So, now I’d better start getting this blog on the road again… “why?” you may ask, well… heres the news:
I’m goin’ back! Yeehaw! and so on.
I went for my interview with OM UK, and have been accepted to go back to the Doulos in February, so, God willing, I’ll be leaving Larnaka sort of middle of January for the conference and pre-ship training.
It’s actually all quite complicated. Yesterday I went and reserved a air-ticket to the conference. I need support for 2 years on board, and am just this week discovering how complex that all is. Some people had already offered to support me, and I met up last week with a church elder and treasurer and parents to discuss it all. They were all very supportive and encouraging, and said they don’t think there should be any problems raising it all. I was supposed to be getting up in church last Sunday to tell everyone about what I’m going to be doing, and how much I need and all. But… I was struck down by some kind of virus or something, and instead spent most of Sunday throwing up. I couldn’t even take a sip of boiled water during the morning. I’d have much rather got up in church and asked for support! I’m still not totally back to normal, but working at it. I guess God is telling me to rely on Him, not on my amazing oratary skills, or something. heh.
As well as the Doulos costs, I also have to raise money for their medical/travel/etc insurance, which equals more than another 2 months normal Doulos money. Also envolved are travel costs to and from the conference, and the cost of the conference itself.
I wanted to get my clarinet insured too. This is all quite complicated, as I need insurance worldwide, traveling, etc. I looked at various possibilities, like joining the British Musicians Union, as you can get good insurance with various agencies in the UK through them, with a discount. But… The agencies in the UK all require permanent residence in the UK, which I and my family do not have, as we live in Cyprus.
I misread the policy of the normal Doulos company, and thought they said in order to get “business items” cover (ie, expensive clarinets), it was another 500+ pounds a year, which utterly shocked me, as for that price I could almost buy a new clarinet intirely after 2 years of that… but happily, I was wrong, and I’m now emailing them getting my poor ol’ brain to actually understand it all. It’s well complicated!
As well as all this, there are more vaccination type thingys. I need to be vaccinated against Hepatitis B, according to the docs. Which is the troublesome one from before. There is, apparently, a super-accelerated one which takes 21 days. (1 jab, another after a week, and another after another 2 weeks). Anyway, I phoned my friendly doctor here in Larnaka, and she told me that they don’t have this type in Cyprus, only the 3 months variety. OK… So I told the UK office this, and they said they would check if I could have the vaccinations on the ship.
My teacher had been telling me that I needed to buy a new clarinet for years now. For the last 9 years I have been playing a lovely old Boosey and Hawkes Regent clarinet.
My teacher’s son is studying clarinet in the UK, and plays a Buffet RC. So of course, my teacher believes that the only Real Clarinets (tm?) are wooden, made by buffet, and have “RC” written on them.
Seeing as how I live in Cyprus, I’m a bit wary of buying a wooden clarinet, as with the high humidity and so forth, and air-conditioning, I felt that a crack would be more likely than I feel happy with.
Anyway. So read through all the klarinet archives and decided to try out a RC Greenline, when we next visited the UK. So. We came to the UK for a month, my family and I, and I had been in contact with Howarths, in London, and they said they had no RC Greenlines, but did have wooden RC and R13 instruments which I could try out at their Worthing showroom, they also had a professional-line Howarths clarinet which I could try out, which was made from ebonite, which would also appease the humidity concerns.
The people at Howarths were extremely helpful, very patient, and had contacted every available source looking for RC Greenline in the UK, and were even willing to order one from France for me to buy. Unfortunatly, if I ordered one from France, it would arrive after we had left the UK, and also, I would have to pay a non-refundable deposit on it, which, if I didn’t like it, might be a problem. Anyway. I tried out their RC and R13 and their own clarinet.
I didn’t like the R13 much at all. The sound seemed to me a bit more shrill than I liked, and I also had trouble playing it in tune. I could probably have become used to it, but things like the 12ths seemed too stretched without lipping quite a lot.
The RC I liked more. It seemed to be more in tune (to my ears) than I could play the R13, and the sound seemed less shrill, and more solid. Nevertheless, it didn’t grab me particually, and although a good clarinet, I didn’t feel it was really special for me.
The Howarths Ebonite instrument was a bit strange. I was expecting to like it, and wanted to like it too, I quite wanted to buy a non-Buffet instrument, just to be more individual, you know. :-) But, I didn’t like it at all. The tone seemed shrill and harsh, the scales didn’t sound in tune when I played them, and I couldn’t play it consistantly well. Sometimes it played quite sweetly, but other times I felt like I was fighting it. My dad commented that it almost sounded like an oboe in timbre, which when I told him about Howarth’s being originally more oboe oriented, he thought quite interesting.
We’re off to the UK tonight. I’m still not packed yet, and am now sending the last of the emails which I need to do, with contacts in the UK, and so on.
I’ve got all my references sorted, and am finishing off the last one or two questions on the OM application form. I will hopefully be going for an interview on the 17th of October about joining Doulos. All very exciting!
Anyway, I probably won’t have much chance to update the blog for a few weeks or more. But I may, and I definately will once we get back from the UK (25th of October).
If anyone feels like praying, that’d be awfully nice.
Ciao,
Dan
This is a 3d representation of the Doulos Toaster:
Strange things happen with this machine.
I’ll explain how ought to work:
You put your bread on the metal mesh conveyor belt at the front.
The conveyor belt slowly slides the bread inside, where a double grill toasts it.
The (now) toast reaches the end of the conveyor belt, falls off it, and slides back to the metal toast-catching tray at the front (just below where you put the bread in).
You pick up your perfect slice of toast, a happy smile upon your lips, and head towards your table, while others in the dining room cast admiring glances at your beautiful slice of gastronomic delight.
There. That’s how it ought to work. This is what actually happens:
You stand in a medium sized queue waiting for your turn at the toaster, while people push past you to put their finished trays onto the rack, napkins in the bin, and so forth.
You eventually reach the toaster, and now have to wait while the bread already on the conveyor belt moves forward enough for you to fit yours on.
You put your bread on the conveyor belt, and realise someone has changed the speed that the conveyor belt moves at, so now it is too fast, and your bread wont get toasted at all!
You set the speed back down to the slowest speed again.
Someone comes along with their bread, peers at yours sitting on the conveyor belt which is just entering the toaster, and they push your bread forward so that they can fit theirs in.
This really annoys you, because it means that YOUR bread won’t get as much toasting as you want!
They then set the speed up to the fastest.
This annoys you even more.
You patiently and with loving brotherly kindness explain that the dial changes the SPEED that the bread goes through the toaster, and NOT how hot the toaster will be, and that they just made their bread get less toasted, which wasn’t what they wanted, was it?
It wasn’t, and so they set it back to slow again.
Your toast pops out of the toaster.
You pick it up and…
Wait a second, this isn’t your toast! You put in brown bread, from the middle of the loaf, and this is a white crust!
You put back the toast into the toast-catching tray, and peer inside the toaster to see where your toast is.
There is no toast in the toaster. It is now empty.
Puzzled, you pick up the white toasted crust, and wander around for a while holding it, and asking random people if it is theirs.
Eventually you give up, and confusion oozing from every pore, head back to your table.
You trip over someone who was pushing their chair out, and drop the toast on the floor.
Someone treads on it, and appologises.
You sigh, say “A little dirt never hurt anyone. Especially on Doulos!”.
Man, I really have abandoned this poor blog, have I not?
I spoke at church, last Sunday. Seemed to go OK. I was quite nervous, but managed to make people laugh a few times, and a lot of people have said how much they liked me talking at church. Thing is, I don’t actually like the whole “Sunday Morning Church” thing. Particually having a 30 to 45 minute “Sermon” or lecture shoved in the middle. I talked for 20 minutes, and feel kind of guilty for taking so long.
I’ve got the OM application form, and thus far have not yet filled it out. I really need to. We’re going back to the UK in about a week, for an entire month. I wonder if they can post the next set of forms to me there? Hm.
One of my friends from the STEP sent me some photos of my cabin! I’ll see if I can put some online over the next few days. Here is a picture of the bathroom of our cabin…
I was going to go on a 5 day woodwind repair course in Wales in about 3 weeks, but 2 days ago I phoned them because they had still not sent me the accomidation details, and they said “Ah, yes, well, you see, the tutor we have hired just told us that he cannot come until a week later. We were just going to phone you later today to tell you…” Well. A week later than the course is the week we come back to Cyprus! So not a whole lot of use! The guy says we will get a full refund, and he is trying to see if he can find a woodwind repairer friend of his to take me on as an apprentice for a week… Who knows.
This is one of those things, you know, when all your plans just jump right out of the window, and there is nothing you can do at all. I just have to trust God again in this. I know that He can change dates and things, like He did with the Doulos when I joined, with them having a place for me in June rather than later in the year. So I know He can do the same now too. Both ways. If He wants me to do this course, He can change the dates back again, and provide the accomidation. And if He does not want me to do the course, again, the same thing. So this could be His way of saying “Not this time, boyo” (He’d say “boyo” because the course is in Wales). So yeah.
On a lighter note, it looks like I will be able to buy my new clarinet in about 2 weeks! Woo! There is a shop in Worthing which is right close to where my Grandmother lives, and we will be visiting her for a while, and will try to visit then to go clarinet shopping. Yeah! I’m currently planning to get a Buffet RC Greenline. We’ll see. I think a greenline would be best for being on the Doulos, with all the crazy humidity and other conditions and all.
This is a photo from my E-day in (I think) Beira, where we spent the morning clearing up rubbish from the roads, and then from the beach area by the hospital, and then did an open-air outreach in the afternoon. We were told what to do with the rubbish by the local volenteer (who was told by the municipality rep he knew).
Dig a great big hole, and bury it.
The europeans in the group thought this was very funny. Anyway, so we did. The photo shows Yours Truely in a deckie uniform (that blue thing). I spent most of the 2 months wearing that thing.
Kind sexy, isn’t it? Well… OK, not really. The shoes are alright though. Nice solid things, with steel tips. I was quite glad of those steel tips at one point. During Sabbath Week while I was on watch, the Bosun called me over to help move a cargo converyor belt, just the two of us, and it dropped onto my foot. The deckie manual says that one should always wear deckie boots while on watch, even though I was told by other deckies “Naw, don’t. Just wear black shoes, so it looks smart. Your deckie shoes are all messy, so you’ll get shouted at if an officer comes up.”
I’m quite glad I ignored them, actually. That conveyor belt was heavy! But thanks to wonderful super-magic deckie shoes, I didn’t feel anything, and we just then lifted it up again and put it up where needed.
I went to Karate last night, at the local centre. I started attending (once a week) about 3 months before leaving to join the Doulos. I hadn’t really had a chance to keep it up while on board, although I did try to do some excersize some days. Right up on top of the ship is the “Sun-Deck”, which is for crew only, and has some excersize equipment, an excersize bike, weights, a punching bag, and so on. There are also some hammocks, which aren’t for excersize, but are nice anyway. It’s quite noisy up there, because it is right above the engine room hatch, so you can talk privately if you want, and it is out of the way of visitors. Some of the guys would go up there every night to work out, do weights, and so on. Weights have never really been my thing, but I occasionally did some stretching, juggling, push-ups, and so on. It’s amazing how much better you feel if you do some excersize each day, or every other day, or so. It’s so easy on board the Doulos to just ignore that kind of thing, as the work on board (deck, catering, etc) is quite hard, and can leave you feeling quite tired, but without actually working out your whole body. Anyway. It’s well worth it.
And this is a photo from the same day as before. You can see me in the background, watching the other two who were doing a drama, during the outreach bit. They didn’t really want to do the drama, much (Statue drama), but they had organized it without asking if I wanted to act, and so when they found out that I love acting, they were a bit annoyed afterwards… Oh well. It was OK.
I hadn’t posted much for a few days. So I thought I would just start randomly typing and see what happens.
When I was on Doulos, with working in the Deck and all, I had to learn a few knots. Just simple ones. I’d always liked knots, and all sailory (nautical is a better word, isn’t it…) things, but had never been particually good at remembering them. I’d always learned them before in situations where someone showed me the knot, and then I had a few minutes to practice with about 6 other people all wanting the same rope, and then no chance to try again for weeks and weeks. Well, on Doulos, we had to use these basic knots every day, and funnily enough, I learned them quite quickly. Like this first knot, the “Bowline” (pronounced bo-lin). It’s called this because apparently some time in the depths of time, for some reason lost in the bowels of obscurity, they used this knot to tie the bow (the front) of a boat, or ship, to whatever they needed to tie it to. The dock, presumably. And for some other weird reason, almost all ropes are called “lines” by nautical people, whenever the rope has a use.
When we loaded (or unloaded) things from the Ship using the crane, we always tied another rope from the item being loaded (or unloaded), which would then be held quite tight to make sure the item didn’t swing around in the wind, or crash into things. This rope is called a “Messenger Line”. Sometimes we used 2 messenger lines, for big things (like the Doulos mini-vans, which had to be loaded and unloaded at every port.) Funnily enough, we actually used that knot (the Bowline) to attach a messenger line to the object being loaded (or unloaded).
Here is another picture. This is a knot which is in fact, a bowline, but so modified that it has become absurd, and no one would ever use such a knot. It does look kind of pretty though, I guess…
Working on Deck, I began to really like knots a lot, and when I got back to Larnaka I went and bought a small ammount of rope, and have been practicing knots and such, and inventing crazy things with them and all. Like that monstrocity here. Terrible, isn’t it.
My father just saw a mirror dinghy advertived on a notice board in the local supermarket… not very expensive, either. Second hand. My father and I have wanted for ages to get a small boat. So. We will see what happens…
Oh, by the way. I have started contacting the Doulos people again, to begin attempting to apply to join them again. And next week I will be speaking in church about my experiences on the Doulos over the last 2 months. Should be fun. Again, we will see what happens…
I just realised that I forgot to post about my trip back to Larnaka…
I spent most of the day that I left in packing, wandering around slightly disconsolately, wondering what I had forgottern, sorting out other peoples stuff which they had left in the cabin, and finishing off packing stuff myself. I had already agreed to take presents back for 2 people on board to supporters or friends in Cyprus, and 2 other people brought stuff to me randomly during the day and said “would it be OK for you to take this back with you? I know this guy in Cyprus who I met while in port there and would love to send them this gift…” Anyway. I also had random things to clear up, like I took some old sunglasses up to the Creative Ministries Office, they always want more sunglasses as props and costumes, and all that. I had a childrens activies/crafts book which I had be loaned before Sabbath Week which I needed to take back, and so on and so forth. So many things to do.
The last of the STEPPERs ate together with our STEP mum for our final meal ( lunch ) on board. The 2 SP-STEPPERs, one Swiss girl, and myself. Our Albanian STEPPER had somehow managed to go on overnight, and had been gone the last 2 days or so, and none of us knew when she would actually arrive back to Doulos, or when her flight was!
Anyway, we were told what time the minibus would leave. At half an hour before that time, I had most of my stuff packed, but not all, and was slowly going about the cabin finding other random things to pack, sorting out clothes and things to take to Charlie, and so on.
Suddenly I realised that I was supposed to go to the quayside earlier than that, in order to say goodbye to people! And worse yet, I needed to go to the loo before leaving! So I quickly rushed to the loo, washed my hands, rushed out again, and picked up my bags, and found that I had forgotten to pack my washing bag, with toothbrush and all, so I collected that, and packed it, then saw on my bunk that I hadn’t packed some other things, so I packed them, looked at my watch, was shocked, saw loads of things in my drawer that I needed to either pack or send to Charlie, and then heard my name being paged on the info system! So I picked up all my bags, and then thought “Oh, yeah, I’d better phone them back!” So I phoned info: “Hi, this is Daniel, I’m on my way! Sorry!” they started laughing, so I hung up the phone, and struggled out and up the stairs towards the prom deck and gangway.
Thankfully, another friendly Deckie saw me, and offered to carry my bag for me, so I could just cope with my hand-luggage, and with the weighing scales that I had borrowed from info to weigh my bags. Which reminded me, I needed to take them back to info! So I changed direction, and we headed up to info. I gave them the scales, and clambered out of the door to the other gangway.
Someone else had offered to carry my handluggage too, but it was that terrible backpack which I had just fixed with the sewing kit, and I didn’t want to take it on and off my back more than I had to. I had a 30 second argument about this with him, he claiming that I would be offending his culture if I didn’t let him carry it for me, which was nonsense. Well, perhaps not nonsense. His culture might be offended, but he wouldn’t. He had been on Doulos so long that you’d have to punch him on the nose to offend him. And his culture wasn’t there to get offended anyway. So I let him carry the scales for me. That seemed to make him happy, anyway.
So I got to the gangway, and all the others were already in the minibus, which was running and the driver wandering around looking distracted “You’re late!” he shouted. “I know!” I replied.
Here is a picture of that wee whaley thing we saw from up on the bridge, way back. Cute, inni?
A few people have suggested that I start formatting my blog and filling it out a bit, and turn it into a book, and try and get it published. So I went through and copied all the text into a AbiWord document, went through it all with the spell-checker (which I had to look at sternly and tell not to use American spellings…) and then did a word-count… 26839 words! Wow… I would never have expected that! Subtract a few hundred for headers and dates and all, and well. Yeah. That’s pretty good for a start. I’ll start tinkering with it soon, and adding anecdotes and all. Just random perhaps interesting stories. Like this one:
While I was on watch, the second time, more people would come and just chat to me, which was nice. It helped the time pass faster. Anyway, one of the guys who came up and chatted was a Project Worker (short termer, not a STEPPER, just came for a specific job or time or whatever), from Finland. We were talking about this one guy some of the ship’s company had met, who said he was British, on holiday on Durban, but had had his passport stolen, and now the British Embassy would not let him get a new one, as they had no proof that he was who he said he was. Not a fun situation. Anyway. Apparently, for Finnish people it is a lot easier, you can just walk into any Finnish Embassy, and get a new one just like that! I asked how this was possible, and he told me in his deep nasal voice “You just speak to them in Finnish. Anyone who speaks well Finnish must be from Finland. Nobody else can.” Ah. That explains it. Apparently also the government has some kind of way of validating it, perhaps with fingerprints or DNA or something as well… I could probably use this as a good excuse to rant on for a few pages about the horrors of Big Brother Is Watching You And Reading Your DNA. or something like that. But I wont. I mean, most people already have pretty strong opinions about it, one way or the other, and whatever I say will have no effect on them. Or on their opinions. I used to have so many random discussions and arguments with one of my cabinmates, who left earlier than the rest. The American Seminary-student. Man, that was fun. “What is the difference between ignorance and innocence? And which is the more blissful?” “How to respond to leadership, and disagreement-with leadership?” and so on, as well as all the usual ones , Speaking in Toungues, Church leadership structure, responce to disagreement with leadership, basis of faith, various cultural things, and so on. Lovely. We disagreed on so much! And at the same time had a similar view on many things. Yeah.
Here is a picture of the crowds in Nacala (the first port I visited, properly). It’s kind of amazing still to me how many people visited, even though it was such a poor port. Mind you, a lot of stuff was stolen at that port. There are normally tables of pens, key-chains, etc, with Doulos pictures on them, and although practically none were sold, the tables were almost empty by the end of the first day. We stopped selling them there after that. That’s enough for today. I’m still kind of settling back in to Cyprus, trying to get stuff organized, and all that.
