Interview with Kwasy
Kwasy - Eco community member

The Most Active Member Of The Eco Community!

HolaEco! team decided to publish an interview with the most active member of the Eco community every month.
We consulted with many people who follow the life of the project, and each of them noted you as Most Active Member of the Community in August, among other participants.
I am very pleased to talk to you and give our readers the opportunity to get to know you better!
Hello Lilishka! Hello to all HolaEco readers! Thank you very much for that honor! It’s a little unexpected and exciting for me. To be honest, this is the first interview in my life.
I will try to be an open as possible! Just in case, I’ll say that my name is Vasily, and karas` is my last name. If I had known how far I would go into ECO I would have changed my discord nickname to another one a long time ago.
But since everyone knows me as karas`, I won’t change anything (smile).
Well, I would like to start with the times where we usually go back when we are looking for inner support. Tell us a little about your childhood. What was it like? Is it the happiest time for you, as it happens for many?
I was born and raised in a small rural settlement. I studied at school with “excellent”, but it wasn’t easy for me. It took a lot of free time, as well as to help the family with agriculture. But I still remember my childhood and school time with nostalgia, especially summer was a wonderful time: holidays, friends, nature. There was a school stadium near my house, so very often we spent our leisure time with friends there. However, perhaps the time of student life and life in the campus was happier, because it was a period when a sense of freedom and the expectation of great achievements in the future were flying in the air! But now I’m happy too, only in a different way. I think that every stage in life that is associated with moving to a new place, another city, is perceived by many as a separate life that has no connection with those “other lives”.
I think your mathematical mindset, responsibility, pedantry and a special sense of justice have been manifested since childhood! Sometimes it surprises me how honest you are with everyone, even when you can cheat a little! How difficult is it for you to say “no” to people? And how often have you had to lose friends, defending your principles?
My profession is an architect. And in this profession, every line, every digit, every word is of great importance. I think professional attention to detail, accuracy are reflected in all other areas of my life.
Ones some people told me: ”Vasily, your world is divided only into black and white.” But I did not immediately understand the meaning of this phrase. And the bottom line was that it was probably difficult for me to find compromise solutions on my own. I need rules of conduct, rules of life. You either fulfill them or violate them….

I also often like to joke myself, unfortunately other people’s jokes don’t always remain obvious to me.
To be honest, I don’t really remember what I was like as a child in the sense of pedantry and fairness, because people change throughout their lives. As for how I see myself now, I can say that being honest is not difficult for me, it is much more difficult to deceive others and be afraid of being exposed. I would even say that there is something of laziness in this: the brain is too lazy to invent some unprecedented stories and then get confused in its own invented stories. It’s easier to say the truth. So the conscience is cleaner and the nerves are calmer.
Of course, it is not always easy to say “no” to people. But if it does not contradict my conscience and understanding that I am doing the right thing, it is much easier to do it.
As I said earlier, I was an excellent student at school, and as a result, I felt some dissatisfaction from my classmates that somewhere teachers overestimated my grades or forgave my mistakes. Perhaps, over time, this developed in me a feeling to treat people as equally as possible, so that someone would not think that I support someone more than other people. Even my wife sometimes dissing me that in conflict situations I sometimes support not her opinion, but her opponent.
At the moment, an ECO-CHAMPIONSHIP is taking place, where I am one of the three organizers and the referee. And quite a few of my eco-friends participate in it. Therefore, here more than ever I have to try to be unbiased and equally honest to all participants of the championship, no matter how much I would like to help them. But sometimes we can hear unpleasant hints that we are unfair judges.

We have to put up with it.
Fortunately, I have never had to lose friends because of my principles. But I think that not everyone can always like my straightforwardness and poorly formulated thoughts. In general, I am open and friendly to everyone and I like to do good to people in return for their sincere gratitude.
You spend a lot of time to the project and always do your job as well as possible! Have there been any cases when it seemed to you that your work was not appreciated adequately? Tell us about it?
Oh, yes! I devote a lot of time to the project! And I would be happy to pay less attention to this, but, unfortunately, there are so many events happening here all the time that this Eco-world just won’t let me go! I would compare it to a gambling addiction! Lately, I even dream that there would be more contests that would be of little interest to me.
When I see a new contest that interests me, I starting search of such an idea that not only the final work inspires me, but also the process of its creation. It even seems to me that at this moment I become a child who is passionate about the idea. I can be so involved in the process that I even forget about eating all day.
Going back to childhood again, I can say that at school my mother paid me (albeit small) money for grades. I think that my love for points and faith in the bright future of ECO push me not to stop there.
As for the evaluation of my work by other judges, I believe that most of my works are evaluated even more than they deserve. I am always grateful for the work and responsibility of the judges who evaluate the work, and I understand that it is often not easy for them to make decisions. Judges judge the complexity of the work only by photo and video material and cannot always fully evaluate the work. Only those who have done the work themselves know its value. And work should also cause emotion! If it is not there, then the value of the work decreases, regardless of the effort spent. These are the rules of the game and you need to be able to accept them.
And I am always grateful for any reward. After all, we don’t know the price of points. They are only “for research purposes”. And maybe in the future even 10 points will bring its owner a fortune! We don’t know anything. That’s why I think it’s worth doing what’s interesting and being grateful for any reward – that’s the key to success.
One of my favorite expressions is: “find something you like and you will never have to work anymore.” And it seems to me that at the moment I have found such an occupation in ECO.
I think everyone remembers the challenge when you made an incredibly beautiful spiral! And a surprisingly similar portrait of Andy Bromberg from simple matches! Who and when discovered in you the talent to do amazing things with your own hands?
Thank you very much. I’am very pleased to hear this. In fact, I don’t see something interesting here. And I don’t see talent in it either. Perseverance and patience for monotonous work – perhaps this is what some lack to do the same. It’s just technically done work and nothing more. The original idea of the ECO-spiral is not mine. I just tried to recreate the same one that the ECO team came up with, only in a tree. And a portrait made of matches is also can create anyone. It’s enough to have a photo of Andy and do some transformations with it in Photoshop. Plus dozens of hours of free time and patience… But I love this kind of work. It’s like meditation.
And about making with my own hands – I will return to my childhood again. Or rather, in his youth. For several years at school, I loved and attended extracurricular classes with my labor teacher, where other guys and me were engaged in wood carving. My favorite thing was to cut something out of plywood with a jigsaw and grind round products on a lathe. I even had serious intentions to become a carpenter in order to make wood products with my own hands, but I chose another specialty, no less close to my heart – architecture, which I do not regret at all. As a result, I can design and then make a product according to my own project – what could be more amazing?!
There were a lot of various activities in the community that give everyone a chance to try themselves in different areas. What have you discovered about yourself thanks to Eco? Are there things that you didn’t know about before, and now, thanks to the ECO, you are skillfully using?
The greatest thing is the discovery of our own capabilities, new acquaintances around the world, as well as friends (albeit virtual for me at the moment). As we say in ECO: “we are exploring ourselves and each other.”
Thanks to ECO, I gained a lot of video editing knowledge and tried it out in practice, took a dance course, and even improved my vocal skills. What are weekly visits to meditation and yoga worth! And how many things were made of paper! After all, just like that (for the soul), I would hardly ever do this, because there would be no goals for this. And I also realized that tabulation is my passion, and I am glad that I can develop in this also thanks to ECO. In general, I discovered myself from a new side, which was a discovery for me!
It seems to me that you get a lot of pleasure from participating in challenges and you are captured by the creative process. Everyone, contributing to the project, expects a reward. Do you have any plans and dreams that you want to realize thanks to the Eco project?
I’ve already written above about the pleasure of participating in challenges. And as for plans and dreams, I can say that at the moment our family lives in a rented apartment. I have a dream to solve our housing issue. And thanks to ECO, I have a more realistic hope for this.
What are you missing from the Eco project? And are there things you would like to change?
I will answer a little differently: it’s a pity that there are only 24 hours in the day and I don’t have enough time to participate in the ECO project wherever I would like.
In general, I would like the ECO mobile app to come to Belarus! And I’m also waiting for the token to be released.
Imagine that you were given the opportunity to choose only one participant from the Eco community to ask him only one question. Which of the participants do you choose? And what would you like to know?
As a rule, I ask questions of interest to those from whom I would like to hear the answer))). Well, I have a traditional question “What is your profession” to, I believe, the creator of this question- Saulo.
By tradition, at the end, I would like to ask you to say a few important words for everyone who reads this interview!
We don’t know what the future prepares for us, so let’s appreciate the present, what we have now and what opportunities are provided to us today. I wish everyone to find something to their liking, and that you no longer have to work. Peace and kindness to all! I am always at your service.

Lilishka, thank you very much for your questions and the opportunity to reflect and answer, first of all to myself, who I am and why I am here.
Lilishka#8053
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