Life on the ship

07.01.2020
After boarding the ship on 7-th January, we were led to the ship office by one of gangway guards. The corridor is narrow corridor with several printouts, instructions, notices hanging on either side. We met the Chief Mate there. He came out with a wide grin and greets us. He welcomes us aboard. He tells us that the crew are all busy with the loading and unloading. The ship will be full. I am too curious "Will we have a view?".

"Your windows will be partially blocked".

"Are there other passengers?".

"Yes, there are three more. A gentleman from Panama and a couple from Germany – like you". For a minute, I felt disoriented until I realized that they go by passport and not by looks. It was the first time we were blatantly referred to us Germans without any reference to India. Neither during the immigration in Manila nor in Singapore had they made any reference to me being German.

The elevator takes sometime and goes up and down some of the floors.

“There might be an inspection going on” – said the Chief Mate. True to his word, I found the safety inspection certificate hanging in the elevator the next day.

The Gangway Guard who carried up the first suitcase takes our suitcases up and sends the elevator down – it is one of the doors on the narrow stairway and right opposite the Ship’s Office. Outside the office hangs a security notice about the "Rising tensions in Middle East". It gives short description, a background and recommendations.

The elevator is steel all over with the description of what’s on each of the deck specifically written. This is going to be easy, He explains which are the most important places to go to.

"You will eat in B. The rest you will see during the safety introduction. You will have one later."

He leads us to the room and opens the door us. We walk in, say Good Bye and he leaves.

We pull in the suitcase and appraise the room. It is a very functional room. It reminds me of the youth hostel rooms in Switzerland/Austria. Very clean, very functional.The furniture is of the same colour – there are white bed sheets on the bed. The only difference, it has been laundered but not ironed.

"It is not a tourist hotel" – the Chief mate had told us when we ask him how much we can tip the ones who carried the luggage. "No tips – except for the Messman if you like". We are a bit confused on how we can thank them. We need to find a way in Rio.

We look out to see the view and realize we will be able to have an ocean view only on the right. We sent some pictures to the family and they laughed in glee at our plight – we protested, we would at least be able to see the sea from the right The partial that he talked about was that they rows in front of our windows and to the right of our window would be stacked up till below. I thought at least this much of ocean view was better than nothing.

The tourist hotel aspects were true in other respects too. Unlike the Youth Hostel , we had a writing desk with a beautiful lamp. We had a sofa to sit on, a very comfortable one. The room was quite large. M opened the cupboard and there was place to hang the clothes and shelves to keep things on.

"There are no hangers" – he said. So, we strategized about how we could handle the clothes for the next days. We unpacked our suitcases.

A bit later, I decided to explore a bit and came out of the room.

My neighbors are the Germans. The young man was outside his door and we greeted each other and introduced ourselves. He is in his early twenties. We decided to meet later and talk more over dinner.

I discovered a door just outside our room door that leads outside. I go there and watch the port operations for some time. Singapore port has modernized its operations. We could see the cranes loading two containers at a time. The operations would continue all night. All the operators work around the clock work to ensure that the ship leaves the port as soon as possible.

M and I were hungry. We went back to the room. We have a lot of ready to eat MTR food which just requires hot water to make it edible. We are equipped. Yet, I am concerned that we would be depleting M’s food. If the cook is unable to make vegetarian, he is stuck for the rest of the journey. He calmed me down by saying he has enough. We shared 2 packs of MTR and took a short nap (finally, after all that wait, we are leaving – it is a relief to be onboard rather than wait further).

It was nearly dinner time by the time we wake up. At the dining room, we got chatting with the Messboy J. We realized that even the German co-passengers are vegetarians. While they do eat fish, once they hear M is pure vegetarian, they decided to forego fish. J brought the other three on the table mashed potatoes and wok fried vegetables as main course. I get an additional lamb steak with that. The soup was non vegetarian. I am going to have to watch my weight. The passengers eat in the same area as the officer’s mess – there is a partition between the two – we greet the couple of officers who came – the others are all busy. As we finish dinner, J takes about 6-7 plates of food covered in foil for the officers to eat later if they were not yet able to come.

After dinner, we went up to the bridge and above the bridge. Here we got a bird eye view of the whole port and realize how structured a port is. All the trucks ply on designated lanes. They stop exactly at the co-ordinates so the cranes can pick up the containers to the precision. The cranes are all positioned so that they can place the containers at the right places on the ship. As I talk to my father, M has an amazing experience with the crane operator. As this needs to be seen to be believed, we will bring it to you after we are off the ship and have proper connection.

Once we are back in the room, we decide to unpack, read and sleep. I keep a close watch on the container situation outside – all good. No change – the view on the side is still there and in fact some of the containers have disappeared – perhaps we will have even more of the sea than I anticipated. We realized they have not even finished offloading the containers yet – we watch the containers being taken away – there is a order to the disorder. They offload the ones away from the bridge, load new ones and then start with the ones nearer to the bridge. We will confirm in Rio whether our assumption is right. We keep our fingers crossed that they do not have any containers to block our view.
We talk to parents, bid them GoodBye and sleep. I keep alarm for 3 am – I had not been able to talk to my mother who was in school at my night. I would like to talk to her before I am out of range.

08.01.2020 early morning 3 am.

I wake up when the alarm rings, call and talk to my mother and we bid each other goodbye. I do not see any sign of movement. I look outside – there are more containers where I was expecting to see the ocean – view is still protected but reduced more than last night but still it was more open than when we boarded. I go back to sleep hoping the loading is finished.