When we lived in London, we made several trips to its Science Museum (for instance, as recorded in this old entry). But in all years of living in New Jersey, we have never visited our own Liberty Science Center. Today, Kimmy and Natasha rectified the glaring oversight (yours truly stayed…
Trying to think – not for the first time, mind you – what I would use Twitter for. I don’t care to share the tidbits of my life as they happen. Maybe, I did care a bit more during the years in England, but even then, I do not see…
One of those songs that I cannot get out of my head for days once someone plants it there. Maybe, if I pass it on to someone…
It will say in sufficiently large and light-reflecting letters: “If you see cars passing you on the right, MOVE TO THE SLOWER LANE, ASSHOLE!”
I have spent the last hour or so recovering my blog from backups after it was hacked by some f***ers who had replaced my WordPress installation with a single sound-hotlinked page in Arabic. On a plus side, I am pretty diligent with backups, so I was able to restore all…
I would really like to live in a place with no natural disasters or extreme weather conditions to disrupt the normal flow of life. No tornadoes, no hurricanes, no volcanoes, no earthquakes. No snow storms dumping ungodly amounts of snow on my driveway. No heat waves, for that matter. Fine,…
My wife’s brother’s wife’s sister’s daughter had her first child the other day. Yeah, I know, it’s not exactly a close relation, in-laws of in-laws, I’ve never had a chance to even meet them. Still, there is a certain implication in this new arrival. To that new baby, I happen…
A number of people whose blogs I read did this meme, where they took the recently compiled NPR list of Top 100 Science Fiction and Fantasy books and marked those they’ve read (or at least attempted to read at some point in their lives). At first, I just scanned through…
We’ve been back on the home soil for two years now. I felt a tiny bit of re-branding of the site was due. The word “[back]” was no longer appropriate as the modifier of our local status. So, welcome to “Burlaki on the Hudson”, all!
Along with uncounted others, I have been unpleasantly – to use a mild term – surprised by Netflix’s changes in the pricing structure announced a couple of weeks ago. Without offering me any additional services or perks, they decided unilaterally to jack up my monthly subscription 60%. Noting the uncanny…
I’ve been thinking for the longest time that the only reason I have to keep this website going is that my expat musings from the years of living in England can be of use to friends and strangers alike. Only yesterday a couple of friends relocating to England for work…
An espresso at a European café or even a restaurant is likely to cost €2. Maybe, €2.50. If the restaurant is upscale, it could go for as much as €3.50. But paying more than that for a shot of espresso happens only at the brazenly overpriced locations, such as Venice’s…
When I went abroad for the first time while owning an iPad, I decided to try out AT&T international 3G plan. The verdict: Never again, it’s a waste of money. The plan is supposed to be for a full month, but the data allowances are ridiculously un-balanced towards minuscule amounts…
Mark Wahlberg turns 40 today. Noah Wyle turned 40 yesterday. Me, I’ve been on the other side of 40 for a few days now. I have a vivid recollection of a kitchen conversation between my Dad and one of his friends that took place some short time after my Dad…
What do you know? The patient still has a pulse. Despite the fact that I have been, sometimes willfully other times inadvertently, shirking my blogging duties for most of the last couple of months, Google Analytics tells me that there continues to be a fairly steady flow of visitors to…
Remember my editorial of several years back on the curiosity of British street naming practices? It occurred to me the other day that the Brits do not have monopoly on making weird decisions in regard to street names. Not far from where we live, if you travel eastward on Lafayette…
In the middle of the night, needing to put gas in my car, I ended up paying over $4 per gallon for the first time that I can recall. I was unpleasantly bothered by that fact. Rewind a few years back, and I used to pay nearly £5 per gallon…
I learned somewhat accidentally the other day that when Russia moves their clocks one hour forward at the start of their summer daylight savings period this coming Sunday, it will be their last such time change. From that point on, people in Russia will no longer be adjusting their clocks…
I live in a house full of women, so it behooves me to remember an occasion as important as the International Women’s Day. It used to be easier to remember in my youth, when the day was marked by a non-working state holiday (for either gender), but nowadays I simply…
For the second year in a row, I manage to see one single Oscar contender for the Best Picture award ahead of the annual ceremony. The movie wins the corresponding Golden Globe award and is generally regarded as a front-runner for the Academy award, but ends up losing both the…