The Delight

In the car into Melbourne town the driver looked at me and said “Yeh gonna bey coald mite!”. As soon as I figured out what he meant I just answered “Listen buddy, I’m from Sweden, you know nothing of cold, ok!”. (Actually I didn’t say that, but it would have been cool if I did) Melbourne is a busy place with lots of construction and positive vibes. There is also an abundance of young “backpacker”-looking people. Plenty of blonde white chicks with dreadlocks, dragging a kid in each hand, all wearing knitted clothing. And it is no wonder since there seems to be an arts museum and a ballet school on every block and every ethnicity is represented. Found some really cool street art too. A culturally rich town it seems. But what the fuck do I know, I was there for a few hours only. I’m becoming somewhat of an expert on instant tourism.

When returning we met the chief officer on the ramp. He looked anything but pleased. My watch began with me checking every lashing on the loaded 400 cars because the stevedores had suddenly forgotten how to lash properly. Whoopdidoo. But it is very therapeutic work and a good opportunity to come up with some clever smartassiness.

The Candy Bar of the Day is none other than Turkish Delight as seen in the picture. I bought it in a quickymart in Chinatown, Melbourne, along with a bottle of green ice tea. How Turkish it actually was remains unknown. It certainly wasn’t delightful. It is some sort of chocolate covered red sticky marmalade tasting somewhat similar to hairspray. I was drawn to it since “delight” is another one of those words that sounds so great in the aussie accent. Duh-loyt! Come on, everyone, say it with me! The ice tea tasted like very uncared for high school swimming pool.  

The glue

I went for a walk in Freemantle town yesterday evening and visited the local Seaman’s club. 

I will pause the telling of this story for a while to give you immature little piglets some time to laugh it up, because I know what you're thinking! But a seaman’s club is, in fact, not a fancy gay bar where the disco never dies, mustaches run wild and everyone is oiled up and ready to go. No, it’s a place where crew members can go and use telephones, internet, drink a beer and play some billiards. Some seamen have 9 month contracts and to be onboard for that long can drive anyone insane, so it’s very much appreciated to leave the ship and be somewhere else for a while. In many ports, like this one, the club is run by the church and people working there are volunteers. They also organize transport if you want to go somewhere, like a shopping mall or a restaurant and they give you a friendly smile and a pamphlet about the benefits of guilt and how you killed Jesus. I appreciate this service, I really do, but on the other hand they want some of us to have AIDS. So I dunno.

Ok back to the story. It was pitch dark and as I was walking past a doorway I heard a noise right next to me. I turned and there was a guy sniffing glue from a paper bag. But I was super cool and not scared at all. 

The blackout

We’ve lost the internets. Of course the new chief engineer needs to get creative on his first turn, and of course he’s going to have ideas about surprise fire drills and planned blackouts! I can imagine how it all came to be. “Let’s pull the main switch and see what fucken’ happens, yeah!”, he says to himself after a few beers, smile wider than the face, face redder than the fire alarm button. He can barely sit down now, he wants to jump, jump, JUMP with joy! 
Unfortunately, to do stuff like this is exactly what they are paying him to do. We now know that the main panel for satellite tracking runs on UPS, Uninterrupted Power Supply, but the antenna itself does not. A very important lesson since this communication channel is more and more crucial to both safety and business. A “blackout” is when the ship loses all electric power from the auxiliary generator or the main shaft generator. All crucial stuff onboard, like bridge control, are connected to UPSs and should never go down. There is also an emergency generator that starts up automatically when the power goes out to run other very important stuff. Since the system is very complicated it has to be tested and the only way to really know is to try and make it as real as possible. But now the satellite dish is broken. Which is, on the other hand, not so good.

Obviously we have now gotten our internets back, how else would I be writing this on..eh.. its?

The eclipse

The electrician has doodled together some sort of gadget that downloads the stream from Swedish radio and hooks on the internal cable system. So all I do is tune into 89Mhz and I have Swedish radio in my cabin. It’s slightly wierd to be in the middle of the Indian ocean and listen to Swedish celebrity Linus Wahlgreen talk about his new movie and how upset the poor thing is for being referred to as an “artist” instead of an “actor”. Well gosh darn it, cry me a river.

Karaoke anyone? Well onboard this ship it is pretty much mandatory thanks to the Philippino crew. I am sad to say, last night I sang “Total eclipse of the heart” by Bonnie Tyler. I am not proud of what I did, but at the time it seemed like a good idea. I sit here now, tears in my eyes, it’s hard to breathe as the shame flows over me and reddens my skin like severe acne on a teenager. But I guess, somehow, my heart will go on?...no WAIT!….
…shit…

The snake

“WHAT IN THE FLYING FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING?!?” That's my body communicating with me. It’s because this is the first real exercise I’ve had since the unfortunate incident in Åre last January. After the arm broke I have spent a great deal of time in a more or less horizontal position and now I am working hard. The ship is capable of carrying 6000 cars. Each car needs 4 lashings to make sure it doesn’t move. How many lashings is that, pray tell? It’s a lot. And you cannot appreciate how many it is until you’ve spent an entire day picking them up from the cargo decks. It’s like most jobs, I guess. Sometimes you have to bend over.

Today was 14 hours long. A foreman greeted me thusly: “Diss is Africa my friend and you are welcometoit. Be com-for-taybell!” And one of the stevedore asked me if I liked mushrooms, said he had a good dealer. And snake. “You like snake?”, he said. Instinctively I said no even though I have no idea if he was actually offering me reptile or if “snake” is some kind of forbidden aphrodisiac. I think I did the right thing but I must say I am very curious. 

For those who’ve been at sea knows that ships have a certain smell. The recipe is simple:
3 oily rags (preferably hydraulic)
3 table spoons of old grease
1 dl Heavy Fuel Oil 
3 dl salt water (1.025)
Put in blender and mix well. 
Set on fire.
Enjoy.
But in this case it’s not true. The smell of this ship is totally bizarre. Since the cargo is always brand new cars, that is what it smells like. I have “new car scent” in my cabin. And I’m not really sure how I feel about that.

The cute, the good and the soon to be extinct

At the Arlanda airport I spotted my friend Nathalie. Turns out we’re on the same flight to Frankfurt. She is later turning left towards Singapore as I continue down to South Africa. And I have so far met two South Africans. One exceptionally nice man who sat next to me on the flight to Port Elizabeth by the name of Cheslyn. He had been up in Johannesburg for the weekend watching a rugby game. Apparently his team, The Blue Bulls, had beaten some New Zeeland team and he was quite pleased with that. Together we went thru the trauma of the 3 landing attempts with harsh humor. Him, “I better call my wife in case we don’t make it…”. Me, “Can I have your puke bag? Mine is full.” He also told me about the new football stadium being built in PE for the upcoming World Cup 2010. He gave me his card. 

I also met the agent at the airport. He is hired by the shipping line to make sure crewmembers came onboard safely. He was very upset about the plane being delayed so long and wanted to know if the pilot was a white man or a “darkie”.

I swear, that’s what he said. Can you spell See You Enh Tea? He talked some more nonsense after that but I stopped listening.

The Flight

Have you ever tried to land a medium sized plane in 25 m/s windspeed? Well me neither, obviously, but I have been around for 3 attempts. One of them successful.

As I am writing this, I am sitting in the departure hall in the airport of a small town named George. It’s not Georgetown. It’s just George. Unless I got it wrong. But it matters not because I didn’t really want to come here and I wasn’t supposed to come here either. But apparently all flights have what is known as a “alternate destination”, where the plane will land if it can’t make the landing at the primary destination. I’ve never considered this because I’ve never been in a situation where I’ve had to before. The first attempt at landing in Port Elizabeth, that’s what it said on the ticket, was awful. I’ve never been so scared in a plane before. But the second attempt was from another angle and therefore even worse. I hate sounding repetitive but I’ve never been so scared in a plane before. The captain then proceeds to inform us, in an alarmingly care free manor, that we’re proceeding to the alternate destination, George.

The fear almost makes me miss the stunning mountains surrounding this town. Soon we will be taking off again to try once again.

some time later...

Do you remember back in the old days when people would applaud after the landing? Yeah that just happened. We have now landed where it said on the ticket, Port Elizabeth. This time the wind was stronger but at a better angle.

It was awful. I’ve never been so scared on a plane before.

The Q&A

Q: Why is this pretentious fuck writing in English? 
A: I have some friends who don’t speak my native language, Swedish, and I don’t want to exclude anyone. And besides, I really like writing in English. Furthermore, I can’t spell words like “regurgitate” without a spell checker. My current installation of a Word can only do English so there we are. In fact, I can’t even translate the word regurgitate to Swedish, and it’s like my favorite word. 

Q: Why would you even bother writing?
A: A few people have mentioned they’ve enjoyed my words before. They’ve said it, not in a sarcastic You-should-reeeeally-try-stand-up! kind of tone, but with a straight, honest face. It might be an elaborate joke at my expense in which case I am going to be very upset.

Q: Will you stand by your words on this blog?
A: Under no circumstances. I find that every word I have ever written has an expiration period of about 6 days after which I can’t say I agree with it or even stand to read it. I should probably write some sort of disclaimer. Or is that what I just did?

Q: What will you write about?
A: I dunno. Stuff. I’m on a boat. I could write some about that I suppose. But it’s going to be a bit messy this thing…

Q: Can you lick your own elbow?
A: I wish.