Tuesday, 26th June 2012, 09:05 AM
Cabin fever
Today I already woke up in a bad mood, but that’s the first time since I’ve been on the ship.
At least I have good reasons for being in a bad mood: a week of
fatty, sweet food, no exercise, no tasks, and no one to talk to beyond small talk.
Besides that: hardly any fresh air (because the weather wasn’t so great), always the same surroundings, and no (mental) input.
Yesterday, I discovered the dartboard and tried it out right away. However, my aim has obviously deteriorated significantly in recent years. I haven’t played for at least 2-3 years – or even longer?
But at least darts is something I can do here.
Then yesterday evening I went to the gym, where Alex and
Thomas were playing a table tennis match. Next to the
table tennis table, there is space in the mini room for two
stationary bikes (aka exercise bikes) and two rowing machines, if I
saw correctly. And also the library located there.
All in all, it’s a pretty uninviting room.
But I’ll probably go downstairs later and try out the bike anyway. Otherwise, I might go crazy.
Later yesterday evening, there was – as announced – the next birthday party. At first I was happy because it was a welcome change, but then I mostly just sat there feeling stupid and somehow out of place.
After dinner, I went up to the bridge for a bit because I desperately needed some fresh air. There were only Romanians there, most of whom speak better English than the French! We also saw a sailboat (the first ship of the day!!) and a whale (well, just the blowhole, but still)!
After that, I went down to the officers’ smoking room because there was supposed to be a darts competition.
But the officers were playing cards, so not darts because the dartboard hangs directly above the card table.
And no one was interested in my whale sighting 🙁
So I then went to the crew smoking room (it was still before 9 p.m. and I just wanted to be around people), where “Immortal” was playing on TV. It was all in French, but I think I understood roughly
what it was about.
Tonight I woke up around 4 a.m., completely sweaty, and besides, the dry air from the air conditioning makes you cough constantly (at least it does me). So I opened the hatch a little bit again – and then I felt better.
But when I woke up again around 7:15 a.m. (9:15 a.m. in
Germany), I just didn’t feel like getting up at all.
Of course, I did anyway. Otherwise I run the risk of missing breakfast.
The shower was “naturally” another contrast shower. It’s obviously only really warm if you take a shower at the time when no one else is showering (e.g., around 3 p.m.).
At breakfast, everyone was super nice to me (did it say “I’m in a bad mood” on my forehead?).
The guy sitting across from me at the table, whose name I still don’t know, said that two weeks ago there was a leak in the gas tank or the pipe and there are a few centimeters of gas at the very bottom of the ship from back to front, and the cadets have the honorable task today of cleaning everything up. They are really looking forward to it (NOT!).
Jean also asked me how I was doing, and I said that I needed fresh air or I would become aggressive.
He replied that he had a beach chair that he would put by the pool for me – super nice!
However, the weather today is such that it’s not really much fun.
I was outside for a moment earlier:
windy, windy, windy, that’s all I can say. Besides, it’s now overcast again and dark and unfriendly :-((
Tonight we’ll pass the Azores – supposedly things will get better after that: warm water, blue skies and so on – I hope that’s true – otherwise next week will be a long one.
By the way, Jean was just here and told me that he’s put the chair outside now, but I really don’t want to go there right now…
Oh well… * sigh *
5:36 PM: outside at the pool
Ha, that sounds great, but unfortunately the sun has already disappeared and on my favorite bench, where I sat at first, the wind almost blew my laptop away.
So now I’m sitting at a table sheltered from the wind, where it’s surprisingly warm, but otherwise not particularly pretty. It would be nice to have a few palm trees, some sand, and cold drinks, but we won’t have that until next week 🙂
Otherwise, the day has turned out quite okay:
At lunch, the guys reported on their cleaning operation: there are seven of them working down there and they only managed a quarter of it this morning (this part was addressed to the captain in French and I understood it!! YEAH!! – well, at least the part about the quarter, but still!!).
Apart from that, I went to the officers’ smoking room twice to play darts and was frustrated to discover that I play better with my left hand than my right. Although my accuracy with my left hand is mediocre but I still seem to always hit the high scores with my left hand, while my throws with my right hand are concentrated on all numbers below 10. Really strange. Maybe it’s something like fear of success????
Then I finally got some new water for my room. I would have assumed that this was part of the steward’s job, but obviously I was wrong. And it’s not as if I don’t have enough time to get my own water.
Now I have six new bottles and know where to get more 🙂
I also just spent half an hour on the stationary bike, and it feels so good to do something and work up a “real” sweat. My goodness, I’ve missed that – I think I’ll develop something like a routine (cycling once in the morning, once in the afternoon, then shower and play a bit of darts…). Since the “Sale de sports” also houses the library, I took a quick look around and found a John Grisham novel in German.
It’s a great distraction from cycling, which in this inspiring room doesn’t have quite the same effect as when you jog along the Aare for an hour.
To be honest, when I think about it, that’s the only place or activity that I feel kind of homesick for. Apart from that, I could
stay here on the ship forever if I had a job and at least one or two people to talk to.
But so, I read a book completely through today (a romantic novel called “Wirst Du da sein?” (= Will you be there?)) that I also found in the passenger lounge, and I’m almost finished with the “Savants,” but luckily there are still some new additions in the library—I just have to see how many of the books are in German or English.
But I mustn’t forget today’s biggest “success”:
after a week, today is the first day I would describe as “completely pain-free.”
How can you be incapacitated for so long after dislocating a vertebra?
In fact, until today, I still had excruciating pain when turning over
in bed or getting up, whenever I made a certain turning movement.
Since the day before yesterday, I have been carefully doing a little back exercises, in which I repeated this very movement over and over again while standing, very gently and easily, and it obviously worked.
But I would really like to know why the pain lasted so long. I am a little concerned about this whole story….
What else really worries me is that my private cookie supply is slowly running out (I have only one left!!!) and I still have no idea how I’m going to bridge the time between lunch (around 1 p.m.) and dinner (7 p.m.) in the future, since I’m already ravenously hungry every day at 4 p.m.
I’ll probably end up standing in Jean’s kitchen every day
begging for bread (=baguette).
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