Back in late August 1998, I was sent over to Russia by the company I joined earlier that year--a publicly traded company in LA that bought the intellectual property right of the voice-over-IP system I developed in exchange for company stock and a fat check VP Engineering position which really meant VP Traveling Salesman, to demonstrate and install my internet-voice systems with national telephone companies and internet service providers all over the world that the company was negotiating co-operating deals with.
It was the end of August when I arrived in Moscow, but the weather had already turned damp gloom cold there, totally taken me by surprise, coming from sunny California. A stodgy young man named Valery came picked me up at the airport, and would become my day-to-day care taker meeting arranger liaison officer buddy companion for the next two weeks in Russia.
I was arranged to stay in a "5-Star" hotel right across the Red Square/Kremlin Palace. It was where all the foreign dignitaries stayed during the Cold War, they said. But to me it's really an old and dingy place with 5-star room rate, and I had to batter my way through a slew of young women--sexual solicitors they were--gathering at the lobby every evening just to get back to my room.
I met with a few people who were our local Russian contacts and associates for lunch and dinner, but my main mission was to install and demonstrate one of my VoIP systems there. And here came the Murphy's Law: One of the systems I brought showed no sign of life when I tried to turn it on for check. It seemed the mother board of the "luggable" PC I carried half the world over just wouldn't take the shaking and beating of travel any more.
"Is there anywhere I might get some PC parts?" I asked Valery the next day, doubtfully. "Hmm, let me check," he said, and surprise, he did locate a local computer store where I found a made-in-Taiwan PC mother board that was exactly what I needed. I then spent one night in my hotel room under dim night-stand light reassembling and rebuilding my proprietary system back to working order.
The testing and demonstration went well at an internet service provider that was the country's largest at the time. It was located in the same facility where they said the old Soviet Union's national science research center was. (Valery used to be a Red Army officer and had his connections, by the way). I don't remember much of the place or the testing process except the gusting cold winds blowing through the open hallways, that without the sweater Valery lent me I probably would have been frozen to death right there.
Then off we went to St. Petersburg, the second largest city in Russia about 400 miles away from Moscow--just about the same distance between LA and San Francisco, on a midnight express. We visited and met a very gentleman-like manager of a national telephone company housed in a museum-esque building near the beautiful Baltic sea. We swiftly installed and tested another of my systems there in less than half a day's time so the gentleman manager took us to sight-see some famous palaces and then a canal cruise crisscrossing the city for the rest of the day. Valery and I then had a celebration dinner at a classy restaurant where we ordered full course Russian dishes that included the famous oxtail soup (or "Russian soup" 羅宋湯, as we call it in Chinese) that I forget how it tasted since I am no foodie except that it's quite different from the one we grew up eating Chinese style.
Perhaps encouraged by the success of the installations I made in both Moscow and St. Petersburg, the company back home decided to send me over to yet another city, this time Rostov-on-don, the largest metropolis in southern Russia, for another testing and installation. We flew this time, on a Russian domestic airlines flight. The Russian-made Ilyushin airplane might be notorious for its safety records, but the service and food on board was actually not too bad. The city itself, like Moscow and St. Petersburg, was calm and orderly, and the people friendly, but probably not as international conscious as the prior two. I felt being gawked at when walking on the streets as if I were the only foreigner in this town of 1 million people.
The Rostov-on-don testing and installation was a success too. Now it's time to go home. Valery dropped me off at the Moscow international airport and we said good-bye and parted ways. It was a totally strange, Russian airport to me, with no English signs or directions anywhere and long lines everywhere. I found my way to the airlines counter and handed in my passport and ticket to the clerk. After viewing my passport for a brief second she said "Sorry, but we cannot let you out of this country today... Your visa had just expired yesterday."
What happened was the visa I got for Russia was for 4 weeks only, and my departure from the States was postponed by two weeks in the first place, then my stay here was extended for one week. As a result I had just become an illegal in Russia by one day. Nobody noticed this until now probably because my passport was turned in for "safe-keeping" by the hotel as required by law the day I checked in.
I surely had no intention of overstaying my welcome in this country and asked the counter lady what recourse do I have other than going back to the hotel and applying and waiting for a new visa for God knows how many days. She told me there was a consular from Russian Foreign Ministry that could issue temporary visas to people like my situation. So I waded my way through to the place she referred me and found that consular and got him to put a stamp on my passport for $72, cash only, he said. I was damn glad I had that extra money at hand.
I then came back to the airlines counter and started going through multiple stands and checkpoints with multiple lines of solemn Russians, with no signs, no directions, and no flight information update panels along the way, for hours, until it was way past the scheduled departure time of my flight and I completely gave up on hope of getting on my plane in time.
Then when I finally reached the waiting area of my flight's departure gate, surprise, I saw a United Airlines plane still sitting down the tarmac, and a roomful of people still waiting. The flight had been delayed and would be for another few hours, they said. Sometimes many wrongs can make one right :)
I arrived safely home in California the next day.
* Here's a YouTube video converted from the tape Valery made for me using his hand camera during my stay in Russia. It started at the underground subway station mall, to the Red Square and Kremlin Palace, midnight express to St. Petersburg, St. Petersburg palaces and canal cruise, etc., and ended with some sagely advice on happiness from Valery, my top secret KGB agent companion :)
** Here's a news announcement made by the company after my trip to Russia. The company's stock shot up from less than $2 to $8.5 a share in one week after the announcement:
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