what does it all come down to... someone's real tangible life. a life that makes sense in the big schema of things, lived through historical times - Lenin's grandchildren, brainwashed till 11, and how this ideology slowly dissolved, and we started wearing jeans to school, and it wasn't so dangerous anymore to get caught smoking in school backyard, because what was the worst thing they could do to you? call you a public enemy or something?
and I remember the thrill of driving a car at 16. My dad let me take the wheel in a narrow highway where people left their Zhiguli's to wander off into the woods and gather mushrooms early in the morning.
August 26th, 1999 - I remember we gathered mushrooms the day before leaving. And then I moved to America, but it wasn't the kind of shock the previous wave of immigrants had. I wasn't amazed so much at the abundance of choice in consumer products, I was struck by the system itself. From automatically flushing toilet bowls in public restrooms to Ombudsband's office of the University of Texas at Austin - a court of law to protect the rights of students (errrr what?!)

And it wasn't anything global and historical that I could put in a book worth reading, it was just every-day life. Meeting foreign people and wondering how they've survived this far with their philosophy and their well-organized lives.
I got used to rubbery food and demanded excellent customer service. And somewhere in that lulling comfort of american dream I playfully decided to make an adventurous move, just to see what happens if I live in Europe.
London was a neurological surgery. With brain transplants installed in my head, a new conscience, and a new pair of eyes. Three years has passed since and it was strange to see american culture ominously grin at me yesterday in a Tex-Mex joint that just opened in the neighbourhood (run by a Turkish American who spoke perfect Russian). ML was annoyed with the restaurant staff for delaying her meal. She bit every last waiter in the place and firmly insisted on her right to be served immediately, despite whatever cataclysms may occur at a London restaurant on it's 2nd day of opening.

None of this seems global to me. Not global enough to put it in a book worth reading... yet somehow I know there's a deep message in all of this, some sort of driving force that I haven't grasped yet. And maybe some day somebody will take a screenshot of my memory and tie it into a story of the 21 century (that vain desire to leave a footprint :))...
If all goes well, I'll die somewhere in 2070. The new 70ties... a century later. The times of my youth would seem ancient, like black-and-white charlie-chaplin movies - more amusing to me for their primitive technology than their content.
What would be the scares of the new 70ties? Will people be afraid of global freezing and over-production of clones? Will we come up with a fair system to let people live their lives? Or will it become more mandated and supervised? Will the grip tighten? Will there be more world wars? Which side would be safer? Which side stronger? Or will we all blow up tomorrow? And there will be no 70ties... we'll fade into dinosaur age.