Day in the life of...

... what do I call myself? A sailor, engineer, mechanic, rather expensive labour, all of these, none of these?

Whatever it is, it never fails to surprise me. I have no idea how many people are familiar with the concept of shutki maachh, at lunch the other day I was offered something called balchai (or something sounding like that) in Mayanmese (formerly Burmese). Turns out the two are the same! Small fish spiced up and wrapped, preferrably in banana leaves, and left underground, or otherwise covered with earth for a substantial amount of time. I was so elated on seeing shutki after an extremely long time under rather unexpected circumstances, that it took the first bite into a rather generous helping to remind me how much I hated it :P.

Then of course there's my shiftmate. There are two people on the entire ship who rank below me, totally new trainees. (I'm decidedly senior with all of 6 months' experience :D.) And one of them is my understudy. First shock, he's 8 years older than me. And not so surprisingly I guess, he's married, and has a six year old kid. All that's very fine, and the chap's really rather nice, but when at the lunch table he launches into a conversation about how tough the first two years after having your first kid is, I kick up my chewing speed a notch or two. Five minutes later I'd be explaining to him how to 'acquire quality seismic data', as my boss puts it. Missing the good old days when seniors were actually older and juniors younger :-<.

Being reminded on a daily basis that getting your hopes up really serves no other purpose than very effectively having them deflated right back again. Waiting... hoping... knowing full well that tomorrow will be not too different in some ways, and nothing like today in others :).

Feeling: amused, at nothing in particular
Listening to: Sheryl Crow - Every day is a winding road