The government, as a rule, discourages specialization: Military officers and diplomats are constantly transferred from one post to another, from one region to the next. Still, specialists do emerge.

Left Bank Astana was beautiful at night, each building, it seemed, with its own nighttime color scheme and the street lamps all going full blast.

While I was in Astana, a ballet master from St. Petersburg's Mariinsky Theatre staged a performance of 'Giselle' in the opera hall. It was one of only a few performances to grace Astana's concert spaces in many weeks, and tickets were impossible to come by.

In truth, I was desperate to leave New York. And Moscow was a special place for me. It was the city where my parents had grown up, where they had met; it was the city where I was born.

I was raised as a Catholic and as an Ismaili. My father felt that I should have some training in Islam, but my mother was a Catholic, so really, I was raised with both.

The idea that I have to be on the same side of the fence as Dan Quayle is cruelly depressing to me, but the truth is, I believe in family values.

I was looking to be in a club where you feel the love, a family where everyone is fighting for the same thing. I'm like that as a person.

It's coaches. It's people that are involved in kids' lives at every level, and it's supporting their parents. Their parents need better jobs. So that they can help them with their homework and don't have to work two jobs.