Preparations

Yet another year has gone by. 2020 will be a very different year.

When one embarks on a journey unknown, the year starts with insecurities that percolate into different aspects of our life. So it was in this case too… and not just into the life of the two passengers but also into the lives of the loved ones. So, this post is going to be about hopes and the insecurities…

So how can we break this up into different parts? Let’s start off on a few topics.

We expect to see a lot of blue and plenty of blue and blue and blue. Again, someone mentioned, when you look forward, you will see the sea, when you look left, you will see the sea, when you look right, it will be the sea and it will still be the sea when you look behind. We hope to see beautiful sunsets, dolphins and other sea creatures, look at the same scenery with different eyes, see how a freighter ship operates at close quarters and look at containers with a different perspective. Both M and I have always loved looking at the barges flowing by in the Neckar at Heidelberg. Now we will be on a huge barge. I have my iPhone, I have my camera, I have my batter”y”. Just a day before M left India for Singapore, I ordered myself a hard disk. What if I run out of space in the middle of the ocean?

There will be no internet on board. For someone who listens a lot to streaming music on Saavn, Spotify, Youtube etc, this is going to be a killer (I am even ignoring the social media here…). The last few weeks saw me taking subscriptions and subscriptions for offline access. So, now I am prepared with music of all types to listen to. Some books mentioned that you can bring aboard CDs and DVDs. I have not gone that far yet.

I am still trying to get Harvard Business Review offline version work on my iPad and iPhone. The offline version disappears as soon as my devices are not connected for a day. I keep my fingers crossed. I have downloaded several types of books on my Kindle. They stay. Yet, what I look forward to, are the stories – stories of the crew – where are they from, what do they do when they are on the ship, what do they do when they are off the ship? I saw some you tube videos of the marine engineers. One of them said, in the evening he does WhatsApp with this family. My family will be thrilled with that. They, and I, are nervous – we are used to talking to each other daily – sometimes more than once. Wait a minute – what happened to my internet detoxification? I hope there is no internet on board but the need to hear my parents’ voice and my sister’s voice makes me nervous about not being able to communicate. I pray for their good health and that we really get to send emails daily.

M is vegetarian. As always, we sent the request for special meal for vegetarian – typical when we travel. Then came the reply, we cannot guarantee any special meal requests on board. There is one cook and whatever he cooks, everyone eats. We devour books written by other people on ship. “Befriend the cook” – they said, “Perhaps he will make something for you”. Typically, ships have Filipino chefs, we are told. I made a trip to Philippines just before coming to Singapore. I met a friend of a friend there. She told me that Filipinos have no concept of vegetables, “It is so bad that it is even difficult to find vegetables here”. True to that statement, M’s sister, another M, survived on pasta and Pizza the 6 days we were there.

M prepares by taking several ready made food items that get magically cooked when hot water it poured into it. We brought some from India and the other day were at the famous Mustafa (my torture session for M – even though I hate going there, I was happy to go there just to let him experience it…), he noted some additional ones he can pick up. As we passed through aisles and aisles of snacks, M’s mom pointed them all out to me – buy them for the ship. She continues this until I remind her that M and I will have to carry up our suitcases to the ship ourselves – we even needed special medical certificate from the doctor that we are healthy enough to climb those stairs without help. I think she has decided to just visualize her son becoming even more thin than he is now. What she does not realize is that post ship we are going to Argentina – the land of beef steaks. All in all, it looks like we will be well distributed in weight gain – he will lose and I will gain.

Talking about insecurity – I am testing one of my main insecurities – can I really post to this blog through email? So, here you are – a trial.

Even as I write this, the ship has sailed from Yantian to Hongkong (the last port before it comes to Singapore).