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Ahem, ahem. So now I've gone and made more plans, for the next break. Road-tripping from Berlin to Munich through Prague and Salzburg :D!! And yes, this actually is a road trip, booked the car yesterday :D. (Umm, I better finish up with the Italy story before there's another one waiting in line huh?)

Anyway, other than that, things have gotten really really slow these days. Don't get me wrong, the days are slipping by really fast! I didn't even realise it's been a full week since the last post. It's just that nothing seems to be happening :|. Even the weather's turned too rough for boating :-<.
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It's quite annoying how they leave you hanging at the end of every season of Scrubs :|. Raced to the end of season 6, and I don't think season 7's even out on DVD yet!! Frick! :|

Currently: comfortably numb..ish..
Listening to: David Gray - Babylon

Re-cap

I guess the whole missed crew change and the bag thing kinda overshadowed the rest. Come to think of it, it wasn't an altogether uninteresting trip back to the boat. As I was flying the same route I'd done a few months back, I had my cam out while flying into Istanbul, unfortunately, there was no flying low over the Bosphorus this time :-<.Once inside the airport though, I immediately recognised the chap at the transfer desk :|. I was not happy at all. And in almost an exact repetition of what happened the last time, he was confounded by my two passports, with the requisite visa being in the old one. He proceeded to rant and rave to no one in particular, in Turkish, I imagine. But every time I asked him if there was a problem or if I could help, he maintained everything was fine /:). Eventually, again as on the previous occasion, one of the others at the desk had to help him out :|. In the process he somehow managed to let the paper with my baggage tag fly off. In retrospect, it was a good thing I took the time to make him find the darn thing :|.

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And on the way back, caught the work boat out while we landed on the Trident. I think the photo brings out a nice comparison of sizes. The work boat happens to be that tiny little blip with a wake, to the right in the pic :). Speaking of which, I've probably had more launches already in the last 10 days than in the last few trips combined together! Yay! :D The sad part is, most of the time the weather's really been more on the marginal side of things than anything.
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Bolli's sudden enthusiasm for resuscitating his blog seems to have worked as a reminder for me to actually get down to putting down the Italy story in writing. Before all the good stuff sublimates off of my memory :|. Did get all the pics done. Well, short-listed at least (unfortunately, not quite as short a list as I'd like :|). Now for the writing...
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This trip officially sucks :(. Certain changes on the boat over the last few months finally seem to have taken a toehold. Changes that leave me in an awkward position :(. More so as I begin to slowly understand the ramifications... Time will tell. But the shine is finally off my hitherto lofty image of the Western Trident :-<. Three years, eleven days.

Currently: planing
Listening to: Portishead - Roads

Or not..

Well, I did get on the boat quite alright. Perfect helo weather and all. Minus my bag. But the bag story is far from over :|. So I got to the boat, right, with a little bag of the bare necessities (which, it turns out, aren't all that much :|) stuffed into an extra backpack that another late joiner to the boat just happened to be carrying :D, and called up the baggage people at the airport, fully expecting a request to fill out their claim form. Instead, I was told that my bag had arrived, and had been sent to the hotel! Probably an hour before, or after I left. I still haven't been able to establish which :|.

And after a week, and another late joiner travelling through the same hotel, and promises that my bag would be with me by the end of the week at the very latest, I still don't have it. That was 4 days back. Now I can only hope that it is in fact still at the hotel, hopefully, intact. As for the rest, I can quite clearly say, thus far, I'm only really missing my flip-flops :).
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Right, gloating time :P. I was actually quite sure there would be no Fantasy posts this season. But obviously, when earlier in the day the last games of the opening week were done, and I saw the league listings.. :D. It may only be the first week and what not, but I'm on top!! And by a hefty margin too! :))
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Getting uncomfortably close to that landmark I've always felt ambivalently about... That doesn't really narrow things down now, does it? :) Well, we'll get there when we get there.

Currently: wondering
Listening to: Aerosmith - Jaded

Losing 'everything'

I'd seen it happen before, but for all this time that I've been travelling, it had somehow never happened to me. But I guess, as they say, sooner or later. So when the last bag was on the belt after I finally got to Perth from Kristiansund via Oslo, Istanbul and Dubai, and mine was nowhere in sight, it was just waiting to happen :-<.

The good thing (well, sort of), is that this was a new bag, and one I didn't like all that much to be honest :|. The bad thing is, and this is pretty bad, inside that bag was everything. Well, everything that makes up my life for about 9 out of every 10 weeks :((. I guess you could say it feels a little like getting robbed of everything in the house....

Fortunately, I still stick with my policy of keeping all my electronics with me, in the back pack. And for some reason I'd chosen to wear my Ferrari jacket, instead of packing it in with the rest of the clothes... That is the one thing I'm really really thankful for actually :|.

On the other hand, I've lost my trustiest alarm clock - the old cell-phone :(. And my old wrist-watch, which, at 3 years, wasn't really that old :(. Then there was my old notebook, the one with the hand written posts while on flights... And the Leatherman Wave I'd got on the boat a couple of years back :-<. And on a purely functional level, the chargers for my phone and my camera :|.

Turns out I'm not really that bothered about pretty much anything else... Probably 'cos there wasn't all that much else :). Except for the cap... And the next GRRM book I was planning to start with soon, seeing that I'm almost done with book 2. And my Kiwi flip-flops... :) It's just that when you spend so much of your time with a few things... well, I should go get me some clothes and stuff I guess :-<.

Currently: 'home'less... sort of
Listening to: U2 - Stuck in a moment you can't get out of

Intersections

This should be it! The last step in becoming a proper coxswain. I just wish the course wasn't quite this tough :-<. Don't get me wrong, the whole driving around and even the mucking around with engines and stuff's pretty cool. It's just that after a couple of 13 hour days, the stress is beginning to take its toll. Well, thus far today it has been only 9 hours. Unfortunately we need to go back.

So here's the thing, we need to have some night-time exercises. By which they would mean darkness is a pre-requisite. Unfortunately, this is Norway, in summer :|. Yes, you've got it, it hardly ever gets dark! So now we're gonna head back to the boats at 11 pm. And hopefully catch that fleeting hour or so when it gets almost dark :|. Of course, after we head back around 2 in the morning it's still a 7am wake up :((.

And I thought I was feeling tired even before I got here :-<.
--It's been almost 2 years since my last course here in Kristiansund, and not much seems to have changed since :). Well, I should correct that, I can still recognise most things... with slight (and sometimes not so slight) changes. The one thing I was not expecting, though, was running into Richie at Oslo airport. For those who recall, he used to be my first boss, till about a couple of years back now... Good times, those :). And as luck would have it, one of the instructors happens to be Stan, the first coxswain I ever went out in a work-boat with! Such is the world of seismic :).

Currently: not quite firing on all cylinders :-<
Listening to: Filter - Take a picture

Yeah, whatever

When I thought this break would be interesting, I didn't really think it would be quite this hectic :-<. I was supposed to spend a rather relaxed couple of weeks here in Asker before getting back to the boat. Unfortunately, there's been a change of plans.

The coxswain (boat driver) course I've been looking to attend for about a year now? Well I was signed up for one next break, way off in October, but guess what? They've somehow managed to shoehorn me into a much earlier one, the one next week! Now ordinarily that would be fantastic news! But then again, had things indeed gone ordinarily, I'd probably not be writing this :|.

Attending the course means I'll not be able to get back to Perth in time for regular crew change. Something I have never missed in 3 years, and now I will, with full official authorisation :|. I'm still wondering exactly what precipitated such extreme measures. The really unfortunate part of the whole deal is that I might have to endure up to a week on a chase boat with rather pathetic living conditions in order to eventually get back on the Trident :(.

And by the time I do get back on board, I would have flown on every single weekend this break :(. I mean, okay, at this point I've spent five consecutive weeks in five different countries. When you say it like that, it probably sounds cool, but come on! Surely even for seismic, this is just a little bit too much :-<.

On the upside, it's a boat course!! And I'll be running into more people I used to work with a while back. And it's going to be better weather than October :). (I hope. It suddenly started raining here midweek :|.)

I just wish I wasn't feeling this tired at the end of my break :(.

Feeling: stretched
Listening to: Vertical Horizon - You say