Dmitriy Ashman

I’m a very versatile person, I could work in creative industries or I could be a manager, it’s all the same to me, and even if one day, God forbid, I have to go sell bananas, I’d find a nice and effective way to do it.

I love my land exactly for everything being so outlandish here.
I hate wearing evening suits and ties, walking along the red carpets and puckering up.

I much prefer fun drunken “private” parties to quite tedious social events that everyone’s already fed-up with and where everything is, pretty much, the same every time. I rather get wasted and have fun somewhere with my mates.

One’s monogamy is not determined by one’s social status or sexual orientation. It’s the question of one’s upbringing and priorities in life. Depending on certain circumstances, there would be people who could live with one woman for thirty years and those who simply wouldn’t be able to do it.

I have an acquaintance who lives in the country and raises 8 kids. I might try to picture myself in the same situation, but I can’t quite picture the kids, as I barely get a chance to be at home. I’m always at work.

I’m contemplating the possibility of buying myself a house on one of the islands somewhere in Asia, in case I get sick and tired of everything here. I’d spend all my time diving.

I go guitar hunting. I sit on e-bay and track them down.

After you’ve been stuck in a traffic jam for three hours, girls start losing their charm. They adopt a kind of expression on their face that makes it scary to even wind down your window and try chatting with them. So while I’m stuck in traffic, I usually get myself busy with listening and sorting out some new music.

There are people who I find extremely difficult to communicate with. I can’t stand people who are disrespectful, unreliable, hypocritical and insincere. I believe that if there’s truth to be said, rather it be said. But, generally, I tend to find common ground with everyone quite easily, unless woken up with a phone call at 8 o’clock in the morning.

Used to happen to me as well, not being allowed inside a club. What irritates me most about situations like this is that caddish attitude you get from the security.

I grew up in St. Petersburg at the time when the Leningrad Rock Club was in its prime. The iconic bands: “Kino”, “Aquarium”, and everything that was linked to the Rock Club, like, painters, such as Timur Novikov, “the new romanticists” — all of this had a certain impact on my life views.

I’m not too much of an addict of Arkadiy Novikov’s cuisine, but I have to admit that he’s an ingenious businessman. I can imagine the type of money and effort he puts into his work, and, suppose, within Russia he remains unrivalled. Those who say that developing a large scale business of that kind is mere luck should first try organizing the same amount of “lucky” projects of the same level.

I wouldn’t be able to name the most favourite project just like a father of a large family wouldn’t be able to tell which of his kids he loves most.

I’m a self-taught guitar player, I never really studied for it. I just took a guitar, while I was still a school boy, and started playing with it. There’s an exercise called “pick up” (not that same thing practised in night clubs these days), it’s when you listen to a song and try to repeat the tune. That’s how everyone learnt it. I doubt that the lead singer of U2 went to a conservatory of some sort.

I really want to get myself a big cute doggy. It’s almost like with women: first of all make sure that the personality is nice.

I’m quick-tempered. The weird thing is that in critical situations I tend to stay calm and react quickly, but some minor nuisance can infuriate me instantly.

You’ve got to treat people decently. If you want to make enemies, find a good reason for it.