Chapter II. What Happened Three Years Ago and What Is Happening Today - Letter From A Persevering Friend
Chapter II. What Happened Three Years Ago and What Is Happening Today
Ace Dias was supposedly the business partner of the young-adult man. Ace was working to get PhD in education, and the idea was that his PhD thesis would become the foundation of their business; meanwhile, the man would work on the backbone information technology infrastructure. For variety of reasons, he started working on his part of the project in Japan. Ad interim, Ace was going to stay in US to start working on his part of the project such as marketing and fundraising; it was because they planned that their company would be officially formed there, and also this PhD candidate needed to continue staying in the country in order to finish his program. This was basically what two agreed five years ago.
Absolutely no funding was available during the first year, but after the end of the herculean task of surviving and keep going, the man managed to start generating some revenue using the elementary infrastructure he built. However, at this time, the contact between two was sporadic at best; he was naturally concerned, and as a result, he was also rather distressed about it. There were many days that he felt like his restlessness and angst were eating him alive. There was even a day that he almost had an anxiety attack. Because of the small revenue that he started generating, he was able to get by, but his stress level only increased because, in the year following, the contact between two became even more sporadic. Two years after he started working on the project, the contact between Ace Dias and he were virtually non-existent. The man dropped Ace many emails and he also called him a number of times. There was no response.
This could not go on, so the man only managed to contact Ace again by taking down the entire IT infrastructure for a period of time. Dramatic action; it was a radical action. But he had to do it. Then, he found out that Ace essentially had done nothing the whole time, for two years; he felt great despair yet he was not astonished. He saw that this was coming; it turned out that virtually everything Ace told him for the previous two years was a lie. What amused him additionally was that Ace tried to ‘share’ whatever the man built; Ace was a looter and just tried to take whatever he could take at this point. He made excuses such as that he and his wife were not getting along well, that he was having difficult time making progress in his program, and that his thesis was not getting approved because he was caught in the middle of bureaucracy of academia. He also made other excuses, but the worst excuse he made was that he had to lie to not discourage the man and to not stop him from working on the project. Whatever excuses he had, lying was about the only thing he did and looting was the only thing he tried to achieve. As any outsider could expect the outcome by now, this was the end. The man managed to salvage the backbone information technology infrastructure and made it into the foundation of his current business. But as he looked back now, it was a painful time; life was frustrating, vexatious and tormenting. He did not mean to pat his back and say “Hey, good job. You managed to survive through that”, but he amazed himself that he did not just give up. He went forward step by step and stayed alive.
Skip forward three years. The man found himself in a similar situation. It was not that someone like Ace Dias was trying to steal from him outright. It was not that those who surrounded him lied through their teeth. But there was a huge chasm between he and those whom he worked with. A lot happened between now and then, and, a number of odd reasons had taken him to India, and that was where he was reading his diary.
There were a number of technical differences between now and then. Three years ago, the fact that he did not officially held the ownership of the business became an extremely complex and stressful problem to solve. He learned a few things from that, and he firmly held the ownership of the brand new Indian company and also its parent US company presently; after all, they were practically paper companies, but that mattered. Three years ago, his income went to zero or almost nothing because he could not manage to transfer the ownership of the business generating revenue swiftly. Two years before that, he started from nothing, and thus, the fallout felt devastating. Though he faced a disturbing situation now, it was not as bad. Back then, there were no prospects in near future; no new projects to take on and no possible income sources. What was worse was that he had to get a lot of help from his parents because he was not exactly being able to support himself financially; he was living with them and it was dreadful. It was not a matter of whether he was having a good relationship with them; after he became financially independent and started living a comfortable life, he found himself going steps backward. Not that comparisons were imperative, but those at his age were living the life of adulthood. Marriage, children and a house. He did not mind the fact that he had no possessions; he was not attached to the idea of marriage or having children, either. In fact, he did not find it mandatory; however, he did mind the fact that he was circling back. It was perhaps a learning process to him, but he could not see it that way. The future could not look bleaker. Now, compared to that, though it was rather easy to see all aspects of his current life as recipes of the catastrophe in making, he could also see that this was just a short time problem rather than a semi-permanent one; this was supposedly another difference.
But having recognized such differences, numerous parallels existed also. Communication gaps between him and those surrounding him were wide; they appeared to be getting wider and wider. If the current situation could not be rectified, then it would have a huge ramification on his whole life; he would be forced to make a rather significant change in his life. Leaving India would probably become necessary.
A friend of his recently warned him that a negative thought was poisonous, but it was still easy for him to have a chain of negative thoughts. Recopies of triggering the catastrophe were there. It was as if he mixed nitroglycerin, diatomaceous earth and sodium carbonate; the mixture was formed into a short stick and wrapped in paper and he put it out there. Dynamite. A triggerman could find it, ignite it and blow him up; that triggerman could be anyone. Though he did not think that he had a lot of enemies, it was only his guess; there could be unknown enemies. One day, he might lose his mind and detonate it by himself. Though the metaphor did not accurately describe the current situation, he felt like it did.
