April 20, 2011 – Future?

So about that school that provoked the apartment emotions… I have been thinking of going back to school and get a PhD in organizational psychology. Actually, since I came to this country 12 years ago, I have been always considering school – MBA degrees mostly – but I have also always found a ton of excuses to postpone it. Only last year, in my "meditation" hammock, I finally realized that I didn't really want an MBA, I just thought it would be "the right thing to do", so no wonder it was always so easy to talk myself out of it.

This degree sounded right from the very beginning. This is pretty much what I have been doing at my old job, but instead of focusing on one company for years and always fight with the upper management for the validity of your optimization ideas, I'll be able to diversify and work with many companies and my opinion will be welcome, sought out and respected (and probably much better paid for).

The good thing is that I can do it online (while traveling!) without any potential damage to my resume. In fact, the school I selected totally intuitively without even reading too much about it (it just clicked somehow in my brain that I have to go there and nowhere else) – Chicago School of Professional Psychology – turned out to be the oldest and apparently most respected schools for this degree.

When in Boston at Jennifer's I listened in on an "ex"-work conference call dedicated to the process of 360-degree employee performance evaluation. Of course, I was very interested in what they had to say, because I personally implemented this tool in our team 6-7 years ago and had been trying to push – in vain – the rest of the company to take advantage of it. And of course, this evaluation tool was pretty much the same as the one created by me, but I guess mine wasn't as reliable because it didn't cost that much money… But that's not the point. The point is that the very first words uttered by the new owner of the company introducing a performance evaluation consultant were: "Please meet so-and-so. She graduated with a Masters in organizational psychology from the Chicago School of Professional Psychology (never underestimate the power of your intuition), the oldest, greatest and most respected schools in this field in the US. Organizational psychology is a very important field of business science… blah… blah… blah…"

If I had any doubt before this meeting, now I am 100% convinced – the mothership is calling me home.

April 18, 2011 – The risk that I took

Nobody would ever rent out the apartment they own if they had enough money to sustain the mortgage payments without having to host strange people at their precious home for money. There is always a risk of your apartment being trashed in one way or another by your tenants, however nice and normal looking they may seem when they sign the lease.

Unfortunately, I didn't have the luxury of keeping my apartment doors shut while I'm goofing around traveling. So I had to take this enormous risk. And I paid for it. Well, technically, my last tenants paid for the damages that they had inflicted upon my apartment, but I am still paying emotionally.

I decided to go back to school (yes, in fact this is relevant to the story) and needed to find my University transcripts to start the admission process. Of course I have no idea where they are now, with most of my stuff in boxes at the storage and the rest still at the apartment. I thought checking the apartment first would be a good idea – less work. Luckily, my last tenants had just left a week ago and my real estate agent is now in the process of finding me new ones. Tanya, Sasha and I walked all the way from Yama (the weather was very nice) to my place. We were all a little nervous because we hadn't been there for such a long time and everybody was afraid of getting too emotional. Well, emotions were inevitable. Slowly, carefully I opened the front door and for a second hesitated to switch the light on. But it had to be done, and… thank God everything seemed to be all right – all the furniture still there, walls are still painted, floors are still… well… there. "Phew," – I exhaled out loud. "Phew," – echoed Tanya and Sasha.

Relieved and confident now, I entered the bedroom. "AH!" – I couldn't contain myself. Tanya turned pale and looked like she was ready to faint – apparently, to her my exclamation signified the presence of a dead body on my bed. Honestly, I think I might have liked a dead body better. But instead, I had a GIANT ASS TV hanged on my bedroom wall! Right in front of my bed! Forget even about the fact that they needed to make several giant holes for this installation and cables, I'm completely against TVs in the bedroom, on principle! But seriously, who rents a furnished apartment for only 6 months and hangs their stupid TV on a sheetrock wall, without even thinking of asking the owner's permission! What, if they didn't fancy some of my furniture, they would have felt it was OK to throw it out, too? Outrageous! Still trying to recover from the initial shock, I turned around to look at the bed and the… "AH!" Tanya quickly repeated the routine of turning all pale and faint-looking – she didn't seem to get that it wasn't a dead-body scream frequency. The closet was punched through right in the middle. Yes, definitely with a fist. There was a block of unpainted wood leaning on the door though, clearly intended for replacement – how very nice of them. "OK, OK, OK" – I tried to calm myself down as I made my way back to the living room to park on the couch and catch my breath, - "It's really not the end of the world. Everything can be fixed." "AH!" – "Stop it already!" – Tanya shouted. Seriously, there cannot possibly be so many dead bodies in my little apartment, I don't understand why she was so worked up about my emotional response to damages. This time it was my coffee table… with its legs completely chewed up by some small animal, potentially a dog or a cat.

Of course, this is not such a big deal and it could have been much-much worse and everything will be fixed and this is the risk you take when renting your apartment, BUT… I have one problem with it. What kind of people would do something like this and not even let me know? If I were renting an apartment and got into a situation like this, I would at least let the owner know of the damages and offered a compensation way before they discover it all. Isn't this the only decent solution? And my real estate agent (and those tenants were his friends by the way) had told me that he'd inspected the apartment and everything was "just the way it was before they moved in". I already sent the deposit check back to him! What the hell! Sasha immediately started pressuring me to call the bank and cancel the check. I really wouldn't have done it on my own, but she can be very convincing, so the wheels of justice had started turning. After the bank, I called my real estate agent and gave him a piece of my mind. He was shocked and appalled himself (obviously, he couldn't admit that he hadn't really inspected the apartment and just relied on their word instead, which made him invent such stupid excuses that he looked like a complete demented idiot – although really he is a nice guy and has so far been very reliable, I must say).

The resolution is (1) I'm keeping the deposit; (2) the closet and the wall replacement will be taken care of by the agency; and (3) I'll get the money for the coffee table. Well, I did throw in the dirty couch, although at this point I was not really sure whether it was dirtied specifically by them or was just a regular wear and tear (well, 99% it was them). In any case, (4) the couch will be professionally cleaned as well.

So I guess, all is well that ends well… Except it hasn't ended yet and I don't want to jinx it. So hope that everything will be all right next week. This time, Tanya will be inspecting.

Life is very interesting

MoMA

Columbus Circle

Broadway and W56th Street

Meatball shop, Stanton and Allen

Lucky Strike bowling

Lucky Strike bowling

near Triboro Bridge

Empire State

My apartment building!

Pongo

Central Park

Central Park

04/12/2011 - Mud Run and Cosmonauts

Many of my friends are scientists and doctors. I'm neither. I always envy them - on a daily basis they get to make a huge difference for the good of the world. I want to be part of it! Unfortunately, I cannot do it other than through a monetary contribution. Fortunately, I can do it. If you are like me, please consider supporting my friend's Mud Run for MS research -http://main.nationalmssociety.org/goto/mvegaher.

Today is also the World's Cosmonautics Day. I love it how some holidays that are celebrated almost exclusively in Russia assume the international status in the name. How presumptuous. Well, I shouldn't be hard on my motherland, since every nation seems to suffer from this superiority complex once in a while though. Case in point - Baseball World Cup.

04/04/2011 – Red 58

She was a complete spaz. She seemed to get nervous about everything. There were maybe eight people in the whole restaurant including the six of us, but even that made her run around in panic like a headless chicken. Literally run around – I would hear the scurrying clip-clop of her high heels behind my back every couple of minutes, running into the back room and darting back to the bar counter, running into the back room and darting back to the bar counter, running into the back room… "Not right now!" – she would shriek into her telephone from time to time. "I cannot take it all right now!" – she would suddenly shrill at the bar tender who looked a bit put off but, smartly, offered no response to that lunge. How could she ever think waitressing was for her? I see a 100% chance of a heart-attack in her near future. Probably provoked by forgetting to bring a teaspoon for somebody's coffee.

In the middle of the evening she came up to our table and asked in a voice that betrayed impending tears, "Would you like anything else?"

• "What's on the house today?" – I think Dima surprised even himself with this question.
  
• "OH… OH… OH… LETMESEEWHATICANDO. ONEMOMENTPLEASE!!!" – and she clip-clopped somewhere, leaving behind the trail of her horrified anxiety.
  
• "Dima! Awkward!" – Melanie was ready to fall through the ground.
  

I liked it. You can always rely on him acting "outside the box" and it's always fun, even if – granted – sometimes a bit embarrassing.

While each of us pondered how they felt about this unexpected exchange, the waitress flew back in, almost tripping over her own foot as she was trying to brake before slamming into our table. With a triumphant smile, she placed shot glasses in front of all of us.

• "LEMONDROP!" – she announced with an attitude you may expect from a circus magician after he makes an elephant vanish right before your eyes.
  
• "Thank you! Thank you so much! This was so nice of you! We really appreciate," – we all spoke at once. She was pleased. But still nervous.
  
• "Yes, yes, thank you," – Dima said very much business-like. He just couldn't leave it at that. Another quality of his, push your luck envelope until it tears apart in irretrievable pieces. – "Luckily, we have something to celebrate. It's Masha's birthday," – he waived at me.
  
• "AH!" – she exclaimed in unadulterated horror.
  
• "AH!" – and off she went.
  

Melanie tried to pick herself up from sinking deeper into the ground and concentrated on strangling Dima with her look. It didn't work, because in this mode he is completely invincible.

We almost forgot about the incident, when she reappeared giddily shouting to get our attention long before she could reach our table.

• "I think I have an idea! Have you ever tried our Red 58 coffee? No? Oh, but it's wonderful, simply wonderful! It has Baileys, Cointreau, whiskey, rum and vodka and is topped with whipped cream and cinnamon!!! Delicious! I'm going to make it for you for your birthday! For free! Will this be good? Please tell me it'll be good!"
  
• "And a cake, if possible," – inserted Dima…
  

Half an hour later, after finishing the cake and letting Dima drink my coffee – because, who am I kidding, I would never drink anything like this, I just didn't want to upset the drama queen who was waiting on us – we were still laughing in disbelief at the fact that apparently she had to run out to a nearby grocery to get whipped cream.

The lengths people would go for… for what, really? Just for being liked?

4/3/2011 – The scent of departure

How appropriate – today (as I'm leaving to NYC for a couple of weeks) I learnt about this new souvenir idea, a city scent perfume! Supposedly, they sell it at the airports of major cities so that you can take a memento of your trip with you. It's pretty damn cool! Although I probably wouldn't want to take anything away from New York, where the olfactory essence is that of garbage…

And you can submit your ideas for various perfume mixes, too!

 

04-02-2011 – “Hey, it’s my birthday! Aren’t I cool?”

It's funny how everything is so relative. One guy exclaimed, "Wow, I didn't know you are that old. I thought you were in your twenties." Another friend – a bit older as you can imagine – said, "I don't even want to know how disgustingly young you are." I honestly don't have any old/young opinion about my age. I feel good. I look good. And several months ago I noticed that I started responding "37" to the question "How old are you?" So as far as I'm concerned, today didn't bring me any new status.

Some people don't like their birthdays. I love mine. I like the special treatment. I like the love floating around me all day. I like the gifts. And this year they were super wonderful, too: the practical dry backpack from Liang (finally, the right one, just like I wanted!), the romantic dawn dive with Javier, the stylish necklace from Cindy, the heart-shaped slate from Sallye, one night in the eco-hotel of Cozumel from Ana (!). No, I don't like gifts, I LOVE gifts, small or large, they just make me so happy! I like the good food, alwaysJ. We went to La Perlita and I had shrimp wrapped in bacon and dipped in cheese... So what's not to like?

One of the virtual gifts I received today was this list of Five Things to Do On Your Birthday. I always do #4, don't care about #2, have been following #5 advice for the past couple of years, and don't require any special effort for #3. But #1 is my favorite. Why haven't I ever thought of it myself!

1. Buy someone else a present, preferably the person who makes you most happy to be alive.
   
2. Eat cake if you're under 18 or over 75. If you're in between, these are your years of discipline and clarity. Look at that pretty mass of sludge and goo for what it is.
   
3. Ask yourself where you came from and where you're going. If the answer is, "I don't know," spoken with marvel and wonder, you're on the right track.
   
4. Thank your mother. Chances are the occasion you're celebrating was a pretty arduous day for her.
   
5. Be a child. Hang balloons outside your door. Announce to random strangers that it's your birthday. Okay, even eat the artery clogging, blood sugar elevating, thigh thickening cake if you have to. And if there aren't any random strangers around, announce it on your blog: Hey, it's my birthday! Aren't I cool?

04/01/2011 – Appreciate your living space

I bumped onto this link on Facebook today - http://gawker.com/#!5788010/this-woman-lives-in-a-90+square-foot-apartment-in-manhattan. It's about a woman living in a 90 square foot apartment on the Upper West Side in Manhattan. Made me appreciate every living space I have ever lodged in, even the one small room I shared with my parents for 19 (!!!) years.

P.S. Dima told me that it was an April Fools joke. Tanya told me that she had seen this apartment while flat shopping a couple of years ago, but she could have been joking too… Anyway, it's worth watching this video.

3/30/2011 – Octopus dilemma

Octopuses are so pretty! I actually like "octopi" better, sounds more official and intriguing. They look so mysterious and mesmerizing at night when they showcase their many colors, fly a little bit over the sand, then parachute down in one smooth motion and change start their color dance again…

The problem is that they are also oh so delicious!

Usually I have no issues with eating what I see underwater. Lobster is more than welcome to my plate. Conch is a frequent guest. And any fish is all right. The octopus is the only thing that makes me stop and think. They are just so beautiful! And I love how they fall asleep if you pet them gently in between their "brows" (Javier taught me that trick, it's amazing to watch). And it always surprises me how well they can masquerade as part of the reef during the day… But so yummy! Ohhh, I feel really conflicted…

3/29/2011 – What's your hiccup cure?

At dinner Dima was still hiccuping. It started in the morning and turned up with some strange consistency every couple of hours. We tried to stop it in every which way we knew:

• We tried to scare the heck out of him.
  
  


That didn't work…


• We made him drink water with tiny little sips.
  
  


Fine, it wasn't vodka that we made him drink, but that didn't work either…


• We tried to make him drink water backwards.
  
  But I guess nobody can do it better than Tanya…
  
  
• We made him hold his breath.
  
  
But I guess nobody can do it better than me…

"Fine, - Shane stood up all of a sudden. – It's time for my father's cure." We all stopped laughing and fell silent – he looked pretty darn serious and determined. "Stand up, - he commanded Dima. He put his both hands forward as if to play this game when you try to hit each other with the palms of your hands. – Put your hands on top of mine." Hesitantly, Dima stood up and put his hands on top of Shane's. "Now look directly into my eyes, preferably without blinking." In total disbelief, Dima did what he was told. We all waited for Shane's next command, but it never followed. And thus they stood for a good 2-3 minutes. Absorbed by this unexpected seen, we kind of forgot what was the reason for it, when Shane brightly announced, "That's it, dude, your hiccups are gone!" Puzzling…

P.S. If you know me well, you'll be expecting some research on hiccup remedies. And I'm not going to disappoint you – click here for some tips on how to cure this little nuisance.

3/28/2009 – Unfulfilled ambitions

The guys tried to pack as much as possible into their 4 days in Cozumel. Diving every morning, followed by walks, dinners, bars, parties, you name it. So on Monday, right after we came back from our two beautiful dives to Punta Tunich and Yucab, we went to a car rental place to exchange our car for 3 scooters.

None of them had driven a moped before, but they'd figured, "How hard could it possibly be? Here, you see whole families with babies and dogs on one scooter – if they manage, clearly can we!" Well… maybe the people of Cozumel make it seem a bit easier than it is, or maybe our friends were just exhausted by the intense diving lessons, but half an hour of failed attempts to hold their balance and 200 pesos of damage caused by a minor collision of one of the scooters into a parked car (all of this still in the parking lot of the rental place), the scooters were shamefacedly returned.

On the bright side, this gave them a chance to take a long romantic walk along the ocean to our dinner destination, La Hach. I took my bike – during their visit I never had a chance to ride it and missed it so much (how had I lived without a bicycle all my life, I wonder?).

3/25-3/27/2011 – My rewards

A teacher is one who makes himself progressively unnecessary. 
-- Thomas Carruthers

I have always enjoyed studying. But I have never thought that one day I would actually enjoy teaching. It was an amazingly rewarding experience to teach diving! I doubt there are words to correctly express this amalgamation of excitement, fear, adventure, responsibility, freedom, conscientiousness, joy and pride that you experience in the teaching process. I am so happy that I got to live through this! And I'm so grateful to my lucky stars that my first students turned out to be good! And I mean, very good, they are simply natural divers.

A month ago, Dima announced that he was bringing his co-workers to get certified and dive in Cozumel. It was immediately decided that I would be teaching them, now that I'd gotten my dive instructor status. That day I got nervous about having my first class. And I remained nervous until March 25^th when the guys finally arrived and… all of a sudden my nervousness completely vanished. How does it work exactly? One moment you are imagining all the worst things possible to happen, and the next – you are absolutely confident that everything will be just fine. I will never understand the mechanism of pulling yourself together under pressure, I guess, but I'd noticed a long time ago that I am very good at it. I remember my very first Fund Filing training (J) at Strategic Insight: with my luck, I had to present the product in front of 40 people at Federated in Pittsburg (yes, it was my first business trip in the US, too). It was almost 13 years ago, my second month at this new job, and I only had a very vague idea of what a mutual fund was and what exactly Fund Filing as a product had to offer. I don't think I slept one minute. "I will surely screw it up," – I thought, "there's just no way I'll be able to even understand any questions coming from the clients. Why would Hanna do this to me? Doesn't he realize that it's too soon, that I have no idea what the product really is???" And then, finally, the morning of the presentation arrived. With my hands trembling I opened the door to a huge auditorium where they had prepared a stage, a projector and a microphone for me. I don't know how I made it up the steps to the stage – everything was kind of blurry and spinning a bit. But one glance at the people in that room, their faces full of curiosity and desire to learn the tricks of the trade, completely calmed me down. And the couple of hours I spent there conducting the training, answering the many questions and making jokes flew by without a trace of nervousness. And I have a thousand other examples of this strange transformation, so eventually I just stopped worrying about this type of thing completely. I just have no "audience fear".

I guess, because the instructorship experience is something new, my subconscious decided it was a good time to let me experience this worry again – after all, I haven't really felt it in a long while. "I will screw it up, - I thought. – It's way too early for me to teach. What if they are terrible and I won't be able to catch their 'fatal' mistakes? What if they are prone to decompression? What if I fail to properly demonstrate the skill? What if I get lost on our open water dives?" Endless irrational questioning bothered me for a month. But the second we stepped into the water near Casa del Mar, I stopped being insecure about my being a novice instructor; as if by magic I was suddenly a knowledgeable and experienced teacher. I knew how to answer all their questions, I knew how to correct their problems, I knew how to make things look super easy. I just knew.

And on top of everything, thank God, the guys were amazing. Totally natural divers! I had absolutely no issues with them – perfect buoyancy, great trim, low air consumption. And they were excited and eager to learn, too! And smart. And attentive. For example, they made only 1 (!!!) mistake on the theory exam. Seriously!? In short (although I guess it's already too late for thatJ), my first instructorship experience was very encouraging, to say the least.

On Friday we spent hours in the ocean, going through all the skills in the confined water first. And Saturday I had my very first guiding experience (while conducting the class for them, too!). Again, I was nervous the night before – desperately trying to memorize the reef maps for the sites we were likely to go to – but the second we dropped in the water at Colombia (naturally, not one of the sites on my list to study), I just knew what to do. And even the fact that I had to struggle not to let them drop all the way down to the reef (because Open Water classes 3 and 4 should be conducted at the depth of no more than 60 feet) didn't unnerve me at all. I will never stop being amazed with human psyche. We can be the whiniest insecure nags on Earth, but when the situation really calls for it we are somehow able to pull ourselves together, and that's the way it is. We are – by nature – survivors. Disclosure: I realize that I sound a bit too dramatic comparing the life's general survival instinct to a simple teaching experience, but I cannot help it – I guess, I'm still high on the adrenalin and whatever else is released into your brain and body as a result of overwhelming excitement.

And to conclude this ode to teaching, I must share this unparalleled feeling of being proud of my students when I followed them around during the hunting trip on Sunday, admiring their absolutely incredible buoyancy that was not even a little bit disturbed by the new heavy ammunition – Aristeo's spear-guns. What a reward!