325 Ship (1) along Sumatra 10.6.2019
It was the
most silent night on any ship so far. The ship is new and big and maybe the
engine is far enough and the noise reduction very effective. My schedule can be
a little less strict this time, because I have less things on my to do list and
more time, so maybe I will find a bit more inner peace? Today, I woke up before
5 and I am curious if this will change when I have the feeling I am free to
choose something to do instead of seeing too much that must be done, always
having in mind that this is not even a first-world problem, it is a luxury
“problem”. I am far from complaining , just wondering about me.
In the next days, I will try to find out the names of my fellow travellers, we
introduced us to each other and in the end, I still knew only my own name. The
German man is 77 years old, a former engineer for constructions regarding water
and still fascinated by that element, and because of that he had done 8 cargo
ship trips so far. He is most critic about the ship, mainly the service, partly
because of his very positive last experience on “Mozart”. For me, this a
complicated thing, because at one hand, we all had paid a lot, but even in a
hotel that is designed for hosting guests, I would not demand something, maybe
I would try to ask. And here we are “guests” in another way, we don’t belong
here, the captain and his crew are not our hosts, they are working here and if the
company accepts passengers, for the crew it is additional work.
He had told me, that he also doesn’t like food waste and I saw that he tried to
get a smaller portion, but in the end, he again had left-overs, so it is a
matter of priorities. At least, we all agreed that we don’t need an extra plate
with cheese and sausage at lunch, when we get soup, main course and dessert. We
will see if the messman can cope with the idea of reducing that.
At 1300, we had “familiarisation” if the security officer. Part one, theory,
was done quickly, because he had filled in the forms for us and we only needed
to sign them. Then, he showed us the way to life-boats, -rafts and -jackets. We
will come to a region with higher piracy danger, where we might not be allowed
to go on deck, because it would be important to reach the “citadel” fast.
Before dinner, I went to the bridge, to say hello and to get the ship’s email
address. So, I saw that we still were near the last corner of Sumatra. The
officer sent me down to the captain and I must say that he was quite rude and
nearly impolite and treating me as if I would be too bold demanding a free
ship’s address (which had been offered to me on all three other ships). I think
it is a bad mixture of this special captain having four passengers who maybe
all have wishes, so that he tends to block as much as possible. But it would
have been ok to explain to me that it is not possible without making me feel
like a silly kid who had impossible wishes like flying to the moon or getting
daddy’s car keys.
I am glad that I had been on three other ships before, so I don’t expect to
have the greatest experience of all, I have a good room, get good food (of
course they have all kinds of muesli, “because” I brought my own!), can do
something in the gymnasium (yes, I am off school, but still going to the
“Gymnasium” every day!), do my “work” and do not depend on anybody’s “love” on
this ship.
(While I was writing this, a spectacular and very near thunder was to hear, for
sure an above creature – Thor, Ba’al, Indra or Lei Gong – tells me not to be so arrogant.
326 Ship (2) to Sri Lanka 11.6.2019
And now it
was the noisiest night on any ship so far! First, there was a thunderstorm, I
can cope with that, but then the containers started to dance, some doors seem
to be closed weakly. And in general, the wind seems to be more effective on the
containers than on the other ships. In this night you could feel that also this
big ship can be moved by the swell but so far, I can see it is much less.
At breakfast, Joachim, the German, (I saw his name on a list, but later I
learned he always is called Jochen) was there earlier. And he, the man, who had
told me that he cannot bare food waste because he was born during the war, now
had put butter on his plate and had two slices of bread but ate only half of
the corner of the second one and left enough butter for the whole slice on his
plate when he left the room. I cannot understand this contradiction between
words and deeds. I ate it up after he left but it is a useless effort to make
things better.
Later in the morning, I got a phone call from the captain to come to the admin
office. He apologized for yesterday and explained that he didn’t know about the
possibility to give an email addy to passengers. I am grateful to the person
who told him, but he maybe even informed himself. He tried to be polite &
friendly and I am not sure if he didn’t succeed too well because he felt
awkward in this situation or if he cannot do better. But at least it will be
easier for both of us to meet on our ways on the ship.
I wrote the first 5 emails of my list just for establishing contact, (in the
next days I will add some others) and got the first answer from Marvin. The
rest of the day was nearly business as usual, I allow myself to be a bit lazy
with videos, only one per day, because I Have enough time and so I started to
read a bit more, today mostly in my offline Wikipedia, I am very happy to have
that.
327 Ship (3) near Sri Lanka 12.6.2019
Yesterday, I felt something strange inside my cheek and when I checked it, I saw a kind of bladder, black 8mm wide and 2mm strong. As every man ( I am not sure if women are different in this aspect) I was prepared to die, there were not many other possibilities than some kind of mouth cancer and I wanted to get to the state of dignity of late Sigmund Freud bearing this destiny. Today it was subject of miraculous spontaneous healing and gratefully I accepted destiny’s decision that I am not yet ready for this (or any other) kind of heroism.
This night we had the second time conversion, from Singapore to Jakarta to Almaty. For my body it was in a way logic to wake up at 3:30, my mind tried to follow. I wonder if the most obvious change I will undergo by this adventure would be a more sophisticated sleep disorder than before. I don’t care too much, except those moments when I am so sleepy that the feeling is so unpleasant like pain only that it doesn’t hurt.
Another unpleasant feeling: the temperature in the cabin. It is simply too cold and today I got an objective prove from my camera, because when I went outside, the lens clouded over. I don’t like cooling rooms and vehicles down too much in general. I can understand when people want to cool down unbearable heat until it is bearable but then I my acceptance sinks parallel to the temperature until I get aggressive when I see people wearing more clothes because the rooms are too cold.
Jochen, the German helps himself by opening the windows (it is the first ship where this is possible). You get warm air, stinky air and much noise and I guess that warming up the room is only challenging the AC to work harder.
To make my despair complete, at the same time I heard a report about a guy suggesting we should colonized some other planets, because the earth will be uninhabitable. I am sure, that with some common sense and 10% of the money and efforts that will be necessary to make the first steps in this direction, you could save the planet and make it a good place to live for all of us.
those photos didn’t help too much to recognize who is who
328 Ship (4) to Maldives 13.6.2019
This night
a had a very special repeating nightmare about video editing! The background:
when I compiled the videos about Kangaroo Island, after completing everything
including music and some coordination of timing between this music and the
video, I found a clip about a big burning area that I had not integrated. I now
can just add it without music, skip it or re-do the whole thing, let’s call
that a trilemma as I cannot prefer one of these solutions. And last night, I
dreamed about a lot of similar situations. But in reality, I am near to finish
this work for the moment, there are only
two videos about Kuala Lumpur left and 6 things about the cargo ships. I don’t
expect to film much before reaching the Suez Canal. From my cabin I have a very
limited view, because of the containers in front and the bridge construction to
the side. So, I didn’t see any seducing sunrise or sunset and I also postponed
walking around the deck, something Marie France, Jean Marc and Jochen do on a
daily basis.
Jochen btw, now gives me his food overflow from his plate and so I can safe his
and my food for breakfast, which is a bit much, but my own weight overflow is
now only 3kg, something I can tolerate until adjusting it back in Vienna.
After the Suez Canal, the next visible highlight most probably will be the port
of Algeciras, the 2nd most South town of Continental Europe (after
Tarifa), as I now know. From there we go to Dunkerque, the most Northern town
of France. In between will be a stop in Southampton, without any superlative.
Maybe I can mention that Titanic left from there…
So there will be again something to film and edit and I guess it will take me
until end of July to finish all of that. Today I had a frustrating moment that
probably everybody working on a computer knows. In general, I try to safe
everything from time to time, I try to make back-ups and so on. But today I was
deeply involved and concentrated in a special part of a video, puzzling around
with slow motion and then, of course, the program crashed down and many
complicated changes since the last autosave were gone. Now, I again start
saving after each step, until it will be saving after a few steps, then only
sometimes, until…