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Life Beyond Borders

My wife tells me that I do not see limits the way most people do. Where others see a border, I often see an invitation: a line to cross, a door to open, a question to ask, or a world to enter.

Over the years, that way of seeing has taken me across countries, disciplines, careers, and ideas: from science to software, from engineering to art, from old books and chemistry sets to cloud platforms, artificial intelligence, photography, and painting. Each crossing made my world larger.

But no one crosses borders alone. The places I visited showed me the size and beauty of the world. The people I met helped me understand it. Some taught me, some challenged me, some opened doors, some corrected my words, and some loved me in ways that made everything else possible.

Pasha at Mount Garfield, Colorado, 1993. Pasha at Moscow State University with Lomonosov statue, Russia, 1993. Pasha with bougainvillea, Croatia, 1994. Pasha with Mount Fuji, Japan, 2005. Pasha at the Grand Palace with Yaksha guardian, Bangkok, Thailand, 2005. Pasha at St. Basil's Cathedral, Red Square, Moscow, Russia. Pasha at Victoria Peak overlooking the skyline, Hong Kong, 2009. Pasha at the Pancha Rathas, Mahabalipuram, India, 2009. Pasha meditating before the Singapore skyline, 2010. Pasha at the Reichstag, Berlin, Germany, 2018. Pasha and Olga beneath the Eiffel Tower at night, Paris, France, 2009. Pasha at the Colosseum, Rome, Italy, 2008. Pasha and Olga with Dante's death mask, Florence, Italy, 2008. Pasha with Van Gogh's The Starry Night, MoMA, New York. Pasha and Olga on a black sand beach, Hawaii. Pasha and Olga at Noma restaurant, Copenhagen, Denmark, 2008. Pasha and Olga at Per Se restaurant, New York. Pasha and Olga at The French Laundry, Yountville, California. Pasha and Olga at Manresa restaurant, Los Gatos, California. Pasha at the Leaning Tower of Pisa, Italy, 2008. Pasha at The Bund with Pudong skyline, Shanghai, China, 2015. Pasha on the Shanghai Maglev at 431 km/h, China, 2015. Pasha beneath the Shanghai World Financial Center at night, China, 2015. Pasha at the Roman Aqueduct, Segovia, Spain, 2007. Pasha with Botticelli's The Birth of Venus, Uffizi Gallery, Florence, 2008. Pasha with Taipei 101 at dusk, Taiwan, 2014. Pasha and Olga overlooking Monaco from the hilltop, 2009. Pasha with comedian Don McMillan. Pasha with Van Gogh's Sunflowers, Neue Pinakothek, Munich, 2018. Dima and Pasha at Hofbräuhaus, Munich, Germany, 2018. Pasha and Olga at their own Adaptive Workouts gym. Pasha with Van Gogh's Self-Portrait, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Pasha on a mountain summit with helicopter, Alaska, 2017. Pasha with Space Shuttle Endeavour, California Science Center. Pasha with Soviet Buran space shuttle, VDNKh, Moscow, Russia. Pasha wearing Google Certified Professional Cloud Architect hoodie. Pasha at the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque, Abu Dhabi, 2019. Pasha with Whistler's Mother, Louvre Abu Dhabi, 2019. Pasha at the Burj Al Arab, Dubai, 2019. Pasha at the Burj Khalifa, Dubai, 2019. Pasha at Kinkaku-ji (Golden Pavilion), Kyoto, Japan, 2005. Pasha at Manresa's three Michelin stars plaque, Los Gatos, California, 2018. Pasha sailing under the Sunshine Skyway Bridge, Tampa Bay, Florida. Pasha with his cacti garden, San Carlos, California. Pasha pointing at the old Sun Microsystems sign on the back of the Facebook sign, Menlo Park, California. Pasha with the Statue of Liberty, New York. Pasha and Olga, Connecticut. Pasha at the Bridgewater Associates entrance sign, Connecticut. Pasha at the Musée d'Orsay, Paris, France, 2022. Pasha at Keukenhof tulip gardens, Netherlands, 2022. Pasha with Queen Elizabeth II portrait at British Colonial Currency exhibit. Pasha overlooking Niagara Falls from above, Canada, 1995. Pasha and Olga in formal attire, Toronto, Canada. Pasha with Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird. Pasha on a glacier with helicopter, Alaska, 2017. Pasha and Olga in black tie, Florida. Pasha and Olga in Santorini, Greece, 2023. Lora and Pasha at SpaceX with Falcon 9 booster, Hawthorne, California. Pasha at Google Cloud HQ with circuit board art, Sunnyvale, California. Pasha and Olga at sunrise balloon ride, Serengeti, Tanzania, 2024. Pasha and Olga with helicopter at the Grand Canyon floor, Arizona, 2024. Pasha under the Northern Lights, Yellowknife, Canada, 2025. Pasha and Olga with Blue Mosque at sunset, Istanbul, Turkey, 2025. Pasha at Stephen Hawking's memorial, Westminster Abbey, London, 2025. Pasha at the Rosetta Stone, British Museum, London, 2025. Pasha and Olga at the Basilica Cistern, Istanbul, Turkey, 2025. Pasha at the Temple of Hatshepsut, Luxor, Egypt, 2025. Pasha and Olga at the Pyramids of Giza, Cairo, Egypt, 2025. Pasha and Olga at Abu Simbel, Egypt, 2025. Pasha and Olga in black tie at a NYC wedding, 2025. Pasha at the Treasury, Petra, Jordan, 2025. Pasha with Gutenberg Bible display, Frankfurt, Germany, 2026. Pasha at the Kalyan Minaret, Bukhara, Uzbekistan, 2026. Pasha face-to-face with an alpaca, Sacred Valley, Peru, 2026.


Places & Wonders

These are the countries and places that colored my life — each one adding a memory, a lesson, a flavor, a face, a building, a landscape, or a new way of seeing:

  1. Russia (1971)
  2. Ukraine (1981)
  3. Latvia (1987)
  4. France (1989)
  5. Estonia (1990)
  6. Lithuania (1990)
  7. Ireland (1993)
  8. USA (1993)
  9. Serbia (1994)
  10. Croatia (1994)
  11. Slovenia (1995)
  12. Bosnia and Herzegovina (1995)
  13. Canada (1995)
  14. Dominican Republic (1999)
  15. Mexico (1999)
  16. Cuba (2002)
  17. Barbados (2006)
  18. Japan (2005)
  19. Thailand (2005)
  20. Spain (2007)
  21. Denmark (2008)
  22. Portugal (2009)
  23. England (2008)
  24. Italy (2008)
  25. India (2009)
  26. Monaco (2009)
  27. Hong Kong (2009)
  28. Singapore (2010)
  29. Taiwan (2014)
  30. Austria (2014)
  31. China (2015)
  32. Switzerland (2015)
  33. Germany (2018)
  34. Dubai (2019)
  35. Belgium (2019)
  36. Netherlands (2022)
  37. Israel (2023)
  38. Greece (2023)
  39. Qatar (2024)
  40. Tanzania (2024)
  41. Kenya (2024)
  42. Bahamas (2024)
  43. Fiji (2024)
  44. Turkey (2025)
  45. Egypt (2025)
  46. Jordan (2025)
  47. Costa Rica (2026)
  48. Uzbekistan (2026)
  49. BVI (2026)
  50. Panama (2026)
  51. Peru (2026)


People & Gratitude

I enjoy working with bright people on challenging problems. The people you spend the most time with color the way you see the world. My life would not be the same without their help, influence, friendship, and inspiration of:

  • my mom (for the copper sulfate)
  • my dad (for saving antique books from fire)
  • Fedosiya Vasilievna (for the pancakes)
  • Vladimir Amirkhanian (for my first radio and telescope)
  • Sergey S. Berdonosov (for letting me study with the best)
  • Lena Fisenko (for the Kamasutra)
  • Kutsenok Ilya Borisovich (for the first PC XT)
  • Alexey Vertegel (for teaching me to play chess)
  • Alexey Savchenko (for being a lifelong friend and showing how to live a life to the fullest)
  • Askar Kuchumov (for bringing me to America)
  • Martin Newcomb (for teaching me hard work)
  • Dmitry Blok (for Kruglinski and for helping me become a software engineer)
  • Alanas Petrauskas (for Canada and for the island)
  • Alexey Pogrebtsov (for Bézier functions)
  • Richard Underwood (for the first lessons in software architecture)
  • Peggy O'Neil (for being a human manager)
  • Michael Lenaghan (for teaching me strategy, for showing me the way of Lisp and AI)
  • Wendel Lacombe (for teaching me to work on my career)
  • Vlad Bilousov (for introducing me to Jesus)
  • Dmitri Papichev (for mushroom hunting and sincere friendship)
  • Jason White (for showing me how to fight and win a lawsuit)
  • Grant Ritchie (for teaching me corporate and tax law)
  • Arlen Ritchie (for cognac leather Italian shoes)
  • Mark Evelyn (for sharing my vision and correcting my words)
  • Pulat Yunusov (for being a great engineer and even greater attorney)
  • Katy Wang (for the user interface)
  • Alexey Kasatkin (for teaching me Java)
  • Igor Katkov (for being original and difficult to control)
  • Vitaly Ayzenberg (for being a tennis grand master and a true friend)
  • Kate Ayzenberg (for crepes cooking competition, fishing and bleach)
  • Dennis Tito (for showing me that billionaires are not so different from everyone else)
  • Michael Lenaghan (for the quality of life)
  • Rajesh (Nat) Natarajan (for teaching me leadership and to be patient)
  • Osama Bedier (for having a green thumb)
  • Tim Kimmet (for showing me how it's done)
  • Shahid Khan (for goal setting)
  • Rene Aeberhard (for being an architect of another kind)
  • Josh Walker (for accepting me)
  • Neal Sample (for the Trust Equation)
  • Joel Yarbrough (for being a 110% Wharton graduate)
  • Aron Lee (for helping me start things up)
  • Dmitry Simakov (for choosing your own way)
  • Angela Lai (for being Googley)
  • David Butcher (for being RESTful)
  • Tom Stanis (for teaching me not to ask questions, which have deterministic answers)
  • Lora Simakova (for the world's best hugs)
  • Daniel Issen (for Conway's Law)
  • John Cox (for not doing a single ancestor query and for the reading list)
  • Nikki Simakova (for the unconditional love)
  • John Orr (for the content object models)
  • Denis Baranov (for the house on top of the hill)
  • Alfred Spector (for the append-only file mode)
  • Mike Gainer (for the world peace)
  • Samuel Fleming Lewis and Stephen Kladder (for the interior design)
  • Adam Feldman (for a dual degree and for teaching me how to negotiate win-win)
  • Michael Lenaghan (for the passive and active guidance)
  • Maggie Johnson (for freedom to explore)
  • Peter Norvig (for the telescope and Google's hybrid approach to research)
  • Ujjwal Singh (for the equal opportunity and inclusion)
  • Issa Eshima (for the Renaissance)
  • Randy Kim (for accepting my legal advice)
  • Max Simakov (for bringing back the ball)
  • Iain Grant (for breaking the ceiling)
  • Ray Dalio (for the Principles)
  • Dima Liakh (for <REDACTED>)
  • Jenna Freedberg (for letting me step into the same river twice)
  • Scott Zawalski (for accepting me)
  • Ron Novak (for your service)
  • Jen Novak (for landscape lights)
  • Keith Boreham (for poker lessons)
  • Karen Boreham (for Pavlova)
  • Vic Iglesias (for DevGraph)
  • Carrie Springer (for the Rabbit)
  • Hamza Arain (for soft landing)
  • UpMa (for Cybersecurity)

and hundreds of others.

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