A million foaming drops of joy.

Finally got to go out in a small boat today! It did take a while in coming, but on the upside, this was a tremendously lukhha trip (/vetti/jobless). As can be expected from my track-record, I was extremely happy to see the outside of the ship. And from quite a distance too, actually! Far enough for a bit of spray to almost eclipse the 92m Trident :D.

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My goatee is now longer than the hair on my head. And if you think that's weird, I'm not the only one. What are the odds...

Current mood: was happy a while back...
Listening to: Three Doors Down - Kryptonite

Deja vu!

Stepped out on the helideck and a totally unexpected view greeted me! The moon hovering a few degrees above the western horizon, piercing the darkness with it's silky glow. (It was 2.30 am.) I was reminded of an almost identical experience over 5 months back! And no, this isn't someting that would happen to you everyday, trust me :).

A few hours earlier, I had watched the sun set, and this was almost the same, the bright light reflecting off the softly undulating waves and leaving a glowing streak till the edge of the world. Only, the disk was a little short of round, and the world was in black and white.

Current mood: pleasantly surprised
Listening to: Moby - Honey

Ticker

There's this nice concept here, the instrument room (where I work most of the time) has these tons of monitors arranged in a rough circle all around, and there's this tiny cut-out of the Trident. So the concept is to have the 'ship' moving around from one monitor to the next with each passing day. Coincidentally, there are exactly 21 monitors, so when the 'ship' completes two trips around the room, we get off!!! :D And today it finished two thirds of the frst circle... two down, four to go.

It's pretty amazing how time's simply flying by this trip. I remember feeling decidedly bored by this time during my first trip, and oh boy, was I depressed when I had to get back to Asker from Kristiansund at the end of my second week in Norway!! But now I barely seem to have the time to spare on boredom :). They say the better your life is, the quicker it seems to pass you by! Actually my dad says that, and I'd rather take his word for it :D.

In case you are wondering, yes I did take these pics while within the ship. It's a pretty amazing view, watching the forefoot of the ship go slicing through the water forty feet below, and feeling like you are hanging in thin air, looking straight down.

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A smile might make a lousy umbrella, but it does turn your day around. Put a wee bit of fight, and start smiling, your shitty day will end up looking good eventually :).

Feeling: hopeful
Listening to: Everclear - Wonderful

Conspicuous by absence

Reading this kind of hit home the fact harder. There is no weekend here. There is the saturday and the sunday but there is no friday afternoon before, and no monday morning after. Well, what I mean is, it's like a tuesday morning all through. Or a wednesday, or a thursday for that matter.

It always feels worst on the second weekend. The first passes you by and you don't even notice it. Then another five days go by and you eventually long just a little bit (or a lot, depending on your state of mind) for a break. You shrug your shoulders and carry on. And soon you forget. Or force yourself to forget, which is sort of the same thing, and life goes on.

Current mood: wistful
Listening to: Oasis - Don't look back in anger

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