My mother, has that special over drive mother instinct.
If a bomb goes off near where I am, she gets worried. I was in Israel once, and a bomb went off killing three. I was fifty miles away. She cried with relief when we finally touched base.
So now, I am somewhere. It is hard to say where.
My mother saw the explosions in London on TV.
I could have been in London.
I could have been at sea.
I could have been in Europe.
But I was likely in London, on a train that blew up, at least in my mother’s logic.
Knowing my mother as I do, I called her as soon as I saw the news to assuage her fears. My voicemail said, "Hi mom. I am not in London. I am no where near London. I will not be in London any time soon, and I think I am in Norway."
My mother was glad to hear from me, even though she says she "decided" not to worry, which is different from not worrying.
Anyway… I have been at work since 5 am and it is 9 pm. At work is a funny thought… work was in Stravanger Norway for most of the day.
I was on the bridge this morning at about 5:30 am, as we headed into Stravanger, we were headed to run over a sail boat. That was cool. What does a 50,000 vessel do when an itty bitty sail boat drifts into its course?
Honk its horn.
It was very unsophisticated.
The whole scene was a bit boring. It was just me and the first officer on the bridge. No chaos. I looked out and said, "Hey Morton, we seem to be getting close to that buoy."
He looked at me like I had two heads. "You mean the sail boat?"
I am glad he was paying attention. (I am not blind… he had the binoculars, which only seems appropriate.)
I love Norway… just FYI, especially now that we are in southern Norway where the sun actually sets this time of year. It is so much easier to go to sleep when it is dark out.
So I think I will do that…
Thursday, July 07, 2005
Monday, July 04, 2005
A Month of One Lazy Afternoon
It is July 2, and I sit in the sun, bundled in sweatshirt and jeans, enjoying cool artic air. The sun rose at 1:40 this morning. It will not set for me this calendar day. I am nearing the artic circle.
This whole sun all day thing is very bizarre. You never have a clue what time it is. Take now, if I were to guess, I would say it is two in the afternoon. If you had asked me an hour ago, I would have said the same. If you ask me again in two hours, when it is actually two in the afternoon, I will likely say the same. It is a strange existence to go to bed in light of the mid-afternoon and wake up to light of the midmorning, only to check the clock and realize you have slept not fifteen hours, but only four.
It gives everything the feel of a lazy afternoon, all day long, for days. It has been lovely and warm in Norway… but funny to see these towhead people, blindingly white, laying in the summer sun.
Norway is a calm land of quiet sedate people, majestic scenery and the endless summer afternoon. Everyone speaks perfect English and is quite happy to help.
Norway is the home of the deck staff. I believe Norway has amongst the best maritime schools in the world, hence of the cruise ships I have been on, the deck staff is predominantly Norwegian. They, the deck staff, are home. Little tow headed kids are visiting the ship, and the energy is high, spirits up with the joy of seeing loved ones and home.
The country has a strange integration of Christian religion and pagan lore. For every cross you see, there is too a sprite if not a troll.
I thought I had a lot to write, and I do, but I am so tired. We work ten hours a day, standard and some days are more like sixteen. Last embarkation day I worked midnight to eight am, eleven to six pm and then was paged and worked eight pm to ten pm. I had to be up at five am the next day.
To be quite honest, I hate the work. But I love the life. I like walking into the mess and being greeted by friends. I like how bizarre it is to ask, “Where are we and what is the currency?” (This is a question asked frequently by the crew. We don’t pay much attention.)
There are three ships in our fleet, the other two are in Alaska and the Mediterranean. I have fellow IT Officers I can contact on those ships when I need to bounce ideas off of someone. These are people I chat with online and make jokes with everyday, yet have never spoken to or met. I will ordain them, my virtual co-workers.
I highly recommend virtual co-workers, they are all the helpfulness and none of the politics.
I will meet them eventually as there is a bit of movement from ship to ship. We have a good time, bantering back and forth.
Yesterday we had a problem on this ship. We emailed the other ships for help.
We have the omen or idle or icon of an African face, named Tokolash. He is mounted on our server rack. You rub his forehead for luck. My co-worker, Adele, prays religiously and believes fervently in the power of Tokolash. Anyway, we had a problem on our mainframe. She decided to rub Tokolash and an hour later the problem stopped. We sent an email to the other ships saying we had solved the problem and they should see the picture for an explanation. The picture was her rubbing Tokolash.
To which one of the other ships asked if Tokolash can switch DLT tapes (a backup method on major computer systems), cause then they want one.
So we have a good time. So, yeah, I guess I recommend server rack deities as well as virtual co-workers.
Another thing about cruise life is crew drills. Every cruise we have a crew drill. This involves five hundred and some crew members putting on neon life jackets and going to an appointed location in order to help guests evacuate, followed by evacuation to an upper deck.
Some people have more active rolls than others. I for example, have to make sure that fifty people stations on five different decks are manning their stations. I report back to an officer. As I was walking to the officer I passed two people, one in uniform, one in casual clothes, in their big bright bulky orange reflective life jackets, on an office couch, lounging, each separately engrossed in reading a book. It was by far the most ludicrous sight I have seen in a while.
Anyway, it is foggy and wet and cold on deck… which is kind of what I imagine the weather is at home at the moment. I am going to grab some lunch before the mess closes.
Oh here is another tidbit. Everyday the captain comes on the PA and talks about the day. He includes the locations of our sister ships as well as our own.
Except our captain keeps getting it wrong! He used to be captain of the one of the other ships. He switches our ship, in reading the bulletin, with his old ship. Hence he says we are where his old ship is.
It throws the guests a little off when the Captain says we are in the Mediterranean and yet we are supposed to be in Norway.
“Well, I did see him have a couple glasses of wine last night…”
This whole sun all day thing is very bizarre. You never have a clue what time it is. Take now, if I were to guess, I would say it is two in the afternoon. If you had asked me an hour ago, I would have said the same. If you ask me again in two hours, when it is actually two in the afternoon, I will likely say the same. It is a strange existence to go to bed in light of the mid-afternoon and wake up to light of the midmorning, only to check the clock and realize you have slept not fifteen hours, but only four.
It gives everything the feel of a lazy afternoon, all day long, for days. It has been lovely and warm in Norway… but funny to see these towhead people, blindingly white, laying in the summer sun.
Norway is a calm land of quiet sedate people, majestic scenery and the endless summer afternoon. Everyone speaks perfect English and is quite happy to help.
Norway is the home of the deck staff. I believe Norway has amongst the best maritime schools in the world, hence of the cruise ships I have been on, the deck staff is predominantly Norwegian. They, the deck staff, are home. Little tow headed kids are visiting the ship, and the energy is high, spirits up with the joy of seeing loved ones and home.
The country has a strange integration of Christian religion and pagan lore. For every cross you see, there is too a sprite if not a troll.
I thought I had a lot to write, and I do, but I am so tired. We work ten hours a day, standard and some days are more like sixteen. Last embarkation day I worked midnight to eight am, eleven to six pm and then was paged and worked eight pm to ten pm. I had to be up at five am the next day.
To be quite honest, I hate the work. But I love the life. I like walking into the mess and being greeted by friends. I like how bizarre it is to ask, “Where are we and what is the currency?” (This is a question asked frequently by the crew. We don’t pay much attention.)
There are three ships in our fleet, the other two are in Alaska and the Mediterranean. I have fellow IT Officers I can contact on those ships when I need to bounce ideas off of someone. These are people I chat with online and make jokes with everyday, yet have never spoken to or met. I will ordain them, my virtual co-workers.
I highly recommend virtual co-workers, they are all the helpfulness and none of the politics.
I will meet them eventually as there is a bit of movement from ship to ship. We have a good time, bantering back and forth.
Yesterday we had a problem on this ship. We emailed the other ships for help.
We have the omen or idle or icon of an African face, named Tokolash. He is mounted on our server rack. You rub his forehead for luck. My co-worker, Adele, prays religiously and believes fervently in the power of Tokolash. Anyway, we had a problem on our mainframe. She decided to rub Tokolash and an hour later the problem stopped. We sent an email to the other ships saying we had solved the problem and they should see the picture for an explanation. The picture was her rubbing Tokolash.
To which one of the other ships asked if Tokolash can switch DLT tapes (a backup method on major computer systems), cause then they want one.
So we have a good time. So, yeah, I guess I recommend server rack deities as well as virtual co-workers.
Another thing about cruise life is crew drills. Every cruise we have a crew drill. This involves five hundred and some crew members putting on neon life jackets and going to an appointed location in order to help guests evacuate, followed by evacuation to an upper deck.
Some people have more active rolls than others. I for example, have to make sure that fifty people stations on five different decks are manning their stations. I report back to an officer. As I was walking to the officer I passed two people, one in uniform, one in casual clothes, in their big bright bulky orange reflective life jackets, on an office couch, lounging, each separately engrossed in reading a book. It was by far the most ludicrous sight I have seen in a while.
Anyway, it is foggy and wet and cold on deck… which is kind of what I imagine the weather is at home at the moment. I am going to grab some lunch before the mess closes.
Oh here is another tidbit. Everyday the captain comes on the PA and talks about the day. He includes the locations of our sister ships as well as our own.
Except our captain keeps getting it wrong! He used to be captain of the one of the other ships. He switches our ship, in reading the bulletin, with his old ship. Hence he says we are where his old ship is.
It throws the guests a little off when the Captain says we are in the Mediterranean and yet we are supposed to be in Norway.
“Well, I did see him have a couple glasses of wine last night…”
Sunday, June 26, 2005
Strangeness of Sea Life
Laundry, Crashes, City Review,
And Daily Life Tidbits
So I walk down to my local laundry mat, deck 4 midship.
On opening the door, I see two inches of suddy water covering the entire floor. Stunned, I watch as it casually moves to the left before slowing and drifting to the right.
At this point, what do you think I thought?
If you guessed, “Oh, I we must be moving,” you are right. I would not have known we were moving without the water moving on the floor with the motion of the boat.
So this guy, on his toes, trying not to get wet turns to me and asks solemnly, “Abandon ship?”
He was joking, since clearly a washing machine had simply overflowed.
But it was pretty hysterical. I mean come on, when is the last time an overflowing washing machine resulted in someone asking you about abandoning ship.
So, where has Mika been. Mika has been on a grueling two weeks, which started with one little F10, and then another.
To run a process on the system I command, and loath, I press F10. The other day, I accidentally pressed F10 twice.
The system crashed.
Crashed hard.
Crashed so hard that we in Russia woke up someone in LA to fix it.
Crashed so hard the person in LA worked for hours, got stuck, and called in a mainframe expert from IBM.
The system was down for seven hours. We literally could not leave Russia until we had the system back up. Talk about incentive! (All the customs and immigration data was held in the system.)
Now let’s go back a minute and reassess what I did, instead of hitting F10 once, which is good, I hit it again which was FATALLY bad.
Who designed this system!!! The Everything In Moderation Counsel?
So I still have a job…. Even after the following day.
What happened the following day Mika?
Well kids, I did not hit F10 twice… but I did press a seven instead of a six. Wish I was joking. We were down for four hours. This time however, everyone who looked at the log was baffled by why the seven caused the crash.
Meanwhile, in Mikaland, I am just picking keys off the keyboard to prevent further problems. No F10, no 7.
If I run out of keys all together, then we will be abandoning ship.
So it has been stressful in the land of Mika, especially in what I now call Saint Petersbrig. (This is because I am not allowed off the ship in Saint Petersburg, still.)
A recap of the cities I have seen recently:
Stockholm: Fantastic, especially for museum goers. Great modern art in the city. Tons of museums. Beautiful green spaces. Canals everywhere. A truly beautiful city. (Paid for with a 25% sales tax.)
Helsinki: fairly boring, except for this Finish girl. I asked her if she spoke English. She said yes. I asked her my question and was very surprised by a near perfect American English accent. I asked her why she spoke with an American accent instead of an English one. She said, “I studied in WiscONsin.” I knew for sure she was telling the truth. You have to spend at least a few months in Wisconsin before being able to pronounce it with a Wisconsin accent. Nothing like a Finish kid with a Wisconsin accent.
Tallinn, Estonia: Fantastic!!! Tallinn is a medieval city with nearly everything intact, from the castle walls, to the armory. The streets are super narrow and some too steep for cars. At the same time, all these medieval buildings, are painted in the warmest pastels. It was fantastic. Pictures coming soon. Tallinn is one of those cities in life I would never have seen if not for a job, and I am most grateful for having seen. Highly Highly Recommended!
Saint Petersburg: Well it still looks pretty boring from the ship.
Gdansk, Poland: I never found the tourist attraction. I would pass on it. (I feel guilty giving it the Mika Seal of Death, but then I am not exactly an influencial travel author, so I think they will long out live my death seal.)
I have far more tales to tell…
I really should tell them now, because we will be moving into satellite silence for a while. We do the Norwegian Forges next week. This is too far north for our regular satellite coverage.
But, I have to sleep sometime.
Sometime after the little funny tidbits from the day…
Bit One:
User: “I have a problem with the computer.”
Mika: “What is the problem?”
User: “It does not work.”
Mika: “Well what does it say?”
User: “It is now safe to shutdown your computer.”
Bit Two:
I was on the bridge chatting with the second officer. A portside surpassing tanker spawned this piece of wisdom, “You haven’t lived until you’ve taken an oil tanker from behind.”
Bit Three:
I get up at 5:30 am to go to work. But tomorrow is going to be very busy, so my coworker offered to help. “You can call me if you get swamped, but don’t call me. I’ll be ugly at that hour.”
Maybe no sleep… the second officer, who was driving ten minutes ago is now buying drinks at the bar.
On opening the door, I see two inches of suddy water covering the entire floor. Stunned, I watch as it casually moves to the left before slowing and drifting to the right.
At this point, what do you think I thought?
If you guessed, “Oh, I we must be moving,” you are right. I would not have known we were moving without the water moving on the floor with the motion of the boat.
So this guy, on his toes, trying not to get wet turns to me and asks solemnly, “Abandon ship?”
He was joking, since clearly a washing machine had simply overflowed.
But it was pretty hysterical. I mean come on, when is the last time an overflowing washing machine resulted in someone asking you about abandoning ship.
So, where has Mika been. Mika has been on a grueling two weeks, which started with one little F10, and then another.
To run a process on the system I command, and loath, I press F10. The other day, I accidentally pressed F10 twice.
The system crashed.
Crashed hard.
Crashed so hard that we in Russia woke up someone in LA to fix it.
Crashed so hard the person in LA worked for hours, got stuck, and called in a mainframe expert from IBM.
The system was down for seven hours. We literally could not leave Russia until we had the system back up. Talk about incentive! (All the customs and immigration data was held in the system.)
Now let’s go back a minute and reassess what I did, instead of hitting F10 once, which is good, I hit it again which was FATALLY bad.
Who designed this system!!! The Everything In Moderation Counsel?
So I still have a job…. Even after the following day.
What happened the following day Mika?
Well kids, I did not hit F10 twice… but I did press a seven instead of a six. Wish I was joking. We were down for four hours. This time however, everyone who looked at the log was baffled by why the seven caused the crash.
Meanwhile, in Mikaland, I am just picking keys off the keyboard to prevent further problems. No F10, no 7.
If I run out of keys all together, then we will be abandoning ship.
So it has been stressful in the land of Mika, especially in what I now call Saint Petersbrig. (This is because I am not allowed off the ship in Saint Petersburg, still.)
A recap of the cities I have seen recently:
Stockholm: Fantastic, especially for museum goers. Great modern art in the city. Tons of museums. Beautiful green spaces. Canals everywhere. A truly beautiful city. (Paid for with a 25% sales tax.)
Helsinki: fairly boring, except for this Finish girl. I asked her if she spoke English. She said yes. I asked her my question and was very surprised by a near perfect American English accent. I asked her why she spoke with an American accent instead of an English one. She said, “I studied in WiscONsin.” I knew for sure she was telling the truth. You have to spend at least a few months in Wisconsin before being able to pronounce it with a Wisconsin accent. Nothing like a Finish kid with a Wisconsin accent.
Tallinn, Estonia: Fantastic!!! Tallinn is a medieval city with nearly everything intact, from the castle walls, to the armory. The streets are super narrow and some too steep for cars. At the same time, all these medieval buildings, are painted in the warmest pastels. It was fantastic. Pictures coming soon. Tallinn is one of those cities in life I would never have seen if not for a job, and I am most grateful for having seen. Highly Highly Recommended!
Saint Petersburg: Well it still looks pretty boring from the ship.
Gdansk, Poland: I never found the tourist attraction. I would pass on it. (I feel guilty giving it the Mika Seal of Death, but then I am not exactly an influencial travel author, so I think they will long out live my death seal.)
I have far more tales to tell…
I really should tell them now, because we will be moving into satellite silence for a while. We do the Norwegian Forges next week. This is too far north for our regular satellite coverage.
But, I have to sleep sometime.
Sometime after the little funny tidbits from the day…
Bit One:
User: “I have a problem with the computer.”
Mika: “What is the problem?”
User: “It does not work.”
Mika: “Well what does it say?”
User: “It is now safe to shutdown your computer.”
Bit Two:
I was on the bridge chatting with the second officer. A portside surpassing tanker spawned this piece of wisdom, “You haven’t lived until you’ve taken an oil tanker from behind.”
Bit Three:
I get up at 5:30 am to go to work. But tomorrow is going to be very busy, so my coworker offered to help. “You can call me if you get swamped, but don’t call me. I’ll be ugly at that hour.”
Maybe no sleep… the second officer, who was driving ten minutes ago is now buying drinks at the bar.
Monday, June 13, 2005
UN F*!@%ING BELIEVABLE
So I am sleeping soundly in my cabin, at 2:40am in St. Petersburg when my cell phone rings, the first time in a month.
I think, “Hmmm, something must be up in America and someone needs information from me.” I was thinking a parent.
I answer and it is a voice I do not recognize. Then my thought is, “If this is a telemarketer calling me in Russia, at $5.99/minute, I am going to be outraged.”
No, it was UCLA Medical Center calling in regards to my past due medical account, my past due medical account which, notably, called last month to issue a credit for overpayment.
This is in regards to bills from July of 2004.
It is June 2005…
At least here in St. Petersburg.
I honestly believe I would have been billed, here in Russia, much more quickly and efficiently.
(And more advantageously in Rubles.)
But what do I know? It is 2:40am in Russia.
And still light out.
Twilight.
I think, “Hmmm, something must be up in America and someone needs information from me.” I was thinking a parent.
I answer and it is a voice I do not recognize. Then my thought is, “If this is a telemarketer calling me in Russia, at $5.99/minute, I am going to be outraged.”
No, it was UCLA Medical Center calling in regards to my past due medical account, my past due medical account which, notably, called last month to issue a credit for overpayment.
This is in regards to bills from July of 2004.
It is June 2005…
At least here in St. Petersburg.
I honestly believe I would have been billed, here in Russia, much more quickly and efficiently.
(And more advantageously in Rubles.)
But what do I know? It is 2:40am in Russia.
And still light out.
Twilight.
I had
VIAGRA
for lunch...
What would you have for lunch in Copenhagen?
Copenhagen is a lovely little city. It has a nice shopping thorough fare, a theme park, and an incredible city park, grass, bushes, dogs, school children, pond, trees, ducks, green stuff. (You miss green stuff on a ship.)
This was an incredible store: http://www.royalshopping.com.
It had lots of Hans Christian Anderson things, statues, monuments, tributes, and lots of spires.
It also had a hungry Mika, at least when I was there.
So Mika wanted to eat something from a place where she could order by pointing at the menu, where she could understand enough of the menu to know what she was eating and was reasonably inexpensive.
I found a menu on the side of a little store and saw what I thought was a salmon sandwich.
I was quite surprised when the woman said, “Ok. Viagra for you.”
Sure enough, I had ordered Viagra,
at the HonkyPizza place in Copenhagen.
(Note that it was not a pizza so much as a little bit of cheese, tomato and lox between two toasted crackers.)
You can’t make this stuff up.
----
P.S. This was such a "kick-ass" comment, it had to get frontliner entry in my blog.
From Kirsten, "The spammers have invaded Copenhagen restaurants! This is terrible. Next time, order the CI4L1S."
Hysterical!
Copenhagen is a lovely little city. It has a nice shopping thorough fare, a theme park, and an incredible city park, grass, bushes, dogs, school children, pond, trees, ducks, green stuff. (You miss green stuff on a ship.)
This was an incredible store: http://www.royalshopping.com.
It had lots of Hans Christian Anderson things, statues, monuments, tributes, and lots of spires.
It also had a hungry Mika, at least when I was there.
So Mika wanted to eat something from a place where she could order by pointing at the menu, where she could understand enough of the menu to know what she was eating and was reasonably inexpensive.
I found a menu on the side of a little store and saw what I thought was a salmon sandwich.
I was quite surprised when the woman said, “Ok. Viagra for you.”
Sure enough, I had ordered Viagra,
at the HonkyPizza place in Copenhagen.
(Note that it was not a pizza so much as a little bit of cheese, tomato and lox between two toasted crackers.)
You can’t make this stuff up.
----
P.S. This was such a "kick-ass" comment, it had to get frontliner entry in my blog.
From Kirsten, "The spammers have invaded Copenhagen restaurants! This is terrible. Next time, order the CI4L1S."
Hysterical!
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