brinstar wrote:as i said oliver is a good name
but so is kiev ;\
Kiev might sound as a good name to you, but for someone like me who was born in Kiev, it has no appeal, kind of like I wouldn't name him Detroit
Outside of the topic as far as the whole Orange Revolution, don't buy into the media hype. That shit was terrible for majority of the population, as it allowed the most corrupt government to come to power. I have a lot of family and friends who live there and with whom I speak on regular basis, and they told me that it is worse now that it was in the 90s and that period is known as the "Bloody 90s". Police and government officials take what they want, and if you disagree you end up dead.
Here are some examples:
My uncle in Kiev was one of the largest builders, a new chief of police hired him to build him a new house total cost was in excess of $4million dollars. He would not put any money down so my uncle had to take out loans just to buy materials and pay employees. Once the house was built the guy moved in, than said that he was not happy with some things so he will not pay for it(my uncle offered to change whatever was unsatisfactory but the guy refused as it was a pretense to not pay). My uncle was than told by this guy (chef of police for Kiev) that if he tries to lean a house or sue for money than one day ether my uncle or his wife will get pulled over and the arresting officer will find enough drugs and guns in their trunk to put them away for life. My uncle bit the bullet and took the losses which almost bankrupted his business, but six month later same guy came back and started demanding more money from him, so my uncle had to move his family out of the country because he was afraid for himself and his family's safety.
My old high school girlfriend in Kiev has a nice high end restaurant and banquet hall in downtown. One day a guy showed up and said he wanted to buy the restaurant for less than a half of the market value. She said no, and he told her that he had good connections and if she would refuse she'd be sorry. She ignored him but next month she started getting audits from every government agency possible. Over next 3 months she was closed for most of prime times and weekends for health code audits, fire marshal, building code, taxes, and every other possible audit you can imagine; most of them multiple times. At the end of 3 months same guy showed up asked how she liked the attention, than said that if she wouldn't sell it for half of what was offered then next week he would have city dig out the street and parking lot around her restaurant for next 6 month of plumbing repairs. She ended up selling for a quarter of the market price.
Was talking to a friend of mine who used to have multiple very successful large businesses. He now sold majority of his ownership in all of them and only has 10% of about 6 different companies. I asked if he got lazy and decided to live off of dividends and he said that it was not safe to be a majority owner in anything in Ukraine so he would rather not make the money he used to and stay alive and outside of jail.
me
