| What is your most memorable childhood experience? | Childhood was a time of true happiness. I still remember a day when I was sunbathing on dunes on the shore of the Baltic Sea with a couple of friends. Even with closed eyes, you could still see the bright light and feel the warmth on your skin. This was a time that I felt serenity; time just froze in that moment. Even today, if I want to relax or switch my thoughts, I try to remember that day. I instantly feel calm and forget what was on my mind. |
| What immediate family member do you closely identify with and why? | I identify most with my father. He always pushed me to do well at school. In my childhood, he taught me math, chess, and the basics of electronics. I still remember how we soldered things on weekends. He had a very rough childhood, but he still managed to get into the rocket engineering school, serve his country with distinctions, and, later, become a successful businessman. He was a man of high standards and unprecedented discipline. I feel like I have inherited a lot of similar traits from him. Even my mother says I turned out more like my father than her. |
| What character traits do you admire in an individual? | I admire humbleness, open-mindedness, and the desire to understand people who have other beliefs and opinions. The world is full of so many different things, opinions, and ways of life. I have met people who just do not want to look at other people’s views. These people often like to judge, jump into conclusions, and, in general, make terrible mistakes due to their lack of perspective. On the contrary, humble and open-minded people try to understand other people, situations, and ideas. These acknowledge that they do not know everything, and it allows them to keep learning. They better understand the world and other people, making them a lot more pleasant and successful. |
| What is the funniest thing ever to happen to you? | My wife and I were in Paris for a weekend and decided to have an evening scooter tour around the city. She was sitting behind me while the guide was on another scooter. As we were riding on a huge roundabout near Place de la Concorde, we heard a cracking sound. Then, someone stopped their car in the middle of heavy traffic and shouted at me in French. I responded, “English, please?” They told me that I dropped a phone, and it was sitting in the middle of the road. At this point, we were already exiting the roundabout and had to stop on the hard shoulder. My wife checked her bag and indeed could not find her phone. I ran into the middle of the road, forcing cars to stop and found the dropped object. It turned out to be a Latvian chocolate bar that was in my wife’s bag. The bar was all crumpled, but I was sure it was ours. My wife checked her coat and found her phone was always there. Everyone thought we dropped an expensive phone, but it was just a chocolate bar. |
| If time and money were not an issue, where would you travel and why? | If time indeed was not an issue, just 2.5 million years at the speed of light would take me to the neighboring Andromeda Galaxy. There are over a trillion stars, many with Earth-like planets – new worlds waiting for our exploration. I wish there was a way to get there and explore it. We just do not know what (and who) is out there. This unknown is what attracts me the most. |
| When and if you ever have children, what would you like to pass on to them? | There are so many things. For instance, I like this quote: “If you can imagine it, you can achieve it.” This is something I wished my parents had instilled in me in my early years. Dreaming big, being bold, and not caring too much about other people’s opinions is what I had to learn later in life, by myself. So, I would try to focus more on developing this kind of attitude in my kids. Another important thing is to discover their talents and true passions. For example, I started programming from an early age because it was just so much fun. Some days, I literally could not sleep and even skipped school because of this passion. So, I would try to help my kids to discover their passion, whatever that might be, as early as possible. There are practical skills that are poorly taught in school, such as financial literacy. I would try to explain this too. |
