Unfinished pages | beyond the mirror

The first month is mostly traumatizing a bit for everyone. Beside a huge load of new information, which you need to know and somehow learn, you also must fight fatigue which is not made easy by the way how the ship moves, which can give you anything from headaches to need to throw up and lack of energy. Or turning green 🤢😊 As I was first placed in a guest cabin on deck 12 , without a window, I was just feeling strong waves throwing the ship around even more intensely. For 2 weeks I was learning to trust my phone and alarm to distinguish day and night. As my office was the same as cabin just on deck 1 , I did not have a window there neither. Life without sunlight, so much for the tan . 😊 :D After 2 weeks they switched my cabin for crew cabin with porthole. At least now I can look under water :D :D I was hoping to see Nemo any second. Sea was very rough, and I discovered that I sleep better with curtains on.  🐟👀😁😁🐟 Guest cabin, deck 12 Office, deck 1 New cabin, deck 4 As I a...

Official language on the ship is English, but the crew, in reality uses its own version talking to each other. 😊 it is a mixture of broken English, ship slang, expressions from other different countries and body language. It is also a tool to let some steam off . It will take you a couple of contracts to catch the meaning of most of it. We had around 70 nationalities, 80% of crew h ave broken English, but all of them understand each other really well. Just before the continuation of trainings, I stopped in crew mess for a quick bite and coffee. There I saw the G eneral M anager. His appearance and demeanour was like Pablo Escobar (only bold and no moustache, short, with big belly and very strange smell), he approached me and saw my name tag which contains name and country where I am from, Serbia and said “ you must be sexy and aggressive” … I really did want to answer him aggressively ( maybe he had a point 😊 ) but before I had a chance, he said “look at this Babalues, I will ...

Your first day of training starts at 7 am sharp . You hardly had any sleep, even though you are dead tired from the trip and finding your way around in the totally new environment. You barely had any food or coffee, and you are running to find the Training Room. The first training is Safety , which is basically the first time you start learning how to be a Seaman . It is a sort of military style lecture and communication.   But you feel like you are back in high school. Suddenly, at this age and with this experience you start from beginning and you have exams… again you do not know the subjects. Of course, there is always a few people in the room with maritime school and you would love to have them as a mates. 👀😂 Eyes and ears wide open as I listen to the Safety Officer explaining to us how to shoot a rocket in case we end up in rubber dinghy in the middle of the fucking ocean. My honest thought is that I need a bible more in that situation . Also pondering if we all have ...