2012.09.23 - Crabs

Giant humongous big crabs !!

Work work work - it takes a lot out of me these days as we are in a very stressful building period and the problems are just piling up. Meeting upon meeting and all the while the production runs ahead full steam .... it's difficult to make time to go onboard and when I do, I just come back with more questions than answers! The Yard must hate me by now.

One day I was so tired that I flexed one hour and lounged at the swimming pool for an extended lunch - I can't believe that I only discovered the benefit of this now - a few days before the pool closes !

I have promised my parents to post some photos from the ship we are building, but I now realize that I don't have any very interesting photos here at home. So I will just post two - one from earlier this month when we had first floating and one from the moonpool in the middle of the ship, through which all the drilling operations are carried out. Later I will post other photos that make more sense to most of you out there.

From the tandem floating - there are three vessels in the drydock - one ready for launching and two incomplete vessels. So they flood the drydock, float out one and leave the two incomplete vessels. After emptying the drydock, there was room for two new vessels (the one that left was a biggie - 13000teu containership). It is our ship on the left.

The moonpool. The workers are preparing to paint from the three cherry pickers. This job has to be completed before the drill floor can be erected, as the cherry pickers can't be lifted out otherwise.

On the positive side, I finally got around to inviting my inspectors out for dinner. I should have done this months ago but with three departments there is always one who is busy and finishing work late. Now we took ourselves time and went to the good old crab restaurant in Bangeojin - one which we have visited several times before with Lauritzen (my previous employer). It is still not the season for Korean king crabs so we had "to make do" with the Kamchatka king crabs. No problem - they taste amazing!

We've had a few typhoons passing through lately and this has had a negative effect on my biking. I missed a few weekends due to copious rainfall and strong winds (Paula realized that she didn't like strong wind - don't know how she survived 7 years in Denmark !). I made up for it by going night riding during the week two times, although the first one was a disaster when my chain broke before we reached the mountain. Second one was great though, as was todays ride (although my buddy Leif confused the days we had agreed on so I had to ride alone).

Paula has kept herself busy with cooking classes, painting (as usual) and a farewell lunch for Zoreh. She even started going to the gym with Agnieszka. If all these activities were the cause of her bad neck and back I don't know, but she has now been suffering for 4 days now. Or three because she was relatively pain-free yesterday, which we took advantage of by joining some of my colleagues for a BBQ at their rooftop in Bangeojin.

The girls at a cooking class

Lilia, Agnieszka, Sarah and Dawn

Maria took notes....

The cooking classes sponsor the local orphanage as did the disco beach party I went to last Friday (Paula was home with a sore back). I won the first prize in the raffle ... unfortunately it was a 1-night stay at the Hyundai hotel 400m from our home! So I donated it back to the orphanage.

Agnieszka at Zoreh's farewell lunch

Zoreh, Dawn, Kelly, Sarah, Nicola and AnneLin in our apartment

It was a fantastic lunch, I heard. There were no leftovers !!

Farewell or auf wiedersehen - Busan is only 1 hour away.

Peo shows solidarity!

Today I dragged her out despite the pain and I think it helped distracting her. I was supposed to go kite surfing but decided to stay with Paula instead. So we drove to Jinha beach to watch Michael have his first lesson. The wind was really good and it looked like a bundle of fun. can't wait until I get a chance to go!

After Michael had burned out we joined Micheal and Agnieszka for sea food lunch and then a coffee at Gangeolgot lighthouse - the eastern most point on the Korean peninsula.