Finally!!

The pic I've been dying to post, like, forever!! :DSort of puts the whole 'how gigantic is the ocean' thing in perspective. That minuscule white speck is just a little shorter than a 100m sprint track /:).

Right, so life's back on balance, I can happily get back to my music, photos, movies and all the rest. Lappy's back with a new motherboard \:D/. If only the buggers at Dell had not replaced the original Centrino setup with a regular M. The difference? As far as I'm concerned, the absence of WLAN. There goes free internet at hajaar airports, cheap internet at almost every single apartment I stay in :-<. Well, at least the disk was perfectly ok, which means all those photographs I thought were gone forever, aren't!! And a shitload of work stuff, but I wasn't really heartbroken over that anyway :P. Of course I've now taken the precaution of backing up every bit/byte of what one might consider useful. Just in case.

Currently: om happy :)
Listening to: Tori Amos - Toast

Tons of my personal Trident pics here.

Uh oh!

Got the rather ominous news today that the in-house repair people haven't been able to do anything to get my comp back to working order. Instead, they are waiting for the manufacturer to replace the motherboard :-S. Wonder what I'd done to it :|. However, I'm now happily out of my banishment from the internet, having hijacked another chap's workstation. He's on vacation :D. Unfortunately it's a stupid old Win 2k system that refuses to let me load my pics X-(.

Currently: in mourning
Listening to: a massively noisy CPU cooling fan :|

P n P

1400: Friday, 25th August

About to write more than a memo or a few notes on a sheet of paper after a fair while. And it's on the blank backside of a now useless printout :|. Pathetic it is, this hyper dependance on electronics. Yes, still waiting to get my laptop fixed.

Got lugged around unwillingly on a trip around Perth last night thanks to a driver who mistook 'a city hotel in Perth' for 'the City Hotel, Perth' :-<. The latter, incidentally, does not exist. And this, after majorly delayed choppers thanks to unknown mechanical failures.

Discovered this morning, rather to my dismay that it's currently the season for cloudy skies and sudden downpours here. I've never quite been the one for dancing in the rain, not with a cellphone in my pocket /:).

The chopper ride out from the ship to Barrow was pretty cool actually, finally managed to get my own aerial pics of the Trident :D. It looks quite tiny from the sky!

Weekend's coming up. With the cam running out of space and the iPod running out of charge, it'll be the King's Park benches with Foucault's Pendulum, listening to the distant honks of traffic and ferries I suppose...

Maybe I should get some stationary and start writing a proper journal. Sheets of paper are somewhat less likely to sputter and die on you.

Currently: shocked at the state of my handwriting :O
Listening to: Oasis - Lyla
--
Update: Still no laptop. No rains since Friday morning :). Weekend = EPL gameweek 3 live :D.

Fractures on an almost empty glass jar

Lying back as the wind rushes past my ears in a thunderous race to nowhere. Yet it doesn't seem like noise. Just a little taste of truly fresh air. A tired kind of bliss. . . A little water-skiing in my mind :).

Can anybody fly this thing?
Before my head explodes,
Or my head starts to ring.

We’ve been living life inside a bubble,
We’ve been living life inside a bubble.

Confidence in you,
Is confidence in me,
Is confidence in high speed.

--

Engines off. Slowing down to a standstill. The immensely vast ocean is silent in the noon day sun. A bright kind of quiet. Wings flap noiselessly. Oh it's all just such a terrific blue!
--
It's all crew-x atmo onboard now. One chopper-load's left already!! While the bunch that got off have been given shit bigtime over the last few days, they're the ones currently sitting on various flights home :|. I mean you just know you'll be given a hard time if you're leaving a full three days earlier than the rest :).

Currently: waiting for my chopper :)
Listening to: Coldplay - High speed

I knew it!!!

How many times have I said that I've been born about fifteen centuries too late?!!! :D Should have been around long before the bullet was discovered, or gunpowder for that matter. At some point in life I rather fancied my chances with some sort of sword or club (specifics varied depending on how old I was) twirling over my head. Lately the Shadowknife had quite gripped my imagination, what with it being carved out of the living shadows of Elaken and what not :P.

My Inner Hero - Warrior!

I'm courageous, straightforward, and charismatic. I'm a born lea... yada yada yada yada.

Too much time does this to you /:). Anyway, there's a chance of you turning out to be a Wizard, Paladin or Rogue as well, so if you've got nothing better to do: click here to find your own "inner hero" :D.

Feeling: amused :D
Listening to: The Waifs - A brief history

Cheating life

Things keep creeping up on you unnoticed. You don't have a clue what's coming, then one fine morning... Ah! I love that expression, 'one fine morning'. Covers all sorts of things doesn't it, good, bad, euphoric, shocking... downright terrifying and heart-breaking.What can one say about a death? Except that I wished it was otherwise. And how does that change anything? I wish there was something I could do. Maybe there was, I just didn't know. What was it that terrorized a kind, humble, once mirthful mind into caving in? They say may he rest in peace. I say may those he left behind, distraught and benumbed by shock, may they find some measure of peace. How? I don't know how...

Feeling: -
Listening to: Norah Jones - Come away with me

Mayday! Mayday!

Dead or dying flying things seem to be landing up in my hands with alarming regularity this past week :(. First there was this tiny flying fish that popped out of the water, only to land up beside me in the small boat :|. We got it into some water as soon as we could, but by the looks of it, chances of survival didn't seem spectacularly high.Then a day or two later Ian gave me this moth. Now I think moths tend to be rather averse to energetic flitting about, especially in the cold. But this one was pretty clearly dead :(.

Finally Richie found me this bird today, stuck behind a pipe, and looking very scared. I'm like the designated wild-life restoration guy on board it would seem :-<. Well, having had some previous experience with scared, lost birds last trip, I was slightly less clueless this time /:). Following my standard m-o, I left it on the back-deck railing for a while. You would be surprised how totally confused and disoriented these birds can get! Let them fly out of your hands and wham! Straight into the nearest wall :|. But this one didn't seem at all interested in flying out into the cold wind, so it's currently swaddled in a few rags with bread crumbs, crumbled cookies and a cup of water within reach. And yes, I cut the cup to size. Trouble is, Dumas (pronounced dum(b) as(s)) refuses to have any of it :(. If only I'd kept the fish from earlier... Anyway, so if anyone can tell me what I can feed the bird I'll be most grateful.
--

Afternoon, 14th: The bird's flown, I think it was just waiting for daylight. And it's left behind a shit stain which I now need to dispose of :|. So I'm guessing it wasnt exactly starving last night /:).

Currently: slightly worried
Listening to: War - Low rider

A year at sea

Nothing much has been happening lately, except days being ticked/crossed/torn off various calendars. The tally to crew-x currently stands at 11 days and a wake-up. Thought I'd never settle into a full six weeks on the ship without at least one day when I felt like jumping off! :) It's taken me a year, but I think I'm finally getting there...

One of the things that had really surprised me on my first trip was the fact that most of the crew-members had done only a year or two on this boat!! Thing is, it felt like they'd been here forever! On every single trip since then there has been at least one new chap on my shift, and usually a whole bunch of new faces in the rest of the seismic crew. Wonder what it will be like getting transferred to another ship. Not that it's an imminent likelihood or anything, but you never know.

While looking for a picture of some guys I'd worked with on my FAST trip, I came across my hyper-enthusiastic post on my first ever small-boat trip :). Then: "I love my job! I love my life! It is so AWESSOME!!!" (I can't believe I actually wrote that :D.) Now: Well, I still love my job, as in, there's nothing I'd rather be doing! I'm not too unhappy with my life, and come to think of it, it's still pretty awesome in a lot of ways..... :)) I'm getting old! :P

Currently: laughing my head off =))
Listening to: The Waifs - The waitress

Rolling (and pitching) along

I'm scared to say I'm less than busy now :|. The other day I did and promptly the next morning I find the instrument room deserted when I come on shift. Horror of horrors, it's back to the back deck!!! Right, so I'm currently very busy, watching the clock hands crawl towards midnight :P.The busy bit's not that far from the truth for the better part of the day though, really! Small boat trips are still happenning almost on a daily basis. And with the decision finally made that I'm to officially spend my office time at Perth, looks like I'll make it to Norway as well sometime this break! That certifies me to finally start driving boats 'under supervision' :D!! For once I'm not the one making all the attempts at planning my immediate future :). I'm even getting an apartment in Perth it seems \:D/! The laptop's still as dead as ever though, will have to do something about that :-<.

--

There's been a change in the avians in the neighbourhood recently. The regular white-winged sea-gulls seem to have disappeared. Instead, there are a couple of black birds hovering in our trail. Every time we're out in a small boat I see them skimming the wave tops with their wings. Barely a foot off the surface, gazing intently into the deep blue. Wonder what goes on through their tiny little heads. 'See fish => swoop n grab' is my best guess :P.

Oh, there were whales again! Not your usual 'whale sighted once, 2 clicks off starboard bow' stuff. Seemed like a really huge mommy humpback and her not quite so huge calf were travelling south and giving the rest of the migrating bunch a wide berth. Unfortunately that put us in their way. For about half an hour they kept up with us, maintaining a respectable distance of a couple of hundred metres on the starboard side (that would be right while looking forward). Not that's it's a difficult thing to keep up with the Trident as it wades along at a measly 4-5 knots. Eventually I guess they figured we were slow enough to overtake rather easily and after changing lanes expertly went on their own way.
--

Ah yes, since I'm logging everything else about my job, I've been promoted! Most important outcome of that being that I'm no longer a trainee!! Yay! :D

Feeling: accomplished :P
Listening to: Kylie Minogue - Come into my world

Miscellany

It's funny how my life onboard swings from extreme to extreme. Till two days back busy would have been the understatement of the century, and now, well... Let's just say that the high point of my life currently is that I've been on 3 small boat trips in the last five days :D.

the usual suspects: me, Richie, Ian, Marcel

On the last of these I finally managed to get the coxwain, in this case the very venerable Party Chief Ian (who's like my boss's boss's boss or something :O) to take the boat around the front of the ship. Primarily so I could take pictures :P. Yes, he's really nice, in fact all I'd managed to muster up courage to do was ask politely if he would take the boat round the front :D. As I have long believed, the Trident looks most majestic from up front.
Another funny thing is how profound thoughts tend to occur when one is somewhat less than terribly occupied. It might have something to do with reading Umberto Eco's massively profound tale of the Templars of course :D.

I've been haunting the mess a lot recently. No, I'm not intent on getting fat, it's just that I can't stand the idea of sitting in my room reading, with no music. Feels a wee bit claustrophobic. So I lug my book down to the mess when I land up for my late night supper and end up sitting there for hours. The good thing also is that there's a healthy number of people who always step in for a bite and then stay to chat :).
And yes, I've found a way to put up pics again :).

Currently: mildly bored
Listening to: DJ Quicksilver - Bingo bongo ..yes, yes, someone else put it on /:)