EPILOGUE
Stories are ending in either good or bad. Mine has not ended yet. I do not know what end might come and when. I imagine different ways my story could go on.
After leaving the company of trucks where I have been working for more than nine years I got an offer to take a back-to-back job abroad. I was to work four weeks in one last and be at home for another four weeks. I accepted it.
The place has been in Kazakhstan, not far from the northern end of the Caspian Sea. It was an oil-mining site in use for about 10 years, but some difficulties made exploitation only even, without profit. The camps, where the several thousand people of the crew has been housed, as well as the working places, had been built by our compatriots in an agreement with the then Soviet government. In 1994 Chevron has overtaken the enterprise from the once Soviet, then Kazakh state company. A new joint venture has been established with the name of Tenghizchevroil.
The place Tenghiz itself is a terrible location. Some decades ago it has been part of the Caspian Sea, but overuse of water of rivers supplying the Caspian caused the level of the isolated salt-water body to decrease. As a former sea-bottom, it is as level as anything can be. Soil is a fine mixture of sand with salty mud. Precipitation is almost nothing, wind is never absent. The fine dust finds its way to eyes, lungs, everywhere. After my first month I left with the determination to finish that employment as soon as possible.
My assignment on paper has been supervisor and chief mechanic of the personal car repair workshop. The person invited in the ad for job had to speak English and Russian on a high level, be an engineer of the automotive or electrical field and have some experiences in the repair of cars. From CVs of several applicants mine has been selected by the Head of Transport Department, Michael K. – let’s call him Mike 1.
After my arrival he was the boss who received and informed me about my would-be tasks. My direct boss, head of the two repair workshops for buses and cars, Michael G. – Mike 2 –, has been on his normal monthly one-week leave. Mike 1 said I was to take into my hands the supervision of car repair workshops, both for Soviet-built and American, Japanese and German cars and pickup trucks. My compatriot, one of the back-to-back supervisors for the bus workshop, has been present at the conversation, but he soon forgot it and seemed to have heard something different there.
Mike 2 thought it otherwise. As the conditions for the invitation of my place have not been determined by him, he has not been too keen to accept anybody found on them. In a short time he decided not to accept me, but he had the manner not to stop my working there, he even let me go back after my first month-off. Alas, he has not been very intelligent in his way to inform the representative of my host company. Also, he let intrigue do its work. On one hand he asked for another one in my place with the excuse, he had not been looking for a scientific assistant but a mechanic. On the other hand he disclosed his decision to my back-to-back, who was trying to displace me by his friend from home.
Simultaneously, Mike 2 launched a different search for someone to my place and found his man in someone, who had been fired from the same place in the previous year. By this action he made reliability troubles to my host company with their new candidate, who left his employee in the belief that his place was secure.
All in all, I left that place with only a letter of recommendation to anyone whom it may concern.
I decided to make my time useful by writing my recollections that was a task long on my plans.
It is open to fate to form my life in the future.
Will it be happier or gloomier than before?
Will it bring some more success or shall I be content with as much as I achieved this far?
There is a whole line of such questions I could put, but I think, it is time to finish and let the reader decide what he or she wishes.