Catharsis

It has been an I N S A N E five days. (No really, I cannot possibly impress upon you exactly how insane it has actually been, even with the capitalised, spaced out letters!) And to think that I was supposed to get off the boat on Friday. However, that fell through, and on Saturday morning one of our streamers (one of the eight 6km long cables with hydrophones, that we tow behind the ship to pick up sound signals) chose to dive to the ocean bottom. This particular ocean bottom in question was a good 1100m below the surface. Predictably, all hell broke loose.

That wrinkled up yellow thing you see floating in the water? That's not supposed to be wrinkled, it's supposed to look like a nicely rounded balloon. Well, sort of. And it has been crumpled and crushed into that huge hulk of scrap merely by water pressure at a great depth. Without going into too much detail, let's say that this was the worst stint on the back-deck that I've ever done.

Thankfully, there were a few people who made life a whole lot more bearable under the circumstances. And there were movies. But I must admit House of Sand and Fog wasn't the best choice under the circumstances. It has brilliant acting amidst equally brilliant cinematography, but is one of the most depressing movies I've ever seen! The only light moment came when the Russian workmate I was watching it with found it extremely hard to believe that she had a similar accent to Kingsley's representation of Southern Caspian English! It is rather difficult to keep a straight face when you hear someone say 'I don't talk like that' while talking exactly like 'that' :P.In between all of this Gameweek 4 came and went, and I did exceptionally well with 55 points. Way above the average of 41 this time! And with it, I landed a solid third spot!! The only trouble is, it will probably only get worse from here. Almost at the same time, F1 yielded the perfect result that I was looking for at Istanbul! A Ferrari 1-2 with Massa in front!! I think someone was trying to compensate for the kinda luck I was having with the more pressing matters at hand /:).

Eventually it was Tuesday afternoon and I was packing with the all important question still hanging unanswered like a dark cloud over my head. Will the weather calm down to permit a chopper to land on the Trident's helideck? And when I was just about through, I ran into the Chief Officer, who just happened to mention in passing that the helo ops would very probably get cancelled :O. I was aghast!!!! The option was to wait for a couple of days, and even after that, the weather was predicted to only get worse :((!! It is probably the worst possible thing that can happen to you, having to pack your bags without knowing if you would have to unpack everything again the next day.

I got on shift yesterday, and headed back to the backdeck, wondering if this would be the last time. Not the best thing to have on your mind when you are trying to concentrate :). By the time I got off at midday, all the gear was almost the way it was all supposed to be. A couple of hours later, I was in the heli-reception, waiting for my chopper. Another half hour, and I was actually on it :). I have, without a doubt, never been this happy, relieved, grateful or exhausted while lifting off from the Trident :-<. It took three flights, the chopper out to Barrow Island, then an ancient looking fixed wing (that looked like it had a flat tyre!) out to Karratha and then another jet to Perth to get back.And when I got out of the cab in Subi, I was still wondering if the keys I had in my hands would open the gate :|. (I hadn't been able to recognise the set I'd been sent.) But it turned out that my misery had run its course :). Got a really good night's sleep and took the day off today. The forecast was gloomy with possible hail, but it's been bright and sunny all day :).

Just for the record, for the first time in my life, I'm living all by myself in a house.

Currently: coming back to life...
Listening to: Dido - Thank you