Life is:

• frustrating.
• tiring.
• confusing.
• wearying.
• long.
• too short.
• too fast.
• too slow.
• too bizarre.
• too boring.
• too random.
• too inane.
• etc. etc. ad nauseum.

I saw the personnel manager today. He asked me about jobs and extending and all that, but started from ground up, as if he knew nothing at all about what I would like to do. We had an 8 minute conversation, maybe, so I tried to explain the kinds of things, just answering his questions, rather than saying anything directly about our (and my dept. head's and others) past conversations as I was just so puzzled.

He told me that it's all very complicated, and that video isn't really a full time job, and that all the manning problems are causing so much confusion.

The new Waterman has started. He's learning fast. I taught him the sounding and basic rounds on day 1, then the other Waterman watched him do them on day 2. Today he wasn't workign with us, tomorrow he's on e-day, Saturday we will work together again, I guess. So I'll keep them updated about how he's doing, and hinting that I'm redundant...

So that's good. But I'm still feeling very frustrated, making me want to leave the ship, even though I still feel it's the right place. Every day people ask, 'So what's happening?' and all I can respond is, 'If you find out, let me know!' And that just makes them think I"m being funny or secretive or something.

It's weird. usually, I can *feel* how the dynamics of the place are, and can fit in. But right now, I feel on a different wavelength, like I expect gravity to be normal, and all mass to attract each other, and apples to fall to the ground, and so on, and yet I'm living in a universe where in fact things don't do that, but almost. And there are no rules written down, but in fact it's something like things attract each other depending on how blue their colour is, and that's why apples fall towards the earth.

I feel like I'm in a computer programme I'm trying to debug, and everything ALMOST works,except that there is some wretched buffer overflow error, and extra 0s and 1s get dumped into random data structures.

Right now, I want to do video and AV stuff, and maybe study and get my deck officers ticket in a few years. It takes 2 years or so. 6 months study, and 9 months on a ship, and then a few months study, then an exam. I think.

My idea currently is do AV until either mid 2008, or maybe 2010, on Doulos, then perhaps
work with the company's TV/video group in the UK, and then either study as a deck officer, or go do AV on Logos Hope, or come work with dad, or all of the above, in some random order.

The AV team would like me to work with them.

But does the dept. head? I dunno.

Does personnel? I dunno.

Will it happen? I dunno.

This country is lovely, but so tiring. Such weird expectations.T hey expect us to bring revival , or something. The church here started with a revival in 1907 of that kind, out of nothing.

They want us to come and for revival to burn, and then seem disappointed slightly by seeing that we are, in fact, merely human. and God is using us in small ways., and all our human efort and life and all is not amounting to the huge dramatic stories they want.