The car mat

About one month later, Ruslan called me, he proposed that he would like to work with me like we were with Sasha. He had a project, selling car mats, with a minimum of 2 million dollars a year guaranteed.

Receiving his sample car mat, I set off to factories. God was always helping me, I found 3 factories, whose sample quality was good, and the price is reasonable. Ruslan flew to me immediately, when he saw the factory’s samples, he was delighted, “Ohuyeno(Incredibly good)!”

We signed the big contract then, ordering car mats in about 1 million dollars in amount.

It was in April or May 2008.

I received advanced payment from Ruslan’s company and sent it to the factory, which also started production at once.

The tragedy came up in September when the Subprime Loan Crisis happened in the US. The Ukrainian currency UAH devaluated from 5UAH = 1 USD to 14 UAH=1USD just in ONE night. Ruslan called me, that Ukraine is bankrupt, there are no dollars in the country. And he could not complete the payment for the car mat order.

That was the thunder in the day, which awakened me from dreaming about happy life.

Time was the only cure.

In 2009, Ruslan told me that he was able to pay 200,000 to get half of the goods. Although it was hard to negotiate with the factory, because the factory was angry, and wished to solve the entire problem, not partially. Ruslan flew to me, and we had a face-to-face talk with the owner of the factory. His move improved the situation.

In November 2009, I was phoned from Ruslan’s phone number. On the other side of the line was his sister, Lyudmila, whom I met for the first time in Guangzhou. She cried, “Ruslan was dead in a car accident. He loved you.”

…

I felt sick.

In December 2009, I returned to my hometown, Changzhou, with a broken body, and a disease, gastric ulcer.

I failed, as a total loser.

Life went on, I had to make a living. I built a website, publishing information about my translating service, inspired by Shaolin’s story, but with the Russian name “Anatoliy”.

I was told to “dance to forget”, but I prefer “dance to remember”.

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