Sky_Pirate
Today I went sailing on Stan's friend's ship, the Naiad. I'm told it's a Norse word for 'Water Nymph'. The vessel is ten feet long and had a crew of myself (ballast), Michael (assistant director from work, also ballast), Stan (from work - jig controller-guy), Sarah (mysterious girl who did things with ropes), Liz (the captain for the day), Liz' husband (the usual captain who was watching over Liz to make sure nothing exploded), and their daughter, whose name I never caught, who did something else, maybe navigation, I'm not sure.
The wind was strong and the skies overcast, but the day was good. The water temperature was also quiet pleasing, as I discovered about half an hour in to the race when I partially fell in to it.
It started off very well. As we pulled away from the vessels permanent dock in the marina, a pod of three dolphins came up and started playing. Unfortunately, I didn't have my camera - I was worried about it getting wet (a good fear as it turned out) and didn't have it on me.
My job on the boat was essentially to counterbalance the boat whenever it tacked. We were sailing in to the wind for the first part of the race. I was surprised by how much speed the boat was able to pick up even when sailing in to the wind. To do it, the captain had to zig-zag the boat every two or three minutes. At this point, I had to hop from one side of the boat, over the cabin, and down to the other side, whilst avoiding the bottom of the sail from smashing my skull into little mush pieces. As you can tell be the fact I am writing here without some impairment, I managed to escape without having splinters of skull liquifying my precious brain meats.
However, this did happen - one time I was too slow to get across and the boat had tipped up to somewhere between 65-70 degree angle. I was mid-clamber across and didn't have any hand holds, so instead I just fell. I managed to grab one of the wooden railings on the cabin as I dropped and so I only thigh deep in to the water. I needed help to get pulled back on board because my clothes were suddenly waterlogged and too heavy for me to get back on after having gone to the gym the night before >.>;; Luckily Michael-ballast-assistant was in easy reach of me and we proceeded on without further trouble. I scraped my left shin considerably on the toe rail. After about five minutes of pathetic whimpering the pain went away. Historically I don't tend to bruise at all, so I won't have anything to show off, but later Stan took a photo of the cuts. Then we all traded horror stories of injuries. I think the worst was Stan's son Stefan, who had fallen and dislocated his knee as well as taking off huge amounts of skin, ow.
Aside from this minor thing, the day was actually a lot of fun. I'd recommend it to anybody. Afterwards, we all had dinner at the yacht house. I don't know if I will do it every Wednesday night, but I will definately try it again.
Yesterday, Ben and I had a great conversation on our tea break. It started out with me complaining about the task Shraga had given me, but then Ben gave me a startling revelation: The reason I am doing this research is because nobody has done it before. The AFP couldn't tell me anything, not because it was secret, but because the information simply didn't exist. This was encouraging!
Ben: "Nobody has done anything like this before. So, if you get it wrong, nobody will know."
I can't argue with that logic.
From there, we talked about the future of the human race. What will humanity look like in ten billion years time? We agreed that the first race would be to find a way to make humanity independant of this rock we call Earth. I reckon we can make it. But first we have to resolve the problem of people currently having to eat mud cookies. I had this same conversation with three different people in the last week - Bosco at the Vietnamese New Year, Sarah over the weekend, and now Ben.
So, here's a question for you - if you could live forever, in your preferred state (so for me anywhere from 22-now seems good), would you do it? Some people say to me, no, they would get bored. Others say that without some kind of time limit, the value of life would be diminished. Others say that they want to experience the whole range of human feelings, including growing old and death. Others say, they want to know what comes next.
Me? Hell no. I'm going to live forever. I could live for eternity and still not experienced everything I wanted to.
What about you?
The wind was strong and the skies overcast, but the day was good. The water temperature was also quiet pleasing, as I discovered about half an hour in to the race when I partially fell in to it.
It started off very well. As we pulled away from the vessels permanent dock in the marina, a pod of three dolphins came up and started playing. Unfortunately, I didn't have my camera - I was worried about it getting wet (a good fear as it turned out) and didn't have it on me.
My job on the boat was essentially to counterbalance the boat whenever it tacked. We were sailing in to the wind for the first part of the race. I was surprised by how much speed the boat was able to pick up even when sailing in to the wind. To do it, the captain had to zig-zag the boat every two or three minutes. At this point, I had to hop from one side of the boat, over the cabin, and down to the other side, whilst avoiding the bottom of the sail from smashing my skull into little mush pieces. As you can tell be the fact I am writing here without some impairment, I managed to escape without having splinters of skull liquifying my precious brain meats.
However, this did happen - one time I was too slow to get across and the boat had tipped up to somewhere between 65-70 degree angle. I was mid-clamber across and didn't have any hand holds, so instead I just fell. I managed to grab one of the wooden railings on the cabin as I dropped and so I only thigh deep in to the water. I needed help to get pulled back on board because my clothes were suddenly waterlogged and too heavy for me to get back on after having gone to the gym the night before >.>;; Luckily Michael-ballast-assistant was in easy reach of me and we proceeded on without further trouble. I scraped my left shin considerably on the toe rail. After about five minutes of pathetic whimpering the pain went away. Historically I don't tend to bruise at all, so I won't have anything to show off, but later Stan took a photo of the cuts. Then we all traded horror stories of injuries. I think the worst was Stan's son Stefan, who had fallen and dislocated his knee as well as taking off huge amounts of skin, ow.
Aside from this minor thing, the day was actually a lot of fun. I'd recommend it to anybody. Afterwards, we all had dinner at the yacht house. I don't know if I will do it every Wednesday night, but I will definately try it again.
Yesterday, Ben and I had a great conversation on our tea break. It started out with me complaining about the task Shraga had given me, but then Ben gave me a startling revelation: The reason I am doing this research is because nobody has done it before. The AFP couldn't tell me anything, not because it was secret, but because the information simply didn't exist. This was encouraging!
Ben: "Nobody has done anything like this before. So, if you get it wrong, nobody will know."
I can't argue with that logic.
From there, we talked about the future of the human race. What will humanity look like in ten billion years time? We agreed that the first race would be to find a way to make humanity independant of this rock we call Earth. I reckon we can make it. But first we have to resolve the problem of people currently having to eat mud cookies. I had this same conversation with three different people in the last week - Bosco at the Vietnamese New Year, Sarah over the weekend, and now Ben.
So, here's a question for you - if you could live forever, in your preferred state (so for me anywhere from 22-now seems good), would you do it? Some people say to me, no, they would get bored. Others say that without some kind of time limit, the value of life would be diminished. Others say that they want to experience the whole range of human feelings, including growing old and death. Others say, they want to know what comes next.
Me? Hell no. I'm going to live forever. I could live for eternity and still not experienced everything I wanted to.
What about you?
Basically I look at it the same as you. There's a lot to do and learn in life and doing one thing leads to three other possibilities. I doubt I could ever get bored with life.
Posted by
Proven Paradox |
February 7, 2008 at 10:02 AM