332 Ship 08 passing Somalia 17.6.2019
i always got some appetite when I saw that
In the morning you could feel that we had arrived in the Gulf of Aden, the sea and the containers became silent. I wanted to make my morning-GPS-screen-shot but the phone was wet within seconds and didn’t work properly. And when I tried to take a photo of the Somalian coast, that was in the haze of humidity anyway, my camera added even more mist because of the temperature difference to the cabin. My picture of Somalia stays incomplete ?
Since two days three of four sockets didn’t supply current anymore, it had stopped before several times for shorter or longer but now it seemed for ever. So, the electricians came, checked and wondered. The problem and the symptoms were unexplainable and so they gave me an extension cable. But 2h later the current flew again in the dead sockets. Maybe the presence of the extension cable will help for the rest of the trip, directly or indirectly!
Today, the chief officer wanted to get my ticket for this trip. I looked around but first found only that of Puccini. Then I found another one, but it was again for Puccini and I was confused. Later I found out that in Kuala Lumpur I had again printed the old ticket instead of that for Benjamin Franklin, but so far no one, including me had looked hard enough to see the difference.
We had another tea party and showed each other some traveling related things. Jochen had a video of an equator crossing celebration where the captain played Neptun and every new “crosser” was baptised with an egg cracked on the head and a bucket of cold water afterwards. Jean Marc last time had shown a photo with cream baptising. On Columba I had also crossed the equator for the first time but there and also on Puccini was no ceremony. This is partly ok with it, because I even couldn’t decide if I would prefer cream or egg smashed on my head
333 Ship 09 passing Djibouti 18.6.2019
Messie always turned the knife outside and I turned it back inside. I wonder if he also wondered
Another magic number, day -333-
I woke up at 5 and for a moment thought that I had slept comparably long, before I realized that only my watch was not set on the correct time, it was 4. For a while I thought about all variants how you can confuse time with two different watches, one at the correct time, one an hour ahead and depending on which watch you look at night and on which in the morning, 6h sleep can also seem only 4 or up to 8 hours, depending on which watch you look when and given that you don’t know if it was the correct or the wrong time.
That was enough to wake me up. Sometimes I hope that being bothered by such things and dealing with all my systems for optimization could have a benefit like training the memory. Or it will only path my way to become a quirky old guy (please, don’t discuss the word “become” in this context, at present, I know well enough, who and what I am).
Waking up….
There is another thing where I am a bit too lazy to explore it thoroughly, the different levels of being awake or sleeping (or dead). But there could be more than 6 of them. My crucial level is one level beyond lucid dreaming, let’s call it lucid-waking-oneself-up-without-a-better-reason-than-being-a-bit-neurotic. You are sleeping but your brain starts working, telling you silly things, like “Interesting – you are sleeping! Are you sure? But how can you hear me when you sleep?! Come on, you are awake, check it out yourself!”
So, awake like this can be combined with being too tired for many things. In such a situation, I often start reading. In the ship’s library, I found a book that is meant funny and that starts with the title, the word game “the liver grows with its task (duty/mission)”, the author is a doctor and knows that. So far, it was not too funny for me, because most jokes were predictable, but some facts at least were interesting. And maybe it is not surprising that I cannot leave a book unfinished, I can get angry but still complete it. And at 5 in the morning, the more when I realize it is only 4, I think it is not the big waste of time to read that. And then, I was surprised, because I laughed sometimes. I wondered if the text were getting better in the second half of the book or if I had adjusted to it or I can deal better with humour in the early morning. Anyway, there were some surprising new thoughts for me in the evening and in the morning, an example: snails are hermaphrodites because they are so slow, so they must save the time for finding a partner by changing the chance to meet the right sex partner from 50% to 100%.
Later in the morning, I listened to and practised a Feldenkrais lection. I like that very much, except that it is a bit time-consuming. You need about 30min to do it and be aware of your body and breathing etc. And in the end, you do a movement that was not easy or only in a small radius and now it is easy and wide. This time it was turning from left to right and the speaker said that it might help to imagine looking at the horizon at the sea, and then I felt very privileged when I looked out of my window!
What is the solution for a guy like me if Feldenkrais lections are too long? Cutting and editing! First, I changed the tempo of the recording, the person now speaks faster and higher. It is wise not to exaggerate this, because it is harder to exercise seriously when Micky mouse instructs you. Then I cut all those long breaks meant for relaxation and/or meditational awareness that in my case anyway mainly bare the risk that I fall asleep. In the end, 30min shrink to 22-25min. And then, I prepared to even shorter versions for those days when I want to do Feldenkrais but 25min seem too long. In this shortcut version, I expelled everything beyond clear instructions, like “feel the echo of this turning of your head in your legs!”, by that, I can reduce the time to 7min. And from there it was only a small step to the quintessence version: the lections in general I built up from easier single movements to more complex and combined movements in the end. My emergency case Feldenkrais version is 1min and maybe not exactly what was originally intended, but still helpful, because those movements are very pleasant and better practice body awareness for one minute than never!
Today, you sometimes could guess to see coast line of and island in front of Saudi Arabia, and taking pictures of that misty view made things even worse, because immediately after going outside the camera (and my glasses) became foggy. In the afternoon, I didn’t take the camera inside and then it was better from this side, the mist on the ocean still was strong.
334 Ship 10 middle of red sea 19.6.2019
For breakfast, I went down earlier, to be there faster with my Ukulele than Jochen. When the others arrived, I wanted to sing “Happy birthday” but Jochen stopped me, because (as you can see in the title) it was not the 20th, his birthday. So, my preparation was unnecessary and tomorrow the surprise only could be to ignore his birthday.
At 10:30, we four passengers had a guided tour by the Cadet to the engine room.
From now on, I know that my initials can not only mean Musical Education but also Main Engine. Compared to other ME I know so far (Georgia, Puccini), that of Benjamin Franklin is not located in the same area as the tower, it is separated. The effect is, that if you need loud noise you only get it by strong wind and rumbling containers or by going to the engine room. The extra benefit there is a warm environment, some call it hot – 45°C and more. I partly had the impression that there and in the long corridors was not enough oxygen around. For orientation: from upper deck level, we went down 3 levels and maybe 150m to the heck, with no windows or direct access to air. The ME is another 3 or 4 levels down.
The cadet tried his best to explain something on the way, but we had ear protection and the noise level was still high. In the engine control room, it was better, but we could mainly see different screens showing the different features of the ship.
Today, I sewed the last 3 missing flags of France, Belgium and Germany to the bike cover. Maybe, I will need the cover in Europe more often that on the rest of the trip, but completing the flags is more motivated by trying to find my inner peace than by any necessity. I got another check mark on my to do list.
Also on my to-do-list is the treadmill training. My goal is to run 5km in 20min. Not even on the treadmill, I can run longer than 3min at 15km/h for now. But everyday I run a bit faster, today it was 12,4km/h. At the end of the ship passage it would be 15km/h but now there is a challenge, because my left foot hurts. For some days I just hoped it would stop hurting, then I tried to run “softer” but I must accept that it becomes worse. Whenever I have an exact schedule, it is hard to find the point to say “time for a change!”. Tomorrow, I will do a last run before I decide what to do.