Wednesday 29 November 2006

Commuter me

I'm off again.I know that I love my life largely because of the whole 'travelling around, never at the same place for too long' nature of it. I know it, but there are times when part of me refuses to accept it. Times like the other night when the rain came crashing out of nowhere drumming on the slanting wooden roof. And this morning when the sun came out after more showers and made everything look shiny and happy...

Had the best time in Perth yet. It's amazing what a huge difference there is between one and none :). But tomorrow I'll be back in Bombay!! And not for a two hour and 10 minute flight transfer, for the better part of a week! So it's back to campus for the weekend! Then there's the wedding. The first of my department batchmates getting married! Married!!! Damn! One of those things that remind you that all of a sudden life's passing you by way quicker that you expected. Which does not mean of course that I'm not terribly excited about the wedding!!! :D First one I'll be attending in like six years or something!! (Counting only weddings that were worth getting excited about that is :|.)

And in two weeks and a half, I'll be back on the ship.

Feeling: excited... :|
Listening to: Pearl Jam - Wishlist

Sunday 26 November 2006

Pearl Jam!

Set 1 Go, Animal, Do The Evolution, Comatose, Corduroy, Severed Hand, Given To Fly, Marker In The Sand, Elderly Woman Behind The Counter In A Small Town, World Wide Suicide, In Hiding, Even Flow, Daughter/(Mother), U, Insignificance, Jeremy, Big Wave, Lukin, Rearviewmirror
Encore 1 Throw Your Arms Around Me, Last Kiss, Better Man/(Save it for Later), State Of Love And Trust, Black, Alive
Encore 2 Wasted Reprise, Why Go, I Got You, Blood, Rockin' In The Free World

My first rock concert. The best Saturday night of my entire life! And I still can't believe I was actually there! Singing along, not with a video, but the real thing :D. Two hours and a half of pure euphoria :-<. It was everything I could have ever imagined, and more :).

Currently: in heaven
Listening to: Pearl Jam - Elderly woman behind the counter in a small town

Thursday 23 November 2006

Choices

Choice of meat (or salad, though how they can sell salad kebabs and get away with it, I don't know), choice of sauce, choice of lettuce, tomatoes, onions, choice of extra cheese, olives, eggs blah blah blah, choice of.... You get the idea. They might as well just let me do it myself! In fact, right across the seating area there's MYO, "make your own, away from home". Trouble is, there the choices are so much more intricate and therefore more intimidating, frustrating and eventually irritating, that I usually just resign myself to an unending series of nods till I manage to lay hand on my lunch /:).

And it's still not over! "Drink?!" (How these people manage the voice with an overdose of enthusiasm coming from a face without the slightest hint of it is quite a mystery to me.) Anyway, you'd think apple juice would be a pretty simple choice? Apparently not. "We're fresh out of apple, something else?" "Apple and black currant....?" (That's what they had the last time they ran out of apple.) "Umm, out of that as well, something else?" X-(((. "That bottle right there." "Excellent, it's apple and cranberries. Enjoy your meal!!"

Currently: tired and bored :-<
Listening to: Joni Mitchell - Refuge of the roads

Monday 20 November 2006

Blue Heaven

Ever noticed how a really good weekend makes the rest of the week look so totally miserable? It doesn't help when the bright sunny weekend ends with getting caught in a Monday morning drizzle. Ah well, one can't have everything I suppose. But I did have a fun weekend. A quiet Friday evening in probably the only Subiaco restaurant that wasn't bursting with people. And one with breezy open-air seating and a hilariously forgetful waitress. (But she was cute!) A fruitless whale sighting trip on Saturday led to an afternoon strolling around in Freo looking for anything other than a seafood grill :|. Not before getting my feet wet and my floaters laden with sand of course. It's finally summer in these parts, so floaters and shorts rule :D.Watched The Prestige and got totally tangled up the twisted web of.. whatever it was a twisted web of, 'cos a twisted web it definitely was! I really don't mean that in a bad way though :P. It was quite interesting.But Sunday took the cake! There was this air race over the Swan river that had been publicized all over, and it was predicted to attract over a quarter of a million people! I figured I'll get there early, just in case. The good thing with an air race is there aren't any seats. But the way the banks of the river started filling up, I was quite amazed! I'd never have guessed there were so many people in Perth!! But three hours later I was really feeling sorry for them. If this is as exciting as it gets, life had to be pretty sad :P. The best part of it all was when a Quantas aircraft took off from the neighbouring Perth airport and started looping around crazily over the river before heading back to the airport! Now I don't think it was a part of the show, but if there were any passengers in that one, I don't think they'll ever fly Quantas again :D.

In case anyone's wondering about the title, that's the flavour of the vaguest milkshake I've ever had /:). Totally reminiscent of the iffy looking 'blue ruin' from Eternal Sunshine... :|.

Currently: I hate Mondays :(
Listening to: Pearl Jam - Black

More weekend pics.

Thursday 16 November 2006

>:)

I have tickets!!!!! :D :D To next weekend's Pearl Jam concert here in Perth!! This is SO AWESOME!!! I've known about the precise date and location of the concert for so long!! But with changing schedules and rotations and all of that I'd kinda given up on actually being here at the right time! Moreover, all tickets sold out like over a month back! At the time of course I was on the boat, and an express mailing address or a 'pick-up point near you' weren't very realistic options :|. But they re-released some tickets sometime this week itself I think! And I have tickets on the floor area smack bang in front of centre-stage :D. And I have company \:D/! A couple of guys from office who'd forgotten all about it (imagine that!!!! :O) and then given up on getting tickets this late :D. YAYYYYYY!!! :D:D Yes I'm totally totally hyper right now :).

Feeling: ECSTATIC!!!!! duh /:)
Listening to: Dido - Do you have a little time

Monday 13 November 2006

Crew change scare!

I was listed on the first chopper, as usual. The least important people get off the ship quickest ;). The chopper landed, the other swing got off from it, the usual long faces, and all of us with huge big grins :D. They took of their life jackets and handed it to us. But suddenly I realised that I was the only one left without a lifejacket, and there were none left!! :O Someone had become so attached to his/her lifejacket apparently that they'd worn it into accomodations!! The chances of getting a spare were disappearing fast, and eventually there I was, staring through the port hole as the rest of the guys boarded the chopper and happily flew off :((.I did manage to get on to the next one thankfully, but from the next time I will make sure I'm not the last one to grab a life jacket! What made it worse was how close we were to land! In fact there had been some marginal weather conditions all through the night and we were actually considering the possibility of swimming across, it was just 7 kms to shore! :P Anyway, I was very relieved to see the Trident disappearing into the blue eventually :).
And since crew-change was on Saturday I had no office the very next day!! Spent the afternoon appreciating land :P. And the whole of Sunday sleeping :D.

Current avatar: office goer :-<
Listening to: Sheryl Crow - Kiss the girl

Thursday 9 November 2006

I won!!!

Something :P. Well, all details are not out yet, but I've been informed that for my entries to the WesternGeco Photo Competition I've got myself a t-shirt and 250 bucks! Okay, so did like hajaar other people, but who cares?!!! :D
This is the one that got the shirt. No idea what the shirt looks like yet, by the way :P. We've been asked to e-mail shirt sizes and they'll send it over from Houston it seems /:). Why can't they ever do things simply?!

Oh yes! Other awesome thing that happened today, I now own a Leatherman Wave!!!! \:D/ It is totally awesome!!! I mean, I know I'll probably never use most of the plethora of stuff they've managed to pack into it! But it's so cool!!! :D Got it for these points that we can build up onboard for doing a bunch of things and claim back with goodies!

I needed this! Stuff to cheer me up that is. Been out on the back deck forever :(. And will be till crew-change, which is just one more day, and a wake up now! I am so dying to get to Perth on Saturday and just sleep through the whole of Sunday :-<.

Currently:
the usual side-effects: bruised, battered, hopelessly tired...
Listening to: Alanis Morissette - Thank you

Sunday 5 November 2006

Reprieve!

I could have very well been writing an obit here! Devastated at having lost one of the most precious things in my life right now. And that, solely due to my own stupidity! It's terrible when you do something dumb and the consequence truly hurts! There's that thick dark cloud of 'What if?'s hanging over your head like a bunch of persistent stinging mosquitoes. And of course you know the answer to the only one that matters. What if I had not been so **cking stupid?!!

Went out in what was probably the last small boat outing this trip. And took my cam along. Shouldn't have, I know, but I did. Should have heeded the sign from above when I'd tried this the last time and the whole trip was aborted :|. But no, I had to go do it all over again, right down to shoving the cam in the pocket under my life jacket. Only, that put it right under the CO2 cylinder in the jacket, the pressure denting the camera's metal jacket enough to make the lens cover jam. Meaning? I couldn't do anything that required the lens /:). I tell you, the trip back to the ship was the longest ever :((. Even the other chaps were looking sombre...
the regular bunch these days: Vic, Javier, Skippy
I did get a few clicks earlier in the boat, and there's Skip in all his glory at the helm :). Anyway, once back onboard, I couldn't just let it be. So I found a screw-driver and got to work. It's actually pretty simple to open up a digicam. Eight tiny cross-headed screws, a bit of gingerly prying and pushing, and the casing's off to reveal all the secrets of capturing the moment forever. Not like I wasn't shitting myself all the while, but I managed to put it all back together eventually. Including the wispy 4-pin laminated bus-type thing that looked really really fragile, and significant :-S. Okay, so it worked, and while things are not exactly as smooth as they had been or should be, I can take pictures with it again!!! Almost missed lunch in the bargain. Even if I had, it would have been a very very small price :).
What if this had been the last sunset/sunrise pic I'd ever take with my little blue L1?!!! Upsetting beyond words. Not like I wasn't planning to retire it after another few hundred clicks or so anyway... the 3x optical is a bit on the short side. But not to be able to take the occasional blazing sunset from my window in Kolkata... that would have been truly unfortunate.

Feeling: extremely relieved!!
Listening to: The Waifs - Sunflower man

Friday 3 November 2006

Sepia tones

A warning sign
I missed the good part then I realized
I started looking and the bubble burst
I started looking for excuses
...
A warning sign
You came back to haunt me and I realized
That you were an island and I passed you by
And you were an island to discover

Come on in
I’ve gotta tell you what a state I’m in
I’ve gotta tell you in my loudest tones
That I started looking for a warning sign
...
An old favourite. Before The Scientist and Yellow. And long before Fix You. Those only too well remembered opening chords took me by surprise. Transported to another time and place, I was once again trapped into longing for things that I have left far behind. Or is it the other way round. . .

Currently: missing a lot of... things :-<
Listening to: Coldplay - Warning sign

Thursday 2 November 2006

Abort!!

Had the shortest boat trip ever! Well, almost had one rather :P. The boat was swung out from the ship's side, we put the gear into it. Before that we put on our raincoats and all of that. Skip went a step further and donned a wet-suit! I at least went out into the boat to put in the gear, poor Skip hadn't even stepped into it when there were frantic signals from the bridge! Abort the trip! Weather's too rough! Normally in such a situation I'd be the most depressed person around, and I was! I'd finally managed to bite the bullet and packed my cam into a zip-loc bag and into my pocket, guarded under the life jacket! I'd even made the smart choice of picking up a pair of Wellingtons instead of my regular boots which take like forever to dry up after each trip. But today there was Skipster looking so gutted that I couldn't possibly complain :).
--

Something has landed me straight back to one of my first trip habits. I religiously go watch the sunrise everyday (one has to adapt :P). And given that we have travelled northwards, the fact that I have to be back at my station before 6 am does not mean that I'll miss the sunrise by millimetres almost!! Anyways, so the shutter's been blinking often enough again.I couldn't help being reminded of the tungsten electrodes from spectroscopy lab by today's sunrise though :D.

Feeling: chirpy!
Listening to: Jack Johnson - Better together