Hong Kong is beautiful. The colours of the place are really spectacular. It's kind of similar to singapore in some ways, yet also totally different. I feel it's kind of more peaceful, and also more human. Some of the countries/places we've been in the last months have been very clean, tidy, and beautiful, yet also, almost too stark. From the tiny ammount I've seen of HK, it seems less so. Still clean, but not clinical. I like it.

I bought a camera here, something I've been thinking about for about 3 years, and here is my first photo I've taken and been happy with. Hopefully this will also encourage me to post more frequently.

hmm

I've just set up this blog to now accept my posts by email from my
Doulos account. If it does work, it should be even easier for me to
post. So hopefully I'll be sending more interesting entries a lot more
often.

I'll keep you updated.

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This message was checked by NOD32 antivirus system
http://www.eset.com

So. First Post in a LONG time.

I'm sitting in a starbucks in Hong Kong, so this is also the first post I have personally posted in a long time too. Mostly I send my entries via email to Cyprus, where my family upload them here for me.

On Doulos we do have an internet connection now, and have done for the last year. This is via a huge golfball stuck on top of the book-ex roof. OK. It's not really a golfball. It just looks like one. It's actually a satillite dish inside a globe, so it can swing around and point the right way without getting stopped by anything or fall off or something.

A few months ago one of the I.T. techies came out from the USA and did some clever stuff with the connection packet shaping and bandwidth distribution, so now all ship computers have internet access, and when we are in port we usually have a wired local broadband connection. Personal laptops don't have access to the net, only our doulos email accounts, but I (theoretically) could post from the computer inside the AV booth.

Speaking of which, I'm now working as an "Audio Visual Operator" or possibly "technician". Yes, after all that hassle. It's great. Totally different work, but getting to work with on board shows/programmes every day is good. I really enjoy that, and have many ideas I want to try, and hopefully will get a chance to soon. Learning/practicing live sound mixing is also good. Not something I feel very confident at yet, but it's something I really want to be good at, and so working with AV every day, I'm getting better. Some nice things about being a musician and doing AV, I'm trying to be able to say "that echo/feedback/noise/loud-part-of-voice is B, one octive above concert A" and then be able to EQ it out straight away... takes practice though, to be able to do it fast enough to not be noticed. Anyway, I'm out of battery juice on this machine, so should head home. It's lunch time. "Cold cuts and cheese" Yum.

I'm quite tired today. I-night tomorrow. Didn't really get a whole lot accomplished these last few days. A bit depressing.

I feel slightly directionless at the moment. I have so many things to do, and to be doing, and yet not getting any of them done. I join AV in two weeks, but I really want to finish Deck well.

I was given three days to do the lifeboat videos, during the time these guys are doing their training, to video them doing everything, basically.

Today was my last day given to do them. I've got the script of one of them done, 1/4 of the second script done, a bit of B-roll filming done. But none of the blocking done, none of the real filming done, and so, obviously, none of the editing done.

I'm VERY excited to go to AV. I really look forward to leaving deck. I don't know how it will be at all. Really weird. Kind of like being a kid, who was in school, suddenly being home-schooled, or something. I enjoy deck work, and too easily and probably too much see myself as a deckie, and a waterman. I am already doing video stuff and some AV programmes in my free time. I have so many ideas, but no way to play with them and try out.

Suddenly, it will be my job.

On one hand, sounds wonderful. On the other, slightly worrying.

Also I still have a problem really accepting that I will be joining AV. , even though I've had an official letter from Personnel about it, at last. I still honestly have a 80% belief that I'll be told "Sorry, someone is leaving, you need to stay in deck" or "Logos Hope NEEDS people, you're the only one who can go, even possibly. We don't NEED you in AV, we could take someone else, but if we don't send 2 deckies, they can't sail." Silly, I know.

Pretty good day today. Some lifeboats videoing, some script writing, some fireman maintenance work (so the fireman can do lifeboats training!).

Found found a weird inconsistancy in the liferafts procedures, so chased it up, asked the captain about it, and have emailed a picture and full explanation to both captain and safety officers.

It's so strange though... I actually quite like ships, and all this safety stuff and all.W orking within the ISM and all the regulations and stuff is quite fun in a weird sort of way. Maybe I would make a good maritime laywer or something....

I was duty fireman today, so will be off tomorrow. I've been loading water, as well, but cannot leave the ship for 24 hours.

If there is a fire alarm go off, I'm fire-station supervisor, overseeing the investigators, calling if to page for the full fire control team to come, etc. Also I have to check any locations before any hotwork is allowed (welding, etc), isolate zones on the smoke detector panel before hotwork is allowed, etc etc.N ot very exciting unless an alarm goes off. Then it's quite mad. My first 3 times as duty fireman I had big false alarms.

Quite a good day today.

Family service in the morning - I was doing a bit of puppets.

Taught more ropes stuff all afternoon. Was just marking taskbooks, and will have dinner (real dutch cheese!!!) and then go out for ice cream with the i-night crew.

The THING I actually miss from Cyprus is a stable, normal, sane Linux box to work with. I am trying to find some documents about EDH training on the network, and to figure out some stuff for the lifeboats next week. There's one page of stuff I've seen the chief mate looking at, and it's good, but he's on break and now I can't find that page! Annoying.

But I just got a programme installed which makes this windows machine work almost like a Linux desktop. I can have 4 or 5 applications open, adn 8 or 9 windows, and get between each job just by pressing alt-1 or whatever. No silly alt-tabbing through 10 windows to see what I want. I don't like using the mouse.

The first day's training went well. I covered most of the ropework they needed to know. Knots, splicing, seizing, worming/parcelling/serving, stoppering at mooring. It's quite satisfying teaching, but complex too, and so much stuff to think about, and figure out how to get it to work. Tomorrow we will do purchases, bosun's chair and stage tomorrow, also care of rope....

Life is good.

The e-day went very well.

I'm going to join AV on the voyage to Hong Kong in September!!

But I'm really tired.

Today:

9-12 i-night technical meeting, looking at the lights
12-3 sea watch
3-5.20 mooring and preparing water for the port

It's now 5.45.

Tomorrow I start teaching EDH (Effiicent Deck Hand), so I need to prepare all that. Should be interesting, but I don't have anything prepared yet.

I'm sitting in the dining room at 7.30am writing this. It's dark outside still, with rain and occasional lightning as the wet season continues to build here in Mokpo, South Korea. The windows are fogged up by condensation and water, allowing me to see the port about as clearly as I currently see my current life and future on Doulos.

I know that what job I actually do is quite minor, really, and that I'm here to serve, and it's God's choice what He asks me to do, nevertheless, I'm finding it intensely frustrating, and hard to focus on what I have to do day to day, and know how to spend my time. I was told (again) yesterday that I will be told for sure by the end of the week...

Tomorrow morning I'm taking a team of 4 people who I've never spoken with together (one of whom I've never met!) to do a 90 minute kids programme. I was told on Sunday afternoon that I was in charge. I was also told I had 2 steppers (who are tour guides, and so don't really speak english) and one from the new preship, who I've never really spoken with. So I tried to arrange a meeting that night, and told them as best I could.

None of them showed up.

So I spoke with the one from the new preship, who was working at the book-ex, and so couldnt come to any meetings. I arranged a programme, and told her what I needed her to do.

I managed to find one of the steppers, but I don't really know what she will do. We arranged to meet this evening to sort out her Bible story, but she never showed again. and I still havent met the other stepper/volunteer.

So I phoned today the host, and she wants to take us for lunch. So I said it was 4 of us.Then this evening I saw the notice board for e-days, and we have someone else joining the team!! So I hope I can see them at breakfast tomorrow, and maybe we have to skip devotions or something to prepare.

I really hate just bulldozing over the others, especially the steppers and just making them translate or something, but then the ballance between "the show must go on" and also "Doulos is about people".

To make it worse, Creative Ministries are closed all Monday, and by the time I'd found out I was in charge and thought about ideas on Sunday, they had also finished. So I havent been able to get any drama music CDs, or props, or costumes, or anything. They dont "open" until 9am tomorrow! Which is the time we're being picked up. I'll try to speak to one of them tomorrow at breakfast.

The host's expectations sound quite high of us, and I am really unsure of how it will all go. We're totally unprepared, and I'm struggling with feeling inadequate and cynical.

Just 4 days ago we had another crazy programme, a "mini-international night" which a church told us to produce at a concert hall they had booked without checking if it was a good idea with us first. So I was roped in and after work went along, having just taught 6 people that afternoon our cultural Scottish dance to perform... When we got there, we discovered one of the costumes missing, and so I had to re- teach them the 3 couple version backstage while the show had already started! We were totally unprepared, but somehow they managed to remember their steps.

The audience was about 80 kids and a few adults, who were there before we arrived and watched us troop in to the theatre and even practice how we would come out to bow at the end. I was feeling quite flippant and cynical by the end. It was an okay show, but what was the point!?

THEN... As we sat in the bus about to head back, a lady climbed up and spoke to all of us: "Thank you all for what you told us. Because of you, I now have strength to believe in Jesus".

Didn't do a lot of work today, really. Moved a bit of water, checked a few levels, sounded a few tanks, and finished off the Pusan i-night review DVD.

It was raining today, so not so busy. It's rainy season here, and rain does have a certain charm.

I'm probably doing AV for a programme on Tuesday. The AV head went today and talked in strong terms to Personnel, and said she sped things up a bit. She wants me full-time in AV so she can release me to make more programme videos, and media clips for our use on board.

Now I have an e-day to organise....

Today has been quite good.

The new Waterman is away on overnight, and will be back Tuesday. The other Waterman is doing most of the work at the moment.

So I'm working to get non-essential but good things done, such as the Waterman's bible, and writing a proper Waterman entry to the Ship Board Operations Procedures Manual (basically ISO 9000 for ships). And I'm getting the keys updated from piles of paperwork to be integrated into the ship's main database, and hopefully making the new lifeboat's training videos with the Captain soon.

Maybe also working with IT to get a couple of databases done.

Oh, and I'm trying to actually get to the bottom of the whole water chlorination deal, and get a proper procedure written down, and perhaps (the Captain is backing) to get an inline automatic chlorination system added. I'm aiming to leave my mark on the Waterman job!

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.

I was just doing video editing all today so far, pretty much. It's a project that the half-time video guy recorded 5 months ago, a backstage i-night video showing what goes into making i-night happen. But he never edited it, and doesn't have time to, for sure.

I'd like to record my own footage and make a better one., I need to record some interviews anyway. I finished the music track I chose, and it works quite well, but at the end, it feels like it's just the introduction to a whole big project. So I'll try recording interviews,and add footage from this current i-night of the actual dances and all that,and try and make a full documentry of inight. But this means its a bit of a bigger project.

Life is tiring and frustrating.

The half e-days doing puppets with children were moderately rubbish. Unresponsive kids, then loud and random.

Then the water got messed up. The water people don't bring anything like what we ask. Like totally different amounts. We ask for 200, they bring 36, etc. so I've no idea how much we have on board. Their barge only comes with random amounts of water in it.

Also I spoke with Personnel about doing half video and half deck, after being told so many times by the video boss he wants me, and my boss OK-ed it, and personnel said it sounded fine.

But today My boss had a meeting with Personnel, and they have a videographer coming in the next preship. So it looks like they don't want me in video.

So I have no idea any more at all what is happening.

Very frustrating.

There's little stuff on top too. Like I got a key request, but the cabin number and key number on the request don't match, so I don't know which they really need, and then the personnel secretary was in meetings all afternoon, so I couldn't call her and ask which it really was. Just silly little stuff like that. Feels like the last straw when life is frustrating anyway.

Also, I'm SO tired.

Seawatch was so long and tiring, and then yesterday after prayer night I went by the keyshop, and found a water sample had gone positive, so I had to start doing re-tests on all the water until midnight. Then I was up this morning at 6am to get all the valves ready for when the water arrived while I was out.

We will have a new waterman next week! I'll be speaking with Personnel tomorrow about doing half time video and deck training (teaching new people, teaching Efficient Deck Hand course to current deckies, doing lifeboats sometimes, etc.

This is OK with both the second mate, and the videographer's boss. So maybe I start in a week or two... Even better than AV, I think. I still get time outside, playing with ropes. And I'll still be doing AV for i-nights. If I do stay in deck, then I can apply for my AB ticket in February, since I'm still signed on under articles, still a deck rating, and still lifeboat 1 coxswain.

I can still hang out in AV, and mix video for them sometimes too.

I have three crazy days ahead.

The next two days are half e-days when I'm doing a puppet thing for six-year-olds, and half water loading and other work. Then there's the i-night the day after.

Last port (Pohang, South Korea), I went with a team to stay away from the ship for almost 2 weeks, living with local families, and working with them (doing programmes at schools, church meetings, etc, etc).

During a 2 year stay on Doulos, most people will go out for 3 teams like this. Some, like here, being very civilised, others (say in PNG or parts of North Africa), being much more out-back "jungle teams". I was staying on my own with a family of four, and every day going to work with my team from 9am until late at night. I really enjoyed living with a family, again. They were so hospitable to me, and looked after me so well, also, they were very relaxed and friendly.
I was introduced to the father like this:

"Daniel, This is Elder Shim. You will be staying at his house."

So I was a bit worried about how formal I would have to be. We'd been warned that Korean culture is very formal, and that on past visits of the ship, many westerners had caused problems, and had problems, due to the very low-context, low formal nature of the west, and also of the ship.

But I found it totally the opposite. Very easy to get along with, very friendly, very family. The parents sitting on my bed talking (even though I don't speak Korean, and they don't speak English!!), and the kids running around, doing a bit of puppetry with them.

It was one of the kids birthday while I was there, here is a photo.


As you can see, a nice cake (for breakfast!) and also much traditional Korean food. My hostess cooked amazing food every breakfast. I was so well fed. Lovely. Kimchi and rice for breakfast,
with rice and soup. Mmmmmmm.

One day she made kim-pap, kind of rolled seaweed paper with rice and crab and carrots and cucumber inside. I'd wondered how it was made. Now I know. They treated us so well, we went out for Korean barbecue 3 or 4 times, had much traditional food. So good. SOOO good! Anyway. A really good time. Really nice people.

Now I'm back on the ship, and have been for a week or two. Usual stressful running around, busy life.


I've been waterman for more than a year. Almost 13 months now. Amazing. It's gone so fast. And I still quite enjoy it. I'm also really tired of it, though. Firstly the long days, and always
thinking ahead and being on-call whenever I'm on board, but also it's not something I'm especially interested in, water tanks, locks, and all. I'm able to do it, and quite well, I think, and have learned a lot, and enjoyed it a lot. But I really want to change my job.

My first love work wise is still theatre and performance/art. I've been working with the videographer on board quite a bit, recently in my spare time, and also helping some with the AV/technical/sound/video people in our on board programmes team. I've applied for a couple of different jobs, on board, but at the moment it looks like I'll probably be staying in the deck department for a while.

I may be changing jobs within the department (maybe going to work on the lifeboats for a bit, do some maintenance there), or something else. The second waterman knows everything now, and it's time for him to take charge, and have someone for him to teach. Time for me to step down.

I have a kind of dilemma, in that I enjoy the practical work in the deck department, I enjoy many of the people. The chief mates, bosun, and many of my friends. I also know quite well the work, and can do it competently, and seriously. Many of the more experienced people in the
deck department are leaving in September, and many other people want to leave. So Deck needs people who are serious about work, and can work well and enjoy it.

On the second horn, I want to do something more creative. To spend my time making and exploring, which currently I just don't have time for. I really want to help the ship make quality videos and programmes and present a high standard to visitors and others. We're using video and multimedia presentations quite a lot, and I can see even more potential in it, and there is a need for creative people who know video and are technical enough.

A lot of the current team dynamics on Deck I find really hard as well right now. Many people not taking the jobs seriously, or getting angry, not caring about the work they do, etc. Many of us still acting like boys, not like men. So many things I find really hard to work and live with, that I'd really be happy to not have to worry about.

I feel as if there is not enough strength of experience and caring about the jobs and the people, so new people join, and when they do, they inherit the old habits and attitudes of the previous people, most of whom are already tired of the work and want to leave.

So.

Do I try to move away from it all and start doing my preferred type of work as soon as I can? Or do I try to stay and be a positive influence, and try and encourage the new people to find interest and joy within their work? Maybe it's my home-educated mind-set, or maybe grace, or something else, that lets me work with this attitude.

Life is complex, sometimes.

We've just arrived in Pohang, South Korea! These last few days have been very hectic for me, and kind of typify my whole life at present:

23:45 - 04:00am sea-watch.
07.30 - 08:30am study groups.
09:00 - 11:45am Korea country orientation. (basic history lessons, culture, language, etc)
11:45 - 16:00pm sea-watch
19:30 - 22:00pm a-team meeting
23:45 - 04:00am sea-watch...

And so on! Quite busy, as you can see. In my "free time" I've also been working on the ship's video edit suite editing 2 video projects. Tomorrow I'm going out with a group of people for ten days to work with a local church.

Here are two photos of me taken in Japan, where we've been for the past month:

Greetings, Gentle reader, and welcome to the latest episode of brummie@sea.

Before we get much further, here is a photo of yours truly:


Taken in Fukuoka, Japan. Nice place. Very clean, efficient, tidy, quiet. Kind of reminded me of some of the more sane and modern parts of London (not that there are too many parts which combine both of those adjectives).

We're now actually in Kanazawa, which is further north.

I've been quite busy this port, as the second waterman has been on a team staying and working off the ship for the whole port. I was also learning a lot about the audio-visual stuff on board the ship, how to use Final Cut Pro, sound balancing, and so on. Fun stuff. We had some of the people from our company's technical/production side out for a week or so, and doing some training for us.

Since then I've been working on the ship's edit suite making a couple of video projects (a Taiwan report video, and a video about the work the ship did in Philippines to show in Korea).. Final Cut Pro is very very nice software.

Especially once you get rid of the silly one button mac mouse, and put a proper 2 button+scrollwheel on the beast.

I've also been working quite a lot on just refilling up the ship with water. We had to pretty much replace all our water with Japanese water, due to strange regulations here, and that was all a bit complex.

I stayed up quite late one night running around the ship with the I.T. guys, when they re-built the network system, rebooting and reconnecting the DHCP client sessions on every computer... We now have internet web access on every ship-computer (not personal laptops). That is really cool.

I am probably going to be changing jobs fairly soon, I don't know where yet. Possibly into I.T and Videographer, or something like that. Maybe working with the Audio-Visual team running the sound and stuff programmes on board. I've been working as a waterman for almost a year now. On Doulos that's a long time. I just looked in our logbook the other day, which I started us keeping. The first entries are from August last year. Amazing.

I applied for the job of Technical Administrator. It would be quite interesting, and a big challenge too. A more technical ship work, and I could learn a lot of administration skills that would be useful in whatever job I end up doing in the future.

Doing all the video and all that these last two weeks, and hanging around with the IT guys a bit, I know that that is where I enjoy working most. I love doing video editing, and IT configuring and installing and all that work is so much more satisfying than water stuff. I miss programming a lot.

I miss linux, actually. Now THAT's a geeky comment.

But whatever job I end up doing here, it'll be useful, and also a good change. I'm really tired of the waterman's job. It's a great job, you can learn sooo much. And it's very interesting, very much responsibility, very much independence. More independence than any other job on the ship, probably. Still. It's time for a change. I'm tired of the midnight phone calls, of thinking about the ship's water and list and draft 24/7. Of being "on call" whenever I'm on the ship. Of working alone, truely alone. Even working with the other waterman, I still miss being part of a team. I don't much enjoy being a leader. I prefer to be a team player. Able to relax with others who know as much or more than I do, and able to pass the ball around, rather than just holding it myself, or watch my partner/assistant run with it the whole time.

Anyway. It's late. Past 10. I need to sleep. goodnight.

This has been a fun week... most of it. Exciting, and all, anyway. We had a damage control drill, in which the fire attack team had a chance to play with our big emergency submersible pump (big blue thing, about the size of a child and the weight of a man) which had to be carried down to the engine room, and dropped into a tank of water, and then they had the fun of emptying a few tons out of the porthole, and then the rest we transferred into another tank. Great fun for them, very good that they finally get a chance to work with that pump (it's a monster!). And the tanks, of course, mean work for the watermen! :-)

We had two tanks which were on schedule for being worked in (we emptied out one of them a month or so ago, and had deck teams in there scraping off the old dead cement, and we last week got the new cement on all the walls.

So we had to open up this empty tank again, and open up the other tank, and get everything ready for that. This meant the usual sitting for a few hours in a bilge/tanktop covered in slime and grease and oil with various sizes of wrenches/spanners getting the manhole open.. This one also created a few more problems though, as some of the nuts were really old and totally seized up.

I had to find out how to get them off. I tried everything I knew how to do (various lubricants, hammers, spanners with extensions, and so on). My next and final option was to grind the thing off. As this is in a bilge, with oil and all about, it's quite dangerous to do grinding, as you have sparks all over the place. So you need "Hot Work permits" which are paperwork to make sure you follow all safety procedures, have another guy on firewatch while you work, have fire extinguishers ready, etc... The chief mate suggested I try using just a oil burner/torch and heating up the nut around the edges, to try and expand it and so free it up. This would also require Hot Work permits, but would be safer, and also a lot easier, if it worked.

As I was getting ready for this (with the deadline being the drill the day after), the chief engineer suggested just using a "Nut splitter", a really cool tool I'd never seen before. Basically it's a chisel with a threaded end, a bolt on the end, and a case to drive it through the nut, as you tighten the bolt. Very cool indeed. So I found this device, and amazingly, it worked! Very nice indeed. I was chatting with the Engine Foreman afterwards, and he suggested a few other ideas involving chisels (and hitting the bolt in the right places to expand the right parts). So I have lots of new stuff learned. Cool. I'll put it all in the "Waterman's Bible."

Have I mentioned the "Waterman's Bible"?

It's our source of all knowledge and wisdom, concerning the job. When I joined, it was about 4 pages long, very hastily put togeather, and with confusing notes, and about as comprehensive as "Spot the Dog" is as a guide to the English language.

So myself and the former watermen began to add to it, and since I took over as head waterman, I've added diagrams of valves, information about the "Free Surface Effect" and other important things we really need to know, but were always handed on (getting more and more incorrect over time) by word of mouth, or just totally ignored, and other interesting information (such as "Where to find people to hang out with on the ship at 2 in the morning when you're waiting for the final water truck to arrive" and "Where can I get new hose-clips?" and "Where can I find good coffee?" or even "How can I get these wretched rusted nuts off the manhole-cover!?" for instance.

Currently the "Waterman's Bible: Nearly Accurate Simplified Version (NASV) April 2007 Edition" is around 50 pages long.

So, back to my week. Three days ago we had to move the ship a few hundred meters down the quayside, so a container ship could come in... the next morning we moved her back again. Then we have have 3 containers of food/books/supplies/chemicals arrive in (including 2 new waterhoses I ordered 3 months ago!).


And most recently, yesterday.

Yesterday was International Night (I-night). Our big festival of songs and dances and dramas from around the world! We're having two this port, for different audiences, and I am on the "I-night Crew" now, doing the multimedia (videos, cameras, projectors, etc). Yesterday was my first time doing that, always before I've been on stage performing. It was so much fun! So good to do theatrey work again. I love the energy and excitement of it. I was sitting on my own with a laptop, projector and camera (and camera person for a while) with a headset on listening to the stage director and back stage crew, and most things went pretty well.

At the beginning of this I-night we had a local Christian band playing, and then we went into 2 movies/video clips, and then the show proper. 5 minutes before the local band started their sound check, the singer came up to me with a USB stick and said "Hey, can you show this powerpoint, it's the lyrics of our 3 songs, while we sing..."

Yeah, no worries... Except, it's all in Mandarin! And I don't really speak any Mandarin at all!

He told me. "OK, these are my hand signals I use with the band, 'this' means 'Chorus' and 'this' means 'from the top'. We have 3 songs in this powerpoint, the first one is slides 1-3, slide 3 is the chorus..."

Woah! Cool! Bring it on! In the end, we did find one of our translators who could run the lyrics with me, which helped, rather.

After the local band, we had those two video clips. The first one for some reason was not on the laptop (someone else had set up the laptop and files on the ship before the day), and it only arrived 10 minutes before the performance! Still, I had them ready. Then, just as I started the clips, the sound came on, but no video on the projector! This was crazy! I'd just been showing lyrics on them! We'd managed to get a flatscreen monitor from the venue to use as a second monitor display by me, so I could set up the videos on the screen before switching the video-switch to display the computer, and the video was playing fine on my monitor.

So I switched off the video and began checking cables, while the whole audience was sitting there... and I found the projector had switched itself off! So I turned it on again, and reset my videos and got it going again. The whole time (probably only 15-20 seconds at the most, from when the sound came on without visuals to when it started working properly) with the stage director and everyone worried in the headset, and me on my first time with multimedia i-night. It was great! I love theatre.

Everything else went pretty smoothly. It was a long day, we started at 6.30am (after getting to bed around midnight the night before because of the container arrivals, that was a 14 hour work day), and then finished de-briefing after the I-night around half past midnight, and then eating dinner til past 1am, (So about 18 work hours...) Then I was up again this morning at 6.30 to get ready for a study group. I don't think I'll work too hard today, except I have my normal work to do, after church, then 2 Irish dance performances later in the afternoon, I need to do my work appraisal with the chief mate, and also a sermon review with the study group coordinator about 5pm...

[Ding Dong, Ding Dong...]

OK, just to add to the fun, the fire alarm just went off. Some kind of electrical fault in one of the wires, they guess. I was at the firestation with the others for about 10 minutes, they couldn't find anything in the whole zone where the alarm went off, so they've isolated the alarm, and check again in an hour.

Yeah. Fun week.

Just a quick photo, me as coxswain of lifeboat 1.

This is Sabbath week, we're supposed to have rest from most of our work.

Unfortunately there are only two watermen.

I did some maths. The water at this port is REALLY slow to load: like 10 tons an hour. If we use 40 tons a day, then in Sabbath week we must load roughly 300 tons of water, which is 30 hours of loading.

It's not too hard work, really, as most of the time we can rest while it is loading. But there are also about four hours of sounding to do (over the whole week), plus another five or six hours moving water ready for the voyage, and so on.

It's quite OK - not too bad, really. If it were a normal port, then no worries. But it's still roughly 20 hours work each - kind of annoying when we're supposed to rest. Normally it's no problem - like last year, there was virtually no work for the watermen, because it was the beginning of a port. So they just loaded the ship totally full - so full she could not sail - and then basically did nothing the whole week.

But we arrived here after a two-hour voyage from the last berth (which still counts as a voyage, so we cannot load above the limit). The water connection only arrived during Sabbath week. It's a slow connection... AND, we sail right at the end of the week so we have to have all the tanks in order for sailing (some full, some empty, etc).

We slightly overloaded the ship with water last week, because of the sheer relief of a quayside connection again. The ship was totally low in fuel, so we loaded her to the max of water, with little effect on the trim. Ok, huge effect on the trim, on the draft, little effect. All the water tanks are at the back, so we ended up with a 2.5 meter trim then they bunkered fuel 4 days ago, and we haven't loaded since.

When they loaded the fuel, the ship was below her loadline. Its quite colder weather, so all the doors are acting a bit odd. The c/m told me that he knew we must be light on water, since his door was not shutting as normal. I told him we had enough, but he said "load her up! The ship must be almost flat right now!" So I loaded her up. It was quite fun. My bathroom was almost diagonal, and the toilet outside the engine room was tilted both ways, and very weird to use.

Anyway. we will load another 50 tons or so the day we sail. (Tuesday)

So today, we started work after lunch (its Sunday) and then did basic soundings, made a few keys and I went up to the mates office. I found a really really dirty tarnished old brass ship's wheel (with wood outer spokes) in the office. The deck secretary told me that the 2nd officer had found it in an antique store, and that it was going to be attached to the bridge of Doulos.



There were Brasso tubs around the floor, and so i asked "surely you weren't trying to Brasso this?"

And she said no, but some others were trying to no avail. They had also tried toothpaste, and were going to try paint remover. I laughed, and said how silly. I then stole the wheel,

I phoned the store keeper, and he came to the keyshop. I borrowed some de-liming liquid from accomotation, and some wire wool and leather gloves. In half an hour of our work, it was shiny and brassy, so then then we Brasso'd it for another half hour or so, called the mates, and told them to come, and bring some Coke with them. On the way they told me on the phone that Coke has had it's recepe changed, and probably wouldnt work. I just told him to bring it. They turned up, saw the wheel and were VERY impressed.


Today was a very good day work wise.

I did my PR thing: I told them all, "if you need to know anything, or if you need something difficult done, just ask the Watermen how! they know everything!

They kept chuckling and saying well done boys, and how happy the captain will be and we will (hopefully) get a *real* wheel on Doulos again!

The Coke actually tasted quite nice....

Warning: this post contains a word which may under certain circumstances be considered less than 100% socially acceptable in the context of the readers current culture and/or position. If this is the case, the blog author accepts no responsibility whatsoever.

Dealing with the baggage locker isn't one of the most complex jobs, but it's kind of annoying and adds stress to the work: having request forms to do every day, extra responsibility and all. It only takes a few minutes a day, normally(up to half an hour or so) but it's just another thing to worry about.

Anyway. The firemen don't have so much work, unless they really want it (ie, go and look for things in a not-ideal state, and then fix them). But they don't do that (at least, not the current firemen).

So one day, I was carrying boxes up from the locker with the boatswain, who is Dutch, and mentioned to him an idea I'd had. Maybe the firemen should take over the baggage locker... ?

He stopped, put down the box he was holding and stared at me.

"That," he said, "is a bloody brilliant idea!"

So now the firemen do the baggage locker.

Delegation is so much fun when it works!!!

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):