How Eating Pigs' Potatoes Almost Made Me a Billionaire (But Not How You Think): From Communist Romania to Irish Shores - Discovering the Essence of Life

By Baron Benoni Robu

Did you ever feel like a billionaire just because you were alive?
‘A mesmerising book of one man’s journey to the West and how his resilience and belief in himself made him the businessman he is today.’ – Nichola Mitchell, graphic designer
‘Nothing less than extraordinary. This book will change your life.’ – Ann Fahey, nurse
‘This book made me cry and ask myself Why am I here? What is my life purpose?’ – Paul Whealen, supervisor, Sky Handling, Dublin Airport
‘A fascinating true story that teaches, touches and transforms our hearts forever.’ – Deirdre Comerford, teacher
‘Is this a book or a compass? Baron, who are you?’ – Chris Smith, building-services engineer
‘I read the book in one go. I felt dizzy ... and after I understood why. – Marcel Rus, driver, Dublin Bus

• Language: English
• Publisher: Baron Benoni Robu
• Release date: Nov 6, 2018
• ISBN: 9781999325725

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HOW Eating Pigs’ Potatoes Almost Made Me a Billionaire

(but not how you think)

Baron Benoni Robu

First published 2018 by

Baron of Dublin Publishing

82 Northway Estate,

Finglas, Dublin 11, D11A4P2

tel: [phone]

email: [e-mail]

website: www.baronofdublin.ie

ISBN 978-1-9993257-0-1 (paperback)

ISBN 978-1-9993257-1-8 (ebook, EPUB)

ISBN 978-1-9993257-2-5 (ebook, AZW3)

Text © Benoni Robu 2018

Cover design by Anup Kumar Bhattachrya

[e-mail]

All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author

For

my father, Vasi and Julia

Contents

Preface

Part I: From Communist Romania to the West

1 Eating the pigs’ potatoes

2 The power of education

3 Living in Romania – and getting out

4 A brush with death

5 Another brush with death

Part II: To Ireland!

6 Joe Dolan is calling

7 The road to Ireland

8 My first Irish girlfriend

9 A new beginning

10 Simple as child’s play

11 When a gladiator dies

Part III: The turning point

12 Learning to think, the harder way

13 The pendulum swings

14 Lessons from the Pendulum

Conference

15 Lessons from my journey

16 Before you start your own journey

About the author

Acknowledgements

Preface

To me, fulfilment is the wonderful feeling I get when I give without expecting anything in return. When I do this, my heart skips a beat. Deep down, I know I’m fulfilling a dream, and I feel fulfilled. I feel the stars have been finally aligned by a benevolent universe, or, as Deepak Chopra says, I feel ‘in synchronicity’ with my destiny. And guess what? When I give from the bottom of my heart, all negativity and fears magically go away. Did that ever happen to you, my friend? How do you feel inside when you give to a stranger from the bottom of your heart?

These chapters are my story, following the tiny seed of the dream I planted deep within me when I was ten years old, until the fulfilment of that dream many years later. And the journey in between. We live so that we learn. It’s no secret that I always tried to learn from others, and I still do. In fact, I’ve never stopped learning. What I learned along the way might also be of help to you.

I honour the memory of all those who have taught me about life. They are all my teachers. This book and all of the experiences within it are, in a way, their precious gift – a gift that changed my life. I am grateful that I can share it with you.

Part I

From Communist Romania to the West

1

Eating the pigs’ potatoes

‘I saw a flower on the sheet of metal. I cut what was not necessary, I hit the metal with the hammer until the flower bloomed in my hand.’

Mihai Robu, my father

My father was a man of all work, but he really excelled in working with metal. Whatever he touched, cut, bent or welded became a work of art – precise and beautifully crafted. He was good with engines too, and he always kept a moped. I loved the smell of petrol in the small wooden shed when he was repairing his moped, cleaning it meticulously and adjusting the thin platinum plates that controlled the spark.

‘This is the soul of the engine – you have to take care of it,’ he used to say to us boys who gathered around him to see the magic happening. So he took care of it, dirty from smoke and oil, and by the end, the moped was sparkling and the well-adjusted engine purred happily like a big cat. He polished every inch of the paintwork until it shone like a pair of corporal’s boots before the morning inspection, repelling both dust and drops of rain alike.

When Dad was in very good form, he would take one of us for a spin. Not far from our house there was a crossroads and, beyond it, opening towards the horizon, a generous bend in the road. For us, it felt like a Formula One track. There was some worn-out tarmac and then just a dirt road. It wasn’t far from our house, about 100 yards, but when you are a child that distance expands like magic, especially when you are riding a moped. What a feeling! The speed, the wind whistling in your ears, the colours all mixing now in front of your eyes, everything was coming towards me like a symphony of rainbows and sounds that took my breath away.

I used to look back, holding tight to my father, and behind us clouds of angry, communist dust were trying to swallow the road but could not catch up with us. The faster the moped was running, the more detached I felt from reality, from myself, and at full speed the vision in front of me was almost intoxicating. I wasn’t riding a moped any longer. No, I was flying and soaring high, into a new dimension, into a mystical realm of the heart, above the clouds, above the world, above life.

Even now, that memory is difficult to describe. It was even more difficult to describe it then, as a ten-year-old boy. I can only say that it was like touching a dream: my unforgettable Eldorado, a prelude for the times and adventures to come.

*

All I needed in life was one chance. Something inside me was almost frozen to death, and I needed one chance to bring it back to life, one chance to start dreaming, one chance to see what was on the other side of the Wall.

When someone gives me that ‘one chance’, I take it very seriously, and I make sure people don’t regret giving me that opportunity. One life, one chance. I felt grateful in 1966 when life itself gave me the ‘thumbs up’ and a chance to be alive. I somehow made a silent commitment to fulfil my destiny, no matter what.

When my father got the news that his wife was pregnant again – this time with me – the first thing he said was, ‘Carolina, get rid of it!’ The night before my mother was supposed to procure an illegal abortion, my father had a dream, and, apparently, his own deceased father whispered to him in the dream that I would be a docile child, never to cross his word, and that I would go further in life than previous generations.

So together they decided to keep me.

*

Although geographically Romania bordered the former USSR, historically and culturally the Romanian people are closer to Rome and Paris than to Moscow. We have Latin blood, and the Romanian language is a Latin language, very much like Italian, French and Spanish. However, in a communist country, you were taught that the sun rises from Moscow, so that’s where the protection, cultural influence and direction were all coming from.

Needless to say, that pressure, a new fabricated history and the communist dream of nurturing new human beings who were totally subordinated to the Party and its ideals automatically set us all as people on a collision course with our big neighbour. Some people resisted, many collaborated.

For a small boy in a rural part of communist Romania, life could be really tough. I grew up in a village called Săbăoani, about 100 kilometres from the border with the USSR. Food was scarce. Even in an abundant and blessed country like ours, foods like bread, sugar and cooking oil were a luxury. Everything was exported to pay back the country’s foreign debt. We were not supposed to know that. Back then, information