There are only 3 videos from February left for cutting, but they are longer and more complex, so I will not manage to cut more than one per day, and 8 more are left so far from March. And 6 days are left on the ship. So, maybe, I will not finish everything. But I have a reserve of 21 videos waiting for upload and I will upload only one video per day, so I will be arrived in Sydney and can continue cutting there for some days, before we leave for Adelaide.
There would be no good reason to be stressed about these videos, because in average they have 10 or 20 views and maybe these few people who really watch those clips are happy if they don’t have to watch one every day. It is only that I want to be done what has to be done and it must be done, because I began this work.
This night I slept on my camping mattress, because I suppose that partly the ship mattress is responsible for my bad sleep with bad dreams. The result was not clear enough, so I will do it again. For the first time however, I woke up by the alarm, what it less impressing because of the latest time conversion.
This noon I could take a photo of the nearly vertical shadow. Maybe half an hour earlier it would have been better, but there were clouds.
For another time-consuming video project, I filmed a bird, that for me was a dove until now, because Bob Dylan sings “how many seas must a white dove sail”. But during filming I remembered the word seagull (Jonathan!) and was not sure anymore. But what is a pigeon? And if a dove is a pigeon, why should it sail many seas?
The project I mean is my daily life on the ship. So, it should cover stairs, food, turning on/off the SPOT-GPS, video cutting, workouts and playing a bit on the Ukulele. I play only one song, “Blowin’ in the wind”, because it is one of the few songs (or the only one?) where I know the chords and even the first verse, that with the white dove. And while I was playing it in all harmonies from C to B, there was a white “dove” sailing in front of the ship which is in front of my window. And I thought it would be interesting to sing that song and partly film the Ukulele and when the dove-line comes the video should show that bird. Yet, I am not sure if Magix and I will cooperate successfully to do that, but I am motivated to try it.
In the afternoon was an alarm signal and then an announcement. I could detect it as English but could only understand a few words, not the message. I wonder sometimes how the Sri Lankans can understand the Chinese accent and the other way around, I can hardly catch anything in both cases. Meanwhile I know what the captain means when he says Moulbairne, because we go there, and I suppose that the crew members also can guess meanings because there is only a certain number of repeating things to tell on a ship.
At least I know that in any emergency case I must go to the bridge and I went there. The announcement was “only for drill” but the chief officer has something for me anyway, a paper from Australian Customs and Border Protection Service regarding things I want to bring.
Question 7
“Are you bringing into Australia (…) wooden articles?”
Yes, an Ukulele – do they mean that?
Question 8
“Are you bringing into Australia animals, parts of animals, animal products including equipment, (…), insects, shells, bee products?
Yes, I wanted to bring some ants and locusts of the brand “don’t cry EAT IT!” to spice up our camping tour but now I better eat them on my daily white rice (deserves to be spiced up, too) before the officers freak out and maybe make troubles beyond those little packages.
In late afternoon the crew had a barbecue like every fortnight. The captain invited me to sit next to him and the conversation had to face diverse difficulties: His Chinese (and my Austrian!) accent, loud music, lack of common topics, eating…
When I asked something and understood the answer, then I knew the captain had not understood my question, when he said something I tried to guess by the melody of the sentence, where a good moment for nodding or smiling could be. The loud music was his own playlist and he skipped all Chinese songs although some started more promising than many of the more international songs were. First, you saw the whole crew around the grille but soon the Sri Lankans went inside in the crew’s recreation room and the Chinese still were outside. The captain said something about beef, but I am not sure if the segregation is based on meat. At 19:00, everything was over again and two times I got the explanation that there is no beer allowed and so, people don’t sit longer together than necessary….
When I went back to my cabin, I could hear loud music from the captain’s room. Now he was playing Chinese songs but after an hour, he played only the same two songs and finally only one song 3 or four times in a row. Then the night could begin.
