Friday, 29th June 2012, 8:40 AM

Yeah, Yeah, Yeah!

After my blues day yesterday, today’s going just great 🙂

In my opinion, which contradicts Barbara Sher’s view on this point, if it seems as though everything is going wrong, you have to take responsibility and change something, otherwise it won’t work. At least that’s how it is for me.
Barbara believes that you have good days and bad days and that you should just carry on regardless.
But that doesn’t work for me. I feel like it would be like building a house on a sandyfoundation or just leave a crooked wall standing: either way it’s not going to lead to a solid result.
The more you stress yourself out, the worse it gets.
For me, I always have to change something first so that things can improve and I can move on successfully.

For me that was yesterday:

• I wasn’t at the pre-lunch drinks
• I took my pictures while they were making crepes in the evening and then left again (without helping),
• at dinner I asked Alex and his colleague (Claude?) if I could join them at their table, not only because the cadets always talk among themselves (which is completely understandable) and I sit there like an outsider and can’t contribute anything. But also because Alex and Claude always eat at about the same time as me and then leave pretty quickly. Just like me. And I had a really nice chat with Alex.
• After dinner, I retired to my cabin (totally anti-social, but just the right thing to do yesterday)
• and was already in my bunk at 9:30 p.m. because a day like that in the sun really tires you out.

I know that, in general, I often (too often) base my actions on other people, on what is expected of me or on what I think is expected of me. Most of the time, the reason things aren’t working out for me is that I’m no longer doing what I want to do, but am only following rules set by other people (or what I perceive to be rules set by others).
That’s why the solution for me is usually to do something that puts me back into control again. Even if it means breaking apparent rules (or maybe not).
And strangely enough, after that, things always seem to go well again, as if the world has been put back in order – really crazy 😉

10:59 a.m.

Once again, it turns out that as soon as I’m back on track, everything runs more smoothly: for two days, I’ve been
racking my brains trying to figure out how to talk to Gaél, the chief mechanic, again about a tour around the ship, and then I go down to the Sale de sports and he arrives. First, he and a colleague walked past into the antechamber of the engine room, but then he came back and asked his usual „Wie geht’s?“(=“How are you?”) and shook my hand.

The handshake is a topic in itself. My impression is that there’s a secret competition to see who can shake the most hands per day.
In any case, it seems to be the case that when you see someone,
you have to shake their hand the first time you see them that day. But whether there are any special conditions as to who has to shake hands with whom first (for example, everyone has to shake hands with the captain and the officers, but what about the other way around? And where do the passengers fit in?)

No one has explained that to me yet… maybe I can ask Gaél about it sometime. In any case, I finally had the opportunity to ask about the tour (in English, because after “Wie geht’s” his German skills are already exhausted 😉 ) and he said he could do it, no problem. Would 6 p.m. tonight be okay? Sure, I’ll check if I can find some free time in my schedule *lol*
So we agreed to meet in front of the engine room at 6 p.m.

Then I pedaled for 45 minutes on the bike, covering about 15 kilometers and working up a serious sweat 🙂
In the meantime, lots of people walked past outside, including the chief engineer, who said that the tour of the engine room could only take place tomorrow.
Well, fine, one more day doesn’t make a huge difference now, does it? 😉

Then I had to make the difficult decision: shower or go to the pool and then shower. Since the steward was already at the door of my cabin, it was quite easy:
Off to the pool and then, when the room is ready, use the shower again right away. Besides, otherwise I would have had to shower three times today, which would have been a bit excessive.
The water in the pool was still soooooooooooooooooooooooooo fresh and cool and extremely salty. So salty that you can lie on your back and float on the surface of the water without any effort. Pretty cool 🙂

Shortly after, the captain’s family arrived and I left them the pool and let myself dry in the sun — but with a towel around me, because yesterday I got quite red, especially on my shoulders.

1:37 p.m.
L’Allemagne a perdu

Great, I was having such a wonderful day and then this happens… How could Germany just lose to Italy and be knocked out in the semifinals? Great, just great!!
But that’s it already for my soccer-related depression 😉

Luckily, there’s still the famous BBQ tomorrow, but I’ll try to let go of all my expectations and just wait and see…ha, ha, as if that were so easy ;-).
Otherwise, there was trouble at dinner again and the person sitting opposite me (hint: one of the cadets) almost didn’t get any dessert because (if I translated it correctly) he first gave Jean a piece of his mind
for not automatically putting a new bottle of water on the table, and when Jean brought the bottle, he allowed him to excuse himself. (Imagine a twenty year old spoiled millionaire brat excusing their personnel)
Maybe he said something even worse, but then I’d rather not know.
And of course nothing is meant seriously!

As you can see, it’s always a lot of fun here. Jean reminds me
a little of the butler from “Dinner for One” – he even tilts his head a little (but maybe he does that on purpose).

Speaking of tilting: for the last 2-3 days, the ship has been rolling quite a bit. At first, I found it a little unsettling that sometimes when you’re eating, you see only water for 10-20 seconds and
then only sky for 10-20 seconds, but since I seem to be the only one who finds this unsettling, I’m not going to worry about it either.

When I go to sleep, I actually find it quite wonderful: it’s a bit like lying in a giant cradle that slowly rocks from left to right and right to left. Very soothing 🙂

Other than that, there are only two pieces of news at the moment:

1. One of our waste water pumps has obviously broken down – let’s see if they can repair it today
2. You can surf in Guadeloupe – yay

Now I just need to find someone to come with me (as a beginner on my own… no way), then we could share a car and surfboard – that would be good. But in my opinion, it’s going to be difficult: most people have to work (and don’t look that enthusiastic about surfing) and the cadets want to go to the other end of the island, but miracles do happen – so let’s wait and see. And for now I’m going to the pool to read for a bit.