Prison Life

I thought it only fair that I should tell my boss on site here that I had actually asked for a transfer to another site, adding that I liked to travel about and see different places and experience different lifestyles, not adding that I am getting to hate the isolation of being in the jungle with no social life and finding Spanish hard to pick up and wanting to see my wife a little more than I am. I told him about the possible transfer to Trinidad and that there are 27 gas turbines to work with and how I could take my wife. Somehow he seemed to think I am the opportunity for him to tag along and he hasn’t left me alone since I told him and he smiles at me in a very strange way all the time now and after every meeting he has in the morning he comes into my office and asks me how I am doing. Admitted he is a nice guy but I am getting a very unnerving feeling about his advances. He just smiles far too much and asks me far too many times how I am doing, totally unlike a site manager. They normally grimace and just grunt demands at you and then tell you what a crap company you are working for. So him being so nice is unnatural so I am trying to keep him at bay, I can field tough questions I cannot deal with a Cheshire cat grinning at me when talking it just aint nice to look at, plus he has these huge false teeth that frighten me, I imagine them jumping out at me.

One reason for wanting to leave this place is to get away from what can only be described as goddam awful accommodation. They are converted office type buildings, they have walls paper thin so you can here the metal frame beds squeaking as people turn over in the next room, you can here people coughing at night from many rooms away. The bathrooms are awful and just basic and have to be shared with another room , the shower leak on the floor and the floor is actually rotten and is starting to disintegrate and these are the rooms for the management, the rooms for the labourers are nothing more than bunk houses, 20 to a room and sharing 1 bathroom. They are probably the worst accommodation I have ever had to live in. Zambia was a nice little hotel with pool and bar and wonderful food in the restaurant. Turkmenistan was the local old communist 5 star hotel, with great rooms and everything you could want, but here in total isolation we have nothing other than the room in which we sleep, and a crappy gym to try and work out in. I am not happy with the place and need to get away, I am seing my manager in Italy next week and hopefully I can get him to release me early and get away to some normal type environment, where you can go for a walk and have a beer and go to the cinema and maybe run naked on the beach, anything that I would like to do and not worry about it and feel normal, here it feels more and more like a prison and working is not meant to be like prison. My buddy in India Slyght, has been complaining very badly about the horrible place he has been working for the last year almost, he complains about the shitty place as it is remote and the crappy people and not getting home often enough, which is what we all work for, to enjoy ourselves at home a lot, not once a year or twice but regularly. Like once a month, OK OK I know I get home once a month but I am letting the isolation get me down a lot. I don’t think I could ever do time in prison, it would feel like the end of the world to me, but at least I would get more reading material and the gym would be OK and I may get sex more regularly.