The Ultimate Ending

I am not going to lie to you, but one of my biggest fears in life is death. I am sure there are plenty of people that fear death, but when I was in my early teens I thought I would never be one of them. Death has hit my family in the past when my grandfather died who was one of my life’s idols, and I came close to 3 near death experiences. All these events were very traumatic which I think caused me to fear death even more or at least think about it. I suppose it is a dormant fear because my mind is occupied with a million other things, but when it pops into my head it has through provoking impacts.

People say that death is easy because you no longer have to deal with life’s troubles since now you are in heaven or hell. I cannot believe that because my scientific background does not allow me to. I do not believe in heaven or hell, I believe in the inevitable destruction of my mental and physical being. Removal from society with nothing left but a rotted corpse and memories for the loved ones, without any physical resurrections occurring.

I am afraid because my abilities to control the act of natural death are very limited. When I come across something that I cannot control and cannot find ways to control, it becomes somewhat fearful. I am afraid because I will not be able to see the next level of technology and the monumental human research and development that will take place after my death, although I have seen plenty already. I am afraid that I will not be there to witness my family go through numerous generations. I am afraid because I will not be there to see the human race continue the exploration of the universes. I am afraid because my awareness to sense and feel alive will be gone. There are a lot of reasons and those are just a few major ones.

They say that one day the world will come to an end, or to put it in scientific terms, planet Earth will run out of natural resources to support the life of human species in the form they are today. I would not mind being there for that and dying because of that. Maybe it is selfish of me to say this, but if I die under those conditions then I will be dying at complete peace knowing that my death was really part of the big ENDING. I would be at rest because no one else is left alive to enjoy their state of being and that there was absolutely nothing left to live for.

With all the dreams I have had in the past 25 years, never once did I die in them. Just once I want to dream that I died and come to my funeral as a guest. I want to be at my funeral to see who showed up. Family, friends, colleagues, acquaintances, enemies, girls I dated, people I pissed off, friends I lost, people that loved and hated me, teachers, bosses, strangers, and who ever else that cared enough. I want to be there to capture their facial expressions and feelings. Once the funeral is over I want to see how the life of those people changed. I am sure people will morn at first and then get over it after a while, but I want to be there to see it. I will become just a memory, but who will the one who will bring up the remembrance of me throughout their own lives.

I am not ready to die and I do not know if I will ever be ready. I am sitting here stressing about life like work, friends, love, having kids, finances, getting married, having a successful life, surviving on my own, paying tickets and stupid fines, staying out of trouble, and dealing with just about everything else you can image, but in reality health is the most important thing in life both mental and physical and none of these other elements of life will ever matter when I am laying on my death bed.

The paradox is that in order for me to be happy on my death bed, I have to care about all these elements of life.

Nowadays, I think that I am running out of time when I watch these young kids striking it big or becoming web billionaires as I like to call them. So for now, I am going to enjoy life to the outmost capacity that I can in my current state and suck all the good out of it. Right now I am managing this particular fear pretty well by occupying myself with society. I am going to do my best and avoid death, but I am not sure if I can control the ultimate result of my demise, which is nature. My hopes are that by the time I am old, science is so god damn advanced that I will be able to freeze my head and attach it to a new body and somehow regenerate my brain cells, but it is way to premature to have those hopes right now.

Death is the last most meaningful event in anyone’s life, but not if they lived an easy and pointless life.

The most significant event of 2006

It was time for me to move out on my own and this being a great market for buyers, I decided to push the trigger and made my second major investment by purchasing a condo townhouse. Getting a college degree was my first major investment, in case you were wondering.

It is a very spacious place and I got a great deal on it. Currently I am doing a complete overhaul of the place, remodeling just about everything to my own taste and hoping that one day it will be my own little cozy pretty pimp palace where I can entertain family and friends and learn new things by living on my own.

Viva La Europa

It was now fall which meant the weather was getting depressing, but I was getting ready for my 3^rd vacation of 2006, my 3^rd trip to Europe with my mom. She loves Europe and since my dad hates to travel long term, I end up being her traveling buddy, which is totally cool with me because I am all about visiting other countries and experiencing their life styles. However, I have to tell you that I was broke and tripped out and not going on this trip would have been a good financial relief for me, but I made a commitment earlier in the year to this so I had to stick with it. This time we were off to Austria, Czech Republic, and Hungary. It was almost a two week trip which is just enough, because then I start to miss the American lifestyle and freely speaking English.

It’s Saturday so I am little lazy about giving detailed information for my global endeavors so I am going to keep this one nice and short and just give you some highlights. We flew through JFK which is a crazy airport and landed in Czech Republic. In both airports we saw several soldiers just walking around with nice AK47’s on their arms. I did not get harassed at the airport because of the clean shaven face, my flawless English and presentation skills when dealing with airport security. The welcoming to Prague was very warm-hearted. I had lots of opportunities to speak Russian in Prague because many people understood it, so it felt like the really old days. We took several day tours of the city, did a lot of sight seeing, walking around, hanging out in cafés and restaurants, going to museums, visiting famous city locations, shopping and checking out the fancy souvenirs. We pretty did this in most of the cities Czech Republic is infamous for their glass so they had an unbelievable selection and of various extravagant of glass works all over the city.

We had a tour bus which took us around the city and from country to country. Our next country was Austria. Our feeling of Austria was that it was a little less warm welcoming than Czech Republic. Same type of activities took place. The architecture of the city was very bold and with aggressive classical sculptures and monuments. We got to visit Mozart’s home and went to a classical concert at the hall where he used to perform. I bought a little souvenir violin with his autograph which plays some of his works, it was a unique souvenir so I had to have it.

The next country was Hungary. Budapest at night was one of the best things about this part of the trip. We took a boat ride on river Danube which splits the city in two parts (common in some major cities in Europe – old ways of building cities) and the scenery was just breathtaking, with the whole city being lit up. Budapest was our tour guide’s hometown so he was all nationalistic about every little thing and poked a little fun on the Americans about finding a McDonald’s to eat. I let him slide on that comment because Europeans are clueless about America other than the negative propaganda they see on TV thanks to the fucking asshole president George W. Bush.

Another awesome part of the trip was driving through the Alps when we were going to another country. We stopped for a couple of hours to enjoy nature’s magic creation. This one part we drove by had a huge lake and mountains on all of its sides with people lodging and being outdoors on the lake. I can’t even put it in words how relaxing it was just to hang out by the lake and breathe in the pure fresh air.

Anyway, I had many trip pictures posted on the web back in the fall which will give you a better idea of how things went. I did not do any crazy partying because it was early wakeup every morning and the day being filled with numerous activities, when night came I was so beat and just crashed. Overall, it was very thought provoking and pleasant experience and I got to spend quality time with my mom, even though we bickered back and forth at times because I can be a spoiled brat who missed his US luxuries. So after that trip my official list of countries in Europe is now

France

Spain

Portugal

Hungary

Czech Republic

Austria

I thinking my next visit will be to Italy, but that’s nowhere in the workings yet….

South of the border

Alright so after recovering from the so called baseball injury I was ready to fly down to the marvelous city of South Beach. It was me and two of my friends just high rolling down in MIA, you know got the nice little A8 pulling in the underground garage on

5400 Collins Ave (Millionaires’ Row). We rented a condo since it was more cost effective, this place was just unbelievable. The place was so big, it was cool just to sit back and chill at the condo and do some drinking and watching Entourage. The beach, the pool, and the Jacuzzi were in the backyard of this high rise so it was just luxury at your feet. The weather was typical Florida humidity, at times it was pleasant outside, but sometimes it was disgustingly humid, so blasting the air conditioner in the car was must while keeping the windows open to for a fresh scent of the Atlantic Ocean. Of course the ladies were looking really pretty 24-7.

The whole trip was just high energy and hustle filled with beaches, liquor, night clubs, music, restaurant, casino boats, shopping, fancy cars and feisty Latino ladies, and a serious lack of sleep. I mean the city can definitely come off a bit intimidating from standpoint that if you want to live the REAL South Beach life you better be on top of your game, whether your game is legal or illegal, it doesn’t matter as long as it brings in steady funding for the Cloud 9 lifestyle that you may choose to have. Since I was only down there for a week I suppose I was willing to put the lack of riches in my life to the side and just enjoy the atmosphere and be smart baller on a budget

I guess one thing that kind of bothered me more in relation to a culture shock, was that Spanish was pretty much the first language down there. I mean every where you go it’s just Latinos almost like you are in another country. It was interesting for me to try to remember some Spanish from high school and talk it up. I tired to tune out the Latino folks who pretty consumed the entire clerical and blue collar job market down there and concentrate on the finer things. It was nice to wake up and go to the ocean or look out the window and drool over multi million dollars homes covered with Spanish roofs, whose garages were docks housing lavish boats. The scenery of the city was magnificent. The real estate market is booming down there, there were ocean front high rises being built left and right.

Of course the huge night club scene down there resulted in ridiculous lines to some of these so called fancy clubs. For the really upscale places, if you are not famous you needed to tip the door bouncer to just put you on a consideration waitlist, ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME? Or you needed to bring some girls along to even get in, or you had to buy a fancy ass bottle of bubbly. Pulling girls to get in the club wasn’t a problem, we just had to work some street magic like David Blaine, be vocal and entertain ourselves with female company in line. A lot of them were straight up gold-diggers, asking me if I will be paying for their entry fee and buying them a drink or tow. Me being who I am, I just put on a circus by clowning them and sending them back to the end of the line. Some girls were more down to earth and just wanted to have good time and the feeling was mutual.

There was a lot of partying and crazy dancing, you might have caught some the pics that I posted online it was definitely intense. Honestly though, I don't know if I would move down there to live. Obviously the cost of living is a lot higher so I would have to find a comparable job. It was just a way too humid, temperatures that my body was just refusing to deal with. At times I got the feeling of alienation that I did not really belong there. As warm as it was down there were times when it felt cold on the inside. When I first partied in Chicago, it felt like I was right at home, but South Beach was different.

You need lots of cash and lots of pull to have a fancy life that is comparable to some of the rich locals. This is something that I already knew, but it was one of those things that you just need to go through in your life and say “ah yes I have been there and done that” and move on. Maybe one day I will be back there, who knows.

Ouch

Back in July 2006, another significant event of the year took place. My friend and I were hosting our annual Indians/Downtown party at the Embassy Suites. You know how we do, multiple hotel rooms, multiple bottles of liquor, and multiple amounts of debauchery. We get up in the hotel and just chill, drinking and hanging out. I stayed back at the hotel with a few people just hanging and drinking, while some people took off to the game.

We eventually made our way to the stadium. After a few innings or so I got up to stretch and then…!!! I somehow loose balance clapping or doing some sort of a cheer on those crazy suicidal seating rows and go tumbling 9 flights of bleachers. All I remember is seeing the blue sky and the bottom of the seats as my face and body was physically traumatized and abused by every seat on my way down, just putting dents all over my body. I would have kept falling, but there was a guy standing who played a key role in killing my momentum for all the good reasons in this world. After coming to a stop, I got up trying to observe the surroundings and assess the damage. I felt okay, but then felt blood gushing out of my bottom lip. As half the seating section was fully focused on my heroic fall, I made my way up to my original seats in hopes of watching the rest of the game. Unfortunately, the injury was a bit more serious than I thought.

Andrey, there is a hole in your lip !!! We are taking you to the Indians medical office. I kept insisting that I am way too pretty to mess my face up and that I am going to Hollywood (you know I had to throw a little dramatic humor acting). I think I had them convinced to the point that they wanted me to go to the hospital to fix the mess. My dear friends and I caught a cab to the nearest hospital. We spent about 3 hours there or maybe more, things were kind of cloudy at time. They told me I had broken ribs and needed stitches on my face. I found out later that the ribs were only heavily bruised, happy to continue my 25 year streak with no broken bones. I ended up having 7 stitches on my bottom lip. Paul sat bedside while they were stitching me up and I kept flirting with the hot nurse. Meanwhile in the lobby, Katy, Craig, and Evan were recapping the dramatic experience with a humorous twist from my acting earlier. I honestly was in complete disbelief on what happened. It was complete bullshit, those fucking bleachers are dangerous. I just wanted to get back to game and felt really horrible that my friends were in the hospital instead of drinking and partying.

So we left the hospital around midnight. I came back to the hotel room, hardly being able to walk from the pain in the ribs along with swollen lips and face. After chopping some stories and laughing back on the experience, I said it fuck it let’s go to a strip club, the night was still young. We caught a cab and went to a Diamond’s Men’s club (free passes) and drank some more beers, my good friend Craig was in town so I felt bad and wanted him to have some fun. The next day I was in severe pain which lasted for about two weeks or so primarily because of my ribs. I had to take antibiotics, painkillers, and use a breathing apparatus so that my lungs do not fill up with liquid. The pain killers were awesome and we had some fun times with them over some red wine and Entourage. They enabled me to sleep like 14 hours a night. For the next month, I took it easy to make sure that I was fully recovered before the big South Beach trip.

You know this was just another wild night out. The year before it was wild too, but no one got hurt. I would have to say that it was definitely a turning point on my heavy drinking experiences, but honestly it was just an unfortunate incident because I didn’t even drink that much, I hardly ate anything that day and it just sneaked up on me. I was very disappointed in myself on allowing this to happen to me and loosing control of the situation. That experience has helped me become more vigilant about drinking nowadays.

Of course, I try to extract positive elements out of every negative situation that happens to me. I survived a near death experience which further goes to prove that I have angels watching over me and that this was just a minor disturbance to the ultimate reach of destiny. The whole time I was in high spirit because the people who really genuinely care about my well-being were there for mental and physical support, and could feel my pain while witnessing such a disturbing incident.

When people close to you feel your pain, they help you ease your own pain. They helped me smile and laugh it out.