An ordinary man, an normal life, extraordinary thoughts?

Sunday, February 25, 2007

I'm back!

I must say, its been a really long time, and i'm glad to be back~ (Not back in Sg, more like back to the blogging scene.. haha.)

Okay, for everyone or anyone who didn't know, i sailed to Pattaya from the 6th of Feb to the 16th... and it was a really eventful trip. okay, for a close-up on the sailing trip, here we go..~

For the first day, the 6th, me and eugene, the medics for the trip, basically just helped out with the loading of ammo, weapons(just a few) into the ship, then i used the crane and helped load the food stores.

Somehow, the chefs decided to enlist us into their company since they were a bit shorthanded, and hence we became assistant chefs~ Basically we just partner with the other ns-men chef and take one of the 3 days to sail there, so work 1 day, 2 off days.. sorta.

We still had some time before we actually sail off at night, so we had our lunch at the canteen, and actually played a bit of pool at the specialist mess. I must say, i've never been inside, and it looks pretty good, but its too empty. And other than a pool table and some newspapers there's nothing. Sheesh. Not like i'll be going there much but still.. *shrugs*

okay, for a laydown of the ship, we're travelling in the MV Avatar, a merchant vessel, and its a really big ship. 7 Levels in all, Eugene and i share a room on the 3rd level, which is just beside the Gym, which happens to be beside the medical centre.

The room is relatively big, compared to the other ships i have sailed on. About the size of 6 toilet cubicles? haha, and there's an inbuilt toilet as well. The room had 4 beds, and there was supposed to be an Ns-men bunking with us, but somehow i guess he deferred, so its 2 of us to 4 beds. Woohoo!

The crew mess where we have our meals is on the 4th floor, same as the chefs' bunks. The officers bunk on the 5th floor, and the 'control' room is on the 7th floor, the deck.

For this ship, the Avatar crew itself consists of maybe around 14 russians including engineers, chefs, etc. They also have a 'washing' service. Every Tues, Thurs and Sat from 1900 onwards, we put our dirty clothes (minus underwear and socks) on the basket and they'll wash it. The next day when we wake up in the morning our clothes will be clean and folded neatly on the basket.

For us, our primary job is to provide medical cover when they're doing anything hazardous or when they want to report sick, so we do get a lot of free time. But since we're attached to the kitchen, our free time just decreased by more than 40%, but still its quite an experience.

Labels:

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]

<< Home