Well, ladies and gentlemen, and everyone who doesn't fit into the above categories. In 12 hours, my butt should be pressed into an airplane seat, flying at 800 km/h across the ocean. The last week in New York was very intense. I had to rock out at Madison, finish work (though it would have been better to just blow it off), buy souvenirs for everyone, and most importantly – pack my stuff. There were no problems with the first part. I arrived right at opening, since I had a seat, there was no need to rush. Entering the hall, the first thing I remembered was the Olympic Stadium 7/06/2007, Linkin Park, a huge hall... yeah, nostalgia, in short. So I sat down and looked – there was no one there at all. Not even half the hall. And 5 minutes after I sat down, Mastodon started performing. Cool guys, by the way. Then men with beer on their heads started walking all over the hall O_o. And since I wasn't busy headbanging near the stage, I thought I'd sit, drink some beer, and listen to good music. It seems to me that they make more money from beer than from tickets – 8.25 bucks for a 0.5 glass, crazy. Honestly, there's a certain charm to it, just sitting, drinking beer, and listening to music... but not at Deftones. I should have been there, bringing pain and destruction xDDDD. How Chino Moreno lost weight and how he jumped on stage... apparently, after his coma, he realized that every concert needs to be rocked like it's the last one. Just indescribable. They played almost everything I wanted to hear. It was unreal. Well, there's always a long break before the headliners come out. To keep from getting bored, I went running all over Madison. It turns out I had really relatively good seats. Even at Deftones, I saw that there wasn't room to swing a cat in the hall – the whole Madison was packed, and Alice in Chains hadn't even come out yet, but the whole hall was already standing. The quality of delivery and performance was top-notch. When the curtain fell and they started playing, I unexpectedly realized that I've been listening to them casually since I was 3 – one of the songs from the DooM I soundtrack is their song O_o. At the end, the crowd got so nervous that they started smoking right in the hall. I went up to the very top, found the most nervous ones, and stood behind them, like I just stood up to get some air xDDDD. Man in the Box was played brilliantly! And overall, the whole concert was grand.

At home, I was met with the absence of the landlady, which was undoubtedly a reason to turn the laptop into a Playstation, hooking one end to the TV, the other to the joystick, and finishing Resident Evil 3 over beer and chips. But besides all this fun, work was hanging over me that I needed to finish. A film that the boss "shot" while traveling around America. 8.5 hours of footage, shot vertically on an iPhone, in places with cut-off sound and a 10-minute view of EACH landscape. I had to choose the best and most interesting shots from this junk, rotate each file 90 degrees, insert photos, music, etc. With great difficulty, I finished it on the last day before leaving, but the process itself was very dull.

Work prevented me from spending the last days carefree. That's why I didn't make it to the Statue of Liberty, the Metropolitan Museum, and somewhere else I wanted to go. I just ran around Manhattan and picked up souvenirs for everyone. This is my favorite activity, buying souvenirs for everyone, and when there's more or less money, not skimping, with a grand scale, but with the knowledge that at the airport they don't take souvenirs for excess weight. Besides everything, the post office was annoying with its slow delivery of what was supposed to arrive in the last days from eBay. I waited for everything except the headphones. The Chinese are veeeery slow in terms of delivery. I had to leave 20 bucks to Roma and ask him to send them to my home when they arrive. I bought some of the souvenirs and the biggest bag I've ever had in Chinatown. It's an attraction. There are really very cheap things there, although mostly the prices are the same as on Times Square. But the bag, almost my height, huge, cost me only $35. While walking, I found a shop that has everything for martial arts. Swords, katanas, masks, posters with Bruce Lee, 10 years ago I dreamed of getting to such a place. Dragons are running through the streets, some kind of food-related festival was also taking place there. In general, there is something to see there. When I started packing my junk, I just sat down. First, at the CIEE they told us that you can bring 50kg in and out of the USA. In reality, it turned out to be 50 pounds, which is 23 kg. In the end, remembering combinatorics, I packed everything as practically as possible. Two bags of 25 and 18 kg and 2 of 5 kg in carry-on luggage. I had to pay another $50 for the second bag in checked luggage, but to be honest, if they wanted to nitpick, they could have ripped off another $100. Apparently, my last name continues to help me. When all this is hanging on me at the same time, I feel like an Egyptian slave pulling stone blocks to build another pyramid. In Moscow, I will drop some, but not much. And how to drag this into the subway through a hundred thousand people, in short, fun is ahead.

And already sitting at the airport, an hour and a half before departure, I want to summarize a little. America is a country of contrasts. The most contrasting city is New York. Here you can see the incompatible, there is a charm in this. Different people, a different mentality. On the one hand, it's a pity that it didn't work out to spend this summer as it should look in the original, but such a story definitely hasn't happened to anyone else. The biggest luggage I'm carrying is experience. The experience of living in the capital of the world, a hard life. There are plans to return here, but with more grandiose intentions. When there are acquaintances, connections, and most importantly, knowledge of how everything works here, it is much easier. There are all the possibilities here for anything. I just saw them, I hope that someday I will be able to use them. With that, I'll take my leave, the captain is tired, it's time for the captain to go home.