Chapter 2 IV

While for Diego his job was to do something (to me) completely  incomprehensible for endless hours with Excel, I did system integration and development of engines in special vehicles, especially trucks. It probably sounds much more complicated than it was. The company I worked for adapted existing series vehicles to special needs, mostly armies and governments but some other clients, like NGOs would also come to us.

The company had a new front, and I mean that literally, they had just moved into the new building a few months ago. The company itself was a part of a bigger defense conglomerate. It had that musty air of government owned companies and the people in it actually too... Thus they got new blood. We arrived barely after the paint dried on the new front, to give the right appearance and  work for less .

At that time I was busy with the upgrade and update of old DAF trucks. Some genius in some forsaken army office of some army had decided that buying a couple of dozen of old DAF trucks, 90s vintage, was a good idea. And then they decided to put them to good use on some of the hot theaters they had going on. And I mean literally, on hot climate.

At any rate, in my team there was two draftsmen and a CAE Engineer. We had been working through a series of changes, which were partly implemented and readied on prototypes. We went  to Austria, to a test field owned by the consortium, so we could test them. Results were not very encouraging, so we had quite a bit of work to do.

A mess of a room after coming back from a trip

When the day finished, many hours afterwards, I had practically forgotten the small computer waiting for me in my room. I went with Diego to the supermarket and as we were back, it was too late to start the washing machine. The pile of clothes under my table kept growing, and it had little headroom left. So, after this and that it was almost 22:00 when I went into my room and closed firmly the door behind me. Sitting on the bed, I started to organize my luggage back. The desk on my room had a little drawer under the tabletop and there it went the small computer. The envelope with the documents went under the sock basket. Even if I was so curious about that little digital vault, I was exhausted so after brushing my teeth and shouting my goodnight to Diego, I went to bed.