1993. I finished the university and entered the graduate school in the specialty "Magnetic Hydrodynamics". The prospect was paid quite clearly - daily trips to the laboratory, endless experiments, magnetic fluid test tubes, long tea drinking with colleagues, in an optimistic forecast - assistant to the department and dissertation in five years. Thanks to the parties of the institutional hierarchy instead of its intelligent chief, a world-famous scientist, I would be subject to the dean. He possessed a remarkably red face, Belarusian talking and hardly read Feynman lectures or at least Landau with Lifshitz. Even the possible internship in France did not particularly clarify the picture. I wanted something else. I worked on the lessons of the Russian language for the flying Koreans, and my young husband Andrei, the same unrealized graduate student, worked as a vertellor in one of the first private printing houses. My crazy financial ambitions at that time consisted, not counting the removal of the apartment, in the summer journey to Gelendzhik with tents, denim jacket and regular fruit purchases for the child. For some reason I remember the pride with which I asked the saleswoman on a tray to weigh the cherry or grapes. It seemed unthinkable luxury.
Our life has changed a major order, for which Andrei was formed as a private entrepreneur, and after six months he registered our first company in partnership with a designer, Andrei Colleague former. The company exists to this day with the joyful name "Color World", having survived the rapid growth and fall and passing together with the native country through all crises and tests of the latter × 20 years. I remember how we ride the April Day we sat on the benches in the Executive Committee of the Moscow District of Minsk and kept constituent documents printed on the inkjet printer. Andrei became director, I am an accountant, the standard of those times.
The first computers Mac ... Remember whether you remember their time as I remember? .. Our copy was called LC or, as it was affectionately nicknamed "apple" fans, "Elsushka". He came under his hands in office cabinets not so long ago, but served us faithfully for many years. He was purchased for the money unwanted in 1993 - something like three and a half thousand dollars - and for some time we stood in a removable apartment, along with the laser (!) The printer doubles its market value. By the way, the printer printed on conscience more than five years ago ...
We then lived in a studio apartment with a huge kitchen. Our friends were hanging in the kitchen for days and nights, periodically falling asleep at the kitchen sofa, and a red-haired son in the company "Elsushki" died in the room. The situation was in the spirit of minimalism - a writing desk, a shelf with books, packing baffles, a wardrobe and a cot. To work at a computer, sometimes it was necessary to remove someone from the friends of a stool and carry it into the room. Friends were not offended and arranged on the floor, without interrupting conversations, songs, games in Bridge, or what else we did there.
But over time, they still removed the office, they were leased to Romayor's old printing machine and began a business in an adult. Then everyone did everything in a row. We were also treated in addition to printed-advertising activity to get only in the trade in French perfume. In the ascetic × 90s, we realized the dream of a simple Belarusian woman about the French perfume, delivering in the city shops a small party cheap, but real French spirits. Certificates of origin attached. Perfumes diverged at the "Hurray", half of the parties of the saleswomen disassembled, not denial to the push. We have brought contacts in all major stores of the city and learned to make the overhead on the computer. Hands and legs lacked to bypass all the shops and make goods. They took the assistant my cousin-student - first office staff. New 1995 We met with Sangriya from the currency store in the basement of our building, exactly opposite the printing house ($ 2.5 for 1.5 liters, I remember as now), I bought myself a woolen Italian dress of incredible beauty, pink with gray, top letter, The bottom of the checkered globe, we arranged at the work of the cheerful feast. All were full of enthusiasm and the most rainbow plans for the future.
There were ups and failures, working conflicts and terrible checks, divorces with founders and crises of personal relationships. If someone showed me in that distant new year, a picture of me in 10, 15, 20 years old, I would most likely not believed. But this is completely different stories ...