Natalya Semenova

I hate it when everything is planned ahead.

If you have a product that requires an air castle, welcome! I’ll build it for you!

I’ve never had a problem with goal-setting. It just happens naturally.

I often rely on my intuition. Other people demand explanation for my actions, while for me it’s enough simply realizing that it feels like a perfectly right thing to do, it’s what my intuition is telling me.

My friends are people with who I can spend five hours sitting in the kitchen…having a glass of wine.

There are less and less really close friends left these days, people with who I can just throw everything away and, say, go on a holiday. Family and kids are becoming a more and more consistent factor that defines the style of my evening leisure activities: crumpled slippers, a blanket, TV, and going to bed before 12. In about 10 years or so, I’m afraid, there will be nobody real fun to hang out with at all, and the phrase “I can’t afford going to karaoke on a Monday” will become a regular excuse.

I’m one of those people who are always trying to improve what they already have. (Otherwise I get bored).

I’ve reached the point where I get bored easily. I barely ever go to cinemas these days, I just can’t sit in one place for an hour and a half.

Mountain skiing? Certainly! I love glühwein!

I’ve got an elder sister who has zero tolerance for any kind of delays between the first date and the wedding day. I love her for this deliberateness and definiteness. One thing I battle to understand though is how one family could have produced such two completely different people.

My hobby is history of art. Many years ago, I went to Italy with my best friend, where she demonstrated exceptional artistic skills of a tour guide. I developed an inferiority complex. When I got back to Moscow, I went through tons of very interesting books. And then I found out how come she knew so much about it. Turns out, my friend had been studying in an art school for 10 years. So my complex vanished, but my knowledge stayed with me.

My priorities undergo regular re-evaluations every two months.

There are so many things that, unfortunately, go far beyond my comprehension, I’ve got so many questions to ask life, that I even started visiting a psychologist. But he doesn’t seem to have answers to my questions, looks like they’re too rhetorical even for him (laughs).

Back in the days of my college youth, after lectures the female part used to get together for a visit to a fortune-teller. A huge Georgian woman would invite us to her kitchen, make incredible coffee, spread Tarot cards and say: “There…I see a dark-haired guy…you’ll soon meet him.” And every time we would walk out from her feeling pathologically happy.

When they ask me: “Natalya, how do you see yourself three years from now?” I always say: “I don’t. I’m perfectly comfortable here and now, and as for what’s going to happen in a few years, we’ll just have to live and see”. I can’t plan things ahead!