one was all right, the other one I couldn't pull out without pliers, so I decided, that it's all right, too. It looked nice from the outside. So I called AAA and asked for the tow to the dealership. The truck came in about half an hour and the driver checked my battery, confirmed that it's not it, and offered me to start my Jeep with a help of two seemingly undocumented individuals, who...

That is from someone who gets picked out from the continuous flow of gently speeding traffic for going 2.25 miles over the speed limit - some of us are clearly marked*. Since I moved to NYC, however, my speciality became parking tickets. I get them everywhere. This is my way of supporting the city (seriously, why running the red light, which is a potentially life-threatening violation is priced $50, and parking with your spare tire hanging 1.5 inches over the sloppily painted crooked white line** - more than twice more, $115? I'd tell you why***, but this blog is a part of my professional image, or at least I hope it doesn't destroy it too much...) - as "premium" as the city is, according to our mayor. Another topic - warranties. How in a world they manage to build something which breaks one to three days after it's factory warranty expires? And how do they know that you are going to buy an extended one, and in that case the damn thing breaks not in 91 days, but ...

This time to Queens, chasing the dream of leaving in a place where there is more grass and less cockroaches. So far seems to be working, even the part where Dar is moving in with us to make it easier for us to help her when the baby arrives. I am going to be a grandfather. That's odd.

I will get to the point eventually. I usually do. Figuring out what is that point, however, is a task by itself. May be, I just need to vent, may be I am just annoyed by the fact that there is a blog on this site, which was abandoned for a while, or may be there is more to the four little metal things residing in my coronary artery than just preventing it from collapsing. I don't remember all the correct stages, but there is one thing I am fairly sure about: this is as far away from acceptance, as it can be. And, finally, I understood why I am so angry with my quitting smoking. First of all, that wasn't my idea. As a result, I feel no real satisfaction, when I think about all these days I hadn't had a cigarette (since 01/30/06 to be exact). I just fill frustrated. Secondly, every time I feel like burning one, I don't. This constantly reminds me that I am old, sick, not well, have "a condition", and so on. It is very annoying. Really. So, what was the point? S...

So, we've moved. Many things are different, starting from street parking, and all the way up the annoyance scale to cockroaches and ever-present puddle in the elevator. It's surprising, how many people are afraid of dogs in our neighborhood. It's like it isn't New York (and it isn't, it's Brooklyn). But what is New York? Or, to be precise, what were my expectations of becoming a New Yorker? Quite frankly, I didn't have any well-formed ones, and as a result, I'm not really disappointed. In theory, yes, it's a city of opportunities, fortune, fame and all the good stuff. Money, for instance. For some people, that is. Still a good thing. In practice, however, it's just a relatively big city, where many people live, mostly because they were born here, and don't know any other places, except this one. Some, and many, too, do move in from other places, though, in search of a bright future. This is why service sucks in so many places around here, in ...

I haven't written anything for so many months, that it's almost impossible to select a starting point for this entry, and unless you are bloggin reluctantly every second you can, an entry needs one. I could start, perhaps, at the time of our move to New York, that would be a good one: 2005, middle of June; my contract with Goodyear is over, there is nothing more to expect from Cleveland, we need to do something, and that something, according to Evelyna, is nothing less than just moving to New York. The logic was impeccable: it doesn't matter, where not to have a job, but there we will be together. To those, who tried to rent an apartment in any of the boroughs, good luck. To those, who tried to rent an apartment without having a job, my condolences. To those, who succeeded, hats off. I had one week, before my "current" pay stub would start to look suspicious at least. That explains (sort of), why we ended up in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, and even that was not ea...