Miracle before moving to China

A true story that hasn't ended yet.

year 2014. We are determined to move to China. There were a lot of weddings this season! As usual, we tried for every couple. Me as a production assistant, Vanya as a photographer. 

In addition to these orders, Vanya worked in a photo theater. In short, the Photo Theater is organized author’s photo zones in the city’s Shopping Centers. The photographer takes pictures, and the client chooses and buys the ones he likes. MAC computers were installed at all locations. Ivan used them to edit wedding photographs in his free time from filming. 

Every photographer understands the importance of the footage they shoot. After all, most events cannot be repeated. We also understood this and therefore kept copies of the source code in duplicate. On your computer and hard drive. But it so happened that the computer broke down, so all the sources from the photo shoot were temporarily stored on the hard drive. 

And then one day, on a sunny autumn day, nothing foreshadowed trouble. Vanya worked on photographs at his workplace in the Photo Theater. Clients appeared and photography began. Completely immersed in the process, Ivan did not notice how several teenagers ran past. And only after a while, on the low-grade cameras of the shopping center, it became clear how, while running, they grabbed one small, but very important thing, costing no more than 1000 rubles. In an instant, an ordinary hard drive became invaluable. After all, this small box contained the memory of the most important day of several couples, future funds for moving to China, and simply the work and reputation of the photographer. I have never seen Vanya in such a depressed state. Everything that was so valuable to him disappeared along with the hard drive. How to explain things to newlyweds? Is there a chance to fix everything? How will we move to China now? All these questions haunted me. 

On the promised day, we again came to the Chinese to look at the hard drive. It was not there, he again forgot it at home. We asked to see a photo, but it wasn’t there either. Then Vanya found a photo of our disk model on the Internet and showed it to him. Imagine our surprise when the Chinese said that he had just such a hard drive. Vanya explained the whole situation to him and asked him not to delete the contents of the disk, because what’s inside is the most valuable to us. We didn’t know whether the Chinese would listen to us or not. The next day, he kept his promise and brought the hard drive. We check, and lo and behold! All material, photos and sources were in place. The joy knew no bounds! But the chance was one in a million.

After this incident, which surprised everyone who was in the know. I was even more excited about moving to China. It seemed to me that this would happen in two years, not earlier. But all the events around us contributed to our move. Even in the harsh Far Eastern winter, we accepted order after order: for filming cars, general photographs in schools and kindergartens, and other filming.

A special surprise for us was the evening call on the intercom; that day we were very tired after the photo shoot. We couldn’t believe it; our friends from China were standing on the doorstep. They just recently moved there, and now they are here at our home! All evening we listened avidly about life in China, about another, completely different world, about the difficulties and advantages. And they became even more determined to move.

And now we had already bought tickets and the ruble collapsed. What to do? Should I go or not?

PS after this story, we not only duplicate the sources on two flash cards, but also store the footage in triplicate.