My name is Andriy Vitaliyovych Samoylovych, the second name (patronimic) being the traditional honor to father - Vitaly. I was born on August 14, 1975. I am still trying to find what are the origins of my family name - it's very rare and I never met anyone with the same name. The most famous peorson to bear this name was Ivan Samoylovych, the Hetman of Ukraine in late 17th century. My father comes from Chernyhyv region - the craddle of Ukrainian cossacks so I hope to find out one day that I am the ancestor of Ukrainian Hetman.
My parents were both from Ukraine but when I was born that lived in Monino, small town some 30 km form Moscow which hosted an Gagarin Air Force Academy where my dad, an army officer, served at that time. The town is famous with its unique Air Force museum which was and probably still is the best of its kind in USSR / Russia. We lived there until I was 8 years old, so I have quite vague memories from that time. That was a little town closed for outsiders; being a base for elite Army Academy it was enjoing a lot of priviliges unavailable for ordinary inhabitants of USSR. Now it seems funny, but back than it meant a lot if you could buy foreign goods, electronics and home appliances without being on the waiting list for 10 years. Black "Volga"s - the favorite car of Soviet "nomenclatura" and New Year children parties at Kremlin are my bright pictures from that time.
When I was at second grade, my dad was transferred to a new assignement and we moved to army base near town of Buy in Kostroma Region, some 450km north-east of Moscow. This was a large high-security army base - circled with multiple rows of barb wire, cameras, flood lights, guards towers, patrol dogs and everything you can see in bad Hollywood movies..., the only difference was that it was not that cool as it ussualy is in movies. The nearest town was about 15 km away with only one mode of transportation: school bus in the morning and in the evening. Everything was in the middle of some endless forest that did not seem either beginng or the end. That forest was also the place where kids spent most of the time, both in summer and winter, which by the way lasted there from October till April with temperatures falling to 40 degrees Celsius below zero. I did a lot of cross-country skiyng at that time, I could go with my best friend for whole day skiying in the forest; during the summer I spent a lot of time fishing with my dad. Not it all seems in a bit of sweet nostalgic light, but it was also a quite lonely place - with your best friend coming and leaving as their parents get transferred thousands kilometers away.
When I was 14, my dad has retired from the Army and my family moved back to Ukraine. I was looking forward to that move but it was really hard to part with the good friends I had there. I never saw anyone of them after that and to my pity I also lost contact with them by now. Anyway, we moved to Ukraine, to town of Zhytomyr where the familty of my mother lived. Zhytomyr is a centre of Zhytomyr region and typically provincial town of some 300,000 inhabitants. I finished secondary school there, graduating with honors, and it was time to look for college. I wanted to move to Kyiv and study there but my parents managed to overpower me at that time, so I stayed in Zhytomyr and become a college student. This was not much of a University (as still many soviet-style educational establishements in Ukraine) but student years are always good...new friends, new experiences, new life.
But life in Zhytomyr never gave me enough satisfaction - nothing seemed to happened in that city, the same boring routines happened from day to day. Ater my third year in school, I won a scholarship for studying in US university and went for one year exchange program to University of Missouri-Columbia. This was terrific year - being first time abroad, being finally free from parents, meeting so many different people from many countries, partying (Spring Break at Daytona beach, that's not possible to describe - you need to live it!). You may like or dislike America, but college life is great there.
I returned to Ukraine in 1996, spent one more year in my university there and graduated in 1997 with honors - it was called "Red Diploma". I clearly did not want to stay in Zhytomyr so even before the graduatin I got the job offer from Procter & Gamble to work in their marketing department.The Ukrainian Office was just starting at that time so it was full of young graduates like me, eager to learn and start their carreers (My CV). It was never easy there but it was a great school and I also met many very good friends there. During 2.5 years there I worked on three P&G brands: Pantene, Head & Shoulders and Wash&Go and became absolute expert on Hair Care.
In 1999 company offered me an to work for the Central and Eastern Europe Regional Office and I moved to London, United Kingdom. This was new and exciting job experience which made look differently at how business is done. I settled in Richmond, beautiful and cosmoplitan area of London; my house was on Rishmond Hill - right at the bank of the Thames, next to Mick Jaggers house (constatnt source of jokes from my friends:) and just couple hundred meteres from Rihmond Park and its beautiful deers. Soon a very good friend of mine (and my colelague from P&G Ukraine) Svyatoslav has moved to London - we did a lot of travel around UK together: from South-West England to Wales to Scotland.
A year and a half later, I have got another exciting offer: The Coca-Cola Company was re-oppening its offices in Yugoslavia to restore operations interrupted by a series of war conflicts there. This was not an easy desicion but this was clearly someting new and interesting that I wanted to try. So on October 14, 2001 I landed at Belgrade Airport - another country, another life. Now It's just a little bit more than a year that I am here but it feels like it was a decade: so much doen at work, so many new people met, so much has changed in the country
So what's next? |
