Blog
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Transit Strike: Day 2
I worked from home all day yesterday, but today I got a lift from my father in law and made it to the office. On the way there, I saw a rather weird thing – a small plane was skywriting what seemed to be a huge frowning smiley emoticon. Did anyone else notice? It dissipated before I had a chance to take a better picture.
Despite the strike, the streets were choked with grim-faced New Yorkers, as usual. Also on the way I saw several MTA buses (probably ferrying union members to picketing locations) and an ungodly number of stretch limos. Cruising in limo when the hoi polloi are forced to carpool, bike or walk seems like an irresponsible thing to do. On the other hand, maybe the rich and the famous are limopooling…
The most photographed sign is ready for its close-up.
The always open 47th street station is sporting some classy art deco gates. I think I’ve seen them only once or twice before.
The neon-encrusted Times Sq. station is simply shuttered.
It looks like Kringle would not negotiate with the Reindeer Local 100.
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I Dream of Xenu
Here’s the dream I had last night.
Scientologists asked me and my dad to help with a gigantic unfinished skyscraper that looked like a cross of the Ryugyong Hotel and the Hearst Tower. We tried to install some floor tiles somewhere close to the top, but could not locate the right equipment. My dad left, and I asked permission to look around and take some pictures (which I surprisingly got).
A helpful scientologist took me to one of the finished floors closer to the bottom and showed me a computer terminal that allowed you to do all your Christmas shopping without leaving the tower. I was very impressed with the user interface and the choice of products. The Church employs a huge amount of people, so it can buy in bulk; also many scientologists are computer programmers – my guide explained.
We wandered the halls for a little while, I played around with e-meters, and then my guide started digging up a floor in some hallway. He unearthed a body of a man dressed in superhero uniform of some kind, and proceeded to break off a toe from it. He explained that many people were buried in the floors of the tower, and that this in fact was the _original_ Xenu. My galactic-overlord-grave-robbing guide was planning to sell the toe to pay for auditing.
The whole thing ended badly – alarms sounded, I left, but did not rat out Xenu’s grave robber. Later, they accused me of stealing Xenu’s toe.
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The Pigeon Washer
I ducked into the Hidden Starbucks to get a sandwich and a Venti Quad Iced Latte for lunch, then sat down outside on the parapet of the weird little plaza to eat. There were a few salariemen and women sitting on the curb, eating, drinking coffee and smoking. But once I got up to return to my cubicle, I noticed something very strange. See, there was this woman sitting on the parapet, and she had a blue plastic bucket with soapy water and a washcloth. In her hand she held a particularly gnarly sick pigeon. She was giving the pigeon a bath. Unless she’s washing the poor bird for food (hey, you never know), Nikola Tesla, who lived and worked close by would have approved.
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Hurdy Gurdy
It seems that I learn more about exotic musical instruments on the subway than I ever did in all the music classes in college and high school. Kora music remains one of my favorite things to listen to while I code. Recently I’ve encountered a girl playing the weirdest instrument that looks like a mix of a guitar and a grinding organ, but sounds like a mix of bagpipes and violins. As it turns out, it’s an ancient stringed instrument called Hurdy gurdy that hasn’t been very popular since the 18th Century.
The performer, Melissa Kacalanos aka Melissa the Loud (blog), is extremely talented. I purchased her CD right there on the spot, and it was the best 15 bucks that I’ve spent in a while. I especially liked “Lucifer Goes to the Circus”, one of her original compositions. I kind of wonder, what “Stainless Steel Worm” would sound like as a song accompanied by Hurdy gurdy.
You know, being able to listen to ancient music played on ancient instruments by talented performers once in a while on a subway platform is one of reasons why people pay so much money to live in New York.
I am kind of surprized that I haven’t encountered any Chapman Stick or Theremin players yet.
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Top of the Rock
I have been looking forward to the opening of the “Top of the Rock” for a long while. As soon as the online ticketing system became available, I got the tickets for the first day, and the first sunset that this observation platform became available to regular shmoes like me.
The entrance, which is located in the underground concourse is decorated with this fancy Swarovski Crystal chandelier. Top of the Rock chose two somewhat strange marketing alliances – with Swarovski and with Target.
The elevator ride to the observation platform features a ceiling-projected movie of cheesy historical images and newsreels. Though that you can see exposed and lighted elevator shaft which is much more impressive.
Once you get to the multistoried observation platform, you start to notice and and photograph hundreds of interesting things otherwise unseen from the ground. The rooftop of the building where you work.
The cross of St. Patrick’s Cathedral.
You get to stand basically face to face, on the same level with the spire of the Empire State Building, only separated by the annoying bulletproof glass. The spaces between panes allow you to take decent pictures, and the top setbacked platform does not even have the glass. That’s where you can entertain your superhero daydreams – by quietly standing there, of course, and not by jumping off of it.
Besides the glass and the loud tourists, the only annoyance that I can name is a little bit of sewage smell. I am pretty sure that came from the plumbing vent that you can see in this picture.
Overall, I have to say that the whole experience was superior to the Empire State Building observatory. Online ticketing interface allows you to buy tickets for specific time, avoiding lines (the guy who coded the ticketing system even dropped me an email on my previous entry). You get to see the Empire State Building itself, as well as views of Central Park. The top deck without the glass is very cool.
Unfortunately I forgot my own camera and had to borrow co-worker’s Nikon, so I’ll be back with my own gear, the long lens and possibly a tripod. One unsettling thing about Top of the Rock, though, is that the ticket (but not the website) states that you are only allowed to take pictures for non-commercial purposes. That’s not very nice. I did see a lot of people with tripods and fancy cameras though – hopefully they are not going to hassle me.
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Natalie E.
Recently, with the help of my wife, I went ahead and spawned a child process.
The birth papers identify her as a 6lb 6oz (2kg 800g) baby female (or BF as it said on her id tag). We named her Natalie Ethel. The old-fashioned middle name is honoring my grandmother, as well as letting my daughter write her name as Natalie E. (like in Wile E. Coyote). My wife got to choose the first name and settled on Natalie. The goal was to pick a simple name that has a clear analog in Russian. Thus Natalie/Natasha. The cartoon conotation is purely accidental. One thing for sure – Gary the Cat and Tilde the Cat are not being renamed “Muss and Skworrl“.
Natalie was delivered in New York Presbyterian Hospital on the Upper East Side. I got to say that we are very fortunate in that our insurance covered it, as it’s pretty much a fancypants hospital. Downstairs I saw several limos and a Maybach (a $300K+ Mercedes). The delivery room was huge and had a great view of the Roosevelt Island and Queensboro Bridge.
The wires that you see on the windowsill in the previous picture were hooked up to my wife throughout labor (it’s a standard procedure in that hospital) and were used to continuously display the baby’s heartbeat. The Windows 3.11 application had the funniest little icons, and an especially cute picture of a choo-choo train that pulsed in and out. The sound effects for the choo-choo were provided by that Doppler heartbeat sound. Things to note are the funny icon representing a pregnant woman in the left corner, the nurse’s name that also doubles as a certain catroon professor’s catchphrase and the 47 in the heartbeat rate.
As I mentioned before, this hospital is fancy and is for rich folks mostly. This means a lot of pictures of dead white men. The whole hospital is basically encrusted with pictures of very rich people who gave money for the hospital and distinguished doctors who led various departments. The pictures in the maternity ward were a bit unusual. Not that there was a minority or a female doctor, but it was very interesting to see that unlike the doctor before him and after him, Dr. Fritz Fuchs who chaired the department in 60s and 70s, in the spirit of the decades, chose to have his portrait done in a modernist manner.
Now that I have a brand-spanking-new baby on my hands, and a wife who can get very upset over things like remembering the sad story about the sentient ocean in Stanislaw Lem’s “Solaris“, my blogging frequency is not likely to be much improved.
But I promise you that as much as I am envious of the popularity of the bloggers that write almost exclusively about ther children and pets, and despite the increasingly personal nature of my posts, this is not a permanent trend.
Also, I will try to avoid referring to my child by a weird and/or embarrassing nickname. Bloggers really let loose with children’s nicknames: Mayor McFreaky, The Squrrily, The Chub and the Grub, Puhtishkin, Kutuzov and Homiak (Hamster), Fasolets (Uhh, Broadbean?). Both Russian-speaking and anglophones. What’s up with that?
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Old Hat
Same old album. Here I am, at the shore of the Black Sea wearing my favorite cowboy hat. Man, did I love that hat. It had this feeling about it… The feeling of something a bit forbidden (cowboys after all were an American icon), and a feeling of freedom. My parents only let me wear that hat as a reward for finishing my summer homework assignments on time (which I rarely did), so there was also a feeling of accomplishment.
It’s kind of sad that wearing hats is out of fashion these days. Hats make you feel special. A fedora, a cowboy hat, a top hat, a derby hat. Gone, nobody wears them anymore, nobody remembers how special they are.
I keep meaning to buy a cowboy hat like that again, but never get around to it.
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From the Old Photoalbum
1986. Mir Space Station is launched. Space Shuttle Challenger explodes. Nintendo releases The Legend of Zelda. Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen are born, as well as one of the London Underground suicide bombers.
Odessa, Soviet Union. Public School #39 (former Madame Balen De Balu’s Gymnasium for Girls), 3rd grade, group A poses for a picture in front of a patriotic mural depicting the fictional underage foe of burgouise, Malchish Kibalchish. Here’s a modern rendering. If I remember correctly, the remainder of the mural depicted Malchish’s main foe, Main Burjuin and his henchmen. I might be wrong about that though.
Somehow I missed school the day when the picture was taken. Of all the people in the picture, I sometimes chat on ICQ with two.
Update:
An interesting thing to notice is the color of boy’s shirts. There were two types of uniforms – one for special occasions and one for everyday use. No doubt that prior to the picture was taken everyone was told to put the special occasion uniform, which for boys means white shirts instead of blue ones, and for girls – white aprons instead of brown or black ones (like seen in this ebay auction). As you can see, all the girls are wearing white aprons, but most of the boys are wearing incorrect blue shirts.
