On the death of cousin Paweł

As this note is automatically posted I am about to depart from Jelenia Góra back to Warsaw after my cousin’s funeral held yesterday. I learnt about his sudden death on Thursday evening, yet I was not shell-shocked…

Paweł died aged 43 on Tuesday, 23 January 2024. He was survived by a mother, a wife and two children.

He was the only son of Ciocia Asia, my mother’s cousin who I first met in 2009. During that holidays we also got to know Paweł, his wife Agnieszka and their daughter (aged 4 then). Around that time despite the distance between our part of the family, the relationship got quite intense. In November 2013 Wujek Mietek, Ciocia Asia’s husband, died from cancer. Soon after the second child of Paweł and Agnieszka was born and they bought a plot near Jelenia Góra and built a house there.

I last visited them in their still newly-built home in June 2019. With Ciocia Asia I last met last March, during late-winter skiing holidays.

In early January 2024 Paweł’s wall on Facebook was crying for help. Online I found out Agnieszka threw him out of their house and they were about to divorce. I was distasted by him washing their dirty linen in public. I remember talking to my mother and fearing he would take an unwanted ultimate step in his despair. My mother talked to Ciocia Asia last week. Paweł was home down with COVID-19.

On Thursday evening Agnieszka posted an obituary on her facebook profile. My first thought was he had taken away his life. Paweł was a well-known teacher and a sport coach in Jelenia Góra so the news on his departure were published in local news sites. Reading some of the comments made me want to puke… Anonymous people either blamed his wife or asked how many time he had been vaccinated. In order to cut out all the speculations, Agnieszka informed on the heart attack as a cause of death. The problem with the heart was most probably an aftermath of a car accident Paweł had had in November 2023, during which the airbags did not go off. Since that time he had only stronger pains in his chest and took only stronger painkillers. Most probably his heart did not resist increasing dosage of medicines, COVID-19 and the divorce-related stress.

I feel terribly sorry for Ciocia Asia, for Paweł’s daughter, aged 18, who will be taking high-school leaving exams in May and his son, aged nearly 10. They are now experiencing a triple trauma – caused by the divorce, the sudden death and people gossiping on the suicide as the cause of death.

Fate and justice at times go separate ways. Balancing at the edge of chaos sometimes involves having a brush on death and getting carried away...

An internal transfer

In six months it will have been a decade since I joint my current employer. With ups and downs and moments of both satisfaction and frustration, the overall balance of that professional relationship is positive, hence I'm soldiering on.

My first promotion (to a "senior analyst" position) came into effect in January 2018 and it involved a transfer to a parallel unit. I have carried on here until now, with one more promotion (I am an "expert" since September 2022) along the way. Six years in one place make up nearly a half of my career and are much enough to necessitate a refreshment. 2023 was the most difficult year on my professional path. An uphill portfolio of clients, instrumental role in an uphill multinational project and uphill mentoring to non-promising juniors have taken their toll on me. The workload at times was unbearable. I worked very efficiently, but could not make it within 8 hours, so I had to do overtime, frequently handling two things at the same time, despite that I got behind with work and assertively refused to take up even more tasks on my back. In December I was sick of it...

At the beginning of 2023 my previous (2018 - 2022) manager took over headship of a newly set up specialised financed unit. We'd got on with each other more than well, so in 2Q2023 we began negotiating my transfer to his new bereau. A green light was in place in late May 2023, with the very transfer delayed until early 2024 to let me sort several things out and to give my managers time to find two FTEs (speaks volumes of my workload) to replace me (they failed to do so).

In the new role, starting over on 1 February, though the transition period has begun now, I will need to learn a lot. I will see the back of taking care of not particularly bright juniors. Hopefully, my workload  declines, to be closer to "reasonable", which will be still a step ahead after what I have gone through in 2023. Combing career development with slowing down appears to be a challenge, time will tell if I am up to it.

Skoda Octavia IV estate

Given what I have written about replacing old, but still reliable vehicles with brand-new ones, you are now in for an unrepeatable opportunity to accuse me of duplicity. In the second half of 2024 I am bound to drive out of a showroom in a car mentioned in the post title.

My Megane III by that time will be over 13 years old and will likely have more than 110,000 kilometres on the clock. Reliability-wise, I cannot complain about the car's performance. Except for wear-and-tear and regular maintenance, the car haas not needed additional visits in a Renault garage. Conceivably, it might serve somebody well for years, though at the back of my mind I see a risk it might become a piggy bank all of the sudden.

If so, why am I replacing it? Firstly, this is probably one of the last moments to lock in a car from the "old motoring" era. You know my skepticism towards electric vehicles, which I believe are a dead-end street and are far from being environment-friendly. I intend to keep the new car going for possibly long, even if it involves bans for city centre entrance (I don't need to drive there anyway) and paying sin taxes for the combustion engine. If I use the new car sparingly and not replace it for two decades, my carbon footprint will be much lower than of somebody who will buy three electric cars and drive much longer distances than me over the same time.

Why the very Skoda Octavia IV estate? Firstly, it is quite capacious (plenty of space for 4 passengers inside, boot of 640 litres) and is not an SUV. Secondly, it offers reasonable price-to-quality trade-off. Thirdly, the comfort and pleasure of driving the VW 1.5 150 hp engine with manual gearbox (I still dislike the automatic transmission after driving several thousand kilometres in company cars equipped with it) is superior.

I believe reliability of this vehicle, if I use it respectfully and have it maintained with proper care, might still be good. The weakest spot of each brand-new car is electronics. Octavia IV is also spiked with it and here I envisage some room for spontaneous visits in Skoda garages.

I will not pay up-front over PLN 130,000 for the car, as I will not even purchase it. It will formally be a company car, with rental instalments deducted from my pre-tax salary, which effectively means a tax shield of approximately PLN 35,000 during the three-year lease term. After that I will have the option to prolong the lease for next 2 years or buy out the car for PLN 70,000. All in all, the net savings in such financing scheme add up to more than PLN 30,000.

As written before, I plan to use the car sparingly - I will keep avoiding short-distance journeys and city traffic, have it serviced each year and park it in a dry garage, with a hope it pays me back with trouble-free service for at least 15 years.

Since my car is customised, its manufacturing has been queued for the last week of June, so I will pick it up in late July or August. The vehicle will be still before the facelift, which will spare me gadgets, but save an equivalent of my monthly salary.

All in all, I feel a bit guilty on account of buying it, yet with a prospect of raising a family I would need a new car anyway - the Megane would not serve me for next 20 years and the best moment for fixing myself up with a non-electrified vehicle with a manual gearbox might be missed soon.