Norway instead of the last meeting

By Georg Malahov

Before the trip, something happened that I still feel a bit ashamed of. The last session at the accelerator before the final — with mentor meetings — fell on June 6. And by that day our whole team had scattered: both co-founders on vacation, and I myself left on the fifth. It's bad and it stings: the meetings were mandatory, we signed up to attend — and we didn't. And it would have been a useful day.

We honestly tried to find a way out. We wrote to the organizer, and he was great about it: he gave us the go-ahead to join the mentors online. But on the appointed day all three of us were in transit, connectivity all over the place, everyone exhausted — and we canceled even the online option. In that state we wouldn't have presented anything worthwhile; better nothing than that.

And I left for Norway, for the fishing trip we'd agreed on long ago — with a group that has been going there for more than ten years; I'm the newcomer. Getting there was an adventure: in Sweden we filled up with the wrong fuel and the car refused to go on — we had to drain the tank and put in proper diesel, losing about four hours. But by Saturday evening we were already out on the water and brought back our first Kübel of fish. Kübel is German for a big tub — that's what they measure the catch in here.

Then everything took off. The day before yesterday we hit a school of saithe and in an hour and a half filled two whole Kübels; if we'd stayed on the spot, we could have buried the entire boat in fish. Then we spent three hours cleaning it. The most productive spot turned out to be in the open sea, at the mouth of the fjord: three days in a row, every boat brought back two Kübels. The cleaning itself is a pleasure to watch: everyone works as an assembly line — one scales, one fillets, one trims the fillets, one packs, one clears away the scraps. Two Kübels — an hour of work. And the captain of the second boat cooks for everyone with real heart: fried cod, fresh wolffish — I don't eat this well at home.

A saithe from that very school — ninety minutes of these filled two Kübels

My hands ache, my back aches, fish everywhere. The freezer is packed so tight we have to keep rearranging the fillets: it freezes well along the walls, not so well in the middle. The guys make a spread for bread out of cod liver. I've never had anything like this in my life — not the quantity, not the size, not what happens with all that fish afterwards. Waves, wind, rain, sun — everything harsh and unfamiliar.

But the main observation isn't about the fish. For five full days straight my head has been thinking about nothing at all. Not about bugs, not about the database structure, not about presentations — only fishing, cleaning fish, and rest with a hefty share of physical work. I have fully switched off from my project — and it's been spinning in my head nonstop since that January day in the coworking space when this whole thing got rolling. It turns out a switched-off head is a state of its own, and ordinary weekends never once produced it. Even the daily rhythm here is more predictable than at home: all day on the water, in the evening everything gets cleaned and put up — and there's still a decent amount of time left to sleep.

Tomorrow we wash the gear and pack for home. The accelerator final is waiting for me there: before leaving, my first co-founder and I agreed to merge his branch with the voice agent — if we make it, Referity will have voice interaction at the final. We'll see what we're worth after two months of this race and one missed meeting.