329 Ship 05 passing Maldives 14.6.2019
In the afternoon, I joined the passenger tea party in the passenger’s recreation room for the second time, the first time was on day 327 and I forgot to mention it. It was a quite “formal” gathering, we try our best to communicate and after 30-60min we go for something else. Last time, I introduced my Bürgschafts-project to them, but I am not sure if they will do it. This time, I tried to take a photo of all of us, but although the settings showed 10sec delay for a selfie, it always was 3sec and I was not ready. After that, I got internet access by the 2nd officer, so I can upload my diary entries. The 10min I needed to check the texts with the online translator, upload them and check my emails took 1$ of my balance, but I guess the next time, I will have less emails and that will save some MBs. The only big risk are the windows updates and I found no possibility to block them. Maybe I will get a warning, but Jean Marc also had tried many times and once an update cost him 20$ at another passage. At the gym, there is one guy at most afternoons who trains very hard (but maybe not very healthy) with very loud music. I have my own music via earphones but his is louder (and not at all my taste). Additionally, he needs to turn on a video with posing women, control his beautiful body in some mirrors and moan during some heavy weightlifting, to create the correct gym feeling. I like to train in the morning but every 2nd day I run in the morning and use the ellipter in the afternoon. Well, this will happen another 9x before we reach Dunkirk, I think I can stand it.
330 Ship 06 in the middle of the ocean 15.6.2019
very alone in the ocean
Because of big problems with broken teeth, Jochen wanted to leave the ship in Algeciras and take a flight back to Hannover to see his doctor, but he had expected or hoped to get the money for the last week back. Now he wants to stay and stand the problems.
For the border controls at the ports the chief officer wanted to know what more important goods I have with me. It was a bit embarrassing to admit that I have two phones and two cameras and two kinds of GPS. At least I have “only” one computer…
At the 15:30 tea party we managed to take some photos. Yesterday I also had tried, but although the settings were on 10 seconds, the camera shot after 3 sec and I always was late.
I found out that I must change other settings in another list but don’t know why. We shared some stories, about the equator celebration (crew and passengers who cross the equator for the first time get tricked), pirates and their techniques, ship travel in general and compared our methods of keeping records and diaries.
Today the ship was shaking sometimes and often it was more a tug not directly caused by the swell but, as far as I guess, indirectly by the containers who swing with the waves and add an extra impulse to them.
In the afternoon, I “normally” ate one of the five mangos I had bought in Singapore, only today and 2d before I skipped that and saved the fruits, because I had some cookies instead. But still, now there was only one left.
And then, in the evening, we got fruits as a dessert, including two mangos! So, the French shared one and Jochen and I the other one. The messman saw how much we liked them and brought four other mangos. I will miss that in Austria, first, I would not buy them and second, they are far from tasting like the real ones. But I can say, that on this trip, I had my share.
331 Ship 07 in front of Somalia 16.6.2019
One of the more useful tools I brought on this trip, is a magnifying glass. My eyes got worse and e.g. the “Lonely planet” for Uganda has some very tiny letters, especially in the maps.
This morning, partly because of another time conversion (now Dubai) I woke up at 3:30 and started reading in that book. It is very inspiring and makes me uneasy, because there is so much lying ahead of me and I hang around on this cargo ship. I read about Rwenzori mountains (where, btw my father had been climbing in the late 80ies), one of the only 3 remaining African mountains still permanently covered with snow and ice (+ Kilimanjaro and Mt Kenya) and now I know that AMS has another meaning than in German (AMS = Arbeitsmarktsevice = employment exchange), it means acute mountain sickness.
Yesterday I heard an Ö1-broadcast and in the morning remembered one sentence about implementing social responsibility in global economy and a scientist said about the USA that they use another word, because they fear the word “social” that reminds them on “socialism”, something obviously ranking somewhere between hell and plague for them. I wanted to find that word and heard through this broadcast 3 times and didn’t find anything about it. Where else could I have heard that? Things like that show me the limits of my mind and memory. For a while, I feared most that my memory is so bad (and on the other hand I know that I am just too lazy to train it – I wanted to learn some important telephone numbers by heart and I wanted to learn some Farsi words, both didn’t happen so far), but now I am much more worried by tricks my memory in cooperation with the rest of my brain plays. Sometimes I am so sure about something and later must realize that I was wrong.
I tried to find that sentence also in other “suspicious” broadcasts but first only found some interesting words, like “man is an animal with a problem of identity” (Kierkegaard) or “Geist ist die Fähigkeit sich angemessen zu verhalten”, something I cannot translate well (~Mind is the ability to behave adequate).
The shacking and rocking of the ship is stronger than before, the sea is rough and while you can see clouds of water brought up even to F-deck, maybe 40 or 50m over the sea, on A deck you get big drops of water in you face, and this is also at least 20m over sea level.
But this night we will enter the Gulf of Aden and even in case of bad weather it will nearly quiet.
And then I found those words ?
In the USA “they” don’t talk about “socially responsible investment”, now they say “responsible/ ethical/sustainable investing”. I had “remembered” a discussion of a journalist and a political writer, both women, but it was a report with an interview of a male university professor. Only the topic was the same, about impact of capitalism and modern way of life on everything.
the last mango from Singapore