Yesterday the trucks started coming at 6am, and I was finished by 5pm. Prayer night was the night before, and ended late (11.30pm) so I was really tired. I went to bed last night at 7, and got up at 7 today (even though I only slept about 7 hours, as usual... *sigh*). Tonight is i-night. So I have until lunch time to get ready. I'm in 3 items in this i-night, and it was going to be 4, but I didn't have time for all those extra practices this week.

The waterman job is so tiring for me at the moment. I enjoy it, it's interesting and fun, but so tiring, and such long, unpredictable hours. I don't even know the day before what hours I will be working on the tomorrow. I guess that's mostly because of the trucks, and once they are done, it may go back to normal again, I dunno.

The new group is settling in well... Even less guys than with ours. The ship is really short of guys! We have more girls in the deck dept, which I quite like, it kind of smoothes off the rougher edges of some of the guys.

The February group of people just joined, like I did last year. Feels very strange. Anyway, the new deck crew have just completed their deck department orientation and basic fire fighting training, so I took the opportunity to steal some of their photos for the purpose of writing a new entry. Applause is not mandatory, as I am too far away from you to hear it anyway. So, without further ado, the photos:


This is the fire-escape ladder from the propellor shaft tunnel in the Engine Room. All of our Fresh water valves are situated in the tunnel, and our workshop is quite near the top of the escape, thus I climb up and down this ladder anything up to 30 or more times a day when very busy (when we have water trucks arriving, for instance). I think this could be one of the only things which keeps me slightly fit on board...


This second photo is incredibly unclear, and shows the new recruits crawling down the main corridor of the ship, in full Breathing Apparatus and fire suits. Fun. As I said, the photo is unclear, and there are much more clear understandable photos available, nevertheless I decided to post this one as I find it almost artistic, it has a certain visual interest, which most of the others don't. I mean, how interesting can a picture of a bunch of lemon suited unidentifiable personages with compressed air bottles on their backs crawling down a corridor be?

Quote for the day:

For no worldly thing, nor for the love of any man, is any evil to be done (Matt 18:8); but yet for the profit of one who stands in need, a good work is sometimes without any scruple to be left undone, or rather changed for a better. For by doing this, a good work is not lost, but changed into a better.

- Thomas à Kempis "The Imitation of Christ" Ch. 15

Long day yesterday...

I did 4 school visits, as a puppet, interacting with the MC for the whole 45 minute programme. So I had my arm up in the air for 3 whole hours. Very tiring.

Then After dinner I started work with loading water, we had 20 water trucks arrive, and so finished around 1.30am the next morning.

This morning I was up at 7am for music practice before the Sunday service, playing bass again... This is the second time this week I've played bass, and the second time ever I've performed with it. I feel so bad at it, I have no technique at all, and can "hear" in my head what the bassline should do, riffs, changes, and so on, but lack the practice and skill to play them yet... I need to find a "learn to play bass" book and spend a few hours practicing.

It's kinda fun though!

Hallo blog.

Here are some photos of my bathroom. The first is of after the plumbers started their invasion.


The thing on top of the toilet seat is a leather welding glove., in case you wondered.

The reason there is a toilet brush with a red ribbon on is because I helped the accommodation department with a video one time, and they gave me this as a present.

The light is hanging off the wall, yes. And the wooden fitting is all broken too.

This photo shows more clearly (perhaps) the underside of the sink.


lovely, eh?

Happily, now the sink has been repaired... with cement and heavy duty black scupper paint.

It looks like this:




Quite amazing, is it not?

For those observant readers (or photospotters), you may have noticed that the wall behind the sink is now white, not that rather ugly blue. If you noticed this, congratulations, take 10 points. I dont know where you can take them from, but I'm sure there is somewhere.

Anyway. The bathroom is currently being repainted, by yours truly and my new cabin-mate,
colleague, and friend Tomas, from Mexico. We're going to try and make it look quite appealing, but currently it just looks white.

So. That's all about the bathroom. Current news? Well...

I'm reading "Slaughterhouse 5" by Kurt Vonnegut. Now that is a strange book. Very interesting, witty, clever, rude in places, but thought-provoking. I have a friend in the Engine Room who recommended it. He loves Vonnegut, and I have another friend who works in AV (Audio-Visual for programmes, etc) who also enjoys his works. I'm still in two minds about it. Very clever... I like some of his ways of working with language, and with stories.

I was just phoned 11 seconds ago and asked to play drums for music tomorrow with some others.

It's dinner time, I'm going to go get some food...

One of the things I've done in my 'spare' time is re-write the Waterman job description.

Here's the old one, which doesn't really say much:

4 months

deck trainee

• - common deck jobs
• - chipping rust
• - painting
• - rubbish
• - cargo handling

12 months

water trainee or waterman assistant

being taught waterman duties as

• - soundings, fresh and ballast water
• - greasing jobs
• - luggage storage
• - key cutting and lock maintenance
• - fixing shoes
• - improving and developing work procedures

8 months

waterman

• - teaching and passing on duties
• - leading the water department of about 2 personnel
• - continuing the regular duty of water supply- maintenance and learned duties

• 
  

Here's my proposed replacement, which I think explains better what we actually do. There are two watermen at any point, one of whom is training the other.

• Making sure the ship has safe, clean, good drinking water. This involves:
• Loading water (sometimes by trucks, water barges, etc, which can come at any time of day or night, and take up to 13 or more hours to load the specified amount).
• Sounding all the water tanks every day, reading engine room gauges, and filling in log books.
• Making sure the ship’s stability as far as ballast tanks and water tanks are ready for voyages.
• Taking various chemical and bacteria tests on the water when loading and at other intervals.
• Having a good and thorough understanding of the ship’s freshwater system, including running all the freshwater pumps and valves in the Engine Room.
• Taking care that the ship does not list from side to side while working, and that the Engine Room watch-keepers are able to transfer water to correct list, that the ship’s draft and trim are good for sailing, and taking accurate readings of them.
• Preparing ballast and water tanks for inspection and maintenance work (emptying the tanks, opening manholes, maintaining the manhole covers, ventilating and inspecting tanks).
• Making keys for the ship, maintaining all the locks, taking them apart and cleaning them, etc.
• Greasing various pieces of deck machinery.
• Bringing up and down luggage when needed to the baggage locker, and keeping it in order.
• Mending shoes, belts, bags, etc.
• Attending deck department devotions at 0900h.
• Normal deck sea-watches and mooring stations.
• Some maintenance of valves, tanks, pumps, and pipes.
• Thinking of creative ways to do things, work around problems, and invent or establish new ways to get jobs done, and passing these on to the next watermen.

There are usually two watermen, one experienced who teaches/leads the new one.

There is very fine detail work (reassembling locks) and quite heavy work too (opening man-holes and floor-plates in the engine room, carrying bags, pumps, etc). A lot of the time is spent working alone, so self-motivation and taking ownership is important, but also a lot of the time communicating liaising and working with various departments and others (Chief Mate, Boatswain, Chief Engineer, Personnel Secretary, Purser, Engine Room Watch-keepers, local port workers (who may not speak English), the Shipping Agent, and so on.)

Many times there will be several jobs running at the same time, with pressure from many people to complete different jobs for them, while there are other responsibilities needed to be taken care of.

Thinking ahead and taking good care and responsibility are vital as failure to complete jobs or do them well can result in flooding sections of the ship, wasting tons of (expensive) water, breaking expensive deck and engine machinery, causing security and safety hazards, the ship having unsafe or contaminated drinking water, or even causing the ship to not be able to sail.

Sometimes the watermen need to work very long or strange hours, finishing jobs during the night, loading water, waiting for water barges, getting called down to the Engine Room at 0200h to help the watch-keeper, and so on.

All in all, one of the most fun and interesting jobs on board.

The crowds on the quayside on Sunday. It was like that *ALL* day! Very
busy.

Deckie outing today. A really nice beach/hotel resort. Most spent most of the time in the pool, actually. I dozed in the sun. Nice lunch.

Got back to the ship, noticed the water hose had half fallen off the deck into the water (YUK!)

So I've had to go and rinse it out and start de-contaminating it. blah. Sea water here is revolting, around the port area.

I think I may have mentioned I'm quite busy, and a bit tired. Here is a summary of my week, so far.


Tuesday 23 January 2007:

07:30-07:55 - breakfast.
08:00-08:55 - Associate director's devotion, and community announcments
09:00-15:30 - final transferring of water, sounding tanks etc to prepare ship stability for sailing.
16:00-17:00 - stand-by for mooring stations
17:00-18:30 - mooring stations, leaving the port, preparing the anchor, and dinner squeezed in while others were on anchor watch.
18:30-19:00 - Dutch dance "dress rehearsal" to check dance quality for the programmes
organiser
19:30-20:30 - "Port report", community meeting to see what happened in Manilla, exchange news, stories, etc.
20:30-22:00 - Lying awake in bed with the light off.
22:05-23:45 - Sleep is a lost cause. Drinking coffee, chatting on yahoo, and getting dressed and ready for sea-watch
23:45-...

Wednesday 24 January 2007:

...-04:20 - Sea watch on the bridge. Training 2 new helmsmen while supervising lookouts, keeping watch, steering the ship, etc.
04:30-05:00 - Getting ready for bed, I still have no bathroom, and so have to use one down by the engine room.
05:00-07:00 - Sleep (2 hours)
07:00-07:30 - Breakfast
07:30-08:45 - Bible Study groups
08:45-11:30 - Lifeboat Drills. More about this later.
11:30-11:45 - Grabbing an apple for lunch, showering, and getting dressed for sea-watch 11:45-16:20 - Sea watch on the bridge. Continued training of one of the new helmsmen, while
keeping lookout, etc.
16:20-17:30 - Sitting in the mess, eating carrots, waiting for dinner.
17:30-18:00 - Dinner.
18:00-18:20 - Preparing for bed.
18:20-23:00 - Sleep (4 and a half hours)
23:00-23:45 - Preparing for sea-watch, drinking coffee, etc.
23:45-...

Thursday 25 January 2007:

-...04:20 - Sea watch on the bridge, you know the story.
04:30-05:00 - Getting ready for bed.
05:00-07:30 - Sleep (2 and a half hours)
07:30-07:55 - Breakfast
08:00-08:45 - Teaching session on Galatians.
08:45-10:30 - Mooring stations, arriving in Cebu. Most experienced people just left, and we have a new deck officer who doesn't speak English perfectly yet (although he knows everything completely in Korean).
10:30-11:30 - Soundings, getting water checked out, and filling log books.
11:30-12:00 - Lunch.
12:00-13:30 - Check emails, write new Job Description for watermen, prepare other jobs, find out whats happening with the water this port.
13:30-14:30 - Help with packing down the lifeboats, and settling down to wait for the first water truck to arrive.
14:30-15:30 - Find out that the water trucks (about 20 of them) will arrive at 19:00 tonight, so decide to write a few emails then sleep til 17:30 for dinner...
15:30 - Now.

So. We'll be loading water from 19:00 or so until midnight or around then. Probably later. 200 tons. It's free, though, which is nice.

Dear Steven Covey - Thanks buddy! Sectoring my time is really helping me be efficient (and facetious - right now.)

About the lifeboat drills, I've just been reassigned, I found out at breakfast, to coxswain of life-boat 1. Very cool. Very nice lifeboat. But I've not actually been in boat 1 in the water before. Nor have I ever been coxswain before, outside of the training a few months ago, in a totally calm harbour, after all the theory and going through all the procedures with everyone about 10 times.

Today, we had a man-overboard drill, so not only do we decide to use boat 1 (the smallest fasted lifeboat), but also a man-overboard, which is more complicated. AND, for man-overboard we don't use the normal crew of boat 1 (not that I'd ever worked with most of them on the boat before anyway), but all of the other much more experienced coxswains are the crew!

So I had to assign them to various jobs (bowman, sternman, ladderman, starting the engine, etc, tricing-in lines, and so on), then have pretty much of the whole of ALL the lifeboat crews of ALL the boats watching me and standing around getting slightly in the way, and doing stuff ONLY when I told them to, rather than when they saw it needing doing (which in a way is good, I guess???), then we went to the water, I was at the helm, with as well as the normal man over board rescue stuff, a photographer and video-cameraman in the boat to get extra footage for projects, in calm (but nevertheless ocean) waves, picking up the man-overboard-dummy, and bringing back along-side to be picked up, with all the other coxswains giving lots of helpful advice (ahem.) for this lifeboat I'd never been in before.

Anyway. It wasn't a complete disaster. At least it was a drill, not for real. I learned a lot. I'm more humble now than before, I think. I hope. The captain, chief mate, and second mate all said well done to me, for my first drill as coxswain. (in reality, I "ran over" the dummy, because I turned the tiller wrong way into the wind, with the motor still going a bit too late), a boat-hook broke (not my fault), the exhaust pipe fell off (also not my fault), I had to come in along side twice (my first time in this boat, with a motor (also first time in ages), first time at the helm of a lifeboat while at sea, with currents and waves and all that too, so no surprise, but a bit embarressing with all the crews watching me, and all the experienced coxswains giving "advice", two passengers taking photos and videos and all, a nurse worrying about the health of the man-overboard dummy, and the man-overboard dummy, who just grinned at me the whole time in a most disturbing way.

So yeah. That added to the fun of the day.

Anyway, I'm going to sleep now, or at least rest. Start work again at 18:00.

Goodnight.

There was a small leak in my bathroom ceiling about 2 months ago.

I wrote a request form for the plumbers to come and have a look. They came a week ago, pulled the ceiling apart, ripped out some pipes, splashed water everywhere, left pipes pouring out for about 3 days, dropped a pipe through the sink and smashed a hole big enough for my arm to go through!

There is a step-ladder in my shower, welding rods in my sink (whats left of it) and dirt everywhere, and it still drips from the ceiling over the toilet.

They also pulled the light out of the wall, smashing the wood of the fixture, and I'm currently waiting with great interest to see what happens next!

Now the most cool thing in the whole epic is as follows:

That bathroom has needed re-painting for about 6 months. The floor is quite bad. So I was going to repaint it, getting ideas, browsing "dynamic interior design for incredibly small bathrooms" at bookstores, and so on.

The day I was going to paint it, I got distracted by work and stuff, and so didn't manage to start.
That day, the plumbers came and smashed the whole place up! If God hadn't distracted me and kept me from going ahead, it would all have been in vain! God is nice like that.

Yesterday was my first day as duty fireman. Once every few weeks I'll spend a day on duty running the firestation. We had a control team page at 8pm - the laundry girls saw steam coming from one of the machines doing a 95 degree wash, and thought it was smoke! It was quite dramatic. On Christmas Day, I got paged about 20 times... insane! About the 18th time I phoned info, and asked if I could get a prize. We were loading water; the quayside is weird here, and the officers wanted to ask about water several times. Also the shipping agent wanted photocopies of receipts, and the purser...

Today was kind of a strange day. I taught puppets this morning to all the port volunteers. Now they're all shouting, 'Hello Daniel!' every time they see me. Then I played guitar for deck devotions, did my soundings and water rounds (quickly), then fixed the director's cabin door. Then I replaced a broken porthole with one of the carpenters, and then took a valve apart in the engine room, and put it back together again, stopping it leaking. All random jobs. It's not a "normal" day for watermen; it's kind of weird, but it's because all our normal jobs were done already. The monthly ones in dry-dock, there are no bags needing to go up or down, and no-one has lost any keys recently.

This port is quite stressful for me. Strange loading, and Stephane has moved to another job. So I'm training/leading Tomas, the new waterman. Because it's a strange port there is no way I can give him routine jobs (like loading water) to do every day for a bit, and I couldn't do the random jobs today with him as he was out with a team!

So, still in drydock mode. But here is a blog update I wanted to write about 2 months ago, but never got around to. I'm really tired, so this may not be as interesting as I kind of imagined it originally.

During the leadership training thing I did a few months ago, we had a day doing work at a school, making their football pitch ready. Filling in holes and such. So I spent a few hours carrying buckets of dirt and filling holes. Nice day, didn't have to think too much. Another guy was there, who was making the buckets of dirt ready for carrying, scraping it out of the big piles of dirt dumped on the stands.

Anyway. I thanked him slightly ironically for the dirt he gave me one time, and he said something like, "Only the best for our customers" or something like that. Anyway, so we developed a whole routine about the dirt, talking about the moisture content, worms, and so on. We formed our own company:

DARN: Dirt And Rain eNterprises.

While walking back and forth so many times I slowly developed one stage at a time our mission statement, basically stating our belief and trust in giving dry dirt, so as to allow the rain to add the correct moisture levels, without the burdensome weight of pre-added moisture:

"We believe in a holistic customer-empowering service effectiveness paradigm which utilises the undeniable precepts of positive precipitation to innovativly implement a beneficial weight/content transportation ratio. "

Kind of rolls off the tongue, I think.

One of our frequent jobs as watermen is greasing various deck equipment.

Our grease gun (device for putting grease inside deck equipment) is moderately dead. It's horrible. We don't have grease cartridges, but have to fill it by sticking the end in a bucket of grease and pulling the spring back. Kind of like re-loading a cross-bow, just messier.

I had kind of a frustrating day today. I expected and wanted to spend the day happily in the engine room with cleaning and putting back togeather a really rusty horrible old valve. But ended up spending most of the day helping a deck team with trying to set up pumps and running around the engine room with them, trying to pump the last few centimetres of water out of parts of a tank so they can work in it.

The chief mate and bosun went briefly into the tank this morning, looked around and said it should be a quick job to do the whole thing. At lunch time, the bosun asked the team leader how it was going, and said, "oh well, at least if you get the tank empty of water by this evening it'll be good."

This evening, there's no noticeable progress made at all.

I went and crawled though the whole length of the tank, found two old rust scrapers from last time the tank was opened (2 and a half years ago). It's going to be a really big job. Loads of the bits of the tank in the forward end have all the cement fallen off, and rust and all kinds, so it's not just a one day job. Once it's dried (which may take 2 or 3 or more days) it may then take another week or so of work chipping all the cement and stuff and putting in new cement. It's down in the bottom of the engine room, below generator 2, so the deckies feel really uneasy and keep coming to me for help all the time.

Luckily once it's dried, all the rest should be done by deckies, not us. But still it's kind of annoying.

For the first time in ages... a post from fingers directly, rather than via Cyprus! I'm right now in Singapore, on break for 3 days or so with my parents and brother who are out to visit. Very very good. Singapore is beautiful, clean, and friendly. We're staying in "Little India", which is (apparently) the least clean and organised part. Which is fine by me! Amazing lovely Indian food really quite cheap here, and of course, being with my family is even more amazing. Apparently I should be making more frequent and shorter posts... with more photos. Well, no photos today, no camera link available. But as to the shorter and more frequent posts, this is the first of (who knows!) many. I hope to post more, but I'm not very good at this whole sticking with good ideas thing, lah.

I’m typing this from the dry food store, miles and miles down in the depthful belly of the ship. I don’t know if depthful is a real word, but if not, I have just coined it. Please pay all royalties to me, chocolate is the preferred currency.

OK, so what am I doing in this previously mentioned food store…? Well, we’ve been having a few problems on the job.

Over the last few months we’ve been emptying out ballast tanks, (the water tanks down at the bottom of the ship which keep her stable) one at a time, and then sending a deck team in there to do routine maintenance (routine, as in, once every 4 years or so per tank).

Anyway. We just got to the last tank in the series, and so needed to fill it up with water. For some reason though, every time we tried to use the pipe to send water to the tank, the pump would get very hot and trip the electrics. We could see a very high pressure build up in the pipe by the pump, so it looked as if there was some kind of blockage in the pipe, which was not allowing water through it. We went into the tank last week or so, and looked around for any obvious problems, feeling inside the pipes as far as fingers would go to make sure they had not got cemeted over in the maintenance. No problems found though…

So we asked the engine room guys to have a look at it, and they sent a very professional welder/plumber. He took a “snake” (high pressure hose with a thing on the end which bounces around and smashes to bits any kind of blockage or rust.
Anyway… it got stuck in the pipe. So he called me, and then he went into the tank to take the pipe off and look for his snake. BUT… forgot to check which pipe. The wrong pipe got taken off…. So he took off the other one. Not his fault, he didn’t know the tank had two pipes leading into it. We couldn’t see any problems, so he put them back.

Presumably the problem was further up the pipe, closer to the engine room.

Presumably so was his ‘snake’.

So, we opened up the other tank, brought a HUGE emergency submersible pump and attached it up to transfer between the two tanks. This pump is a very serious pump. It’s designed to be hooked up, and chucked down a staircase into a flooded hold to pump it out, kind of thing. It took 3 of us to carry down to the food store here where the tank manholes are to put the pump into. We had to use all kinds of ropes and stuff to hoist the thing down. We attached it, and set it going. It was a bit complicated, as we had to have one guy at the suction end of the pump, to make sure it was OK, one guy at the discharge end to make sure it didn’t swing around and kill someone, one guy running between to make sure the hose was OK and didn’t explode, and one guy 3 decks up with a radio to switch the electricity for the pump on and off (there are only 3 connection points on the whole ship for this creature).

So… First when we switched it on, we found a hole in the hose. We found it as it started shooting water the pressure of a fire-hose all over the place in the book-hold where the discharge tank manhole is. So we stopped the pump, pushed more of the hose into the tank so the leak was inside the tank, and tried again. This time, the pressure of the pump pushed the hose into a crack under the flange of two pipes, and then ripped the whole hose open as the pressure was too high for the squashed position. I got totally soaked by this.

So we stopped the pump, got a new hose, and tried again. This time was OK… for about 4 minutes. But the pressure of the pump started pushing the discharge end of the hose back out of the tank! So we stopped the pump, tied the hose down, and started again. 2 hours later, nothing more had gone wrong, and 60 tons of water had been moved. That is, 30 tons an hour. 500 litres a minute, in other words. Quite fast.

So in went our bold intrepid welder/plumber guy to the now empty tank, and he took off the pipes and all, found the ‘snake’ in a “omega” shaped bend in the pipe (the chief mate says this is to allow for expansion and contraction of in the ship’s shape… if he had asked the C/M before sending his ‘snake’ in, it would have saved a lot of problems…) anyway. He got his snake out, closed up the pipes again, and declared the pipes probably useable… at least, no problems found in them. (These are probably original 1914 pipes, brass (I think) and still in amazingly good condition…)

Yesterday was spent with myself and another guy (possibly the next waterman? Who knows…) down here with a smaller more sociable submersible pump moving the last of the water across. (When they had opened up the pipes, about 20 tons of water drained back across to the other tank we had just moved it from.)

So. Now what…

The tank we are moving from (where the snake was stuck) is smaller than the tank we are moving the water into.

By about 10 tons.

So I still have 10 or so tons of water to move across. I tried this morning using the probably OK pipe system, and the engine room pump. I did this very slowly, checking everything, slowly allowing pressure to build up, etc, so as not to overflow anything, or trip the electricity on the pump, or any of that. Strangely, although water was leaving the pump, the water level didn’t go up in the tank. I checked after lunch, and the level was exactly the same…. So I stopped the whole thing, and started checking my tank levels, sounding everything I could think of. About 40 tons of water had left the freshwater tank I was pumping from, and 0 had arrived in the ballast tanks. And it had not arrived anywhere else either.

About this time, I was expecting my name on the paging system any second, to find 40 tons of water had turned up in someone’s cabin…

Luckily it didn’t

Unluckily (or possibly not) It didn’t turn up anywhere else, either.

Anyway. We sail tomorrow, and this tank must be full when we leave. So I decided to ignore the whole missing water problem, and spent the last part of this afternoon moving water from the engine room into the empty small tank, (these pipes still work…) and then am myself down here in the dry food store, miles and miles down in the depthful belly of the ship moving the water from the small tank into the big one with the sociable submersible pump. It’s very slow.

And quite scary too. Last time the other waterman did something like this, he managed to flood the book-hold, and it caused some huge amount of damage, something in the thousands of euros range. So that’s why this entry is so disjointed, I keep running off to check everything. Yesterday I started at 6.30am, and finished at 10pm, and today I started at the more reasonable hour of 9.30am, and hope to be finished before the same numbers reappear with another suffix (or the same. That would be worse…). We shall see.

The reason it is so much work for just me, is that the other senior waterman is leaving, and changing jobs (I may have mentioned this before). And is doing training all this week. It’s all really tiring, anyway.


This is a photo of the inside of one of the tanks, including the “omega” bends. The tank is 1 metre 33 cm high.

Yesterday was quite a long day, I worked normal 9 till 5, and then left the Engine Room watchkeeper with the normal instructions for the night, as we wanted to load water (very slow connection) overnight. Anyway, the watchkeeper wanted to make a 1 degree starboard list (tilt of the ship) so they could pump out a bilge tank. They got it a bit wrong and ended up with 3 degrees. 3 degrees sounds like very little, but at 3 degrees it is actually hard to walk down the hallway. I phoned them to see what was up, they said they would correct it.

I was preparing for teaching Sunday school this morning, in my cabin, and so thought nothing more of it until the Duty Plumber phoned me, incredibly worried because the ship was now at 4 degrees, and he was getting leaks from random pipes. I pulled on my coverall and ran (almost while leaning against the walls!) for the Engine room, shut the valves all off and started correcting it (by this time we were at 5 degrees), then ran out again to sound the tanks and find out what was happening. The Engine room watchkeepers had left a few rather important valves open that they should have shut, and about 20 tons of water had siphoned across from one tank to another.

I ended up working until 11pm in the Engine room, keeping the pump going, replacing the water in the correct tanks. So I'm pretty tired today...

Today was the captains dinner, like a special programme for high up local port officers, VIPs and so on, and I was asked to play background music while they were eating for 20 mins or so. There is someone I have played with before a few times, doing guitar/voice/ clarinet French songs, which seems to work really well. So we were going to play, but then today at about 4.30 I found a note in my workshop saying "Sorry, I can't play tonight, but this STEPper will..." I'd never heard the guy play before, except once when he came around playing Christmas Carols with a few others (who couldn't sing...). So I was moderately terrified. I'd rather not play at all than play badly. Not everyone else feels that way, alas.

To continue, I went for the sound-check at 5.15, and he said he could play classical guitar, and went and found one, and played a few classical pieces (I'm sure he could be good, but I think is very out of practice...), stopping and starting all the time, and I improvised around him. Also a few old hymns and stuff (Greensleeves...). Then tonight we went and performed, and it in fact was not so bad at all. Nothing too amazing, but they were all eating anyway, and so it doesn't matter too much the few mistakes there were... we kept going and it sounded kind of OK though our monitor, anyway.

Tomorrow I will be MC for a programme in the morning, for 200 or so 12 to 20 year olds. Then in the afternoon/evening it's I-night again, and I'll be playing a small part in a drama. It's possible that I may be in the Irish cultural dance as well. I went to the practice today, just to watch them prepare for tomorrow, but one of the guys didn't show up, and they muttered a bit about if he didn't turn up tomorrow... I've only been to 3 practices now for that! And it's really quite complicated! Anyway. I don't think so tomorrow.

My official and rather boring report of the A-team:

Our A-team was sent to Melacca to work with the Calvary (AOG) Church there.


We were involved in teaching 2 drama and 2 dance workshops, running a mini i-night / cultural evening with the other Melacca A-team, a school visit, children's home visit, a programme about unity at a pastors' fellowship breakfast, a bunch of church services, 2 Sunday school meetings, practical chores in the church building, one epic adventure across the city in search of pizza, and lots of eating.


The church looked after us very well, providing a beautiful “condo” for us to stay in (with a swimming pool downstairs!), plenteous food, bottled water, transport, and schedule.


They briefed us well when we arrived, giving us times we would be picked up and dropped every day, information about each programme, and so on. We then followed the schedule almost exactly for the whole week (I believe this is a first in Doulos history.)

One of the main highlights of the week was the cultural evening on Wednesday. We joined with the other Melacca a-team to provide a whole range of cultural items including dances, drama, videos, songs (in 3 or 4 languages), and much more. The students from the dance and drama workshops were able to perform two dramas, which was amazing after the short time we could spend with them, and we hope and pray that they will be able to continue to work and use their many gifts in the future. All in all the cultural evening was a great success with many compliments and expressions of thanks afterwards.

We were able to spend quite a bit of time just talking with the people of the church at meals, before and after programmes, and at our condo after hours. One girl sent in the first application to join the ship while we were there! Another guy was very interested and spent a few hours one evening with us, asking questions and telling us about his life, with all of us sharing with him our own testimonies, and of how we were able to join the ship.

Preparing to go on the A-team (see this post for explanation):

The waterman job continues quite busy. The last two days we have been moving an awful lot of water from one ballast tank to another, as the deck team have finished cleaning/maintaining the one, and need to work on the other. The only way to do this directly is by opening up the manholes of those tanks (both in inconvenient places down in the food store), and sticking a pump into the full one, and a long waterhose (firehose thickness) between the two tanks.

So the first problem is getting the manhole covers off. These are large heavy metal plates with a rubber seal and 18 nut/bolt s on each one. We have a nice electric wrench thingy which gets them off quite quickly. We started opening the starboard tank manhole, but water came gushing out around the edges, meaning the tank is very full. There is a bilge entrance right next to the manhole, so we figured we could just drain the water into there, and then have the Engine Room pump out the bilge into the main bilge and then into the sea next time we sail.

But they told us that their main bilge that they would pump into is already pretty full and they didn't need another ton or two of water in it from us. so we got a small emergency pump and used that to pump from the small bilge into another spare bilge. This was taking forever though, as it's
quite a small pump.

Then we checked the plans, and saw that the other manhole for this tank is further forward in the ship, and the bow of the ship is really quite high at the moment, and so that manhole would probably not be overflowing if we opened it. But... that manhole is at the bottom of the lift shaft in Hold Two... So we went though to there, and got it open. Indeed it is fine! So we had to get the watertight door between the food store and hold two open, put a safety chain from the lift to the crane deck and then get the electricians to isolate the lift so no one else tried to use it and drop the lift on us. Then we rigged up the hose between the two tanks and started the pump. It went quite well but SO slowly.

The book-exhibition teams needed the lift to take the day's books up (it was about 3.30pm by then). We had moved enough water that the other manhole was free from overflowing, so we opened that one again, moved the pump across, and started pumping again. Then we had to close up the manhole in the lift shaft again, and get the electricians to restart it, and remove the safety chain from the crane deck. All this time we were moving the ballast water, it made the ship list to Starboard, so we were having to use the freshwater transfer pump to move fresh water about and correct the list with freshwater. Most of the day I had to spend down in the food store to keep watch on the pumps and all while the other waterman was doing other stuff about the ship. While | was down there I extended a watch strap by a few notches for someone as well, and started work on updating the "Waterman's Bible", our handbook for all things watery (last updated 3 years ago). So quite busy.

Yesterday again we were doing more pumping all day, and also had to close up the manholes at the end. Because of the shape of the tanks, and where the water is, we actually have to list the ship a bit in order to get the last of the water in the tank we are emptying to run down to where the pump is (as we can only lower the pump to directly below the manhole, and cannot move the pump without ourselves going into the tank, and that requires a "Enclosed Space Entry Permit" and mountains of safety checks and paperwork.

Another problem yesterday we went through was that the nice big fast pump we have requires itself to be actually submerged in the water to keep itself cool while pumping. So when the water level fell below the height of the pump, we would have to switch to a slower smaller pump. But I managed to rig up the smaller pump without a hose so it would be hanging at an angle constantly splashing water all over the big pump, and keeping it cool. So all quite complex and fun. We were finished at about 10.30 pm. Very long day.

Today is my off-day, but I am taking a few hours of watch for my former deck-team leader, as she is going out today, or something like that. The schedule today is even more complex than the water situation! One of the watchmen is going out to play football, and so she is taking some hours for him, and so on. I was also invited out for lunch with some of the Indians on the ship, to a local family. Apparently Indian food!! Very exciting. I miss the food from India so much. It was SO lovely there. If anyone feels like opening an inexpensive vegetarian Indian restaurant in Larnaka in a few years whenever I go back you will have one regular customer for sure!

I'm going on A-team next port!! Yes! Another Doulish word with an unintelligible prefixial letter. In this case "A" stands for "Action". Which gives absolutely no help in understanding what an "A-team" actually is. What is an A-team?

*Open "Unauthorised Revised Doulos Dictionary." *

A-team - Noun. Abr. "Action Team". C 1980-1990AD (Origin unknown). A short (1 to 3 weeks) land based team, leaving from the ship for however long to be involved in any number of different projects. Some do building work for a local charity or children's home, some travel a lot, visiting a different village every night putting on a short programme, possibly taking a video projector along. Some run a youthgroup's summer camp, and so on. Most Douloi guys go on 2 or 3 "A- teams" during their 2 years on board. Most Douloi girls go on 2 "A- teams", and during the two dry-docks go on "Land Teams" which are basically the same as an "A-team", but only girls, and during dry- dock. Some people go on up to 5 "A-teams" during 2 years.

So. Cool, eh? My a-team is comprised of all drama-ish creative people, and we are going to be mostly doing drama/dance/creative workshops for a local church/youthgroup. I will probably be speaking at one or two church services. So all in all quite interesting.

OK. "Quite interesting" is a bit of an understatement.

YEAHOO!!!!!

Very exciting!!

So if you want to pray for me (us!) until about the 15th or so of August it would be really nice. One or two very strong willed (lovely!) people on the team. And a LOT of time together, so pray that we will be able to work together, and help the people we meet.

So yeah. By the way, my "boss" the senior waterman just told me yesterday while we were chatting about books how he hates "chatty" books that are written in spoken English style (many modern books), rather than written English (like C.S. Lewis). It's probably a good thing he doesn't read this blog. I think he may find it too much spoken English.

We did our crane training yesterday. Which pretty much completes the basic deck training. Now only advanced lifeboat/firefighting/etc training to go (I think). We do training so sporadically though for these sorts of things. Drills every week though. I think I must be OK with the crane, as the teacher (my ex-teamleader) told me I was pretty good and she may even change my mooring station to the "standby" team (who start the unloading first), presumably as they need a crane driver. Pretty cool! Then again, standby team is quite boring most of the time. I'm currently in the forward mooring party, which is the nicest, I think so far. It's a big open deck, with lots of space, and you get to watch the port and everything really easily.

That's about it so far! Watermanning is going well. I haven't flooded anything else yet. I greased the crane though. Tomorrow probably I'll grease the main windlass. Huge, ugly, with about 100 points to find and squirt grease. And the grease gun is about empty, so I'll have to fill it again, which is quite complicated and very very messy.

I ought to go now though; It's dinner time.

I've been on e-day/overnight for the last three or four days. When I got back, people told me that the entire section 6 (girls) had been truly flooded! Like a foot of water in some cabins. But that wasn't me, it was the other (senior) waterman. He was filling up one of the ballast tanks (from empty) which has no pumpconnection, so we have to fill it up byusing a couple of hoses and the ventilation pipe, and a tiny little domestic pump. Takes about three days.

Anyway, he set it going, checked it the next day and it was fine. Next day he was out, then came back and heard himself being paged... there was water all down the steps! It was Monday, so most people were off the ship and no one had noticed it all day.

We think the water must have got to the top, and while slowly filling up the ventilation pipe found a crack in the pipe which happens to fun through section 6. We don't really know, though.

It's been a cool weekend. On Saturday I worked until 1pm, and then went and showered, and went to do a 'mini inight' programme all afternoon, and got back at about 1am. One of the benefits of the waterman's job: I can take time off like that.

On Sunday we left at 6.45am for my kgroup brother's church, with our whole kgroup. We did a simple programme, and then went to a shopping mall in KL [Kuala Lumpur], then stayed overnight in an apartment rented for us by his dad. We spent the day chilling out in KL. Then today was another e-day, painting panels/walls for a Sunday School in a new church.

KL is about an hour's drive from where our port is. Even the city to which our port is attached is about 30 minutes' drive, so it's really hard to get out at all here. You have to hitchhike to the train station (about 10 minutes' drive) and then get a 30+ minute train to Klang (this town), and then from there it's another half hour or 45 minutes to KL. And we're at this port for 5 weeks! It's so long.

For the weekend, the brother from Klang has his own car and we borrowed a Doulos van. Then as some people had to go back to work, the rest of us just piled into his car or took the trains about KL.

People visiting the Doulos here come in cars. We get about 18,000 at weekends. It's amazing.

The glued part I mentioned yesterday didn't quite work. The glue seems to be strong enough, but unfortunately I didn't quite check how it all fits and works before gluing it. I glued it as it is when you insert it into the lock... but once it's in the lock part of it gets pushed into another position by a spring. So tomorrow or something I'll try with another broken part and see if I can glue that into the already sprung position instead.

Yesterday I was in a programme as well in the evening, it was a programme for the local churches, to thank them for all their help this port, and show them what kinds of things the ship does. So
stories from one of the nurses, about her work with the ship in India at a leprosy home, and so on. I was asked to be part of the "parade of departments".

Basically go up the front with my work clothes on, with people from the other departments, and they had to guess where we worked on board, and what we did. I don't think the programme organiser thought about which people she asked though too much... or maybe she did. I was the last person in the line, and when we introduced ourselves, it sounded something like this:

"Hi, my name is Daniel, and I'm from Ireland."
"Hi, my name is Danielle, and I come from Malaysia."
"Hi, my name is Daniel, and I'm from Cyprus."

So all I had to do was say my name, pause slightly and look ironic, and the whole audience burst into laughter. Nice. I dressed up for the occasion. I wore my normal work clothes, but raided the workshop, so had about 3 screwdrivers in a pocket, a tape measure on my belt, pliers, a sounding rope and weight on a nice harness thingy, and perhaps 80+ keys on various jangly rings.

Waterman's job... So far, I quite like it. It seems like a good job, many things to keep busy with, but not too much stress, and quite a flexible schedule (will be more so, once I've got everything mastered). Sort of quite senior. Quite "elite" and all that (being only 2 of us, and no-one else actually knows what we do, how to do it, or anything. Apparently people get "chosen" for it rather than choosing it. Bit weird... one of the other ex-deckies came to me and told me "yeah, all the watermen just get chosen, no one actually ever wants the job. It's totally unromantic, unlike "fireman" or "team leader" or something. But everyone who becomes waterman seems to really enjoy it." And loads of other people keep saying stuff like "you're the new waterman? oh good! It's JUST the right job for you!!". I feel like I'm missing something...)).

Strange thing is, a lot of knowledge about the job seems to be passed on by word of mouth, apprentice style, but then it looks like a lot of it has kind of disappeared in the last year or so. So like the lock situation, for instance. As far as I can tell, about 2 years ago they replaced the entire lock set on the whole ship, then about a year ago bought a whole load of new / replacement locks & padlocks. But they have *never* ordered any spare parts for them. Which means that about now, we are very short.

There is this stupid little brass bit right in the middle of *every* lock on the ship, which has the entire weight of the lock on it when it gets opened, and these snap quite frequently. So far, what the watermen have done is to swap the part for one in one of the unused locks, or swap out a lock from elsewhere, or something similar. We're kind of short of spare locks now. So I'm trying to find solutions to this. They have been talking about ordering or even trying to order new parts for ages, but have never done it. So I keep reminding the other guy, and it looks like this week we should order them. But until they arrive (could be months away!!) we still need solutions.

So I first went to the engine room machinists, and asked if they could make replacement parts, with their lathes, etc. They said yes, but it could take a whole day just to make one! So that's not really a solution. Then I thought about maybe glueing/ soldering a fix, (it's far too small and delicate to weld). So I asked the electricians, and they gave me some very strong epoxy mixing glue stuff, which I tried out today on a part. (Today is my first day working alone...) So far it seems like it may work! Monday is our off-day, and then on Tuesday I will hopefully get some time to sand/buff off the excess epoxy cement stuff, and build a new lock to try it out with. I really hope it does work.

I really enjoy the working with locks, but SO much of it is trial and error. We only have maybe 3 booklets on basic lock picking, but no real books on lock maintainance, theory, or whatever. Some things I am just curious about. The way they "grease" the locks to keep them working smoothly is by adding graphite dust. Why? I don't know! They don't know either. It's just the way they were taught. Sometimes the graphite dust gets too much and blocks up the lock, and it all needs taking apart. Why not use liquid wrench or something like that? Or some kind of oil?

Hopefully I will get a chance to go on the net sometime this week, and then I can look up this stuff. Also try and find spare parts. Part of the problem with the spare parts is we don't even know what the correct technical term for the parts are! So some jobs I want to do is to (once I've got it all worked out), make proper drawings / blender diagrams of how all the locks work, how to build/ rebuild them, etc, and then to make a small manual. Like as far as the locks go, I know about as much as the other waterman now, because it was the OTHER waterman before him who always did the locks before, and he never really got a chance to learn it all (he only started the job himself about 4 months ago). Anyway, it's all quite interesting.

The other waterman is a really nice guy, friendly, etc. It will be very fun working with him.

Fixing shoes is not particually interesting, but it's a good way to make everyone love you. :-)

We get our own "workshop"/office. Which is cool. And also access to the deck officers/workers computer, to which is quite nice. We have to fill in spreadsheets of all the water readings and so on every day.

About the Doulos intranet thing, apparently the other IT bloke who is coming back from furlough in a week or so wants to make it all with the microsoft groupware thingy so it all links in with our exchange system. So that means I don't have to do any of it. Oh well.

So thats about all really.

We're in Port Klang, Malaysia now. Sabbath week has started, so no deck work - 8 hours watch tomorrow only, and that's it! Probably that's my last ever gangway watch. They still have me scheduled for watch with my team, but my new teamleader is trying hard to get me off that week of watch and straight into the job as waterman.

Sabbath week means we have seminars etc in the mornings, then afternoons are free. Monday is sports/general madness afternoon.

The speaker this morning gave away free books to everyone! He told us about the most important emphases in his life, then recommended about four books about each one . He had a table up the front where at the end each person could take any three they wanted. But there were quite a lot left over, so he said take as many more as we wanted. So I got 7!

I have the go-ahead to make the Doulos intranet website. We're getting new computers soon, and one of the old ones will be converted to a Linux server.

Slightly weird news is that I'm going to be waterman. Means no more work outside really, hardly any physical work either. No more gangway watch either, mind you. I start right after sabbath week. It's the job I didn't want as it means being on call in evenings, but for the next lot of ports, as they are quite developed, we should always have water from a main, rather than trucks, which is better. So I won't be on call all evening.

There are two watermen, the old one is leaving and I know the new one requested me about two months ago already. Then today I was told to work with him for the day, so I did, and then this evening the chief mate told me that as soon as sabbath week is over I will be the new waterman. It's a job I know I can do, and some of it will be interesting. Like doing all the key-repair/locksmith stuff, but yeah. I dunno.

The chief mate knows I don't really want to be waterman, and he knows I want to move to another department as well eventually. So he could have given me the job because they need someone, and it actually isn't that hard, and I'll be able to fill the second position until they find someone who wants the job. I'll enjoy the locksmithing part, as long as I can find some good books about it, and can get enough work time to do it in. I'll learn how to pick locks. And I'll have a slightly more flexible schedule than now.

Also I have the go-ahead to make the Doulos intranet computer system, which should be a fun diversion. So I will kind of have full internet access sometimes for a while, to do research and get the software I need and stuff.

Oh, and I'm playing tambourine with the gospel choir. Kind of fun, but utterly exhausting in the right arm after playing solidly for six minutes straight.

As waterman, I'll be able to play clarinet in my office, which is far away from everyone. I don't like playing in my cabin, as there are always watchkeepers in next door cabins asleep, or in my cabin, and it's hard to find other places which are free. I'm currently playing a lot in hold 1 which has so-so acoustics.

This is lovely lovely lovely Thai fruit, "rambutan". Tastes kind of like grapes, but without skin (once youve taken the outer layer off). So peeled grapes. One huge seed, but you dont eat it.

I'm spending a lot of this week on watch using my swiss knife and some twine to whip and finish lots of the book-exhibition ropes. They are all in horrible condition, although some have been finished off with back-splices, but not beautifully. Since the ropes have to be pushed through small holes in the stanchions to make lines for the people to walk, having them all thicker at the ends doesn't make it any easier... they look so much better whipped off. Some of the ropes have
frayed though some of the strands, so I'm having to re-lay them, and then perhaps tonight I'll splice the frayed ends togeather. It's something to do...

GREAT day 2 days ago... Plan was for morning planning/preparing, afternoon teaching drama and creative stuff to teenagers, a kids' programme after, and then a café on board in the evening where we would be waitering and stuff.

The drama was really really good. I got to basically run the whole thing, teaching drama, basics, games, etc. Kids loved it, really joined in, did so well. I hadn't realised how much I miss drama/theatre work though until then. I miss it a lot! Teaching drama is so wonderful.

Then the kids programme after that was v. disorganised, on a street corner. ok. kids enjoyed it, I think. Did the usual dramas, silly songs, etc.

Then as we got back to the ship to prepare for the café, (which I was not looking forward to. Normally I end up sitting at a table with two people who dont speak English, I don't understand their names, music is too loud for me to concentrate or understand anyway, and when after half an hour or so we begin to get a conversation going, before I can say anything they both leave. I dont enjoy...) one of the line-up people said to me,

"Are you free to come out? I need musicians!"

I said I was in the cafe, he said no problem, went and got me out of the café, and told me to get my clarinet. So I did, and we went to a café run by some local people. They are trying to make a new safe cafe/restaurant, where it isn't all cabaret and sex and stuff, but friendly, good music, and so on.

So we set up music stuff, and played for 2 or 3 hours. The other musicians were amazing too. One of them was a bassist who went to music college to study bass. Between sets, he started playing
"Amazing grace" ... he's THAT good! We did a bunch of Christian songs, English, French, etc. Then after that the bassist brought out "The jazz real book" and we played a few songs from that: Georgia on my mind, Moonriver, etc.

Lovely, lovely. Clarinet and bass go well togeather, I think. He said he may be able to teach me some jazz theory before he leaves (2 or 3 months!!), whcih would be really good. and also maybe I
should teach a standard music theory course, as many musicians on board have no theory at ALL.

So that was a really really really good day.

We're in Phuket now (pronounced "poo-kett", in case you were wondering). It is SO beautiful. Both ports in India were coal ports, so the ship got really dusty and black, but here it is a tourist berth, and the landscape is like a tropical paradise from some Caribbean movie or something. Lovely. The people are really friendly too. I have not had a chance to go out yet, being on duty and really busy with dance practices and so on.

Yesterday we had an actual fire! Someone left a laptop on their bed coverings, and it overheated and started smoking and sparking. She had left the cabin, but one of her cabin-mates woke up because of the smoke, grabbed it and threw it on the floor. Someone phoned the ship's internal emergency number, and all of us in the control team came running to the firestation. We sent in the attack team dressed in full gear and everything. But thankfully someone had already put out the fire with an extinguisher. They reckon they may be able to rescue the hard disk, but I dunno.. We're just glad they were not injured.

Today was a pretty good day.

Not many deckies working'; many people are seasick, and so extra deckies are taking on other's seawatches, and so on, so not many day-workers. Tomorrow there are only 3 of us!

Anyway. The Bosun asked me to wirebrush/clean/paint one of the compass stands on the bridge, which was a good job. Went well too. Hopefully the rain the rest of the day wont have messed it up too much....

Then in the afternoon we had fire attack-team training. Which basically envolved learning about how the breathing-apperatus worked (BA-sets). Then putting them on, and going about the ship, all of us getting shut inside a small compartment/fan-room togeather (to make sure we could cope with such spaces, and not get claustrophobic), crawling along mainstreet (the main corridoor of the ship) using only hands and feet (knees not being protected enough) and then we went up to the funnel, climbing down through inside of the funnel structure inside the engine room, (very very hot! while wearing heavy BA-sets too...) to give us an idea of how it is like inside a fire, then we had to go out along the propellor tunnel shaft (small, hot, and with the propellor axel/pole spinning half a meter away from you the whole time) and climb up the emergency escape shaft.

Then our instructor (one of the ship's firemen) went and lay down somewhere in the lower engine room, and we had to go in to find him, and carry him out as a casualty, the whole time wearing our BA-sets. The normal cylinders we are using here for air give about 45 minutes, so the whole thing didn't take THAT long, but it sure felt like it, as it was so hot, and carrying a human body about while wearing a set is quite hard. One of the people on the training mis-attached his BA tube to his mask, and so had to stop half way through, and go on the rest of the time just breathing normal air, with his BA-set detatched, and one of the others ran out of air 10 minutes before then end, as he is less fit or something, and so was using up air faster. But we got out in the end.

I enjoyed it a lot. For some reason many of the others didn't. Most of the others got burns on their hands while we were climbing down through the smokestack funnel, -- it was that hot. I didn't. Family asbestos fingers coming into play, I think. Anyway. They ended up walking around the rest of the day clutching plastic bags of icecubes. One of the others as well was feeling too sick to participate. But one of the other guys, from Germany, was really really good. Very competent, and good to work with. I'm sure he will be on the attack team soon, and good too.

So yeah..

We left India yesterday. Kind of sad. I will miss India a lot. A lot of people on board are glad to leave, as it has been very stressful for them, what with many of the visitors being so pushy and all. For me, I didn't get so stressed by it, even when on gangway watch, with many people coming and asking for tours, and for permission to walk about the ship and stuff like that.

I was thinking about it, and many of the cultural traits which ship people were finding hard to deal with, and much of the culture are pretty similar to Cypriot culture.... just imagine a Cypriot culture that had continued for 3000 years without being invaded every 100 years like Cyprus has.... then imagine their religion teaching that they were spiritually better than others, and that the others were trash, lower than dogs, because of bad stuff they had done in previous lives, not even to be pitied. But the aspects of everyone being out for himself, but caring about his family, or family image. Not wanting to look bad, trying to get the best for himself out of every situation, thinking he knows best, and so on. Very similar to Cypriot culture. Maybe that's why I didn't have such a problem.

Two days ago we got the new deck schedule for this month. no news about jobs or anything, BUT, I found I had an extra 2 days of 12-4 gangway watch this week, as some people are on re-entry training. That's not good news. So I did 12-4 today. I'm SO tired. I wasnt ready and so didnt get enough sleep or anything, and I still have tomorrow to do.

BUT the good news: one of the other blokes wandered into my cabin just now, we were chatting, and he said, "just 2 days of 12-4? That would totally wreck your whole sleeping pattern. 1 day is fine though. How about we swap tomorrow? I'll do your 12-4 tonight and tomorrow afternoon, and you can do my cleaning team." He just phoned to say he confirmed it with the bo'sun. COOL!!!!!

He said he quite likes gangway. So many people tell me that. I just dont get it.

Re-entry training is brief 2 day training about getting ready for going back home. We have about 8 or 9 deckies leaving in the next few months, so it may be quite unlikely that I leave deck any time soon. I hope I'll get the lifeboat job and that it works out as well as I hope.

I spoke with the bosun, and he knows that Im quite practical and good with my hands and stuff, and so he would quite like me in lifeboats, but the watermen want me to join them too (specifically asked for me). And he knows I'd quite like the lifeboat job. I told him that I am interested in moving from deck into creative ministies or AV or videographer job in the future, so if it is better for the deck to get someone who doesn't want to leave deck ever (which would be good if there was someone to do lifeboats for 1 and half years! very good for the department), then maybe is better I stay in normal deck work. He was happy I told him. unhappy that I may not stay a deckie, but he really appreciates openness.

Watermen job is (in my opinion) not fun. Others think it sounds great. Basically no hard physical work at all; they are in charge of the ship's drinking water, so when trucks come, they have to come and get it attached and coming to the right tanks, moving water from one tank to another so the ship doesn't get lopsided, checking the water making sure it's OK, testing the depths of each tank. There's also a bunch of other random jobs (like looking after the baggage locker, making the new keys for the ship, repairing shoes, etc) mostly it doesn't require too much work, but not exciting.

AND... many times they end up being "on call" all evening, and having to rush off to do water trucks at all hours, which would be really really is bad for me, as I'd almost never be able to totally confirm with a programme organiser, "yes I can be in a programme to do a drama" so they would not want me in dramas at all, as I might have to keep rushing off. So you can see how some people like the job. No hard physical work.

Sometimes they don't ask if you want a job, though, they just assign. It's the chief mate's decision in the end. Apparently what happens is that all the department heads meet up to discuss what people they want, and then negotiate it all out, and then after that each deparement head assigns jobs out within the department according to which people they have left, and so on.

According to the AV people I'm almost certainly on the list of people they will request, but because of me being quite strong and a guy, I will almost certainly stay in deck for the first year. The thing is, AV will be SO short staffed in the next few months. I know I could do the AV job, and many people could not, and so I dont want to commit to the deck department of getting the extra training and stuff of the lifeboat job, if I will then end up having to dump them in a few months if AV cannot find enough other people. Its not fair to the department. So it's all quite complicated. That's why I told the bosun.

At the moment, though, I'm just glad about not having 12 to 4 again tomorrow!

I missed lunch today as I had to give a tour for my "little brother"s family at 11:30. So I went and brought an icecream from the book-ex shop, then made a chocolate spread and jam sandwhich and put the icecream on top. Scrummy. Then I had some dinner too, but not much. I put the rest in the fridge for later. But i'f I'm not on watch I wont need it...

Gangway watch is so bad for eating too. You never feel hungry at normal times, and then need energy quickly at random times, and waking up at like 2 am, and so end up eating really bad stuff, chocolate spread sandwhiches, choclate bars, tea with loads of sugar,cereal with sugary squash juice stuff as the Doulos milk is not nice.

We were supposed to go on an extra trip on my off-day, all of our group, to do a special programme at an old peoples home. But the driver didn't turn up, and so we were waiting for ages. Then when he did turn up, we got taken off to the wrong place - the same place where we did some building. They wanted us to start building again, but none of us were in building clothes. All the girls were in punjabis and all . I remembered the house of a local guy we had met before, so we went there, and phoned to the real guy, and explained the problem ... and then it began to totally chuck it down with rain. So we hid under the veranda and played music and sang songs with the local slum kids, which was really cool. They sung us their Sunday school songs. Really nice.

Then somehow the guy turned up, found us a jeep, and drove us back to the ship. On the way we stopped at a really nice cheap Indian fast food/resurant place and had lovely lovely lovely Indian food. A whole huge meal. The whole meal, plus drinks and dessert, and auto ride home cost us 50 rupees each!!!! 50 rupees is about 50 CY cents [approx $1 US].

It was too late to go where we were supposed to go - everyone had gone home.

Today has been pretty good. Sunday service music practice at 7am. I went early, to warm up, then we practiced until 8:20, service started at 8:30, so about 5 minutes for breakfast. Then after the service cleaning duty, so went outside to start cleaning. Barely started when an absolute torrent of rain started. So we ran around lashing down all the canvasses, lowering the engine room hatch, etc. Got totally soaked. Totally!

Ship seems SO clean now. It's lovely. Everyone said "God is on cleaning duty today!"

Yesterday was i-night, at an outside quasi-amphitheatre venue, a 4000 seater. We packed it!!!!! We were praying for no rain on Saturday for the last 3 weeks or so. So it was really great getting soaked today, and thinking, "This rain might have come yesterday, and ruined all our equipment, and wrecked the whole night, but God made it rain today!" so we didn't mind getting wet at all.

Then after lunch I did the rubbish, had a 10 minute rehearsal for a drama, finished the rubbish, had a shower, went and performed the drama, played guitar for a few minutess, got some props from creative ministires, practised with 4 others for a drama tomorrow. Then I got ready for gangway relief, went and did relief for half an hour while the watchman (watchwoman) went for dinner. Then I put the lights on on the ship, lowered the flag, ate dinner myself, then came back to clean up my bunk a bit. It was covered in random stuff from i-night and all.

I was in two acts in the i-night. Scottish dance, and then TWO minutes later, the "parade of nations" as Cyprus, so very rushed to change. I wear the closest I can find to Cyprus costume: black trousers, white shirt, and a black "Spanish" waistcoat from the costume locker. Looks kind of silly to me, but (a) no one in the audience knows any better (b) if it really looked stupid, they wouldn't keep assigning me to parade of nations (c) most of the costumes look a bit "made up" or fake, so yeah.

Oh, and i've got jazz dance practice in 15 minutes.

I'm working on a puppets script at the moment, for tonight's practice. We brainstormed it last week. Someone else wrote the first draft, and I should have sent it back to them before. But now I have fixed many things, and re-written a few scenes, so I hope it is OK.

I will be BUSY tonight.

6.28: drama performance
6.30: Scottish dance practice (I'll be late though)
7.00: puppets practice
9.00: jazz dance practice
10.00: clarinet practice in foc's'cle
11.00: sleep

The drama will probably actually be nearer 6.40. I still don't know if I'm definitely in the official drama team! One of the other drama team people who is in this drama tonight (which I already knew, and so taught them) told me he thought I was. But who knows? I'm waiting for them to tell me.

Funny thing is, in deck work I am totally NOT busy. There is far too little work for us all to do at the moment. So we're doing silly things, and spending as much time as we can on them. Like cleaning the aft mooring station. Totally pointless, as in three days time it will be filthy again from the coal dust, and takes just as long to clean now as it will in three days, whether or not we clean it now.

We also spent about half an hour re-whipping a rope for the canvas cover for one of the bridge compasses, and then stood down two hours early.

But that's good for me, it means I can finish this script now!

Fare from the firefighting. Fair food for free! Fantastic...

I'm finished watch, but feeling kinda sick/queasy, possibly bad fruit. I did eat four apples just before watch in one go; the fruit had probably been sitting in the backstage of the theatre getting hot and stuff all day. Not serious.



Visak port is even dirtier than the last one but it's rained twice! Lovely. Huge massive torrents of it, with thunderstorms like in Colorado. Lightning hit one of the port floodlight towers, and so the port lost lighting for about 6 hours.

Then we got a page from the book exhibition, "Attention ship's company, we are in need of volunteers to come to the book-ex deck to help save the books."

So of course loads of us charged up there. Water was coming in all the sides, as it wasn't prepared for 45 degree torrents. All the cash desks got soaked too. So I was running around tying canvases down all over stuff. Because it was a sort of i-night last night, most of the ship's company were off-ship, so only about 40 people were on board. A lot of books got a bit wet, but not wrecked.

I spoke to the bosun about the lifeboatman job. He says he wants whoever does it to start working as soon as possible so they learn the job really well before September, when the current guy leaves. When I spoke to one of the firemen, he said that with the lifeboatman and fireman jobs, you can basically work what hours you want to, as long as you get jobs done. So it would be very cool.

Lifeboatman does maintenance of all lifeboats, emergency equipment and so on, also repair of all canvases on board, and nets, ladders etc. They can get as many deckies as they need when they want them. But if just checking rations and water supplies, no others are needed. If I did this, I'd be able to do more dramas and programmes easily, and sleep more at night! Also because I'd be working on my own frequently, I'd be happier socialising during off-time.

It sounds ideal, but then again, the grass is always greener and all that. Heading for almost 4 months on the ship, almost the whole of my preship is a bit fed up with their jobs and want to move/change etc, which is expected. In about 2 months' time, most will probably be happy again.

I don't know if I will do it; they must have this week's team leaders meeting first and see what happens. They will probably decide then, but who knows? Some things happen on board so fast and other things take forever! I still haven't been told definitely that I'm in the drama team...

Here is a poster they showed us in our fire-fighting "training". I'm quite glad we didn't have to actually put one of these on...

Last week has been kind of slow/busy/confused etc. One of the creative ministries people is on an away-team, we had an i-night, I went on an overnight, and am on watch this week (12 till 4), and so on. Also I learned a new mime/dance and performed it the next day. Tomorrow we sail to the next port.

The overnight went well, it was a very good experience. I'm so glad to have gone on an overnight in India. Some of it was not such fun, but very good to have experienced it. Hole-in-the-ground type toilets without toilet paper, for instance...

The book-ex has closed for this port. We were going to be open today, and pack down tomorrow, but today is election day so the local people (port authorities) told us it wasn't a good idea to be open. So we closed today and are doing major clean/pack down. A major, major clean. This is a coal port, so there is black dust caked onto EVERYthing. Horrible. Apparently the next port is even worse...

One of the team leaders asked me yesterday if I would consider the job of lifeboat man!! More flexible hours, I'd be pretty much my own boss, as long as I got the jobs done, no gangway watch or firerounds and so on! I'd have to look after the lifeboats, clean them, make sure all ropes/equipment are correct and good, learning more about how they work, and helping to direct during drills and when using them etc. It should mean I could have more flexible hours as I'd be working on my own most of the time and so I could work around performances/practices with drama and stuff. But I'd still be a deckie, which would also be good. And, I'd get a special letter/chitty/thingy from captain and mates, which would (apparently) pretty much get me a job on any ship anywhere!

"I'm on a church team tomorrow," said I.

"Cool. Who's your team leader?" said he.

"I am."

"My goodness? What is the teams co-ordinator smoking to make you team leader?"

... or so (approximately) went a conversation on Saturday.

Yeah. I was a team leader. So, what does that mean? well, basically, a church asked for a team of us to go do a short programme/presentation in their service today, and my job was to find out (a) what they actually wanted, (b) what we would do, and (c) how we would do it. Another question was also (d), who "we" are.

I was told that I was a team leader on Wednesday.

I thought it was Thursday, at the time. So I went to the board, and make a notice that my team should meet on Saturday evening, in the dining room. 6.20pm. Why this time? Well, the sheet of paper they had given me told me we would be collected from the port gate at 6.20am, the next morning. And I thought it kind of appropriate.

I phoned the pastor as well, and found out what he wanted (songs, drama, mime, a couple of testimonies, and a short presentation about the ship. nothing too challenging).

So...

SATURDAY :

18:20 - I was in the dining room. Waiting for 2 fairly experienced Douloids (both had been on the ship longer than I have), and 2 STEPpers.

18:30 - I phoned the info desk to ask if it was allowed for me to make a page for them to come. They told me no, only on the actual day itself could I page.

OK. No problem. I'll just wait then.

6:35 - one of them turned up! Whoo! One of the experienced Douloids. We chat for a bit about what kind of things we should do. I'd been given one good idea earlier by someone else. As the STEPpers probably don't know any dramas, and probably don't know how to give a good (ie, short) testimony, I could ask them to sing a song in their own languages. Most westerners are horrified at the thought of being asked to sing solo in front of a church, but many Indians don't seem to be. Also, although some don't sing so well, most seem to sing very well indeed.

7:00 - I ask info, and apparently one of the STEPpers is actually out today, with some other team, and hasn't returned yet!

7:30 - no one else decided to turn up. oh well. the both of us leave. I have some work to do, I need to stick some adhesive sandpaper-type tape to the steps to Hold 3, so they are safe to walk up without slipping over. The trouble is that the self adhesive isn't strong enough to hold it in place, and the contact glue I have to use should really be left overnight to dry, that's why I am doing it tonight.

8:00 - My K-group (fellowship/family group) "parents" are leaving, and it's now time to say goodbye, so pretty much the whole of the people who joined the ship at the same time as us are there. Quite sad.

9:00 - I get dressed in work clothes to go do that work. On my way, I pop by the book-exhibition up on deck, as one of the cabin mates of the other STEPper (not the one already away from the ship) told me that he should be working there. I found him! I told him we're meeting at the info desk at 6am, and he says he can sing. Jolly good.

9:45 - While working on the steps down to hold 3, Andy (from the previous pre-ship group to mine) brings the other STEPper down to see me! I ask her if she can sing, she says yes, and although she doesn't like the idea of a 6am start, thats OK.

10:00 - Finished. Bedtime.

SUNDAY:

6:10 - At info. We're all there! Wow. Pray, discuss briefly what we will do, and head for the port gate.

6:25 - We're in the bus heading for the church!

8:00 - Service finished already. Didn't really go as planned at all. Very short simple baptist style service, which I enjoyed. Old hymns and everything. Not 200 people, as my paper said, but more like 30 or 40. The CD played didn't work properly, which disrupted us a bit, as a mime/dance kind of relied on it. But! One of the STEPpers sang very well, and the other one... could be professional! Lovely voice. Amazing. So, yeah, it all kind of worked.

10:20 - The pastor took us out for an indian breakfast (lovely), and we're now in a taxi on the way back to the ship. Wow...

11:20 - I find my "little brother" port volunteer, and gave him a tour of the ship (I'd been on watch when he joined, and kept missing him, so he hadn't yet had a proper tour! Not so good of me. But he liked the tour.).

And that was it!

It all went well. Afterwards in the team "de-brief" in the mess, while filling out the form about how it went, one of the experienced Douloid team members took the form and in the extra comments she wrote how she liked my leading style, as I was so relaxed, and asked peoples
opinions rather than being a dictator, and how unusual I was. *blink* hm. Thanks!

But maybe that means I'll have to lead many teams in the future! Oh stress!

So, yeah.

Doulos life is still pretty hectic.

We've been having many inspections and stuff this port, so yesterday I was helping to clean up the lifeboatman's office, and in the back, we found an old guitar (without strings), which belonged to one of the lifeboatmen of ages past, and the current one didn't want the guitar, and so said I could have it! Wow! So I now have my own guitar! Today hopefully I can go and buy some strings. I'd just been talking with God a few days ago about not being able to practice guitar so much, so yeah! Doesn't often happen like this, but a nice present. It's even a classical guitar! Whoo!