Saturday, July 19, 2008

Playing mum......

We're still at Station F, should be headed to Station E in the early hours of the morning. I didn't get much at this station, not unexpected, it's been a busy one none-the-less. I'm sat at my computer with many mud splatters all over me, time to wash some clothes I think. 

There's always a time in the cruise when people really start to piss you off or get on your nerves, it can't be helped, your stuck on a 200ft vessel with basically no private space at all (though I have to say the Palmer is nice and large and has lots of hidy holes). I'm used to it and just brush it off, go to bed early, watch a movie and start the day again. We have a few new people on here and two of them came to a head today on my watch, which was a bummer. They're both interesting people. The guy is a teacher here to stand watch, do science, write a website and converse with kids while out here. He's also go a rather blunt and often brutal sense of humour and has been getting on most peoples tits by now, but it's just him and how he is, so you brush it off. The girl is an undergrad from Hawaii, who to be honest is just very young and not very outgoing. She's also been driving me a little crazy as she's not much of a doer. She'll stand doing nothing in front of a bunch of muddy buckets and tools that need cleaning and not move to clean them until asked. She also needs to be shown stuff many times before getting it, and is a big questioner rather than a 'figure it out' person, basically just very young and not confident. 

So it's all very junior school. The guy has been too brutal in humour with the girl, the girl takes it to heart and now doesn't want to work with the guy, and ended up in tears when I asked the guy to show her how to do something today. Well that just doesn't cut it out here, we're all out here together for quite a while yet, so wee things like this have to be buried, but they seem incapable of doing it by themselves. So guess who had to step in today. Yup, playing mum to the three year olds.....or at least that's what it felt like. Makes the day more interesting I suppose. If they don't get over it and work together it will become a problem, so we might have to talk changing the shifts around, which is a real pain in the butt, so i'm hoping they got the message. It's amazing what being at sea will bring out in people, how you think you can hold a grudge on a ship is beyond me, there are always people you don't like, but you find a way to deal with it. It's a great teller of personality when stuck on a boat with total strangers for a month. Some come out good, some come out bad. 

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