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!
This week I have created the blog, using a new video format! Let me know if you like it.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Here we are in chapter 10! This week many bad things will happen and then a good thing will happen at the end! If you want to start at the beginning then click here.
Nothing but blue to see, and the smell of sea.
The next morning there were no students at the level two six A.M. class per usual. With the free time I took the opportunity to go to the top deck. As I gazed out at the horizon the French warship was no where to be seen. The Ottoman warship was missing as well. I went back down to the bridge to do the daily printing and to learn about the most recent gossip about the warships.
Nothing but smiles.
Uzgur was smiling as I entered the bridge, he was talkative and in a jocular mood. The warships had agreed that both of them would leave and for now no military action would be made against Osman. I finished my printing and showed him the list of students who hadn’t come yet. He promised to take the list to the captain who would talk to the students individually.
The following day the captain came back with news that some of the students were too far behind and they didn’t feel comfortable being in the class. With the new crew, I had noticed that there were a couple of students that were so far behind that the class was almost impossible for them, so I wasn’t surprised. They would end up getting laughed at and teased by their friends and one of them had told the radio man that he couldn’t understand anything, so he didn’t want to come anymore as well. I decided that I would make an extra class on Saturday since there were no classes then. I called it “Beginner catch up class” or in Ottoman: “Super cok beginner ders”. I put up posters along with the normal crew list with their class times. I came up with a creative idea, but I made one mistake. I added two confused looking people and then speech bubbles where I wrote common English mistakes that Ottoman students make. I.E.: “How old are you?” “Fine thanks and you?” “I am very money” etc. The only problem was that this enticed some people aboard the ship to add their own bubbles.
The daddies of the coop right?
One person added “I love cock” and put it right above the confused girl’s head. I decided to report it to the radioman and asked him if I should write a focus card. These were cards where anyone on the ship could report a safety hazard or complain about something. He laughed and said “No, let’s tell the captain.” The captain also laughed and said there was nothing we could do because there was no way to figure out who had done it. He said to write back “Come to the OIM’s office (the captain’s office) and you’ll find the biggest one”. Then the radioman started to talk about how one of the helicopter pilots from Cameron had a large cock too and the captain asked him how he knew.
I decided to do nothing, I thought that writing a response might get me more responses and they might write on future posters for more entertainment. Half a day later the message was still up and the talk of the ship. One of the head guys on the ship asked me to scratch it out, but I had a better idea. You know if you turn the second “C” in “cock” to an “O” it changes the word to cook? So that’s what I did. Then I added “ing” on the end. “I Love cooking” it said, which was a little bit sexist since it was above the girl’s head, but it was better than cock.
The mess hall was like a frat hall, even though most of the workers were 40 to 50 years old.
I assumed people on the ship might write on the posters at some point, as whenever I heard the foreigner’s conversations, they usually talked about three things: “Women, cocks and masturbating”. These of course were the western foreigners on the ship. I sat with them a few times and it was silent when I sat down, that was until someone brought up one of the three topics. Then they could talk for hours. I still figured if cocks and raunchy conversations were the worst thing about the ship, then everything would be ok.
In theatre the broken leg is a great thing, on an oil ship: not so much.
However, there were soon injuries in successive weeks. First a guy broke his leg on the stairs. There were constant reminders in safety meetings about holding onto the rail, and in those same meetings half the focus cards focused on people walking up and down the stairs, with a coffee in one hand and a cell phone in the other. Perhaps they were holding the handrail with their foot and hopping down. This man was apparently carrying laundry down the stops and missed the last two or three steps and crashed down, and cracked his ankle, with a minor fracture. He claimed he was holding the handrail when he fell but nobody believed him.
These fleshy sticks weren’t meant to go in a grinder
I thought that would be the end of it, that maybe everyone would be on edge and extra careful about safety, but I was wrong. The very next safety meeting there were two more injuries. One man twisted his wrist and had to be taken to Antalya for X-rays. He returned in under forty-eight hours and was working again though. Then there was a man who got his finger stuck somewhere it didn’t belong. He also went to Antalya, but he wasn’t so lucky. Part of his finger was amputated after his glove got stuck in some part of a machine and tugged his finger in after it. It made me glad that I was an English teacher.
Cranky tears, know no age.
That was until the new crew arrived. The classes went well and were pretty typical lessons, but one class came in and they were overly pushy. Immediately complaining about reviewing old content that half of them couldn’t do anyways. Demanding that the class be ended early because they were tired and more. I was happy to let them leave about five minutes early. I wondered if the last few weeks were just subsequent hell weeks. Then there was an announcement. “Do not use the elevator, maintenance is being done on it.” Well, I didn’t think anyone would be using it anyway since it hadn’t been working for almost two months.
Pretty close to how our elevator worked.
What I imagine the Scotsman on the radio looked like.
It wasn’t but a day later where the message “The elevator is working, I repeat the elevator is working” came across the PA system. A second PA announcement followed “WOOHOOOOOO”. Perhaps it was even more “O’s” than that. Something good had finally happened, and in relation to this week I had to say “it was about time.”
Chapter 9 is here! This week, there are crew changes on the ship, which cause chaos and a French warship shows up!
If it’s your first time viewing the blog or story then click here to start at the beginning of the story.
Ship men leaving, much like they did on Osman.
Now everything was falling into place. My daily habits and schedule were working perfectly together. I also knew all the students; their names as well as their true levels, so it was much easier to plan the classes. I hadn’t messaged Darren for almost a week and had every part of my routine down, including doing laundry and eating. Yet when I went into the classroom and looked at the crew members from all the crews, their test dates and other information there was something looming over my head; “February 24th, 25th and 26th.” These were the days when the new crew would come on board and by the end of the 27th; they would be mixed in with the other classes.
Trying to figure out the crew changes and curriculum with mixed crews felt like entering a matrix.
Some classes were behind the others, and now there would be crews coming who had already completed certain units in the book that would be added to the chaos. Now it was time to send lots of text messages to Darren again. It was my first time facing the crew change, so no matter how much I talked about it or planned for it, it was impossible to know how it would go. Crew member shifts were also changing for those who would be staying on board, so I was also guessing when they would come to class. For the two classes that would still have Crew A members I planned three lessons and had them ready based on different scenarios. Scenario A: The same students come but no new ones. Scenario B: the same students do not come, only new ones come. Scenario C: the class is mixed with both crews.
Things getting serious
Darren recommended that I head up to the bridge and ask the radio man about the different students. He could tell me who was coming on which day and what the shifts would be for the students who still be on board. The radio man worked with me over the next fifteen minutes checking all the students work times and dates of arrival. When I was about to leave, he told me I should go to the top deck, because there was an Ottoman warship patrolling along side the ship. Apparently due to threats coming from Cyprus and the European Union, the Ottoman Empire’s leadership had sent a warship to protect Osman while it was doing its exploration drilling.
Looks scary or sexy, depending who you are.
As I exited the stairwell and was greeted with the smell of the sea, I could see the towering metallic structure of the ship, making its way almost to the top of Osman’s top deck. Gigantic guns ready for action, Osman men in camouflage patrolling and running about, and others standing at attention with rifles awaiting orders. All of the sudden, there was a radio announcement blaring out of the warship’s speakers. It was in Ottoman, so I couldn’t fully understand it, but they seemed to be pointing towards the horizon. I squinted and tried to peer through the piercing sun and the white water that was flashing and reflecting to see. There was a tiny black dot on the tip of the water, far in the distance, where the water met the sky.
I was awoken at four A.M. with a siren shrieking. There was an announcement about the dot on the horizon. It was a French warship, which was coming at full speed towards Osman and its warship. The radio man went on saying that we should be ready at all times for an abandon ship drill, should anything happen. When seven A.M. rolled around there had been no other announcements, but I was awoken by another shrill noise, my alarm clock. In the class I had a stroke of luck, no students came. Then when ten AM came, only old students joined the lesson. A bit more relaxed about the crew change situation I went to the bridge to see how the warship situation was going.
A lot of action on the top deck.
The radio man Uzgur looked serious. No smile was on his face and he was furiously typing on his computer. He couldn’t take it any longer and went out onto the deck to smoke a cigarette. He apologized for not being friendly when I came in. He told me to look out onto the water and there you could see the French warship, now only a hundred meters or so from Osman. Directly fifty meters from the French warship’s guns were the Osman warship’s guns, they were both pointed at each other. Neither ship had much commotion on it, with men standing at attention and ready to take orders. Uzgur said, there was a lot going on, on the radio. There were a mix of threats and commands which were mostly being ignored for now. The French ship was demanding that Osman leave Cyprus’ waters. The Ottoman’s were demanding that the French warship leave The Ottoman Empire’s waters. Then they went from demands to threats and from threats to commands. Then the cycle continued but there was still no movement on either of the ships.
The main sources of entertainment on the ship were the gym and sleep.
I wanted to continue watching the exciting stalemate, but it was about twenty minutes until my third class. I went back downstairs to the classroom. When one o’ clock arrived, there were only crew B students. I did my normal thing, going to the gym, showering and relaxing until dinner came. At the dinner table there was the latest gossip about the warships around the dining room’s tables. The French warship and the Ottoman warship wouldn’t budge. I finished my dinner as quickly as possible and headed upstairs for the final class.
Mixing it up in the class like this. Unfortunately there were no girls though.
Seven P.M. swung by and the class was a mix of one crew B student and three crew A students. It was also a class mixed with crew A students who were in different units. My plan for this scenario had been to do the unit that was the furthest behind, and the more advanced students didn’t seem to mind. As the students left the class at eight fifteen, I was able to relax. Now I knew where all the students were and planning the lessons would be easier. The day was over and now I felt more comfortable with crew changes. The other ones would be much easier. The only problem at this point was the students who wouldn’t come to class, yet is extra free time on one’s hands ever a problem? I went up to my cabin for the night. The warships suddenly crossed my mind again, but then I relaxed. I was sure they wouldn’t do anything. Thirty minutes later I crawled into bed, hoping for a good night’s sleep.
Welcome to the weekly blog! This week we continue with the story of my experience being an English teacher on an oil ship. If you want to start at the beginning of the story to catch up, then click here.
Our radio man wasn’t this handsome, but he was trying to be.
Before I even left Adana for the ship, the other teacher “Darren” had messaged me on WhatsApp and advised me to have a good relationship with the radio operators. Another radio operator named “Samet” had also messaged me, telling me about the PSV. Having a good relationship with the radio operators wasn’t going to be my only goal, but everyone. Because on a ship of even two hundred men, I assumed that gossip could get around quickly, and any bickering or fighting wouldn’t have much room to bounce around. Therefore, I greeted every person I saw on the stairs or in the hallways and chatted at every opportunity. In a realm full of gossip, it’s best to let them know everything about you, rather than to be a mysterious figure followed by many rumors.
Loads of a stairs. A dream or a nightmare, depending who you are.
My first day going up to print, I climbed the four flights of stairs and met another radio operator, this one was called “Uzgur”. He turned out to be a very talkative and friendly one. I often stayed up on the “bridge” talking and hanging out for a good thirty or forty minutes when he was there. The first few trips he helped me print or copy what I needed but soon I had mastered the printer and he only talked to me as I copied. There was also a door with a deck where people working in the radio room and bridge could smoke. I called it “NAV deck” a few times but some workers got upset at me and said I should call it “The bridge”. Before I knew it, it was part of my routine; climbing the four flights of stairs, copying, and talking with the radio operator. Due to the time I was usually ready to print and their shifts; it was usually Uzgur. I was fine with this as he was the most open and friendly of the radio operators.
Syria. It’s hard to find a non-political map nowadays.
I also chatted with the DPO, which was a fancy name for the person who kept the ship aligned properly. The acronym actually stood for “Dynamic Positioning Officer”. The first one I met was named “Daane” with two As. He was from the Netherlands, but Samet used to joke around with him and say he was from Syria. He didn’t appear to like the joke, but Samet really enjoyed it.
“I have so many things to show you”
I learned a lot about the devices and instruments in the radio room as Samet showed me how to zoom and change the cameras and Uzgur showed me different mapping, tracking and frequency devices. He also showed me how to work the public announcement (PA) board and how to change it so the user would send a PA everywhere including the accommodation areas. The PA announcements were usually sent to the working areas and only the drill PA announcements were broadcasted everywhere.
What my friend was imagining.
Another thing I liked to do in my free time was to watch the waves and look at the sun; taking many pictures of them as they changed, or fascinated me. I asked Uzgur more about the waves and how they were measured, so he showed me the measuring system. It was based on the wind speed and the current. The first time we checked the waves they were two meters high! I told a friend on WhatsApp and he almost had a heart attack. “STAY AWAY FROM THE SIDE OF THE SHIP! HOW IS IT STILL AFLOAT?” he panicked.
What the sizes were actually based on
However, they weren’t two meters high in the air, they were two meters on the wave measuring scale. The radio operator told me that there were different kinds of waves. Ones that were small in size but moved quickly, others that were medium sized but moved slowly and lastly there were giant waves that moved the slowest. The strongest waves were the small ones that moved quickly. The measurement had more to do with strength than it did height. At night they had observed waves at eight meters!
Those who seek knowledge will always go farther than those who don’t.
I thought about it the next day while watching the waves again. I liked to go out onto the open area of the ship and watch them. How high were the ones today? Later in class a student guessed that they were one point six meters. As he and the others left the classroom, I stood up and looked out the window at the waves once more. Then it occurred to me. In the classroom I was teaching Uzgur English but in the radio room he was teaching me about the waves. No matter where you go or what you do, you’ll always be teaching someone one thing and learning a different one from someone else.
Welcome to the next chapter of the story of my life on an oil ship as an ESL English teacher!
To begin from the start of the story click here.
The feeling of completing a lesson.
I completed the first wave of level two and three classes, as well as the first abandon ship drill but now the next day loomed. My first weekly safety meeting and all those level one classes. I also needed to get my face fitted for an oxygen mask, as I was reminded by the guy who helped me find the stairs when I was lost on the “NAV deck”.
Pastirma and fried eggs.
I woke up around six AM, as I had every day so far on the ship. I put on my clothes and headed down the four flights of stairs to the mess hall. There was a smaller sized crowd than normal. I had “Pastirma” and scrambled eggs. Pastirma is a “non-pork” version of Osman bacon that is super salty. I was told that people had to be careful of eating too much of it as it would emit a strange smell from ones pores if they ate too much of it. I grabbed a couple of fried eggs and a tomato slice as well and washed it all down with a cup of orange juice.
The calm before the storm.
Then it was off to the training room. I went through the normal rituals, unlocking the door, plugging in the printer, opening the laptop and turning on the TV. I browsed over the lesson plan and then waited for students to come in. About three minutes before seven the first student came in and then before I knew it there were three of them.
The nuts and bolts of English
This class was a unit behind the others, and there were two main students who were a bit older and one of them was a lot slower than the other one. We learned some vocabulary, did a few listening activities and then busted out the “Oil and Gas” book. There were two books we were using, Speak out and Oil and Gas. Speak out was a generic ESL book with vocabulary, listening, grammar and writing exercises. The Oil and Gas book was similar but had lots of vocabulary and exercises that tied in working in the oil and gas industry. This book was good but a bit too academic and advanced for the lower level class. I reviewed some tools with them, tools related to their job such as a spanner, wrench etc. For the final activity we read a dialogue together first and followed that by acting it out. It took them a few moments to get the gist of the role-play exercise but then it was off and rolling. “What’s in the box” “Some screws” “how many?” “14” “that’s too many”. They practiced several more phrases “That’s the wrong part number” and “Perfect, that’s the one we need”. Then it was eight fifteen and time to say goodbye. They waved enthusiastically and went to sleep, I waved back and got ready for the next class.
I cruised through the ten AM class and before I knew it, I was eating lunch. After lunch I wandered into the cinema for the first time since my tour with Steffen the safety guy. There were already three or four dozen people in the seats waiting and there were some people signing a paper on a clipboard. I walked past them and sat down, not really knowing what they were signing or doing. Then each person that came in signed the clipboard, so I asked a man sitting near me if we needed to sign in. “Yes,” was the answer.
A scene from the episode.
It wasn’t long until the meeting started. Steffen spoke in English and another Osman gentleman translated every twenty seconds or so. They showed a PowerPoint presentation which focused on trash segregation, and also pinpointed the main safety precautions. Stair safety was the most popular topic this time. They showed a clip from a family guy episode where he falls down the stairs a lot and then decides to live upstairs to avoid going down the stairs. I never thought so much about a handrail before in my life but now with the ship weaving and bobbing sometimes; it seemed like a good idea, especially after that family guy episode.
The award for winning the weekly competition was usually a powerbank.
The main event of the meeting was when they randomly drew the winners of the week. These were drawn from the focus card reports that had been filed that week and then the ship’s captain gave free power banks out to the two lucky workers. The focus cards were written when there was a problem or a safety issue. There were usually around two hundred of them written each week. Don’t be too alarmed; some of them could be as simple as a person not shaving or someone not holding the handrail while walking up the stairs. Others could be more serious, not following safety precautions with equipment, leaving flammable material in a bad place and so on. After the meeting the students strolled into the classroom, some of them on time and others late due to the meeting and wanting to smoke afterwards.
Breathe…
The class went well and after reporting attendance and class notes I went upstairs to find the oxygen mask guy. He was Scottish and it was the same Scottish guy who gave me the H2S safety briefing on the first day. I was supposed to take a deep breath and hold it for eight seconds. He told me, “take a deep breath, then I will give a signal.” Actually, it sounded more like “Tek eh depp breth, en I well gev ya eh segnel.” I took a deep breath and gave him a thumbs up, then he said something that sounded like a mix between start and stop. It sounded more like stop, so I started breathing again. We did it three times before I figured out that he was saying start and not stop. He didn’t know that I was breathing and thought air was leaking out of the mask, so he pulled it as tight as he could, and it was already tight enough to begin with. After I realized what he was saying we progressed through the attempts much faster. He gave me a copy of the results and I parted ways with the Scotsman for the last time.
I usually feel like this picture at the end of the day.
After dinner and my final class, I closed the door, locked it, and headed upstairs for the night. The classes and hours were going by much faster now. I had completed my first week of classes, my first abandon ship drill, first safety meeting, and all of the safety briefings and other things I needed to do. I felt a sense of relief as I laid in bed that night. I had seen all the students and been through all the classes so the lesson prep would be much smoother now. Likewise, I had been through the safety meetings and drills, so they would also be much easier going forward too. Now just for one more thing to get used to, the painful feeling of waking up at six AM.
Welcome to this weeks blog! We are continuing the story of my life on an Ottoman oil ship as an English teacher. This week I experience my first abandon ship drill. If you missed the beginning, here is the first episode: Prologue.
Wht my class often felt like….
The second day with the level three students was another easy one. A single student came at seven AM and then two students came for the seven PM class. No students at ten AM and again no students at one PM.
Ok he looked a little bit friendlier than this.
Around midday a knock came at the door and a large student with glasses came in to talk to me. He looked like a guy who liked to talk, and that turned out to be true. He came in and talked to me for about fifteen minutes and then left. The day was pretty quiet after that; I started my gym workout, edited one book and did the level three class at seven. As I was putting everything away and preparing to lock the class up for the night, I remembered that there were certain emergency drills on a weekly basis. I tried to recall where I was supposed to go. There was one where I had to go to the cinema and sit on the right side, then there was another one where I had to go to the lifeboat. I had completely forgotten the deck, but I had a faint memory from my tour with Staffen, he had said that I should go to lifeboat 2.
When all the stairs and hallways look the same, how do you find anything?
As I walked up the stairs, I ran into one of my students named “Vahap”, he was a welder from my level two class. I asked him which deck it was and he told me “Deck B”. I felt a sigh of relief and continued up the stairs.
Everyone’s favorite time.
I woke up and it was Saturday, a more relaxed day with no classes. Then I remembered that I had a student named “Barak” who needed to take an exam, because he had had to leave the class early the previous night. So, I got up around eight thirty and went to the class. After giving him the exam, the day was pretty quiet. I filled out the reports and prepared the lessons for Sunday and Monday. This day I wrote one poem and edited both of my books then around seven PM the student with glasses returned.
Is this your gourmet cheese?
His name was “Serkanhan”. I had previously tried to learn Polish and the name for cheese was “Ser” and kan, was like “can” in English, so this is how I tried to remember his name: “Cheese can”. He talked to me for about fifteen minutes and then told me that there was a drill tonight and asked me if I knew where to go, I told him lifeboat two on B deck. He said “wow”, and added that most people didn’t usually know where to go.
Hello sir, what beautiful music you have. Would you mind turning it down though?
I was preparing to leave around nine o clock when the dreaded screeching noise came. It sounded like a giant alarm clock that you wanted to slap and never hear again, but this giant alarm clock never stopped beeping. I calmly followed a man into the cinema room, and we were the only ones there. Then an announcement came “This is an abandon ship drill, please go to your primary muster point”. The guy next to me jumped up and yelled “oh shit, primary muster point?”.
I often felt like I was on the Titanic.
My thoughts exactly, “Oh shit, primary muster point? B deck, right?” As I headed up to B deck, lots of people were running past me, many of them with life jackets, the further I went up the stairs, the less people I saw. It was apparent that I was going the wrong way, and I couldn’t find a door to go outside. I asked a man, who was in a hurry, “Lifeboats are on B deck right?” His answer was “No, follow me.” We clambered down the stairs and then I realized we had to go to “A deck”, not “B deck”. I also needed my life jacket, “Should I go back up two flights of stairs and get it?” I asked myself.
What an amazing device, I wonder who invented it?
Then I saw a locker filled with lifejackets, so I grabbed one. After a few moments of figuring how to put it on, I turned my card around and stood in line. We stood there for what felt like forever, and there were still people missing. They sounded the alarm again and this time it kept going for five or six minutes.
Scotland. What a beautiful country, but what the fuck are they saying?
The whole time my group was silent except for two Scottish guys, who spoke in thick dialects. “Aye did’yeh se’de farse down by de were-well-e?” “Naw’r deh stret far’lo deh begg’in.” “Seh deh Mester Flackersnap slepen on deh shep en’de Pharoh Islands?” I got “Mister Flackersnap” and “Faroe Islands” and that was all I understood. These guys continued to talk throughout the drill and finally the radioman reported that only three men were still missing. Four minutes later a dozen guys came walking out and shortly after that the drill was finally over.
Me, almost every night that I was on the ship.
Like all nights, I went back up to my cabin to go to sleep. Now I knew where to go, hopefully subsequent drills would be much easier.
The story of my first day of teaching on the ship called Osman.
This is the story of my teaching experience on an oil ship. If you missed the first episode, you can check out by clicking here.
6am, a time most people loath seeing; no matter how many hours of sleep they have gotten.
I looked at my clock and I couldn’t believe it was already six AM. I forced myself to get out of bed and shaved. After that I took a quick shower, as I hadn’t showered at all while on the PSV. The shower on that supply vessel had been suspect looking; there was one faucet that hung near the toilet, there was no barrier, no shower curtain and just the same tiles that were all around the bathroom on the floor. The water was also cold, and the entire ship was much colder than the temperature on Osman. After showering I tried to find the stairs that would take me downstairs and finally found them.
What a door inside a ship looks like. Beautiful, isn’t it?
Next, I tried to remember which deck the classroom was on. I glanced at the row of decks on a list near the stairs and thought I remembered it being “F deck”. However, when I reached the bottom of “A deck” which was right above “F deck”, there were no more stairs, only a door going out onto the deck of the ship.
A look out at the sea, during the wee hours of the morning.
I went out onto the deck and it was well lit, but as I looked out into the sea there was a swallowing darkness. I couldn’t see the waves, but I could hear them. I backed up and moved further away from the rail. Finally, I saw the windows of the classroom. Going inside, the starboard door nearest to the windows, eventually I found the classroom, with the lights on but nobody inside. I sat down and waited.
Our snack bar was a little bit less luxurious.
Fifteen or twenty minutes later the other teacher Darren came in. He asked me if I had eaten breakfast and I replied no. I had woken up at six and sacrificed breakfast over a shower and a shave just for today. He told me I could get some fruit from the snack room, but I didn’t dare leave the classroom for now. We sat for the next fifteen minutes briefly going over the lesson plans and then chatting with some small talk, most of which I don’t remember now.
Any teacher, gets to see many of these.
At seven A.M. no students came. Darren showed me how to record that in the “lesson notes” file and then told me he would leave around eight for the helicopter deck. There were calls on the broadcast system about the helicopter and people leaving. These calls would come almost every day in the future, and I would get used to radio calls coming over the broadcast every once in awhile. Darren left soon after and I waited for the next class that would be at ten A.M.
This broadcast booth looks similar to the one on the bridge, but there were less sliders on the board.
When that time came though, nobody arrived once again. Darren had told me that I could do my own broadcast for tardy students using the broadcast system or I could call the radio room and ask them to do it. On the first day I decided to let it slide and not to do any radio broadcasts. It had been expected that no students would come to the first two lessons, but after lunch, there would be students for sure.
A mess hall from a navy ship. The mess hall on our ship was a lot more attractive looking.
Lunchtime came at eleven A.M. and since I hadn’t eaten, I was more than ready to start as soon as the doors to the cafeteria opened. I had to ask a person going down the stairs where the mess hall was, and he beckoned me to follow him. Inside there were around a dozen tables for sitting and eating; two kitchen counters, a salad bar, a soup kettle, a dessert table and a second salad bar, plus a double-sided refrigerator and two jugs. One of the jugs was always filled with ayran and the other was filled with some kind of juice that changed from time to time. On my first day it was filled with orange juice. The other drink called ayran was a popular Osman drink, so it was filled and emptied every day. Ayran is a yogurt filled drink by the way. A Canadian girl in Istanbul once described it to me as yogurt mixed with sweat, but I had grown fonder of it than her. I met a few people at a table and chatted with them as I ate and then went back to the class to wait once again.
About three minutes before the class started a student came waltzing in, he had his head shaved bald and bushy eyebrows. He set his notebook down and then left. Soon there were four students and later a fifth came in. The class went like any other I had ever taught before. Introducing myself, writing their names on the board, talking about where they were from and other basic “get to know you topics”. We did a maze using “simple present vs present continuous” and then spent the rest of the class playing an “adverbs of frequency game”, similar to “candyland” except they had to ask questions and answer using an adverb of frequency to get to the end.
After dinner three more students came and we did the exact same lesson. I added a second die to make the “Candyland game” go faster but it still drug on forever. We had a few minutes left so I used the adverbs of frequency to ask questions and burn out the remaining minutes. They all shook my hand and said that it was nice to meet me and then the first day was about to finally close. I took a photo of the daily attendance sheet and sent it to Darren via WhatsApp, did the lesson report and punched the students into the attendance file. I looked around the room and made sure everything was in place. Turning off the lights, I locked the door and headed back up the stairs.
Me after the first day.
I had spent all day in between the classes messaging Darren asking about the level one student classes and many things about the schedule and planning. The first day was finished but now Sunday might be even tougher, with a full load of classes. As I would soon grow accustomed to, the level two and three students skipped their lessons a lot but the level one students almost always came. Luckily the following day was level three followed by Saturday where I only had to do reports.
Planning. My life’s greatest skill.
In my cabin, I went over my schedule and now that I knew what my days were going to be like, I could plan when to go to the gym, write and plan lessons. My first plan was to do the gym four days a week, on those days edit one book and on the non-gym days edit both books. Finally, on Saturdays I would write a poem and edit both books. This plan would not hold, but it was a good start.
In this chapter, we’ll learn about what happened on my first day on the oil ship! Well actually, it was half a day.
Before we jump in, if this is your first episode in the series, feel free to checkout the prologue and catch up before reading this chapter! Click here.
Similar to how my cabin looked, except there was less space and there was also a bunk bed.
The cabin room was slightly smaller than the dorm I stayed in while going to University of Alaska, Fairbanks. There was one desk against the left wall that was accompanied by a large comfy chair. Getting up from the comfy chair and taking a right there was a bathroom with brand new interior design, a tiled floor, a small shower and a vacuum styled toilet. There were also cabinets on either side of the mirror. There was a sign warning people not to sit while pressing the vacuum button on the toilet, as it could leave a large hickey where the sun doesn’t shine. Returning to the main room there was a small sofa opposite the desk, sitting down the cushions gave little resistance. On the left wall next to the desk there was a bunk bed with curtains and a sleep blinder. Across from the beds there were two dressers. There were also many outlets strewn across the room. These outlets also included American outlets, it was the first time I had seen them outside of the US in Europe or Asia. I wondered how crowded this cabin would be with two people, especially the desk. Luckily for me, I would be the only one staying here, the rest of the crew had to share rooms.
It’s almost three fifty.
I waited until my cell phone’s clock read “two fifteen” and then I tried to find the area I had just been in. I walked around for a few minutes and then asked where “Steffen” was. They had told me my safety briefing would be with him. He came a few minutes later. He was a guy from Scotland, yet he only had a slight accent. He had giant eyes and in a matter of moments I could tell he cared a lot about safety. I sat down with him and the teacher I was meeting who I would replace as the English trainer for one month named Darren. Steffen went through many slides, he played a couple of sounds that represented alarms for abandoning the ship or dealing with different gas leaks or fires. It was an abundant amount of information and I instantly forgot most of it.
Similar to what our lifeboats looked like. We never got to see them in the water (luckily) though.
That ended up not being too bad, as much of it didn’t apply to me anyway. Then he took me on a tour around the ship, he showed me where my lifeboat was and what I should do when I got there. I had to turn my card around, grab a life jacket, find the last number and stand on it. All the numbers for each lifeboat were painted in circles on the ground. If I was the first person there, I should stand on one, and if someone was standing on one, then I should stand on two. It all seemed simple enough.
H2s Gas. It’s dangerous. Worse than burrito night.
After Steffen was done with me, I met another Scottish guy. This guy was called “Gale”. His Scottish accent was much thicker than Steffen’s. I followed him up the stairs to the helicopter deck and had to repeatedly ask him to repeat things three or four times due to his accent. He brought me to a room where he struggled with the TV for a while and then taught me all about H2S gas and the dangers and what to do if certain things happened. He showed me the equipment and had me practice opening and closing the oxygen valve I would use to connect my mask to if there were a serious H2S leak or incident. The further he went along the more I got used to his accent and by the time he was done I felt like I was ready to go to Scotland.
Dinner on the ship was pretty good. Okay it wasn’t this good. (but close)
After Gale, I was finally able to meet with Darren. We ate dinner and he showed me more of the ship. We talked a lot about how to do all the paperwork associated with the job. There was an attendance list on the computer, a daily attendance sheet for the students to sign, a lesson notes file for every class of every day, a lesson plans file for the same, and there were the books. There were also four different crews to track and the crew shifts to track and the shift changes to track with each crew change.
One of the books we used.
Now back to the books. There were the Oil and Gas books, and English exercise books. The English exercise books also had workbooks for the students and a teacher’s book that had lots of interactive activities in it. There were two whiteboards on either end of the room and across from the teacher’s chair you could see through the windows and look at the sea.
What our real classroom looked like. The table is a little bit curved due to the panoramic photo.
There was a long table with a TV monitor mounted on the end near the teacher’s chair. The TV was also connected to the laptop and there was a printer behind the TV, resting on a chair. After several hours of talking about paperwork and how things worked, he let me know that I would need to plan the lessons for the following day because he would be leaving at eight thirty in the morning. We spent an hour or so working on the lessons for the next day and then I went back upstairs.
NAV deck, short for “Navigation deck. We called this deck “the bridge”. This is a photo from google and not the actual Osman NAV deck.
My main piece of luggage was still in the radio room so I went up to get it. The radio guy was busy, so I just grabbed it and left. Then I walked around this deck called “NAV deck”, which is short for “navigation”. I kept looking at the signs trying to find the stairs to head down to my cabin, but I couldn’t locate it. Finally, after my fourth or fifth time around a square shaped hallway, a guy came out of one of the rooms and asked me if I was lost. He directed me to the stairs; the sign was obstructed behind two other signs. In the coming weeks I would learn – go left, then left to get to the radio room, then go right, and right again to get back to the stairs. My cabin’s floor was just below the NAV deck, so I carried my twenty-kilogram bag back down the flight of stairs and found my cabin again. Inside, I only unpacked what I needed and then slumped onto the sofa.
One of the perks of being on a ship.
It had been an eventful day. I had woken up on the PSV ship and spent most of the day there. Then rushed through two different Scottish guys giving me safety briefings. Then I had gone over all the paperwork and planned lessons for the next day. I sat on the sofa in my cabin for ten or twenty minutes, planning the next day. I thought about how I would plan my weekly schedule, when I would write, go to gym and eat as well as plan my lessons and do all that paperwork. Then I wasn’t sure I even remembered how to get to the classroom in the morning. I would have to wake up early. I hated waking up early. I could wake up at five thirty, take a shower and shave, then go to breakfast at six am and be in the class by six thirty. I could also just sleep until six, have a shower and a shave, skip breakfast and be in the classroom by six thirty. As I lay in my bed thinking, I decided to go with the latter plan.
Siem Sasha is one of the Port Supply Vessels (PSVs) that bring supplies to the oil ship Osman.
One of the most exciting parts of a flight, when the plane lands.
The plane’s wheels rolled along the tar-mac and soon I was exiting the airport. There was a man waiting with a “UNG” petroleum” sign as had been promised. UNG was the oil company that my English teaching company had a contract with. “UNG” stood for Uzbekneftegaz and it was an up and coming oil company. At the time I started work on the oil vessel, they had around one hundred thousand workers and 102 of them were working on Osman.
A look at Konya-Alta, which is near the port in Antalya.
The location of the port on a map. The port is in Liman.
The man drove me towards the port and as I talked to him, he had several questions; questions very similar to those from the taxi cab driver. Since he seemed friendly, I thought I would use that to my advantage. I told him about moving to Antalya and looking for places there. He pointed out the different districts as we drove across the city. First there was Lara, then Kepez, then Konya-alta, then Sarisu and finally Liman. The main thing that caught my eye during the drive was the mountain range and some of the peaks and mini peaks were quite close to the houses. I immediately thought about climbing some of them and my imagination started running wild.
An aerial view of the Antalya port terminal.
We arrived at the port’s gate and the security guard asked for documents and then asked me to step out of the vehicle. After some conversation between the driver and the guard, the driver got my bag out of the van and sped off. The security guard scanned my passport a few times, my Turkish resident card, he phoned someone and then finally let me through. There was a long sidewalk that led to a shipping area and then there was a terminal a little farther down the road. I was directed towards the working area that had a cafeteria, bathroom and a small lounging area. Beyond these rooms there were many cubicles. At this time, it was a little past nine thirty in the morning and I would end up sitting on the couch for several hours before lunchtime.
This lobby is a bit more luxurious than the one I was waiting most of the day in.
People came and went often, and a few people sat on the couches and conversed in Ottoman and took frequent smoking breaks. I spent the time snoozing and using up the last of my phone’s Internet minutes in between the ten to fifteen-minute snooze sessions. Close to four P.M. a man came and showed me and two other Ottoman guys a safety video on how to use a loading machine that would transport us from the Port Supply Vessel (PSV) to Osman. Then he asked us to sign a document and I asked him where to sign.
Oh. Hi.
Shortly after signing the document, one of the two Ottoman men started talking to me. He said he thought I was Ottoman this whole time, at this point around five hours, and that is why he hadn’t spoken to me. We talked for ten minutes and then went back to the cafeteria for dinner. It was a typical Ottoman dinner; a bowl of soup, bread, and an option of stuffed peppers or stuffed eggplant. A few hours after dinner we were told that the vessel might leave in the early morning or the next day at noon. We could go to a hotel and return at noon and risk missing the boat, or we could sleep on the boat.
The Ottoman guys were upset for some reason and conversing, but I agreed to go. Shortly thereafter they also agreed to go. We waited in the security area for some time before a guy came to check our passports and let us on the ship.
The gang-plank to Siem Sasha.
The look of the dock in the daylight.
The first thing I saw as we exited the terminal onto the dock was the moon and stars sparkling on the water; and a white and red colored ship gently rocking back and forth in the water. There were a few men with hard hats walking along the dock and in the distance was a metal ramp with ropes and metal forging the walk way. It was a gangplank.
As I looked around the ship I found a plaque and other things on the walls.
A health poster which included advice on how not to get Ebola.
I walked up the gangplank behind the others and we entered the small hole to get onto the ship. Inside there was a ship worker waiting with a sign in list. The Ottoman guys shared one cabin and I got another cabin to myself. We were given a tour by a Ukrainian man who turned out to be the second mate of the ship. He showed us the mess hall, which was a small open room with four or five tables, a counter with leftovers and empty steel pockets for the fresh meals. He told us the mealtimes and then showed us the lounge and smoking lounge. It was around ten P.M. so we all headed to our cabins and went to sleep for the night.
My first breakfast on the PSV.
There were lots of stairs leading up and down; the walls in the hallways gave barely enough space for two people to walk past each other. I finally found my cabin again; it was next to some kind of cleaning trough. Inside it was pitch black with the lights out so I kept one of the reading lights on while I slept. I could feel the water below rocking my bed slightly but due to the super long day, I didn’t have much trouble sleeping. I woke up again around four A.M., then six A.M., then 8. I wondered if the others had woken up yet, and so around nine thirty I finally got up out of my bed. After rummaging through the kitchen area for a few minutes I found a few things to eat. There was bread, sausage, cheese and a few onion rings. To my surprise the two Ottoman guys came up the stairs, they had just woken up too. We all ate together and then spent the rest of the day waiting.
I took a stroll around and took a look at what was in the loading area of the PSV
One of the Ottoman guys
A sign that could use some help
The ship never left the dock and we were still waiting by the evening. We spent our whole time in the smoking room, and I discovered their names were Barak and Talan. Barak was from Hatay originally and Talan was from the eastern part of The Ottoman Empire near Georgia. Barak spent the time playing Fifa on the PS4 and Talan spent his time watching videos on Instagram. There were frequent breaks for both them to have another cigarette.
The look from the back of the PSV as it left the dock.
What the PSV probably looked like from afar, as it bobbed up and down among the waves.
We spent another night on the ship and this time I had a harder time falling asleep, as I wasn’t that tired. The next morning, I got up again around nine thirty, but Barak and Talan didn’t come this time. I spoke with the chef who was Ukrainian and several other of the crew members. There was one from Russia, one from India and the rest were from Ukraine. Around ten or eleven the Ottomans came up for breakfast and then smoked. I spent most of the time learning the Russian alphabet on my phone, Barak played fifa on the PlayStation they had in the smoking room and Talan watched videos on his cell phone. By evening time, the ship was finally moving. We all ran outside and watched as the port, the mountains and all the buildings got smaller and smaller. I could feel the ship rocking side to side and had to learn how to walk properly. On this night, I could really feel the water rocking below the ship as I slept. It was as if the waves were touching my back.
Confident on the outside, screaming on the inside. Getting tucked into the frog machine.
By morning, I kept waking up every hour or so after six, because I was sure someone would come knock on my door, telling us we were going to be transported to Osman, but no such knock came. I had another breakfast, another lunch and was preparing to have another supper when we were told to get our bags and head to the main deck. They were loading cargo and the crew told us that we would have to wait until all the cargo was loaded. Then about ten minutes later, they changed their minds.
Unfortunately I don’t have a picture of the frog machine being brought onboard, but it is done the same way as this piece of cargo.
All three of us put on life vests and climbed inside the “frog” machine. The frog machine was a device about seven feet tall and shaped like a bullet. It had four seats and bars that you had to hold onto while being buckled in. The frog machine lifted us high in the sky and the boat looked tiny from above. I wondered to myself what I would do if the line snapped. If I unbuckled quickly and treaded water for three days, I might survive.
One of many new staring eyes, as I made my way to the correct place on the ship.
The line didn’t snap, and the machine lowered us down to the top deck of the ship called “Osman”. We were finally there after three days of waiting. This ship was huge in comparison to the small PSV boat. It reminded me of the titanic, with so many decks, stairs and rooms. I made sure to keep within a few steps of the Ottoman guys as we went to check in. We left our luggage in the radio room and were told to come back for a safety briefing in thirty minutes. I was supposed to find “C deck” and room number five hundred and thirty-eight. It took some time, but I finally found it.
Chapter 2: The adventure in the glorious hotel
Dude, looking busy.
Behind the counter of the reception desk sat a medium height and heavyset teenager. He sat hunched over so all I could see was the top of his head. He was busy staring at his screen and hoping to God that nobody asked him anything in English.
A stock photo, he’s a bit more confident then the receptionist I came across.
“Merhaba” I said. His head popped up. “Merhaba” means “hello” in modern Ottoman. Then the dreaded words came: “Ingilizce konusyor musun?” – “Do you speak English?” His bottom lip quivered, and his hands pointed at a shaking document. “I have a room booked for 7 days” I said. His eyes blinked, he looked down at his desk. I held up seven fingers. “Yedi gun, Yedi gun” I repeated. “Yedi gun” means “Seven day”, which wasn’t grammatically correct, but it was the best I had to offer at that moment. His frantic hands grabbed a telephone and shortly thereafter another man came down.
That beautiful “Nakit”
He slurred English and Turkish words together. “You pay nakit!” he said. His voice raised a bit as I pulled a bankcard out. “Nakit!” he yelled again. He motioned with his hands. He held one hand flat with the top part facing the ground and slid his other hand across its palm as if he were flinging money at me. “Nakit” means cash. “ATM var mi? ATM yakin?” I asked. “Do you have an ATM? Is there an ATM nearby?” He walked with me and there was a bank just around the corner. I withdrew nine hundred Ottoman Liras and moments later he handed me four liras and a key to room 402.
The elevator wasn’t this crowded, but it felt like it.
I got in the elevator with the nervous teenager, into an elevator that fit one or two people but now had a chubby boy and a skinny man and two large bags both weighing around twenty kilograms each.
A photo from the actual hotel.
This place looked a bit skeptical from the outside. There were dirty and old buildings as well as skeptical looking warehouses with Conos and Kros waddling on the streets like penguins. The hall was dark and shady looking, but the doors were new. I turned the handle and entered, everything inside was new and clean too. There were four different Internet connections to choose from, hot water in the shower and a nice comfortable bed. I slide the curtains to check out the view. There was a grand view of the warehouse’s yard, which was covered with beautiful packages resting on slabs that looked like they had been there for quite some time. Beyond the yard there lie a crumbling street. Across from that makeshift road there was a school and down it there were car lots and other stores.
“Shock” with “shocking” prices.
After settling in a little bit, I decided this neighborhood was not one where you would want to go out after dark. It was about four P.M. so I pulled out my phone’s map application to look for a shop. “Sok” showed up which is a small shop similar to wal-mart or Tesko in appliances yet there is less variety and the entire shop is the size of a large room that has a “U shape” that goes around like the IKEA stores. There are several different chain franchises like Sok around The Ottoman Empire: “A101” “BIM” and “Migros”.
Some dude opening or closing a door
I checked the route several times. I needed to exit the hotel, take a right, then walk for four to five minutes cross a set of railroad tracks and then I would arrive at the “Sok” store. I checked it a few more times, then grabbed my wallet, keys and phone and headed out the door.
Looking at this photo you can smell the air, but what do you smell?
I had been right about this neighborhood. I stood out and their eyes flocked to me like moths to light. As I crossed a road on the side closest to my hotel of the railroad tracks I had to sprint a little bit to avoid being hit by some kind of truck that looked like it was from the 1960s or 1970s. I crossed the railroad tracks and there still weren’t any signs of a “Sok” or any food shop. I pulled out my phone to check where I was on the route and then put the cell phone back into my pocket as quickly as possible.
shhhhhhhhh
There are a few rules you may want to remember if you ever end up in a neighborhood like this in The Ottoman Empire (or any foreign country). “Don’t ever pull a cellphone out of your pocket that isn’t a flip phone or a cheap smart phone”, and “don’t ever speak English or any foreign language that isn’t native to that country”. As long as I didn’t have to open my mouth, I would be fine. Hopefully they would just think I was a Syrian Refugee from Aleppo or an Ottoman Laz from the Black Sea region.
Looks almost like the one I entered in Adana.
There were a few people waiting at the station and I passed a few shops on the opposite side of the railroad tracks and could see the “Sok” sign in the distance. However, as I got closer, I saw that there was also an “A101” store, so I went inside. Once again, I tried my best not to say too much. I grabbed a few things to make sandwiches, got a few mini tubs of yogurt, a bag of doritos and went to the check out. The workers in this shop didn’t seem to care that people were waiting in line and they either went about the shop continuing to work or just talked on their cell phones. Finally one waddled up and started scanning items. I paid in cash and went back out to the road. Carrying two bags of groceries more eyes were attracted to me and whispers of gossip were flowing already.
I wish I had bought this much pastirma.
After eating a pastirma cheese sandwich with cream cheese base it was almost time for bed. Pastirma is an Ottoman attempt at bacon, but it isn’t made from pigs. The cream cheese is actually a little bit different too, a very wet cream similar to cheese whiz with a rich coat of white that works perfect for a cheese/ham sandwich or a wrap. I lay on the bed and it felt great. The hotel was perfect inside, everything was working well, and it was also amazing to have a hot shower and working Internet again. There was no worry of the “Kro” landlord or the English school I had been working at anymore. I would just need to be careful to go out and shop before dark and keep my eyes peeled for anything dangerous on the outside of the hotel when I was out there.
A photo from Turkmenistan, but it represents what I saw in that neighborhood well.
Evli misin?
The days passed quickly and every two days I did a new shopping trip. The eyes never ceased to stare each time. On my way back one morning I noticed that there was a long line waiting for bread. Perhaps this wasn’t a dangerous neighborhood but a poor one. There were several times where I had been forced to speak in the shop and now there were whispers of “yabanci” when I walked by. “Yabanci” means foreigner. Yet, at this time I was no longer worried, in the daylight and on the main road I was sure nothing would happen now.
A sign that sinks most hearts
The flight was delayed a bit and I began to converse with the teacher who was currently on the ship “Osman” where I would soon be going. As I texted him and other people from the company, it hadn’t registered yet that I would be leaving soon, as I got used to the hotel and the road and the shop.
I’m sure this food tastes great, but I hate the time itself
However, that day did come; I had the flight time ready. I would need to leave the hotel at five A.M. and catch a flight at six fifty-five A.M. I hated waking up that early and was tempted to just stay up all night, but I knew even two or three hours of sleep would feel better than zero. I went down to the reception and told them of the details, they responded saying that they would be ready with a taxi at five fifteen.
A dark road road, so beautiful. It’s too bad you have to wake up early to see it.
I rolled out of bed around four thirty and had a quick breakfast. I ate the rest of the strawberry yogurt and put the rest of my things in my bags. I checked everything in the hotel to make sure I hadn’t forgotten anything and then grabbed my bag and the key and headed to the reception area. There was a man waiting for me as promised and we headed to the airport. I hated being up this early but there was a gratifying feeling about it. Driving through the dark cool air, when most people were sleeping. We arrived and I went through the multiple security check areas and before I knew it, I was in the sky again. Flying to a new city.
Chapter 1 takes place in Adana, where my journey began.
I sat in a dark room, and with each sound of a car driving by my ears perked up. With each car stopping, doors slamming then followed by voices I slowed my breathing and waited to see if they would come to my door. I was leaving my company and they knew I was leaving but they didn’t know how soon. I had lied and told them I was in Istanbul and that I would be back on Monday. They were trying to force me to pay several thousand Ottoman Lira for payments they had made while I was at their school. Therefore, from the evening time until late night I left my light off in case they came by to check and see if I was there.
A picture of a kro I found on google. Not my landlord though.
There was also the landlord. He was an ignorant man, yet very strong with a short temper. A typical “kro” from Adana, who would walk around town with prayer beads in his hand, attend Friday prayer but that was as far as his religious life went. He had been one of the reasons I was leaving, taking months to fix basic needs and as his apathy ascended, so did the company’s apathy. If he came early, then I would have to come up with a story to tell him about why the company hadn’t paid the rent or the monthly bills, and how I didn’t owe them.
I eat a lot of vegetables.
It was around seven pm in the evening, when I decided to cook something for dinner. I only lit the room with the cooking stove’s light and cooked a chicken salad. As I sat down at the small table in the center of my living room there were footsteps at the door. My neck craned to the left and I peered towards the sound. But the steps continued to the neighbor’s door. I was on the first floor of the apartment and had one neighbor on the right side. With the chance of someone else coming, I switched the stove light off again. The only light now was the glare from my Alien ware laptop’s screen. It had been my only source of entertainment for the past week or so. I was mostly writing, editing or playing games from time to time, if the Internet allowed it. That was another reason I had started looking for a new job. In my only free time, I came home to write and then any leisure time was spent looking at a loading screen or pressing reconnect.
Ah a calendar, one of the worst inventions of all time.
Soon I would be free. I only had to make it forty-eight hours and I would walk out the door with my bags, take a taxi to a hotel, and then stay there seven days before I headed to Antalya. That was another problem. When I left the apartment, the landlord would see me with two large traveling bags and might come asking about the rent or where I was going. I looked up hotels nearby and planned to go there a day early if I could find one.
He’s saying “yok”.
Thus, I walked out around noon to search for the ones I had found on my phone’s map app. There was a nice hotel about half a kilometre away but when I arrived at the reception desk nobody spoke English and when I asked them about a room, they waved their hands left and right wildly and said “yok”. That of course means “no” or “none” in Ottoman. I would have to stay in my apartment for one more day and leave in broad daylight and hope that my landlord didn’t try to chase me down.
Ok, so I wasn’t wearing flip flops…
By noon on the day I would leave, there had not been any knocks on the door and all my things were packed. I prepared my two bags in a way that I could grab them quickly and leave down the steps as fast as possible. As I swung the bags out the door, I put the key in the keyhole and left it there. Then I clambered down the steps and walked at a hastened pace down the road. There was a commotion on the balcony and yelling. I walked casually as if everything was fine and kept going. Some moments later I was rounding the corner, crossing the street and going down another. I finally felt free and only had to make it to the corner where the taxis waited every day.
A typical Turkish cab driver. Friendly and chatty.
If they had seen me, they had been too slow, as it wasn’t long before I was sitting in the front seat of a rolling taxicab and being asked questions in broken English. They were the most popular questions I heard while living in The Ottoman Empire. “What’s name?” “What are you from?” “You like Ottoman Empires?” “Why Ottoman?” For the next twenty minutes of the taxi drive I spoke in broken Ottoman to him and changed my English to a broken version and we conversed all the way to the hotel.
AH look at the beauty, I can almost smell it.
The cab drove down road after road with rubbish on the side of the road and buildings with such a lack of maintenance that it looked like it had recently been through a fire. You could smell the smog in the air, and we stopped just short of a warehouse. There was a sign pointing around a corner that read, “hotel parking” to the right of the warehouse. Right before you turned into a car garage there was a sign that said: “Empire’s Lux”. I thanked the cab driver and once we confirmed that it was the right place, I took my bags inside. As he sped away, I opened my nostrils and breathed in the smog, yet in this moment it didn’t smell like smog to me. It smelled like freedom. It smelled like a new adventure.
A story of my adventure on the Ottoman Empire’s first oil ship as an English teacher.
The Ottoman Empire in 1914.
The year is 2019 and The Ottoman Empire remains intact. In the year 1914 the Ottoman Empire failed to join the Central Powers even though they had a secret agreement with them. German and Austro-Hungarian officials were both shocked and angered by this but had their hands full with the Allied Powers. However, these Allied Powers were on edge due to the uncertainty of what the Ottomans would do. Thus, in the autumn of 1915 Mehmet V, the sultan of Turkey at the time, was assassinated by Greek and British agents. Ismail Enver Pasha took over the country and declared a state of emergency. While remaining neutral during World War I, The Ottoman Empire started to see a huge descent in their economy’s efficiency. In a meeting between military officials, including officers as low as lieutenant, they began to discuss the country, the economy and drastic changes. The first step of action was to give Arabic states autonomous freedom, while The Ottoman Empire still controlled their foreign policies. The next step was to modernize the country.
Mustafa Kemal
One young officer by the name of Mustafa Kemal, caught the eye of the grand pasha Ismail Enver and he was allowed to start a committee which worked solely on the modernization of The Empire. Over the next decade they improved their education, added more modern fashion and religious ideals to the country. In 1923 Ismail Enver Pasha retired as leader of The Ottoman Empire and appointed Mustafa Kemal the leader. Mustafa Kemal continued his work towards modernizing the country and also took up the path of secularizing it. He banned certain religious garments and put focus on less religious subjects in schools. He also created a more modern form of writing which made it easier for Ottoman people to read and write. With the death of Mustafa Kemal in 1938, the country decided to do away with their authoritarian government style and attempted to copy a western democratic system. From the 1960s to the 1970s they also gave each Arabic country their own true independence.
Osman traveling through the Mediterranean Sea
In the year 2019 The Ottoman Empire is on a quest to find oil in the Mediterranean Sea, under the orders of their new president Recep Tayip Erdogan. They have just recently sent out their first oil ship named “Osman” to do experimental drilling. The purpose of the drilling is to see what is in the waters near The Ottoman Empire and around the island of Cyprus. The country of Cyprus has complained but the European Union does not support them, and The Ottoman Empire ignores them. Half the crew on Osman is Ottoman and the rest are a mix of different foreign nationalities. Many of these Ottoman workers lack the English skills that are needed to communicate with the foreign workers. Therefore, they have created an English program on the ship and hired several English teachers to teach in the workers off hours. In this book I hope to tell you my tales of working and teaching English on The Ottoman Empire’s first oil ship: Osman.
Would you choose to be a foreigner, just like this handsome guy?
Being a foreign, can sometimes be a dangerous thing. In some countries it could Lead to depression, helplessness or death, so why would anyone want to be one?
You want to be unique!
Stop being just another umbrella in the crowd…
Just another boring white guy
In America I was just another white guy, that was until I went to a country with fewer white people.
Don’t open your mouth, or they’ll know you’re a foreigner!
There were also times in Norway and Poland where I felt unique, but I had to open my mouth for them to realize I wasn’t a Pole or Norwegian. There is something to be said about feeling unique, feeling useful or feeling important and being a foreigner can certainly bring about those feelings.
You want an affordable lifestyle!
Live an affordable lifestyle and become a goblin king!
Look at that receding hairline. Probably the result of all the stress and violence in the USA.
In America I worked one summer at a gas station. I made $2,200 a month and after taxes I got around $1,600. My cost of living was around $900 a month, as a single person living in Alaska (the third most expensive state in the US). Many countries out in the world have a much higher quality of life, due to the lower cost of living.
Lots of money. Something a goblin king might own.
In Istanbul I was living on an average of $381. In Saudi Arabia, I spend around $300 (It would be more, but my company pays for my rent). While in Poland my cost of living was about $500 a month. Another thing to note, as an American living abroad, you don’t owe any income taxes over the yearly threshold. The threshold for 2019 was $104,000.
You want true Freedom!
Ah, freedom. Something a lot of people like to talk about. Yet, few experience it.
With the money saved from the better qualify of life, it not only leads to freedom of time but also to the freedom of movement. By needing less money to pay for rent, food and transportation, a person can focus their time in other areas. This means they can work less, travel more, or work on skills and new career paths.
You want to take more risks!
*Clack, clack* Throw them dice!
If you are easily afraid, sitting on a comfy chair slowly mowing down your fingernails with your teeth. Then, perhaps you shouldn’t try to be a foreigner, or try to live abroad. It can be scary, taking a step across a border, or flying through the air, looking down and seeing a brand-new town.
“It sure looks scary out there.”
A town with nothing but strangers, unreadable language, and new sights and smells. Each time I have flown to a new state or country, the thought in my mind as I looked down at the new country through my airplane window has been “What am I doing?” Yet, one who never gambles, never tosses dice, only gets to live once, not thrice. I started my journey 6 years ago, and as I left New York City in 2014, I only had $2,500 in my bank account. Today I have over five times that and it is only continuing to grow. I don’t say that to brag, but to show what potential there is out there.
You want to diversify your life!
Nothing like drinking a different cup of coffee every morning!
“What are you doing today?”
“Nothing.”
If you are bored of the same people, the same races, the same faces and everyday bullshit. Then, why not diversify your life? Some days you will feel helpless, other days clueless but as you learn how to adapt to foreign cultures and situations, you will also improve your own situation. You are not a tree, you can move. You are not a rock and you can do more than roll! You were born in your country, but that doesn’t mean you have to die there. Why lie in your casket, with only an unfinished bucket list and lots of dreams that never became a reality? New languages, foods, men and women await! They are waiting to tell you their history, their traditions and most importantly. Their story.
Beautiful virus molecules, aren’t they colorful?
During COVID19, also known as Corona Virus, a lot of citizens are either under lock-down, or are being advised to stay indoors. Perhaps you are one of them, and are wondering what you can do to pass the time? I’ve gathered a list of 5 things, you can do that will make your life more productive while locked inside. Also, note that I am doing all 5 of these things and wouldn’t advise you to do something that I’m not doing.
1.) Exercise
Exercise is healthy for your body and also for your mental health.
Try to exercise once a day, if not more than once a day. You don’t need a bike, a gym or weights to exercise. You also don’t even need to go outside!
Every morning I pull 5 coins out of my wallet and put them on the table. Then throughout the day I work out and each time I do, I put a coin back in my wallet. I make sure to exercise at least 5 times a day. Now these are extremely short work outs that take 2-3 minutes to do.
I have two work out sessions and I rotate them each day.
Day 1: I do 40 push-ups and then I lift a 5 liter water jug 20 times. I filled one of my water jugs with tap water and I keep it in a corner and never drink it. This 5 liter jug of water can be used for a lot of different exercises.
Day 2: I do 10 sit ups, 30 bicycle crunches, 10 second leg raise (lie down, put your arms at your sides and lift your legs, then hold this position), then I do 30 ab twists (sit on the ground, put your hands together and then rotate quickly from the right and left side of your body) and then I finish it with a 30 second plank.
Both very simple and short exercise routines that anyone can do.
2.) Gain more knowledge
Einstein says imagination is more important than knowledge. That being said, it is still important.
Gain knowledge! you hear lots of people talk about knowledge all the time. There are memes about it, movies about it, as well as drunks in bars slurring words together about it.
What better time than being locked up in your house will you ever have to “gain more knowledge”?
Put that wine case or bottle of Jim Beam down, turn off whatever netflix show you are watching and get started!
Some of the simplest ways to gain knowledge:
1.) Read books
2.) www.google.com
3.) Youtube videos
I personally have been looking for knowledge in two areas and I’ve even created youtube playlists where I keep most of the information.
Investing:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLy8f0x3AC3M2NBBrLFUM98twh7VIYAlyC
I am planning to start investing each month this fall, so I am learning as much as I can about it. I started around February, so this playlist is a bit longer than the other one.
Space Research:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLy8f0x3AC3M0AtOdriy-uy8P48L1yvAtq
Not only do I love space in general, but I am also going to write a book series in the future, that has to do with science and outer space. I started this about 3 weeks ago. The book probably won’t get started until 2024 or 2025, but I am starting the research early.
3.) Improve or gain new skills
Skills can pay the bills.
Skills or hobbies are great things to hone or gain during this lockdown. If you have used the excuse, “I would love to do X but I don’t have time” well, now you do!
The skills I have been working on, are writing, editing, and advertising.
I am actually doing this all the time (and have been on schedule the past year or so), but I have even more time for it now. I have been testing social media advertisements, as well as writing a poem a week and editing my book that will be released late summer or early fall of this year.
4.) Create a routine
No one ever gained success by being spontaneous
With the stress of work, social obligations etc, sometimes it is hard to start a healthy lifestyle or routine. However, with no job or social opportunities, you now have the chance to start! Plan every day to get something done, then think of how you can continue this while managing friendships, work, and other things.
5.) Catch up with old friends
Talking to someone can be a great stress reliever
Sometimes, life happens and you can’t keep up with everyone. During Covid19, it can be possible to browse facebook and message those friends, 90% of which you probably just ignore. Why not send a message to one new person a day and see how they are doing? During covid19 I have skyped with a few friends and FB messaged a few as well. I haven’t done it as much as I should, but it is a start.
Stay safe and keep others safe!
Thank you for reading! Now make sure to stay safe, and protect others too. I will see you in next week’s blog :)
Sit down kid.
In today’s blog, I will introduce you to 10 annoying tourist/expat types I have met. They are annoying to me, perhaps you are one of them, or enjoy being around them. No offense taken, we all have different personalities and styles. These are in no particular order.
The explainer
We have all been introduced to the concept of the “mansplainer” quite recently. While abroad, the “explainers” are usually male but once in awhile they can be female too. They are usually aged 30+ and will tell you about things you aren’t even interested in, over explain a question, or force their own theory or life philosophy on you.
The camera champion
We all love photos don’t we? Not as much as this guy/girl. They take photos of everything. They often bring an expensive camera everywhere and take 100-500 pictures a day. It is as if they can’t enjoy a location or country without snapping 1000 shots.
The cultural copy cat
Look at these cute cats, which one do you think is the native and which one is the copy cat? The copy cat is on the left. They know everything about the country/culture, perhaps more than a native. They usually gain fluency quite rapidly and want to blend in with the country so far that it will be impossible to tell they aren’t originally from that country. There is nothing wrong with a little bit of pandering, but these copy cats have gone in deep. They will also try to make other expats feel bad that they haven’t gone as far as them.
The social Chameleon
These expats want to be friends with everyone, even if they are friends with two different groups who hate each other. They go to the extent of holding back their own opinion, just so that everyone will like them. This usually has a negative effect. as they are seen as being fake.
The History buff
There’s nothing wrong with loving history, I for one love it too. However, these “history buffs” take it to a whole new level. There is rarely a moment where they stop discussing the history of the country. They love going to historical sites, but that is not the only place where they flaunt their expertise. They will also mention people who visited or did different things at certain locations. Such as a restaurant, shop, district etc. There is no stopping them. Their talent is endless.
Nostalgic dude
In fact, I’ve never met a woman like this, so that’s why I call it “dude”. Usually they have lived in the country or visited it frequently over a course of 5-15 years. They have seen many changes and most of their conversations revolve around the past and how the country or city used to be. I have personally met a few who lived in a country for 5, 7, 14, and 20 years. While it is nice to learn about how the country used to be, at some point you have to move on from the past.
The political activist
I enjoy discussing politics, and I feel if you don’t then you are missing out. However, these activists come in two forms. A.) They find a way to fit politics into almost every conversation. B.) They bring their politics from the west and try to influence the said culture. Often, getting involved with protests, putting their life in harms way, or getting involved with politics that they have no business meddling with.
It’s hard to say which one is more annoying but both are wise to be avoided in my opinion.
The chronic complainer
Obviously, I am complaining in this blog post (in a way). I think it is ok to complain. No country is perfect (including yours). That being said, constantly complaining is annoying. Stop it! Stop right now!
The traveler
We all have our own styles. The traveler is no different. They spend little time in one place. When they visit a country or live in a country they visit as many cities and locations as possible. Spending almost no time there or really getting to know the area. For me, I am less annoyed at them and more sad for them. In my opinion they do not get to know a country or culture that well.
The ultra-mega optimist
“This country is perfect” they might say. In my experience, these people are usually married, engaged or have a boyfriend/girlfriend in the country. This kind of gives them a biased view towards the country, as they have a guide and a large group (the significant other’s family) who are hospitable towards them much longer than a normal tourist or expat would be experiencing hospitality. You can’t criticize the country in front of this person. Because the country “is perfect” and they will argue with you, letting you know how/why. In my experience, they aren’t always married or involved with some one romantically, but they usually are. It also worth noting that not all married/engaged expats in different countries are like this.
That’s it!
Thanks for reading! if you made it through the list, let me know what you think about these types of expats and if you agree/disagree with me on them. At times I have been one of these expats too! So of course we can’t judge too much.