Check it out!
Seconds from Death
Though time is fleeting,
While your little heart is beating:
Stop.
Relax awhile.
For as the hands of time churn,
Forsaken unintended fires burn,
Because man’s patience was riled.
Poor little Billy Bob was late,
He dropped his pen and awoke his old grandmother,
Who still lie in bed like a slate.
She asked for some small crackers and a towering glass of milk.
Little Billy Bob raced to the kitchen,
Sliding to her room and the milk he spilt.
On his way,
After cleaning the mess.
He ran fast and hard,
Towards the school with his heart beating strongly in his chest.
As he rounded circle street,
An unconcerned cabbies car, barely missed his nose.
The saying goes,
Haste makes waste,
Especially when you often end up on your face.
Isn’t it strange,
How everything accident or planned,
Seems to fit perfectly in place?
Every failure ends in glory,
At some point.
Every tragedy brings a blessing,
One man’s heartbreak,
Can quickly follow another’s fortune,
Seconds later.
If you ever wonder,
Why the earth is rotating.
Why you are sunken in doom,
Only wanting to sleep in your tomb.
Stop,
Relax awhile.
Your life, may be at stake.
Earn Travel rewards: CapitalOne Venture card!
The Onion
The world is an onion,
With different layers,
Different levels.
There are those who live like kings,
Decorated like queens,
On their level.
Those eyes stare from level to level,
Dreaming, worshipping, idolizing.
There are those who do not worship,
They are the top of their level.
They don’t have desire to worship,
Knowing their level,
Loving their level.
Each level has pros and cons,
With different demeanors and lifestyles,
That individuals have to don.
The pressure and stress of a level,
Can vary from how to act,
How to live,
How to attract.
The pressure is impossible to see,
As you stare at the clothes,
The body parts,
The eyes and noses pulsating.
Deep inside is where the stress wreaks havoc,
Manipulating choices and movements,
Causing chaos and panic.
Moving from a level to a new level,
Can be a dream come true,
Or it can be a disaster,
For me and you.
The American Highway
Newest Poetry video! Uploaded October 31st! Watch below:
The rolling highway,
Endless asphalt,
With racing cars,
Plodding along.
As they barely move,
When compared to the space,
That exists in the universe.
They have such speed,
For their time,
For their space,
That is the most important,
In the universe.
And what lies on either side,
What lies on and alongside them,
What lies on the asphalt,
As their tires roll and slide,
As they fly by.
Restaurant and business,
Both lie in decay.
With the ever-telling sign,
Of boards and broken windows,
Empty parking lots,
Overgrowth of grass.
It is another sight,
We often pass.
What lies in abundance?
Carcasses and corpses.
Of domesticated animals,
Both owned and stray.
Of wild animals,
Who whether or not recognizable,
Will be on the vulture’s buffet.
The vultures tower,
High in the sky.
They look tiny from below,
We look tiny from above.
As we crawl along,
At a sluggish pace.
They scour what remains of the highway,
But not much remains in place.
The auto parts stores,
They are endless.
Outnumbering even the roadkill,
As they lie on display,
For the vulture’s buffet.
The auto parts stores give us hope,
That not all will lie in ruin.
As we roll by.
That there will be more to this highway,
Than the racing cars,
And the vulture’s buffet.
Listen
The most recent poetry video, check it out below:
Listen to a person who gives a lecture,
They have been born with their opinions,
But somehow follow scientific principles.
Listen to a politician who gives a speech,
They recite the same slogans as anyone in their party,
But claim they are free.
Listen to a character in a movie or series,
They are full of wisdom and emotion,
But are reading from a script.
Listen to your parents as they explain a life lesson,
They are older than you,
But does that mean,
They know what to do?
1000th poem
I recently wrote my 1000th poem, so I did presentation about it on Tik Tok. Check out the reposted video of the live performance below:
I am an APPLE
I am an apple. What are you?
Lyrics for the poem:
Stoicism,
I am an apple,
I am an apple with a stem,
A crease,
All apples are the same,
We are the same apple,
Like cloned apples,
In a world of mirrors.
Transcendentalism,
I am an apple,
I am an apple with a stem,
A crease,
My apple floats,
Slightly above the ground,
I feel high,
Everything I feel, think and hear,
Will lift me higher,
Until God,
I am near.
Dualism,
I am two apples,
My apples both have a stem,
A crease,
My apples look the same,
But they are not on an equal plane,
With competing realities,
They will remain philosophical,
Within my deepest fantasies.
Humanism,
I am an apple,
I am an apple with a stem,
With a crease,
With eyes, heart,
And many organs,
I am alive!
Reductionism,
I am an apple,
I have no stem,
I have no crease,
I am a round red ball,
Am I an apple?
Am I a jawbreaker?
Am I a bouncy ball?
Am I a human?
Relativism,
We are all apples,
We have stems,
We have creases,
Our stems and creases and shapes,
Are shaped by our experiences,
With the world,
With knowledge.
Absurdism,
I am a banana.
Theism,
I am an apple,
I have a stem,
A crease,
And a halo.
I am holy,
Guided by God,
My life will never cease.
Empiricism,
I am an apple,
I have a stem,
A crease,
A shape,
But I have no color.
All the curves of my shape,
Are mathematically made,
There is an event,
An experience,
Attached,
To each shape of the curve,
To each length,
Of my height,
Of my body,
Of my stem,
What I smell,
Touch,
Taste,
Feel,
And see,
Is the formula,
For you and me.
Hedonism,
I am an apple,
I have a stem,
A crease,
And someone has eaten me,
They took deep gluttonous bites,
From around all sides,
I hope all those bites were pleasurable,
I gained great fancy,
From the feel of the teeth,
The lips,
It was like a hungry kiss,
Now I miss your lips,
But there is not much left to offer,
Your never ending hunger.
Constructivism,
I am an apple,
I have a stem,
I have no crease,
I have been sliced apart,
But wasn’t it nice,
To still be placed carefully,
To still almost look like an apple,
But I enjoyed being created,
I was an active part of my creation,
Not just some kind of passive,
Machination,
Some apathetic factory production,
I am a unique apple.
Holism,
We are 3 apples,
We have stems,
We have creases,
Our stems are still attached,
To our twigs,
To our branches,
To our tree,
We still love our daily radiation,
Our photosynthetic nutrition,
Brings about much satisfaction,
For our growth,
And daily interaction.
Modernism,
I am an apple,
I have an artificial stem,
Someone has taken a bite,
Perfectly placed,
For the highest chance for sales,
For the perfect advertisement,
To avoid societies,
Rebuke or perhaps chastisement,
I am worried more about money,
Than I value my own life,
Give me some coins,
Dollar bills,
My appetite,
Will never be filled.
Existentialism,
I am an apple,
I have a stem,
A crease,
My freedom,
Will always be,
The most unique thing in this world,
I am surrounded by nothing important,
Just a gray cloud,
Of perhaps apples,
Perhaps nothing,
They do not affect my will,
My life,
Because I am an authentic apple,
I am free,
I am unique,
And I am true,
To my true self.
Utilitarianism,
I am an apple pie,
In fact,
Am I an apple pie?
I could be any pie,
But I have no stem,
No crease,
I have a hot streak of smoke,
Dwindling in the air,
My past of being an apple,
Is not even a care,
I am an apple pie,
Would you like to have a bite,
Would you like to have a try?
Nihilism,
Cake
Do you love ‘cake’? Then watch this video:
Here are the lyrics to the poem:
“Let them eat cake”
‘They’ve got the distance,
They’ve got the speed,
They’re all alone,’
“Let them eat cake.”
Cake is everywhere,
In quotes, songs, song titles,
From books, magazines, on TV,
Even in the bible.
Cake is everywhere.
But what is cake?
A bready, sugary, short, fat, cylinder,
Held together by eggs.
Tastes good.
Used for celebrations, birthdays, accomplishments,
Even death.
You cannot escape cake,
No matter how hard you try.
Someone will peddle you,
You will never have an alibi.
Chocolate, vanilla, strawberry, or carrot cake,
Show your true personality,
With the decorations.
Then dive in, indulge,
Until you achieve full satisfaction.
Calories will come, bloatation will come,
Perhaps diabetes will come too.
But will you let that stop you?
What will you do?
Nightmare's, Dreams, and Hallucinations
New poetry collection released as a poetry book. Check out the book trailer below!
Download the book e-book for free: click here.
Love's Arrow
Love’s Arrow
As the arrow pierces your heart, fear not,
The end is not near,
New life has just begun.
Naturally, nervous hands grip the rough shaft,
With each turbulent tug more blood drips.
The blood spits,
it spews,
it spouts, like a never-ending fountain.
The mistake is never forgotten, as you breathe your last breath,
Each breath, pulls you closer, to your timely death.
A Frantic mind wanders,
then it wonders:
What if you had not felt the fatal pull,
remained together with your fateful dart?
With your drastic instinct, you made yourself extinct,
As you would rather die, than to have an arrow pierce your heart.
A Star in the Sky
A Star in the Sky
Close your eyes and what do you see?
The darkness without the light.
Lost,
Blackened,
With not a single light in sight.
Light sprays out from stars,
Lying all throughout the universe,
They are speaking and sparking,
Hoping to illuminate life,
And converse.
A billion years ago,
A light shone towards this place,
Today as you walk out the door,
It calmly lands on your face.
Look at all the millions,
Stare up at all of the billions,
Of stars in the sky.
Look up and ask yourself why,
Why you can’t join them,
To sparkle and shine.
Become a star sparkling in the sky,
Make sure to shine bright,
You never know,
Who may need your light.
Sweet Death
Sweet Death
I am the darkness that seeps into your light,
I am the torment that twirls, whirls and chokes,
Anything in its sight.
The sun scowls down at me,
The sky trembles,
The sky hides,
Behind its clouds of fear.
I stop,
Stand,
Stare.
I take a good look,
At this pathetic world.
Dopey peasants pattering around,
Peddling insignificance,
Exchanging naught and zilch.
They will gasp soon,
They will promise anything,
They will grasp at what lies around them.
What is radiating in their emptiosphere?
Upstairs?
In their bottomless pits of wonder?
Don’t they see?
What great feelings I bring?
The sweet feeling,
Of no feeling.
Warmth comes,
The greatest warmth they have ever felt,
The longest sleep they will ever get,
The blackest dreams they have ever sought.
Ahhhh,
They cannot forsake,
This pathetic world.
Ahhhh,
If they only knew death,
They would embrace it.
Ahhhh,
Sweet warmth,
Sweet zilch,
Sweet calm,
Sweet death.
There is no phone ringing,
There is no adolescent singing,
There are no appointments,
There are no more disappointments.
They don’t exist,
You don’t exist,
You will feel,
As if,
you never existed,
At all.
A starving sea gull
Poem text:
Do you ever sit and think,
about a seagull circling an oilrig?
The seafaring bird flies closely to the tip top of the waves,
its small black eyes scouring and scanning,
for any sign of movement,
for any sign of life,
for a single piece of floating and edible trash.
The Gull’s giant white and grey wings flap,
they slap and slide through the wind,
the gull’s starving stomach growls and calls out to it,
as piercing as its beak’s call might be to a human.
The seagull’s heart skips a beat
its stomach starts to warm,
as a familiar figure walks and skips up and down a beach.
The other day the same figure cast a fishing line from a boat,
several days former a chorus of noises and movements
had caused a similar emotion from a ship.
The sea bird hovers ever closer now,
for nature’s lesson,
has never been taught this easily before.
The sea bird’s piercing call comes,
it is met by a stray fry,
a chunk of an unfinished cheese burger,
half a slice of an onion,
slightly gnawed on,
many more delicacies on their way to quiet its stomach.
The seagull knows not what it does,
the humans know not what they do,
the seagull’s stomach is quieted,
the human’s spirits are uplifted,
both of their hearts are warmed.
The seagull cannot find any fish,
the humans have caught most of the fish,
the seagull has found a human,
and humans never seem to run out of French fries.
This world is a prison
Welcome back everyone!
I haven’t posted a blog in a while and that is because I will no longer be doing blog posts. Instead, I will be doing monthly giveaways and monthly poetry videos. This month’s new video is called “This world is a prison”. Check it out and let me know what you think!
English Teaching Story 3
This week I have created the blog, using a new video format! Let me know if you like it.
English Teaching Story 2
Welcome to story 2 of the series where I tell about my English teaching experiences. Click the links below to check out my social media pages or to go to the first story in the blog series.
FB page: https://www.facebook.com/Sam-German-poetry-142944589638891
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/skgbooks/
First blog post: www.skgediting.net/seasidesammy/2020/9/28/english-teaching-story-1
Snowy winter grounds and no campers.
It was early 2014 and I was working at a summer camp as a groundskeeper. I found a TEFL course at a local university called “Richmond University”. It was an in person 100-hour TEFL course. It was to be over the course of 3 weekends and each weekend it was both Saturday and Sunday for 9 hours each day. Four hours straight, an hour lunch and then another four hours. It also included an online grammar exam that was worth 40 hours.
Both kids and adults love games.
The course included a lot of games and interactive activities the first day but then over the next few classes the course delved into lectures and PowerPoints. These ranged from teaching approaches to general English grammar topics and other ESL topics.
Lunch is a great way to get to know colleagues or fellow students.
I met another attendee who I met with for lunch one day at the Richmond cafeteria. He found out that I was going to book a hotel for the next weekend, but he said he lived in the area and I could stay with him and his wife, who was also in the course.
I was a little shocked as I had only known them for a week. When I showed up, the man was no where to be found and the woman was hungry. We decided to go out to Chilis for dinner, but once there we realized that I was valentine’s day. When we got separate checks, the waiter looked at me like I had punch 25 babies. The three of us laughed about it all night and still joke about it from time to time today.
The final weekend all the attendees had to perform a 30-minute demo lesson. I volunteered to go first, as I figured that I would be teaching first every day as a teacher, so I might as well get used to it. I was very worried and practiced my lesson many times alone. Sometimes on the couch and other times in front of a mirror. When I ran the lesson in the class, it went smoothly. Later in the summer, I passed the grammar test and had the 100-hour TEFL in my hands, ready to head abroad.
I saw many different people in the course, some young, some old. Some were going to the University of Richmond and others were local high school teachers looking to get another certificate. No matter who they were, the ones who had taught the most previously, performed the best when asked teaching questions or grammar questions. It would continue to be a trend as I went about my English teaching career. No matter their age, if they were a non-native speaker or 73 years old. The teacher with the most experience, always outshone the others.
English Teaching story 1
Somewhere in Norway.
It was the end of my last trip in Norway, and I was considering a new career that could lead me back there. I had just spent seven years studying Wildlife Biology, Psychology, Archaeology, Theatre, and Film. I was feeling like it was a waste as it seemed like I couldn’t get a job anywhere. In Norway I had applied for 84 jobs and only gotten one email back. In future months I would apply for 140 jobs in Virginia, get 8 interviews and zero job offers. A few days before leaving Norway, a Norwegian friend recommended that I consider teaching English. She reasoned that the in ten years that most of the English teachers were going to retire and Norway would need new teachers.
Picture of Concordia
When I returned to the USA, I set off looking for master’s programs related to teaching: English programs and Education programs. I found a program in Minnesota I liked called “Concordia College” and I applied for it. I went through the process, submitting documents and fees but at the last moment I was rejected. I was now left to search for more programs, but the more I looked the more I found nothing that worked out either.
I turned to online programs. They also looked great, but when I looked at the money I was making, I estimated that it would take 4-5 years to get the master’s degree in education that I needed. That is when I found out about TESOL and TEFL certificate programs. (TEFL stands for “Teaching English as a Foreign Language”) I had two options, take 4 to 5 years working on a masters and then start teaching, or get a certificate and start teaching immediately. With the second option I would be able to gain experience and travel right away, whereas with the first option I would be stuck in America for half a decade. In five years, I would have four or five years of experience. I chose to go with experience and the certificate.
Lesson 1: How to deal with failure
When I was rejected by Concordia College I was crushed and sad. Like many other failed plans, yet you can only stay in doom and gloom for so long. I have learned over the years, that the best way to deal with failure is to create a new plan and goal and start working towards it. To replace failure with thoughts of success and to replace bad experiences with past or future amazing experiences.
Osman chapter 12: Leaving the Ship
We arrive at the final chapter of the story of how I taught English on an oil ship. If you want to start at the beginning then click here.
Time is not on our side.
The weeks were now flying by. I printed in the radio room, saw Uzgur leave and another radio man come. Lots of new Scottish guys arrived as well, they were just as interesting as the others.
I continued to put up ads, about five to six every week but I saw some of them disappearing. I could feel a negative vibe from the crew related to the ads, but I had to put them up. One day the head of security came to me and formally asked me not to put them on the glass part of the door. The complaint was that they couldn’t see a person on the other side of the door. It was a legitimate complaint, so I moved them farther down on the door away from the glass.
They looked like this except more blood involved.
The next event close to leaving was that there was a fight. It was between two students, the only two students in one of the afternoon classes. Apparently one of them had told the other what to do and the one being told what to do took exception to being told what to do and a fight had broken out. The man who told the other man what to do bit him on the head and apparently ripped and twisted his flesh like a crazed animal until he bled. The two were separated, fired and kicked off the ship. I was later told that in the Ottoman Empire whether you start the fight, defend yourself or let the person punch you, that you would still be fired. Thus, if someone attacks you, you should beat their ass.
When the roads cross, which way do you go?
The time was coming for my departure and I was certain that I would be leaving on the PSV again. Then one afternoon I was called up to the radio room where I met the logistics coordinator. He told me the PSV I would be traveling on was actually going to be the helicopter and not to tell anyone, not even my company. It was quite the dilemma because my company would be arranging my flight. They needed to know the time I would arrive, and they needed to arrange a taxi to the airport. If I arrived at the airport and they didn’t know, they would wonder how I got there and why I didn’t take their taxi. I figured it was better to have the guy on the ship mad at me then my company. My company could fire me for lying which was more than the ship could do to me. So, I told them. Then the captain of the ship got mad at my company and the radio man, the logistics coordinator got mad at me and my company thanked me for telling them and then asked me not to tell anyone else.
Ok, so I wasn’t this excited.
Before I knew it, I was plugging ear plugs into my ears, putting muffs on and marching towards the helicopter, careful to avoid its rotating blades. The takeoff wasn’t as dramatic as a jet’s takeoff. The helicopter moved backwards and forwards a few times and then skipped off into the sky, ascending higher and higher. The water was deep down below, and the ship soon disappeared on the other side of the horizon. I looked down at the water and remembered what the radio man told me, “The helicopter training isn’t that important because if the helicopter crashes, you will probably die when it hits the water.” I mean it seemed like there was nothing to worry about now, except the helicopter crashing.
This guy didn’t wait.
We arrived at Antalya airport and quickly got through customs as we went through the VIP section. I had met an Ottoman guy on the top deck of Osman before leaving who promised we would hang out in the city center and leave together since our flight was at the same time. However, as I made it through security, he was nowhere to be found.
It is hard to burn 7 hours in an airport.
I had seven hours to kill in the airport. I took turns reading different books and watching people walking by. Halfway through the layover I went to burger king and ate my food as slowly as possible. Finally, it was two hours before my flight, so I was able to check-in.
The new Istanbul airport
When I arrived in Istanbul, I had one bag with almost everything I owned, no home and one person to contact. It was my boss’s brother, where I would stay until I found an apartment. He was the typical plump Ottoman man; he was friendly and as hospitable as possible, even though he spoke almost no English. My legs were wobbling on land and when I laid down to sleep on his couch that night, I could almost feel my bed still rocking. It was only when I looked up at the ceiling that I realized I was finally back on land.
A big thanks for keeping up with the blog story! I hope you enjoyed it. This is the end of the story, I’m not sure where I will take the blog next. We will see next week.
Osman Chapter 11: The Ship's Heart
Chapter 11 has arrived! This week I will be invited to check out the engine room of the ship. If you haven’t read the other chapters and wish to start at the beginning of the story then, click here.
One of the PSVs (Public supply vessels) that would frequently visit Osman.
One of the biggest challenges on the ship wasn’t getting shipments on time, keeping the correct amount of sludge in the pipes or even keeping the ship afloat but it was something much simpler. Something that most people would never be able to imagine: trash segregation. There was a lot of trash on the ship, and there were many systems that had to be paid attention to. The cans had labels in Osman and in English and they even had a different color based on which kind of trash they were. Yet, there was still a huge problem when it came to getting people to put things in the right can.
Here are some examples of segregated trash. We had a lot more bins though.
There was general waste, plastic waste, paper waste, and metal waste; there were also special bins for razor blades, and aerosol cans. The kitchen could throw disposable food off the ship, but the rest was kept in these bins. Sometimes the trash didn’t even make it to the bins though. One day after a weekly safety meeting, about 10 steps from a general waste bin there was a banana peel sitting on an arm chair. Of course, in the next safety meeting a picture of the infamous peel was shown and trash segregation was mentioned once again.
The ship sits still, but the gossip travels fast. This is the top deck of Osman. We had a barbecue up there.
Sometimes the trash in the cans wasn’t the only trash on the ship though. That would be the words and gossip that came out of peoples’ mouths. There was good gossip and there was bad gossip, but no matter what kind of gossip it was, it made it around the ship faster than a speeding bullet. One morning I told a student about minimum wage in Alaska and by the last evening class at seven PM, another student was asking me about it. When I went to the break room after my final class that day, a food worker there also commented about the minimum wage salary in Alaska. The gossip wasn’t always good though. The gossip could be at its worst during the mealtimes in the mess hall.
A photo of race segregation in high school. The ship also had cultural/national segregation.
There were segregated groups that grouped together. They didn’t get together intentionally, but it happened naturally based on race or nationality. I tried to bounce around and when I did, I ran into more and more gossip. One day I sat at a table with Scottish, Canadian, American, Australian and south African workers. “Did ya hear about that damn safety man Steffen”, one asked the other. “No, what’s it?” responded the other. “He used to be a welder before he got into safety. Guess he couldn’t hack it.” There was a bit of a “macho” mentality on the ship, nobody wanted to show any weakness. Hard men, with stone mouths with as many tattoos as possible but they gossiped like little girls on a school yard. I tried my best to sit with them but there wasn’t much to talk about.
The attitude of many on the ship.
They were set into their routine of trying to act manly, so the only times they opened their mouths were to talk about women, sex or gossip. Eventually I returned to the Osman and Uzbek table. It was better to not know what they were saying, then to hear all the vile talk that I could understand. Sometimes I could still hear the gossip from afar though. When they were bored of gossiping about their fellow workers, they would scan the room and analyze different eating habits. “Look at that fuck, he only eats three portions every day and always cleans his plate,” said one. “He eats like my 15 year old daughter.” Said another. “Look how he slurps his soup, he looks like a camel. Just put it in your mouth sissy fuck it’s not that hot.”
A few of my students.
One day at the Osman table a man came up to me. “I heard you’re writing a book,” was his opening. The word got around the ship fast. I didn’t see myself as the Shakespeare of writing books or even close to being well known, yet they were still excited. “A lot of people think of the drilling and things on top deck as the most important, but the engine room is where everything else happens,” he continued. “Without the engines, the ship would die.” He was very serious about the engine room. He talked to me for the entire lunch about the engine room and even invited me to visit him. He wanted to show me all the engines and machines that were there.
PPE = gear a doctor might wear during Covid19.
It was going to be my first time going out of the accommodation area, so I needed special equipment just to go. I had to get boots, gloves, coveralls, a hat and goggles. The ship was split into two sections: the accommodation area and the working area. The accommodation area was where the mess hall, gym, living quarters, cinema room and English training room were located. The working area was the rest of the ship and took up about sixty to seventy percent of the total length of it. After a week of planning with him and getting the equipment from the ship’s store man I was finally ready. I entered the side locker on the way to the work area and the floor where the mess hall was. I didn’t see him. Every floor had different areas like this where there were changing rooms in between the two sections of the ship. These side pockets also had showers and lockers for the three hundred workers on board. I kept seeing people coming and going, they said hello and disappeared as fast as they came. I waited for ten minutes and then asked the next person who came into the locker “Where’s Ferhat”? He looked Osman, so I thought he would know.
Directions: they are everywhere.
The man knew English and told me how to get to the engine room: “Go outside, walk sixty meters, take a right, walk up the stairs and go inside”. They weren’t the best directions I had ever been given. I walked outside and there was the sea waiting for me. The walkway was about 2 meters wide. I walked along it but wasn’t sure how far sixty meters was. Soon I ran into another worker and asked him about the engine room, so he was kind enough to lead me there. Inside there was still no sign of the missing Osman. There was a bald man sitting looking at a screen, an Osman guy wandering about about and two old Croatians sitting at a table. I asked them where Ferhat was and they said he would be there shortly, and I could make myself some coffee. “I’m going to need half an Osman lira for it though,” one of them joked. I sat down at the table with the Croats and made small talk for a bit. Then another Osman student Murat came and sat down. He was a rough looking guy from Adana and had a huge Mustache the size of Texas. He joked and chatted with us as well. Finally, after about half an hour, Ferhat arrived. He also sat down, and we continued to drink tea and coffee for almost an hour before we got started. We put on our helmets and began our aquatic safari.
An engine room on a ship. The one on Osman, looked pretty similar.
There were doors with handles and doors that slide open with a button; like a door in a Sci-fi movie, or maybe a US prison. In the first room there were dozens of machines and engines. The sound was loud even with ear plugs in and ear muffs on. We went from room to room and he checked engine after engine. He told me the whole tour would take forty-five minutes and he had to do this route each shift. He wrote things down and checked more engines. Different engines did different things, and some of them had backups, just in case the main ones stopped working. I can’t remember what all the machines did but some of them included supplying the ship with hot water, storing all the shit and urine and mixing it into sludge that could be released into the sea.
What an engine workers life was probably like.
There were also engines that powered propellers, kept the ship cool or warm, distilled water and many other things. I asked questions about the engines and Ferhat knew all the answers. I couldn’t imagine a job like this, twelve hours a day, checking the engines three to four times each shift and then making sure nothing was wrong. Yet, without it being done, perhaps the ship would be in trouble. He joked that he didn’t need to go to the gym, because of the number of stairs he had to go up and down each day and the heavy pipes and other materials he might need to lift. He was in better shape than me, and I went to the gym every day while I was living on the ship.
Freedom!
After almost an hour of walking through room after room and yelling to be heard above the engines and make it past the earplugs we called it a day. I went back through a side door and came out on the bottom level of the ship. At first, I had no idea where I was, but then I saw the laundry room as well as the stairs and the elevator, so I was on the lowest level of the ship. I was excited to see all the engines but also relieved that it was over. I had gotten to see the heart of the ship and Ferhat had been right, without the engine room the ship would die, or be a very miserable place.