Thank You for Existing In My Life женя — part1
Want to feel alive again?
storybackground: Im eric(naruto), one of my dream is to friendalize as much human as possible. i started out my Asian Foreigner Hitchhike All Across Russia During COVID-19 trip 6 months ago. My current location is Sainkt peterpurg. I am here now not because of beauty house, talkative people, or different russian culture.
But because I must appreciate one person. Actually, a hero who saved my life…
Her name is женя(zhenya)
The story started around 10 months ago
What the hell do I mean by hero?
Hero does not mean masculine or helping me out of big fire, flood or being killed situation. My definition of hero is people who significantly improve my life by enlightening me.
Internet forum is a really easy place to receive personalized info
I was preparing information about nomading in Russia. Especially since i havent seen snow in my life i started to ask questions about how to prepare for russian winter, language and law.
A lot of people helped me actually. I was pretty damn surprised.
I mean this is my travel trips not others, and some of my questions are pretty “common sense” to other people, but strangers on the internet they helped me like helping their own friend, texting me so many information!
In retrospect: What makes me feel like so many people help me further leading to extreme happiness is because I do not expect. I was holding a experiment attitude simply posting questions on internet forum and see if anyone will help me.
To be fair, answering question on the internet is pretty easy if we know the answer and know how to use keyboard. Even though there are countless of strangers on internet, but we as a human do have a habit of helping people.
However!
What if we are asking some very difficult questions and nearly nobody had encounter this situation before?
Well this is my case.
What was the difficulty?
Russian registration law
There is such a law in russia called “Foreigners who lives in russia needs to apply for registration(document) WHENEVER CHANGES A NEW CITY”
As a person like me who is planning to live like a nomad, hitchhiking across Russia by sleeping at couchsurfing host house and random stranger’s house at more than 20 countries.
This law is very harmful to my travel plan.
It’s actually really okay to apply these if the procedure is easy and if I know how to apply it.
But holly fuck!
After I spend hours and hours of research I found nothing but shit about applying registration. (But now I know nearly everything about registrationsince I’ve been nomading in russia for 6months, ask me if you need help)
But!
Until one day miracle happened
Can you imagine a complete stranger keep helping you on the chaotic internet world?
The hero of this story appear – Женя
Can you imagine a complete stranger who lives in sainkt peterpurg help a complete stranger who live in taiwan without any previous contact or mutual friend, answering question with thousands of words?
well, i can now:))
These are just tiny fraction of the messages that she helped me:))
женя not only makes me feel like helping me is her responsibility, she told me she doesnt want me to get trouble in winter Russia.
But also she is super friendly willing to share additional information other than registration law, she even apologize for not answering me instantly.
in retrospect: i asked too many questions without asking her feeling. I mean i do ask her if i could ask more. But at some point once i realized her attitude towards me has changed i should start to increase my politeness level and start to ask lesser questions.
Eventually she answered more than 130 questions on instagram and whatsapp
She even helps my russian language, criticizing my medium article(she was a journalist), Russian transportation questions constantly for 7months.
Countless of audio messages ,texts and some phone calls every few days, if not ,every week.
“ женя i will never forget that you take your own picture show me the material of scarf, and guide me which big jacket should i buy and which one are you wearing”
What’s additional super helpful of her is that
She also introduced her friend — Kirill, to help me with any questions about hitchhiking. Surprisingly, Kirill also help me with thousands of words, even create an google documents to answer my questions. (i will make a youtube about how Kirill and женя helped my hitchhike trip across russia during covid, it contains tons of photos that’s why)
She also videochatted with me, spend time with me while i was hopeless, being locked by police and doctors in one small city in russia — Birobizhan.
However
I finally experienced the principle of our universe
“Things will develop in the opposite direction when they become extreme”
Her kindness is to extreme…
Things will develop in the opposite direction when they become extreme
I realized женя started to reply me slower and slower. Ultimately, she stopped replying me. My interpretation was that since she is a hostel boss now, it’s reasonable that she stopped replying me. I also thought that i understand her feelings, i understand that texting can be really uncomfortable, because i also feel the same way.
So I didnt noticed i did something wrong.
As far as i understand, she is busy but still curious about my hitchhike trip progress. So i still share some of my life through youtube and medium link but she didnt response.
Not only her but Kirill also stopped sending me messages.
Again, my interpretation was “they are busy, and i have evidence that they are truly busy since they are both hardworking and purposeful manager”
Again, This time i didn’t introspect myself, because i thought i did really good on interacting with them, updating my travel news, being polite, showing my friendliness.
So when i successfully achieved my goal — Asian Foreigner Hitchhike All Across Russia During COVID-19 .
When i successfully arrived at moscow by hitchhiking!
I decided to give женя a surprise, to show my appreciation directly to her.
Because of her, I decided to make my trip even cooler, hitchhike additional 600km more to Sainkt peterpurg, while i have a upcoming flight in moscow to turkey. And i also have a pressure of upcoming expired visa.
I thought i am logical enough but before meeting my hero…
On my way taking metro to женя’s new hostel — Bookcase hostel.
My brain is full of emotion and thoughts.
“fuck I am going to meet женя, holly shit”
“man, what if she doesnt like me, what if she doesnt consider me as her friend”
“man, but for any person, my trip is super epic, she will feel honored to meet me”
i get even more nervous because i was worrying that she wont be in the hostel while i am in sainkt peterpurg, since i only have 6 days maximum stay in sainkt peterpurg due to the upcoming expired visa.
In introspect: I didnt planned before. Next time i should make slightly early plans of meeting женя instead of suddenly decided to visit her, so that i could reduce the amount of days i stayed in unimportant cities in exchange of more time in Sainkt peterpurg.
I actually did wasted a lot of times in some cities like krasnoyarsk and kazan, i should have hitchhiked earlier.
In introspect 2: i should not worry the things i cannot control like женя’schedule, if she was having a vacation and happened to not appear in hostel, that’s totally fine. Because the purpose for me is to show appreciation to her, is to let her know how much she had helped me and motivated me, i could just told her by texting her that
“i had come to your hostel because of you женя, it’s okay that we couldnt meet because i have successfully received your help and accomplished my hitchhike trip, writing down my appreciating words in my letter, i will give it to the worker here”.
Focus at the moment… HAHA easier said than done
Fortunately, worker told me that женя will come to hostel within 2 days at any time.
i told everyone in the hostel
“DO NOT text or call женя that i am here now, i want to give her surprise!”
I decided to go to sleep for 1 hour since i only had 5 hours sleep in the truck yesterday.
“shit…” i said
i could not fall asleep, cant even slightly take a rest because of the thoughts, the thoughts about женя, about appreciation, about the epic moment when i see her, about женя…
i did read a lot of articles about meditation, mindfulness and focus on the present, so i keep remind myself
“Eric, youve done enough, everything is all set now, all you need is to take a good rest”
But i cant!
I was still worrying about how can i set up the camera to capture the epic moment, where should i put my camera, should i also put my ipad on the table so that i can make sure to record the first moment i saw женя? wait there are a lot of people in hostel, is it safe if i put it there? wait wait wait, holding camera all the time will be super tiring, what should i do:((
It turns out that i spent entirely 1 hour on making myself nervous again. Even though i am laying on the nicest bed with ideal temperature and environment.
The problem that i cannot focus on the moment and JUST CHILL, if i have big task in front of me
in introspect: it’s not good to chill and meditate when i still have a emergent problem i need to solve. Next time i should solve first then chill, or meditate for 4 minutes first then solve the problem.
After 1 hour, worker told me that женя wont come tonight, will come tomorrow.
It should be a good news, because i can refresh myself today and show energized version of me.
But all my mind is
“How to set up camera” “how to capture the epic moment i have been craving for” “how to not lose the moment”
All the self-improve lessons I had learned were out the window.
i fucked up the rest of my day by worrying about how can i record the 1st minute of meeting женя
The only things that is not fucked up is that i introspected at the night
I realized
“Camera can be a really bad invention” (my article)
And
Fortunately i didnt disappoint myself at this night.
Fortunately at this time i havent know i broke the friendship between me and женя
Only until the next day…
i would call it the day that changed my life
i still have the attention to keep writing it, but people nowadays including me has problem with being attentive
Maybe my articles are shitty…
Maybe we really dont have enough patience to reap the gold nowadays.
Anyways since i always want to make sure my articles are no longer than 8 minutes
To be continued…
202009 by eric(naruto) sainkt peterpug
