-I honestly thought there would be less people tonight, 10-15 people would come to listen, but there was such a huge audience. Damn, that’s nice. 25 years ago I sat in one of these auditoriums, went to these laboratory works in the third building and now I walk through the corridors, I do not recognize anything at all, everything is different, everything is at a completely different level: there are no these coffins with such plugs, all fancy computers, laptops. And today I want to tell you about a new concept, which is now being actively promoted around the world, motivated by the fact that the modern man, the man of the XXI century, should not be monofunctional, that is not a knife or a hammer or pliers. The modern man must have many skills, but many opinions and many professions in order to survive in the modern world. It has to do with the fact that there is a lot of competition, the world is changing very fast, it’s changing probably five times faster than when I was in your shoes. And 20 years from now it will change even five times faster, there are many professions, there are many opportunities, old professions are dying and so the main idea of today’s speech is that you will have to learn to become flexible, not to be attached to one skill and be always, look around carefully. That’s why I have such a strange title for this presentation. Now let’s take the remote control. It’s great that today we are meeting in the afternoon, you can’t see anything on the projector, but imagine that here is my mom and dad holding me in their arms, this happened near Odessa, 44 years ago. I was born and spent 12 years there. My father was a serviceman and I passed my first, first educational stage there in the village of Alekseevka. Then my father served, he was transferred to Floresti and I finished school there, it was there that I became acquainted with electronics, I was already interested then. I was in the radio class, I started to solder different circuits, different detectors, and then I heard for the first time about the computers, the concept of personal computer and approximately at this time, it was probably around 88-89, 87 was the Vector-06c, a personal computer that was built I understand, on the functional base of the spectrum ZX, but it was positioned as a Soviet computer and in Chisinau it was produced too. It looked like this. The box and these dirty keys with incomprehensible letters. The information was outputted on the home television and in fact there was a BASIC in programming, in which I began to write programs that were then sold in Chisinau, I earned there, how I earned, the word earned is loud, but there I could buy myself for a week, everyone could eat an ice cream. I was very proud of the fact that I was a programmer and the games were sold on these cassettes. I don’t know, you must know how computers were loaded before, you had a cassette recorder, you played the sound and the sound went into the computer and the program was loaded. If all of a sudden it malfunctioned, it was loaded twice and you sat there waiting for 15-20 minutes for some program to load. If, all of a sudden, some bad film or dust got there, you had to load everything all over again. So, in short, it was a hell, but this thing helped me to orient that, I’m interested in it, I want to do it further. So I decided to go to the Polytechnic Institute. But it seemed to me that the Polytechnic Institute in Chisinau is weak, it’s not my level, I have my scope, so I went to the Bauman College in Odessa. It so happened that I passed all exams, but at the last exam in mathematics I was given a difficult problem and where I thought for a long time, I could not solve it, but at the end I had an insight, I realized the original way I found, I solved it, but when I saw the result it turned out that I was a couple, I started to ask why, he said, well, as a solution is correct and incomprehensible. I say, well, so-and-so so-and-so… They say no, there is a normal way, you have somewhere written off, something fitted. In a word, I did not pass, I did not get in. Parents grabbed their heads, appeals, arguments, nothing helps, all returned to Floresti. And then my relatives, from Orenburg, I have roots in Orenburg, said Dmitriy, we have no connections at the polytechnic in Orenburg, and we can push you into a group of candidates, if there is a group of candidates. I do not know whether we have such groups or not, that is, there is a core group of guys who passed the exams well and a candidate group dummies who well almost passed, but did not pass. So when six months passes and they start throwing out the lazybones who did not study well from the main group, they replenish the main group with candidates for a doctorate. So I got into the master’s program, studied for six months, I was transferred to the main one, and my specialty was, I could not choose what they gave me, I used. it was the power supply of industrial enterprises in the cities, here. There star, triangle, how to haul cables across the country. then i did not leave my cravings for computers, i started to put up a fishing rod in chisinau. Kishinev Polytechnic is not so bad after Orenburg and parents nearby and in 92 year I was transferred to the Polytechnic here. I took the documents from there, came here, submitted it here Thank God I was accepted, I began to study at the Polytechnic Institute, at a specialty. now it is called “computers”, but then it was called that. here I’m so proud to stand that I’m a student of the Polytechnic Institute, I left my parents’ home, I’m a free man. There I lived with my grandmothers, here I lived with my parents, and there I will live by myself and will live in the dormitory. I don’t know about the dorms now, but I have a lot of interesting stories connected to the dorms, a lot of vivid ones. I was not a very authoritative dude at school, to put it mildly. And so the hostel allowed me to build the right social relationships, learn empathy, emotional intelligence, to survive in an environment of others like me, where there is no preference that I have here my mom dad here, all are equal, and need to somehow get out. So the dormitory gave me a lot. Although it was not easy to say that it was easy, because, well, you probably know how the dormitory is arranged. Now maybe a little differently. But then the cockroaches were the norm, no one ran after them, they lived on their own, just tired to beat them, hand from a slipper tired and thought well let them run. I see they are alive, you know, familiar picture. These are my friends, with whom I studied and lived in the dormitory, I wanted to tell an interesting story. How I was taught to play preference. I do not know if it plays now or not. Back then, the Polytechnic Institute, was such a mecca of people who know how to play preference. This is not a bilot, this is not some fool, this is a serious intellectual game – preference, as guys explained to me and that any self-respecting student should learn to play this game. I said great you will teach me. They said that of course we will teach you, but keep in mind that this game is only for money, that is, you can not play it this way, you can not play with matches. I said no problem, let’s. In the end, 2 years of training, I left there 10 scholarships, but only at the end, when I learned to play, it turned out that the guys who played with me, they kind of played with me against me. This money, this money they actually lived on. But when I found out, I realized that I was just undressed, undressed all this time, but I learned to play Preferance, I play it well enough, I can play with some of you. It took me about 15 years to teach my friends to play preference and the money returned to them. I had a problem – the money had to come back, that’s not right. That’s how we are now, sometimes you still meet with them and from Floresti my friends come and we sit down to play preference, because the game is unique, who can not and do not play, be sure to learn. I was so lucky, the stars were aligned, that exactly in my period of study, from ’92 to ’96, at the Polytechnic, the Internet began to come to Moldova. At that time computers were prehistoric, there was no Windows 95, but there was a 311, it was on the floppy disk. And this was one of the first versions of the non-Skype navigation, when we had Windows and we saw the internet. There were 10-15 sites in Moldova at that time. And of course we were amazed that you could do such things, that you could contact anyone in the world. It was fantastic and I remember when I was totally crazy, I realized that the future was here, we had to dig in this direction urgently, because soon it would cover the whole world and I started disappearing to the computer in the classrooms. Of course I didn’t have my own computer, I didn’t even have my own calculator, but I sat in those labs and tried to communicate with them through terminal connections, through text messages, which helped me a lot. In 96 I finished the institute and here it is my group, here we spoke today, I shall tell to you that guys practically nobody remained, all have left unfortunately. Perhaps you, too, in 5 years there will be very few people left here, but I wish it were not so, because in fact, I’m sure that in today’s world it is absolutely not important where you live, you can live in Moldova, you can live in Hollywood, you can live in India. It’s important what you do, the borders are now open and I encourage you to look around and find opportunities to earn money and around the world, but also to live here, because I feel very comfortable living here among my friends, my family, people and nature, I like it very much. I defended my diploma – evaluation of the performance of personal computers based on the Pentium microprocessor, I can say at 3 am the title of the thesis. I thought about how to evaluate it, how to evaluate the performance. I will then do a game Live, if you know such a game. It is about a colony of bacteria that eats each other or give birth to new ones depending on their coordinates and made a big field that would kill the processor, the processor was loaded 100% and you could see who could cope with this population in what time. Well, my teachers remember I do not appreciate, they said, we are going to seriously assess, and you write us a game, it’s not serious. But they gave me some grades, I don’t remember then, but I got a B and the only place where I worked in my life was the company Reval Computer and I was assembling computers there. By that time 96-97, it was the dawn when personal computers came and people assembled them, bought ready-made and I learned then how modern computers were built, those were the first pentiums appeared, the first and we assembled them there. Standing to the left is Alexander Kovalyov, my classmate, or rather classmate, with whom I began to work on the Internet. Well now I want to put this issue of the Internet on pause, because I had an interesting event after the Institute, which has completely changed my fate, but again related to the fact that I was looking around, I became acquainted with new technologies and this technology called computer graphics. you probably now, each of you lies in your pocket device which is a thousand times greater performance than the computer on which I saw the computer graphics. There was a program called 3D Studio – it was a DOS program, not even a Windows program. And when I saw the spinning cube on the screen of the monitor and the man who could spin it with the keyboard, I was blown away. I realized that it’s very, very interesting that you can make 3D models of anything. I got into this thing with computer graphics, Windows 98 came along, and I started doing computer graphics in ’90-’97 or ’98, I did my first commercial, my first commercial of what. There were no orders, there was no market, but I decided to do, let me do it, let me do TV. I lived in Buyukany at the time, and there was an Alpha factory nearby, I was passing by, they were selling TVs on the street like that, they just put out a TV, you could buy them. The plant was falling apart by then. The TV set was called TVT, and I thought, I’ll advertise TVT as a portfolio, I will show everyone, here I know how to do only graphics, order from me. I do not remember how many months I did this reel, I do not know, we can look now or not. and no sound, right? (Video) I do not know if you can see or not, such a simple video, I do not know why this pyramid, I thought it was original then. Believe me at that time it was an absolute bomb, to show it and say that in Moldova it was done, no one would ever believe it. What I did, by that time I came here with a young wife, I rented a room in a studio apartment and I decided that it was necessary to earn a living, but since the Petri nets unfortunately did not give the opportunity to earn, I had to learn a new skill. I made this video, recorded it on VHS to tape and started walking around Chisinau in search of my first client, I had a gray overcoat like this. I remember, it was autumn, it was very cold, I decided that I would start in the center, I would go to all the business centers that are there and I would go into all the offices and propose that look at my video. But then it turned out that not every office had tape recorders, and then it turned out that nobody was interested in computer graphics. But it seemed already on when I passed botanika, buyukany, chekanany, after 2 months I realized that something wrong I was doing. took the tape and went as a job in all the offices and offered. By chance I ran into a company called Sun TV at the TV center. For some reason I did not know about its existence, but when I found out, it turned out that this is a young television, they need a screen saver for computer graphics and when they saw what I was doing, they said here you found what you were looking for, we give you the order and do advertising for us. That’s how my career in computer graphics which later grew into a studio started. I’ll show you what we do. At that stage it was feeding me for about five years, I was just making computer videos at home, 3D graphics, and selling them to various companies of different complexity. At the beginning of the 2000s, I got a client through that, some group called Ozon, I think they called it. They came and said they wanted to make a clip, I didn’t know who Dan Balan was, but some young guys came and said we had to make a clip, we came up with a song, we wanted to make a clip. Clip with 3D graphics, we saw your videos, we liked it, make us computer graphics for our clip. The city of the future is there… I said, come on, but you understand that it will not be cheap, and there is work for two months. – We understand, how much? – $300. They say, we will consult, they consulted and said well, we will not even haggle with you. We were so happy with one guy and in short we had enough for $150 a month, we had enough for dumplings, water and interesting work. And this we did later authomovie how we did. Then we worked with Ozon on four more videos, including dragostea Din Tei. made them three more, but the truth is the budget was still, I did not ask a lot because I understood that I need to do something to be able to declare it later, so this price, it was almost always the cost of the product. It’s now I understand that I asked for 5 times more no one turned me down.And now I have such a paradoxical video, which probably not many people know about. I happened to do it, but now it looks a little strange when you find out what this clip is and who did it, you say, it can’t be. Let’s have a look. (Video). Turn it up. There was one of those. With the broker we have a separate story, this is another can gather the meeting and talk about it but then I had an order, I was offered money and they even knowing what I do then at the very early stage of 999 then, it was a few thousand people a day and so did not pay attention . as for 999, perhaps you wonder how it was as they appeared. We bought the domain in ’99 to do a phone directory there. We used to have a service called 999 where you could call for three nines and the surname will tell you the address, the phone will tell you the address and the address will tell you the phone number. So we decided well what to call, it is easier to go to the Internet, type in the name and see the address. We bought a licensed disc at the bird market, ripped up the database, installed, running, began to advertise 2 days later we got a call saying that they sue. The site suddenly stopped working, all disappeared, all the domains are missing and the site ceased to exist. But the domain remained, it is not a small money, we bought for a few months, $ 60 it cost and so we decided that good things do not disappear, we decided we should use it for something else, which is that by then in parallel with the computer graphics I traded in hardware, resale. I bought Ram memory, motherboards, processors, cases and resold them, so I earned 50 dollars a week to live. But it was very hard to sell that way, so I had the idea to make a place on the Internet where I could sell components more conveniently. And this is my first site that I made even without programming, where I placed my commercials, thus showing that in Moldova there is a studio where you can order advertising. Well, I realized that this is not enough, that I need to make a platform where you can buy and sell all sorts of junk. That’s the friend with whom we started the business, my Sashka, he knew how to program and I knew how to do a little bit of design and so we decided to try to do this forefather of 999, Gsm.md, a site where you can buy, sell cell phones, there’s buying and selling, it grew out of there. You see, this is a unique site, take a look at this screenshot. I’m looking at it now and understand what came out of it. You see here is Gsm.md, the news is point.md, phones is buy sell 999 and forum is forum, that is the main site from which everything started, everything started with this and every year the section has turned into a big portal in the future. And here it is first site that we have made, it was called 999, you have already understood why, not to lose the domain, not to buy a new one, we have already put this one. We had very little traffic, we started with 20-30 visits a day, then we had 100-200 and in 2000 we launched the 999 and there was no profit, we were only investing in programmers and design. We were dissuaded by many, they said, but it is nonsense, guys do not go, who needs it. The Internet is a toy for the rich. Well, we went on to develop it, to make it, we even had a competitor, a bird, such a site. I don’t think anyone knows it or remembers it. It slowly faded into oblivion, 999 remained. The broker did not pay attention to us at all. Of course at the time it was childish pranks sell no way. If earlier I administered myself 999, now literally here last month to me has called old my friend, says Dima ad says put, take away, to me now it in the hell is not necessary. I say what? – To find 999. – How to find you, how do I know how? This ad. There are 50 moderators sitting there, call the support. – Can’t you already? – Not anymore, I don’t control the business enough to remove the ad . This is our first office, because we decided to start a company. Because we already had a lot more people, there were three of us. There were three of them, the staff grew by half and we had to put people somewhere, and the programmers were motivated not by the salary, we promised them that they also studied, we promised them that we would give them bunk and food, for a month you just live here and eat, because you make a great product, we had no money and the money that we earned on computer graphics on advertising, I gave to production and five years of computer graphics fed our undertakings. I can tell you a lot about this road, difficult, with obstacles, if you are interested, just ask questions, I will tell you what was happening from 2002 to 2019. What twists and turns happened, but that may not be important now, because I’d like to tell you a little bit about something else. I’ll show you. Look at this. Here’s a crowd for example , Here and here’s a 15 years difference between them how to do it, we were helped by the versatility of our company, because we have about 35 projects that we do now, completely different, from planting trees to vr products for animation. Yeah, 80% of them don’t make any money, 20% of them cover those and give us a chance to do new ones. These are the projects that we’re doing now, actively, you probably know many of them. Yeah here are the first ones for sure, here are these oldies, I would have put and these corpses, graveyards, you know, which. here yes. md you know probably , maybe college , immobil. I mean I put everything that was there because we have a lot of dead. We have a whole rip where we have projects that didn’t work out and that we safely buried. Well it is also absolutely normal and do not be afraid to do some things that you think, but they may not go do and leave, but it did not work out and God be with them. Take them and make new ones. There is no sense in doing one thing for ages. Our business is built on the Turkish model, you know, you do not know. In business, you have to get a product to market as quickly as possible, raw, crooked, with bugs. It doesn’t matter, because if you don’t put a product on the market, you’re still going to fix it. You’re still going to do it, you’re still going to patch it, time after time, but it’s better to go out first, right away, and then you’re going to fix it. Here I wanted to tell you in two words about our studio. We’re not going to see anything here, literally, on April 1st as usual on April 1st every year we’re releasing announcements, making announcements about what we’ve done over the last year. This April 1 we will show our new project, it’s called Arip – Wings. It is an animated film in a virtual reality, that is, with glasses, that is, an animated film which we did 3 years and now it is at the level of the world made and in Eastern Europe similar has not made, neither in Russia, nor in the Balkans what an animated film yet, unfortunately now I cannot show you because firstly need glasses, I have no glasses with me, but April 12 – day of astronautics we will make and any of you who will come to us in studio, I am ready to everyone put on glasses and show what it is. These are our awards that we got for cartoons, lots of them. I’m just bragging now. And the pictures. When I came in, I said, here’s my first presentation, where I’m not going to talk about sports, sports, what the guys from Polytechnic need, they need specific applied knowledge, what the hell are we going to do. Here we are now learning what we don’t need. Show us where to go? Why all of this? Because it’s a little off the beaten track. It’s more what we don’t need to do. But when I came here, the guys who invited me said, Dmitri Sergeyevich, we’re waiting. I promised, we need to tell, we need to show. I just recently told so much about sports, so many motivational speeches, and about how in Oymyakon I ran, how I broke my legs, but I’m ready, if you are interested, I will finish my main presentation and then if it is interesting I will tell you without problems, because I summed up as if the main presentation about the garage, about our laboratory, where we create new products. Recently I begin to understand that our 999 – is not the engine which will always bring money. I understand that with the lapse of time audience will become less and people will start to buy – sell in social networks and for sure in 10-15 years there will be no 999, probably they will not exist at all. But since business is big and dragging it out ahead of time. I’m actively searching for new opportunities for growth and I’m now convinced that the opportunities for growth are in the sales of devices which are created here in Moldova by our specialists and so we created the first device, a piece of lead, which we sell worldwide and which is a profitable and successful project. Now we are working on an old one. Well, as for the first, I’m a freediver myself, I do freediving, this diving underwater on a breath hold and noticed that even the world champions swim, hang on the neck, priprytivayut themselves simply tires with lead shot, not to pop up. it looks creepy honestly. How Normal, you didn’t see Yeah well, you didn’t hold one. Have you ever held a Lobster in your hands? I came up with this thing that looks like a million dollars and lets you customize the weight, so you can adjust how deep you want to sink. I’m going to show you a video. ( Video) You can’t see anything that shows . Yes it’s just a black lobster on a black background, so it’s unlikely you’ll see something. In short, this thing went very well, they started buying it, they started buying world champions and they started setting world records in Moldovan lobster, which is made in our factory. It was very nice, but we have to develop this success, and the freediving market is very small, very narrow, and we wanted to reach a wider mass market, to sell not just 100 pieces a month, but 1000 pieces a month, for example. To do this you have to produce products that are needed by a wider range of consumers. so sonar came along. Unfortunately it is not visible again but I will probably post the presentation somewhere so that it could be distributed and people could download it later. In 2 words sonar is a radio for communication between the coach and the swimmer during training. The problem is that when the swimmer is swimming, he can not hear the comments of the coach on technique and therefore can not correct in time, that is, he swam, and they say that here at 15 meters, his arm is not as inserted. So he says, “OK, why didn’t you say so? – Here I was yelling at you, you did not hear, because his ears are in the water. We invented a walkie-talkie, which allows the coach to talk to a person who is swimming underwater, that is, an underwater walkie-talkie, which allows sound to pass through the water column. Its peculiarity is that the receiver is not the headphones and headphones are not put on your ears is such a disc, which is inserted under the rubber cap and through bone conduction transmits sound directly to the head, that is, you can hear the sound inside yourself, while your ears remain free. Yes I mean the paradox is that you don’t even have to do stereo. So you can hear the sound, you hear it, you don’t think about mono or stereo, you just hear the sound in your head. It’s very cool , we’re literally going to have prototype testing tomorrow. We’ve already had a test, it was a disc with wires and a receiver unit, it was all attached to the head, it looked creepy. Tomorrow, the guys have promised me a bloody nose that they will bring already, now show what a thing, ready fully autonomous drive, which can be put under the cap. Here is a little video of how we work, work on it in our garage. It’s probably more than half a year and faced with a lot of difficulties, with a lot of problems because in Moldova we have not adapted a little infrastructure to this, neither for the production of printed circuit boards, nor for the right devices. It is very difficult to find electronic devices, you have to order them and the biggest problem is that there are no specialists. Perhaps there are, but we can’t find them. We need electronics specialists, we need people who can program microcontrollers and hold a soldering iron, but we need more programmers. I’m sort of complaining that I don’t have enough programmers for 999 is bullshit, there are programmers, they are just expensive. Well, it doesn’t matter how much these specialists cost, they’re just not there. It’s just considered that this profession is old, it’s dying out, why do you need a soldering iron? We live in a modern world, but in fact I believe in these guys, because times come when programming alone is not enough, because you definitely need an iron, which you have to program, you need one and two, and we have lots of ideas, I’m sure you have ideas and I see this as the future of my company and maybe you too. Before the questions, I want to show you a video clip, I don’t know I showed you where we’re standing together with Sashka with a trash can. And this is a video about our move to a new office, at the same time look at how it looks like and maybe I would be happy to accept. Thanks .Well you understand that these are commercials, that it’s not always so fun and joyful and incendiary, that there are weekdays when it happens, but really what I want to say with my presentation, look around there are plenty of opportunities and every day there are more and more. Don’t be afraid to learn some multiple things at once. Try 1 2 3 5 it is very important in today’s world to try and be able to do as much as possible. Don’t be afraid to spread yourself out if they used to say don’t spread yourself out will be single-processor, be single-tasking. Now it’s vice versa, you have to be atomized, you have to look right and left, because life is very, very fickle. Civilization moves very fast. Thank you. I’m waiting for a lot of questions.
The IRS? Well, how do we pay taxes, we work completely white collar. No, thank God we are allowed to work, no one bothers us. To tell the truth, that someone helped us, but we don’t count on government help. We just don’t want to get in the way. We have hr department here, if anyone is interested in taking part in some startup creation process, I’d be glad to consider every candidate. What’s more I think we together with polytechnics, will make some class, where we will teach all stages of startup creation – from ideas, sketches, design, prototyping, and up to how to enter the market, earn money or find grants. It’s very interesting. It seems to me this is the best way and it was checked, that you can enter the startups and earn money on them, moreover for us people from Polytechnic Institute it was a must, we are not economists, we know how to create products – that’s the most important thing. Now in the world there is a terrible lack of the realized ideas, very much speak, but really very little that occurs. And every second economist and lawyer, that’s why it’s important to do. You know pre-seed and investment in start-ups. The pre-seeds are when you go to a sponsor with an idea and say, I’ve invented a device for communications under water. They say, is there anything else? You say no, but it will look like this. – Do you have a team? – Not yet. – Business plan? – No. – All right, I’ll give you $1,000 for 90% of the company, you say, well, it’s better than nothing. Let’s do it. Once you create a prototype, when you come in and show how it works. They tell you: OK , I’ll give you $100,000 for 20% of my company. And when you go to him and say here’s a device, now I’ve launched it on the market and I can’t just make them in batches, I need investment to expand production. They say to you: ok, a million dollars for 10% or 5% of the company. So you have to move from words to deeds and try to create something with your own hands, don’t be afraid of it. I want to go to your canteen, I haven’t been for a long time. I’m listening.
-Why isn’t the 999 sorted by price?
-I’ll tell you why. People often ask me why 999 is so weird, why I can’t sort to the cheapest the most expensive. Is that what you mean? Because if you put it that way, people will stop updating their listings. You put the most expensive car and it’s always at the top. Now sorting is by time, you put it up, it goes down, you want to go up, put more money in, it goes up. That’s the basic model of making 999 money. If we gave it up, you probably wouldn’t be interested in talking to me. There would be no lobster, no sonar, nothing, no oymyacon included.
-Can I tell you about your athletic part?
– Can all started 7 years ago, when I realized myself as an entrepreneur, as a creator. I already have as a director normal and in business everything is normal and but I had a very sad? Because I did not understand what to do next, because it’s like all the stages are passed, no idea where to go. I was terribly depressed. I was drinking, I was a fat, ugly man, I have great photos, unfortunately, I do not have them with me, but I did not understand what to do next. And one fine evening I was sent a link to how one office man did an Ironman distance run there swam 4 km ran 180 on a bike and then ran 42. All in one day, called Ironman. I could not believe how a man from the office mold has turned into an Ironman, I started reading and found out that turns out it is a trend around the world, managers especially managers who have free time and some money are starting to do triathlons and do such amazing things. I sat up all night and searched, the next morning I went to look for sneakers and it happened. I just blew my mind, I realized that this is what I have to do now, this will save me, because I began to sink into the abyss of disease, hypertension, drinking, horror just. and all cut off, all I had a sport, I should say better to drink and smoke, as in the song sings, because with me to talk about nothing was impossible. It was only sports, sneakers, workouts, trips, competitions and the family went into the background, work went into the background, friends into 3 and only those friends who were with me in the subject, who ran, all the rest to the side. And that’s the vacuum I had for 3-4 years, I wrote a lot of reports, I participated in marathons, ultramarathons, I did first a half, then a full Ironman, then ran ultramarathons in South Africa, then swam across Gibraltar. In short, I was totally spitballed. I understand now that I was flustered, at the time I thought it was okay, just a new interest. I almost divorced my wife because of it, because she said, I see you 2-3 months a year, the rest of the time you’re running around the world like a madman. And when you come, you talk about your plans for the next six months when you will run . The kids suffered from this too, and now, now I tell you everything, because before I did not see it all . It’s only now when I start to let go a little, I’m starting to do consciously with the family, take them with them, with the little I do, I begin to understand that such a passion is dangerous, that I do not call you not to do sports, you do, burn you make the same mistakes, But thanks to sports, again, of those areas why it is worth doing everything appeared lobster, sonar appeared, there were a few more ideas, a sportsman who organizes the Chisinau marathon and 12 other events, phosphorus appeared, that is, it’s like, a tree that grows. And now, last year, I had a year, I ran the marathon at the North Pole. I came second, I was in a good shape, and then I had an idea about Oymyakon. I knew that this is the coldest place in our hemisphere, the coldest temperature is only in Antarctica in winter. And you know about motivation, when you earn 1000 lei a month, you want to earn 2, if you earn 2 you want 5, and so on. Like in sports, when you ran a marathon, you want 50 km, then 100-150, then you want to run in the heat, then in the cold, then to crawl without legs, on your teeth without hands, all that stuff to show yourself that you are growing. Thus appeared Oymyakon and I decided to run in the coldest place ultra marathon, in general I wanted 42 km and the temperature at least -50. But I lacked motivation honestly, I mean, I was already tired a little from sports, I thought, well, yes I will go and run, but the desire of such a bright was not. I did not understand what was going on, why it was so. Until I got acquainted with a girl whom we at the end of November is a charity run which organizes and collects money for her, collect money for the treatment of a child. This year there was Eva written, I met her, I was so surprised. The child has cerebral palsy, but she walks, tries to dress herself, eats by herself and I was so inspired that I said I wanted to go and help raise money for her treatment. Especially she is not a case where everything is over and she will be like that till the end of her life, she can be lifted, she can be cured, she has this shape and she just needs money, so there was a campaign Unfrozen, I wrote a story about it, that she is a girl frozen by the evil spirit of cold – Ulutai – this is Yakut mythology, we should go there and give the warmth back to the child. So we started to get ready and went with the guys to Oymyakon in early January to get to the most, most severe frosts. I will literally tomorrow publish the first part of the story, there will be three parts of this journey in total. Tomorrow will be the first, I can tell in 2 words about the trip from Chisinau to Tomtor and the life and life of those people who live there. We were going, we arrived in Yakutia, we flew to Yakutsk early in the morning and immediately wanted to go to Oymyakon, then the thermometers said that now there is a wave of cold weather and we must go now, in two days there is nothing to do, it will get warmer up to -48, it’s not a serious temperature. That’s why they broke in, and the universe was whispering, calm down, everything will be fine, but I did not listen to her and in vain. I’ve been playing lately, little time, recently I pay attention to the whispers of the universe, the voices, not that I have voices in my head, but the signs that gives me the universe they give everyone, we just do not pay attention to them, but you often push to something or from something to the contrary repels, it is 900 km on the road less traveled. We were going there 21:00 by car, we were caught once, a tire blew out at night. You know, 50 degree frost, you get a flat tire on the desert road and when you get a car that runs out of gas everything is dead and the driver wasn’t talking to us for a while, two hours till he changed the wheel, it was deflated and he was totally silent, tense and ignored all the questions until we got to the station and changed it then we ran into a frozen river that got out of its banks. They had lots of warm springs there, overflowed the road and the cars that tried to go over, they fell through the ice and immediately froze, so everyone was waiting until the ice froze and some were already standing for 12:00 hours, standing until they ran out of gas and people just got into cars that were just standing right behind. We stood there for several hours, too, as a result of the road through the woods dragged these cars, but for the locals, it is absolutely normal. Here’s such a road, as we have to go I do not know in Balti from here, they have such a road. When we arrived, I saw that the temperature was dropping, or rather getting warmer, it was already 52 degrees and I decided to run straight to the next day, although we didn’t sleep that night. We understood that I understood that it would be good to get a good night’s sleep before this race, when you are so prepared for it and you should be full of energy, but I could not sleep, I tossed and turned over and at 5 am when I woke up, we went out and came all. And when I said that one car door would not close, again I was told, no wait, slow down. I still stubbornly, no 2, let’s go in one car, we all get there, I’m running. And then my friend, with whom I arrived, comes up to me and says the thermometer is 49. I say, everything is clear, let’s breathe out, relax, we could have run at 49, but I realized that so many signs, it can’t just go further some asshole and really it would be, because I did not know the features of equipment and which I learned a little later. I did a simple workout and just ran 10 km and froze my elbows off. Why elbows? I mean, you must have studied physics, right? Why do you think my elbows were the coldest? I was dressed the same everywhere, but my elbows were the coldest? That’s right, my elbow, if I, when I run, my leg unclenches, clenches, my elbow is always bent and there’s no air. So it’s part of my… what protects me from the cold? The air layer. No fur, no down, no super material.Air is the best insulator from the cold. Here there was no air and I came running and my arms could barely bend from pain, if I ran in this outfit for 50 km, I would have definitely finished badly, my arms would have definitely fallen off. Made here out of socks, sewn pockets and put chemical insulators that go into the mittens and when I ran the final race, I had warm things that did not let my elbows cool down. Such nuances you do not understand until you run at least a training session and thank God that I had the opportunity. And the next day we decided everything We are waiting for heat, gone cold and we decided to hang out for a while in that area to acclimatize, see how people live. was an interesting incident when we went to get vodka, you do not need to tell but went for vodka in the store at 11:00 am and we were told to understand the store – is such a store, a shed, covered with snow, the door opens with creaking, standing woman in aprons, behind the shelves, and the shelves of compote. as in the Soviet Union. I asked the lady for a bottle of vodka. She says come at 12 a.m. And I say why? – We don’t sell vodka before 12 am. In Yakutia there is a feature that they get drunk very quickly, they have some kind of a problem with their enzymes, they take care of their nation and don’t sell vodka before 12 am. I say we’re foreigners, we’re allowed. We are not from around here. He asks me where are we from? -We are from Moldova. – Poor souls. I was stunned, a woman at the edge of the world in a sundress, with no fruit or vegetables, no bread or meat, at the end of the earth… – What makes you think we are poor? – They say on TV that things are bad there. I said: Grapes grow in our streets, we have heat, we have more opportunities, we live in Europe, we have a stock of whatever products you want. We told her everything, she understood that Moldova is not so bad, and he may also come to visit us, and you know how they drink vodka, it’s fantastic. I don’t drink vodka at all, I’m more of a wine drinker. But you come there, you drink that vodka and it’s fine, you don’t fall under the table. If I drink 100 grams here, I feel sick. I don’t know what it has to do with, maybe it’s the atmosphere, the temperature regime or some kind of diluted vodka they have. And this is the only way it happens, the bottle must always be on the table. They eat mostly meat, not mostly, but only stroganina, do you know what stroganina is? They, mostly hunters live there and they hunt and fish, every family has a gun and a net. The father catches some fish, throws it out into the street, it lays there for half an hour, then loads it into a bag and puts it in the pre-bathroom where it is -20° warm. When children come to them and say, “We want to eat,” he says, “They take a lot of fish with them, take a knife, cut the fish, dipped it in salt, and the children are fed. But with us it’s like, you have to cook soup, borscht, vegetables-fruits, shit. Everything is much easier for them. We went fishing, fell through the ice, met Genghis Khan. We had a lot of adventures: steamed in the bath, played Yakut preference, I’ve taught my own, I say. I say, let’s play preference, they say okay Let’s teach us. But it’s played for money. They say, no, we’re friends, we won’t play for money. Let’s do it this way, one whiz-one second in the frosty underpants. In the end stood for 3 – 4 minutes, came out with a stopwatch, who lost stood in the cold. If you are interested in sports, I’ve decided for myself that it’s very important to experience pain in life, that is, to suffer very important, because pain is the shortest way to progress. Discomfort – the more discomfort, the faster you progress, the faster you grow, the more confidence you have in yourself. Your self-confidence grows. And self-confidence allows you to take the edge off and believe that you can do anything. And as you believe in it you start to really do everything. So it’s very important to develop confidence in yourself, in your abilities. This way of pain is the shortest. I was asked, why do you suffer so much, what do you do it for, and often I can’t answer that. Just last year I began to understand what it gives me, it gives me confidence in my abilities. If I run 40, then I can run 100, if I can do 100, then I can do 200. The same thing with all the projects that you do, step by step, you realize that you can do more, more, more. So not dreaming, but just taking it and doing it and it’s very good. Did I answer the question? That was the longest answer to a short question . But in fact I can have a separate meeting about the sport, talk I do not know for 3-4 hours without stopping, because I have every trip , every competition on the website Voloshin. md, where you can read. I do not think that I write because I like to write. I write because I have a very bad memory. I just write it down so I can read it later. If I don’t write it down, I won’t remember anything. So I confused you a little bit. We were talking about one thing, and then we switched to sports. So, friends, I will not torture you, who wants to come up to me after, we can chat. All thank you very much!
