On Martial Arts Misadventures, Household Chaos, and Engine Room Ignorance
Martial Arts and Piggyback Monarchs
( A brief detour and fast forward in memories)
Twenty months later, when I finally returned home on leave, I promptly enrolled in a local Taekwondo academy. I attended classes religiously for a full month — until the instructor made us perform an exercise where we had to carry a partner on our shoulders for a full lap around the grounds.
First, I had to ride on the shoulders of my assigned partner, a tall, skinny Muslim teenager, with my legs wrapped firmly around his neck. The entire time he carried me, I was terrified he would trip, sending me crashing face-first into the dirt to break my nose and several bones. The poor boy was muttering curses the whole way, demanding to know why I was so heavy (I wasn’t — I was quite lean in those days) and why I couldn’t weigh a few kilos less. I held my breath and prayed silently to every deity I could recall, thanking both him and God profusely when he safely deposited me back on the ground after that nerve-wracking ride.
Then came my turn to carry him. I had expected a modest sense of shared suffering, but I found his attitude thoroughly irritating. He acted like a medieval king riding his prized stallion, enjoying the view and urging me to gallop faster to overtake the others. My knees buckled, my back screamed in agony, and that single exercise marked the abrupt end of my martial arts career.
The Clutter of Half-Baked Ambitions
I am, by nature, an enthusiastic starter but a terrible finisher. I throw myself into new projects with immense gusto and vigor, pursuing them passionately until the initial spark inevitably fades. I used to fool myself into thinking my seafaring career was to blame — that had I worked a land job, I would have followed through on every ambition. Meanwhile, my wife gets utterly exasperated by the steady accumulation of half-used, unused, and “intended-for-future-use” items cluttering our home.
To make matters worse, while my daughters inherited their mother’s good looks, they flatly refused to download her work ethic, enthusiasm, or active lifestyle. Instead, they downloaded the absolute latest, most upgraded version of my laziness, procrastination, and “just five more minutes of sleep” attitude. Their personal software package even came bundled with zero remorse, guilt, or sentimental reflection.
The Persistent Fly and the Teleporting Guitar
My younger daughter is relentless — much like a housefly on a sticky, humid summer day. No matter what you do, you can never stop a fly from landing on your sweaty forehead or upper lip to scrub its feet, nor can you silence its maddening buzz. Similarly, my daughter will not rest until you surrender to whatever her latest demand happens to be. She drives her mother to the brink of tears while I’m away at sea, offering remote advice over sketchy satellite calls to my wife not to fall for her emotional blackmail. Of course, the moment she gets what she wanted, her interest rarely lasts more than a few hours.
A brand-new packet of ‘Easy Slim’ tea sits gathering dust after a single teabag is consumed and abandoned.
On another occasion, she hounded me relentlessly until we toured multiple music shops and bought her an acoustic guitar. She attended exactly one lesson at the Mellowing Musical Institute before losing interest entirely. Since then, that ungainly, hideous instrument has developed a malicious habit of colonizing whatever spot you intend to relax in. If you want to sit on the sofa, it’s resting there; if you try to lie on the settee, it teleports there ahead of you. When you crash onto the bed at night, some survival instinct prompts you to check first — and sure enough, there it is, stretched out sideways across the mattress like a privileged guest.
I eventually managed to persuade a friend of my elder daughter to take the instrument off our hands. He promptly returned it a few days later — likely after his neighbors called the police, mistaking the horrific noise emanating from his apartment for a crime scene, when it was merely him attempting to play the sadistic device.
Since its unwanted return, the guitar has learned new tricks. It sits all day silently, but the moment midnight strikes, it tempts my younger daughter to strum its strings, clearly delighting in the noisy family arguments that follow between my wife, her brother, and the girls.
Short-Lived Passions and Morning Battlefields
Over the years, my younger daughter has cycled through short-lived passions with equal fervor: Karate (I paid for three months; she attended one day), Tennis (lasted one week), the Veena (which surprisingly survived a bit longer), and numerous others. Whenever we remind her of the small fortune wasted on these whims, she casually tells us to log every expense so she can repay us with interest once she enters the workforce.
My wife did manage to draw a firm line when it came to pets, successfully vetoing her demands for a puppy by temporarily distracting her with a rented baby chick, a tortoise, fish, or a rabbit.
My poor wife has to manage not one, but three chaotic personalities in our house. Both my daughters share a deeply held conviction that one should only wake up ten minutes before it is time to physically leave the building. Every morning is a scene of frantic panic: searching for missing towels, hair clips, blow-dryers, shampoo, black leggings, green tops, earrings, and finally, ID cards.
They blame their mother. She should have put in ‘more effort’ in waking them up.
The moment the girls leave for the day, the house resembles a fresh battlefield — clothes flung across furniture and household items scattered in total disarray. It routinely takes my wife two full hours just to restore sanity to the living room.
Back to Sea: Lessons in Morality and the Engine Room
(The Telegraph Incident — Back on track)
Be that as it may, once Pal departed, I set out to master the layout of the engine room. My primary mission for the night was simple: ensure I could navigate back to the ECR from any corner of the space without getting lost.
My watch partner, an elderly Muslim oiler, spent the first few hours lecturing me on moral character, proper conduct, and the societal evils of alcohol. After several hours of wandering through the lower plates, main engine platforms, and auxiliary spaces, I finally began to grasp the ship’s layout.
The Mysterious Case of the Missing Paper File
At 9 p.m., while I was enjoying a quiet cup of tea in the control room, the internal phone rang. I picked up the receiver.
“Good evening, ECR,” I answered professionally.
“This is the Chief Engineer. Who am I speaking to?”
“Sir, I am Girisam, the new 5/E,” I replied politely.
“Girisam, check and tell me the current position of the telegraph,” the C/E ordered.
I naively assumed “the telegraph” referred to some official document or paper cable file. I glanced around the desk, searched through logbooks, and told him I couldn’t see any telegraph anywhere in the office.
(For context: in maritime terms, a telegraph is the mechanical communication device used between the bridge and the engine room. In the movie Titanic, when the ship approaches the iceberg, the bridge officer pulls a large lever on a brass pedestal to alter speed. In the engine room below, a matching indicator bell rings continuously until the engineer on watch moves his corresponding lever to acknowledge the order and adjust the engine output accordingly.)
The C/E completely blew his top. “What?! Can’t you see the telegraph? Are you blind?! Put the oiler on the phone right now!” he roared before slamming the receiver down.
I hurriedly summoned the oiler and passed along the message. He picked up the line, informed the Chief Engineer that the telegraph lever was resting in the Finished with Engines position, hung up, and turned to me with a sympathetic look:
“The Chief wants you to report to his cabin immediately.”
Sweat was pouring down my neck as I walked up the alleyway and knocked on his door a few minutes later.
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