The Last Tongues So Far

This is the end of the 3 parts on the different languages I have learned over the years. A lot of people in New Zealand are bilingual, but I think I can almost claim to be a polyglot, with around 9 languages that I have studied over the years, although I can’t say I am fluent in most of them.

The first languages were Dutch, English, German, French, Latin, Hebrew, and Spanish. Then came Japanese. By my count that makes 8 languages. I also kept up with some of them using the Duolingo app, which I highly recommend. Actually they randomly chased me today to beat my record of 32 days study in a row. I wish Duolingo had been around earlier. It would have complemented my studies at night school, although doing it in a group is more fun, and of course you learn a lot more about the cultures that go with them and meet interesting people.

When I was a kid, we had a family friend called Sergei. He was a Russian with a deep voice. It reminded me of Ivan Rebroff, a singer whose records my parents often played. I think my parents met him through the folk club we belonged to. He and his family often came to visit us and make music together. If you have heard Russian music you have probably heard the catchy sound of Kalinka. Kalinka describes a ‘snowball tree’, and the song is about a happy man enjoying the countryside and the beautiful girl he hopes will fall in love with him.

A song I liked, was Kretchma (see below) which I think may have been made famous by Theodore Bikel, born in Austria, with parents from Bukovina, one of the areas that at various times was part of Russia/Ukraine. He became famous for his part in Fiddler on the Roof, and most of his music was in Hebrew.

I liked this song, which I often heard on my parents record player. I knew it as “When you hear Russian Music do you Suffer?

Over the years, I have worked and associated with some very nice Russian people, especially in the area of wireless and mobile applications.

In 1998 I read a story about a solo sailor in the Around Alone yacht race around the world who had to operate on himself while miles from anywhere at sea. His name was Victor Yazykov. I was impressed and as a fan of yachting, I made contact with him by email. We became friends and had regular contact for a year or so.

When he came into Auckland, he arranged for some Russian locals, who were also following his progress, to invite me out on one of their impressive launches to go and meet him as he sailed into Auckland.

So about 3 in the morning my younger daughter and I left to meet these kind people at a marina, and we went out into the Waitemata Harbour and cheered him on, as he arrived into Auckland.

I was in the telecommunications industry and was able to arrange sponsors to help him with a free mobile phone and other things, and became friends with Viktor and his wife Lludmilla, who arrived soon after, by plane. He spoke good English, but also taught me some Russian. He had some fascinating stories, including having helped in the cleanup of Chernobyl, when he was a Russian commando. He also introduced me to a type of Russian green tea which he used to help him stay awake when he was on watch at sea, as it had high levels of caffeine, and left me some for my own use, as Lludmilla was able to stock him up again ready for the next leg of racing.

Share

One day, probably around 20 years ago, a friend that I had known for probably 20 years already came to me with a proposal. “You have a lot of experience and success in international marketing and innovation”. He said. He went on to tell me that he had spent the best part of a year researching a huge international business opportunity that nobody else seemed to have thought of.

Now I had a few small successes as a business owner, but they were small. The last one at the time was a consultancy in wireless and mobile computing, which had started with a huge mailing list for a blog, and grew into a successful business which I eventually sold to a national telecommunications company, which had big ambitions and wanted me to join them, which I did. That’s a different story I will get to one day.

My company was called Mission Control and the new owner didn’t want the name. I’m kind of sad to say I gave the name and the URL away to an advertising company. Big mistake in hindsight. You don’t get many chances to own a cool web site name. But I digress.

I was a bit dubious, but he was an old friend so I asked him to tell me about it. He said, “I can’t tell you anything unless you sign my Non-Disclosure Agreement.” I was perturbed, to be fair, that an old friend didn’t trust me enough to just tell me about it. But he was insistent.

So eventually he came to me with an NDA that was about 42 pages long and had been put together by a Queen’s Counsel! It was going to take me forever just to get my head around the document!

I did sign the NDA, but given more than 20 years has passed, I think I can share a tiny bit about the concept, without divulging names or significant details.

The concept was huge and he gave me his notes to read, which was 10 times the size of the NDA, full of technical notes, newspaper clippings, financials and took me a couple of months to get through. He said he needed someone good in international business, as well as languages.

I remained dubious, because this was the biggest HAG I had ever seen, and it had some fatal flaws which remained fatal, but with his urging, I kept an open mind.

The concept was to somehow acquire a redundant Russian submarine and turn it into an underwater cruise ship with cameras all around it, so that people could enjoy underwater eco-tourism, being able to explore the world under the surface of the sea.

He said there were many Russian navy subs that were redundant, but could be safely converted into non-military craft. We could buy one cheap, because they would otherwise be converted into scrap metal and anything military or considered secret would have been removed.

This was a crazy idea. Neither of us had any significant money to invest, but he was confident we could find investors. But we would have to go to Russia and do a lot more research and complete a business and investment plan to a very high level of detail before we could even tell anyone what we were up to, let alone find investors!

My first reaction was, “why would anyone in Russia even meet with us, or entertain such an audacious idea.” I was actually worried about our safety, let alone any credibility.

Well the first thing was, if we were going to have a hope in hell to have anyone lend us an ear, I was going to have to learn to speak Russian. So off I went to a local high school and started Russian language classes. Why not. It sounded like an interesting language, and all I knew at that point was a few words Viktor had taught me, plus things like “Na zdorovie”, which I thought meant cheers, but it meant “You’re welcome”, and Dasvidaniya, meaning “Until we meet again. So harasho, I was at night school again learning another language. Why not?

Well, we never went ahead with it. I spent a huge amount of time reading his ideas, and starting to document a business, case, plan, budgets and more. It was a huge amount of work and the more I did, the more I told myself that nobody with any sort of money would invest in 2 guys from New Zealand, with an outrageous idea and nothing to invest besides sweat equity on the plan.

My friend said that as long as we held on to the IP, we would be safe, but I said, nobody is going to give us any money without having the big picture, and if they had the big picture, we would be redundant. They could run away with the idea and we would have no legs to stand on. Eventually I told him I was out, which he wasn’t impressed with. He tried for a couple of months to get me to change my mind, but it wasn’t going to happen, cool as the idea was.

So, I added another language to the collection. I only studied it for one year, but I met some nice people and learned a bit more about every day life.

More than anything, I think I reinforced to myself that people are not their country. What I mean by that is that people are just people, like us, trying to live their lives. In many cases they have little or no impact on their countries politics and when it comes down to it, while leaders like Trump, Putin, and Netanyahu, for a few examples do things that most of us loath, it is no reflection on the average people in those countries.

So when I hear Russian music, I think of good, kind people, enjoying their culture and history, the simple things like songs, dance and being alive. The music does not make me suffer, and if I could get t the Kretchma, I would.

I have no plans to learn any more languages :)

Leave a comment