Friday, June 24, 2005

Laid Back Cruising

My first brief visit to Malacca will be over in half an hours. I've been here to support an Organisational Level Maintenance course in the fancy subject Computer Based Maintenance (CBM). Unfortunately, the development of CBM for this project is not quite completed and I'm only familiar with parts of it. I did kind of a night flight with closed eyes. However, the customers seem to be happy with the result.

Luckily, Malaysia is far more laid back than Shanghai. Hence, I could kind of recover from my ordeal in Shanghai.

On the Chinese shipyard I had to sign a paper which confirmed that I've read the safety regulations. E.g. I agreed that I will not show up at work after heavy drinking on the night before. I soon learned that I was in peril on this yard. On the vessel, I was exposed to welding, sanding and painting on a daily basis. One day, a man’s shirt caught fire right next to me. The fire alarm was on anyway most of the time. One shirt (scratches) and a pair of trousers (paint and a strange oily substance) got destroyed during this setting-to-work.

But most important thing is, they have pools in Malaysia. Since I arrived here last Saturday, I've been swimming for 6½ hours at my average cruising speed of 1.3 knots. Do the math yourself.

However, this noon I'll travel up north to do some real cruising on a real vessel.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

It seems to me that you have to improvise a lot on your business trip. Luckily your are a versatile person, who can manage to find a solution to a given non predictable circumstance. I am proud of you. Take care. My thoughts are with you. Missing you, Gatín.

Ms Mac said...

Enjoy your trip! You are putting me quite to shame on the swimming... I may have to try a little harder today! ;-)