Today, I saw a ton drifting along, a container ship (from Maersk) on the horizon
and a smaller ship coming towards us and then making a bow behind us.
This was more than in the last days and especially the ton could have been everything when it was far away, but still I hope to see dolphins.
The drilling work is only finished on F-deck, but you can hear it well from everywhere, the sound propagation of metal and this concrete look-alike is perfect. A ship is a loud thing anyway, the engine demonstrates its power also acoustically, the wind makes noise, everything trembles.
During the meals two sounds are more intrusive to my ear, it is my neighbour at the table when he eats soup (slurping with this noise production must be exhausting!) and when he eats something else, opening his mouth with every chewing motion and apparently enjoying food more, when he sees, feels, smells, tastes and hears it. My inner eye produces diverse pictures fitting to this soundscape, one is a 150kg Viking in bear fur sitting near an open fire with is big wooden spoon and his long hair and longer beard and so on.
But here sits a Chinese young man, looking even younger than he can be, and he wears his white uniform most of the time.
Regarding the food, I miss the Colomba, because this chef here is from Colombo (the crew is only from China and Sri Lanka) and I would be the only reason to cook less spicy. I need much salad to extinguish the fire on my lips and tongue. At least I could successfully suggest putting less salt in the soups.
Today was the second time conversion in those 4 days, and I didn’t expect that. Last time, we were going mostly east, now mostly south, and the changes came faster than on the tout Dubai-Kuala Lumpur. After dinner the security officer met me at the bridge to talk about the questionnaire, he had given to me on day 1.
There were some questions that I couldn’t answer, because I didn’t know what it is about, eg what I should do in case of SOPEP. It is always good to answer, “go to the bridge” and “as to master’s order”, because as a passenger I have no fixed duties. SOPEP means shipboard oil pollution emergency plan. The most important part in this case is to avoid oil going to the sea. There are many other nice abbreviations, OOW is the officer of (or on?) watch and MOB is the man over board. Most important for sure is STBD which means starboard side and that is the right side of the ship.
On the wall, I saw our coordinates, we will pass the equator this night but the sun should be still in the south if I understand the situation (I am very bad in simplest astronomical matters), because the sun should change to the northern hemisphere on 20th of March. I will try to see that at noon, but noon is also more complicated than only 12:00, because only at 135° or 150° it would be nearly 12:00 (there are many more complications) and the ship currently is at 140° that might mean 20 earlier or 40min later, depending on the time-zone. Do I suppose…
After that I went again to the laundry to make everything fit for Australia (no mud ). The floor is quite dirty, and I have no basket for the clothes. So, I try to get everything out from a bag to the machine and back to the bag. But always something falls to the floor, the clean, wet clothes of course more likely. This is not a valid proof for the existence of that jolly God, because I bet even as a monk and praying 5 times or all the time, I could not avoid it and God cannot use this for punishing or rewarding people, it is stronger than everything – washed wet clothes must fall in the mud or dirt, you can only avoid that by staying naked or never washing.
