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!