Friday, September 12, 2008
Farewell, Phil
Boat’s almost buttoned up and we are almost out of here. Finishing touches going on now. More on the Philippines, drydock, and the trip home once we arrive back in Chuuk. I’ll try to get a couple photos up as well. Thank you for checking in and hope to see you back in a couple of weeks.
Sunday, September 7, 2008
Getting Huffy
We’ve turned a corner on the boat. More stuff is going in than is being taken out. This means coatings: layers of paint, varnish, shellac, etc. to protect the new materials and construction inside and outside the boat. As you can imagine, salt water is a rather harsh environment, so this is a pretty important step, one they luckily don’t entrust to me directly.
I am still working around the process every day, though, which exposes me to the fumes. Today was paint and varnish day, with a top coat of paint on the upper hull, anti-fouling paint on the bottom, and varnish on the new beds, fixtures, and walls in some of the staterooms on the lower deck. In other words, very few places on the boat not being doused in something noxious.
As you may have guessed, the regulations regarding carbon chain polymers, resins, petroleum and acetate products, and basically anything designed to stick to anything else are not as stringent here in the Philippines as they are in the U.S. Good for lasting integrity of boat coatings,. Bad for brain cells.
Inhalants are branch of the psychotropic tree I have never stood on and bounced. I just think I would have trouble taking myself seriously while huffing gasoline or model airplane glue. Perhaps my disinterest in said substances never blossomed due to the fact that the makers of that gateway inhalant, Liquid Paper, shifted to a non-toxic formula when I was still in early grade school and we dealt with mistakes the old fashioned way, with the pink end of a number two pencil. Anyways, killing my brain cells fast enough that my body panics and releases endorphins because it thinks I am in critical danger and pain just never caught on with me.
Perhaps I have been cheating myself all these years. I was loopy as a loon today. Thank goodness for handrails or I might have walked right off the boat. I was doing finish carpentry, a job for which I am more woefully unskilled than painting even. I was reassembling the dining room, ‘mess’ in boat jargon. Oh so aptly named by the end of my day. When we took it apart, all the trim, molding, tongue and groove slatted walls, and finish pieces, we meticulously numbered and labeled them and stacked them neatly. Then, over the course of a month, we thrashed the room, moved everything five times, shuffled all the piles, and walked on more than a few of the pieces. I say this simply to give you an idea of the starting conditions.
Then add toxic fumes. Even though I was not working in an area directly exposed to them, every time the breeze shifted I started having trouble remembering my measurements on the way back and forth to the saw. Numbered boards were confused, misplaced, seemingly mislabeled. By lunch I was having trouble remembering how to use the saw. By the end of the day, I just didn’t care. You guys have got to come out to Chuuk if for no other reason than to start at one end of the mess and walk all the way around, taking in the progression of my work over the course of the day. It would be quite funny if it weren’t so, what’s the word? Permanent. With the windows newspapered to prevent overspray from the painter, it is nice and dark in the mess. As every college grad and bachelor with a touch of romance knows, mood lighting hides a lot of dirt and, in this case, poor carpentry. I am nervous about the inevitable unmasking.
That’s just me on the upper deck, too. There’s a lady who does staining and varnishing who spent all day in an enclosed room with the stuff, below decks. She just started working on our boat last week, as we began having fresh carpentry available for staining, and she struck me as being a little off. Something beyond the language barrier. Something in the way she babbled to anyone who came near her, and to herself if she was alone. Something to do with the way she zoned out while running the orbital sander back and forth over the same piece of wood for hours. Something about that demented, snaggletoothed cackle. Now I know! She’s pickled! And having a fine time of it too. Good for her, I say. I’m not condoning that you all go soak a rag in paint thinner and see for yourselves, mind you, I’m just saying that one man’s combustible propellant is another man’s livelihood is yet another man’s Saturday evening.
I am still working around the process every day, though, which exposes me to the fumes. Today was paint and varnish day, with a top coat of paint on the upper hull, anti-fouling paint on the bottom, and varnish on the new beds, fixtures, and walls in some of the staterooms on the lower deck. In other words, very few places on the boat not being doused in something noxious.
As you may have guessed, the regulations regarding carbon chain polymers, resins, petroleum and acetate products, and basically anything designed to stick to anything else are not as stringent here in the Philippines as they are in the U.S. Good for lasting integrity of boat coatings,. Bad for brain cells.
Inhalants are branch of the psychotropic tree I have never stood on and bounced. I just think I would have trouble taking myself seriously while huffing gasoline or model airplane glue. Perhaps my disinterest in said substances never blossomed due to the fact that the makers of that gateway inhalant, Liquid Paper, shifted to a non-toxic formula when I was still in early grade school and we dealt with mistakes the old fashioned way, with the pink end of a number two pencil. Anyways, killing my brain cells fast enough that my body panics and releases endorphins because it thinks I am in critical danger and pain just never caught on with me.
Perhaps I have been cheating myself all these years. I was loopy as a loon today. Thank goodness for handrails or I might have walked right off the boat. I was doing finish carpentry, a job for which I am more woefully unskilled than painting even. I was reassembling the dining room, ‘mess’ in boat jargon. Oh so aptly named by the end of my day. When we took it apart, all the trim, molding, tongue and groove slatted walls, and finish pieces, we meticulously numbered and labeled them and stacked them neatly. Then, over the course of a month, we thrashed the room, moved everything five times, shuffled all the piles, and walked on more than a few of the pieces. I say this simply to give you an idea of the starting conditions.
Then add toxic fumes. Even though I was not working in an area directly exposed to them, every time the breeze shifted I started having trouble remembering my measurements on the way back and forth to the saw. Numbered boards were confused, misplaced, seemingly mislabeled. By lunch I was having trouble remembering how to use the saw. By the end of the day, I just didn’t care. You guys have got to come out to Chuuk if for no other reason than to start at one end of the mess and walk all the way around, taking in the progression of my work over the course of the day. It would be quite funny if it weren’t so, what’s the word? Permanent. With the windows newspapered to prevent overspray from the painter, it is nice and dark in the mess. As every college grad and bachelor with a touch of romance knows, mood lighting hides a lot of dirt and, in this case, poor carpentry. I am nervous about the inevitable unmasking.
That’s just me on the upper deck, too. There’s a lady who does staining and varnishing who spent all day in an enclosed room with the stuff, below decks. She just started working on our boat last week, as we began having fresh carpentry available for staining, and she struck me as being a little off. Something beyond the language barrier. Something in the way she babbled to anyone who came near her, and to herself if she was alone. Something to do with the way she zoned out while running the orbital sander back and forth over the same piece of wood for hours. Something about that demented, snaggletoothed cackle. Now I know! She’s pickled! And having a fine time of it too. Good for her, I say. I’m not condoning that you all go soak a rag in paint thinner and see for yourselves, mind you, I’m just saying that one man’s combustible propellant is another man’s livelihood is yet another man’s Saturday evening.
Attention Blog Respondents
Hey, I noticed that you guys are leaving neat replies to my blog. I am most appreciative for your attention and participation. Internet traffic is really slow here, and for some reason it takes quite a while to check each blog entry, notice new replies, and pull them up. Unless you are eager to have your reply made public, which is, of course, fine, could I impose upon you to send your replies to my email address? I will be much more likely to notice them and it will also take less time to receive them. Thanks again for reading and responding, as it motivates me to dribble this stuff out of my head.
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
Portrait of Durian Green
One of Anthony Bourdain’s books has a story of his encounter with a fruit called the durian. It was such an odd description of what sounded like an odd food that it stuck in my head. His final conclusion was that he loved it, but it would be impossible to serve in the U.S. because there would be no way to ship or store it because it stinks so much. This, of course, from a man who eats congealed goat’s blood and cobra venom sacs.
Imagine my surprise and excitement when I passed by a whole passel of durians at the grocery store. I hiked up my skirt, asked the lady in the produce section to pick me a good one, gathered that she didn’t touch the stuff, and picked one out myself, going on…nothing.
Next came the adventure of getting it home. The durian is just plain dangerous. It is a medium green color, about a foot tall, eight inches in diameter, and would not look out of place on the end of a chain attached to a wooden handle in the hands of a medieval knight looking to stove in the helm of an armored opponent. That is to say, it is covered in small, hard, sharp spikes and is heavy enough that holding it pushes those spikes into a hand with enough weight to hurt. Pure murder on a plastic grocery bag, but better than an umbrella or walking stick any day to discourage would be muggers or aggressive wildlife.
Assuming that this thing would be better cold, I displaced some stuff in the fridge to make room for my new durian, which mainly meant moving beer around. I live with five guys. Got up early the next morning and went out to tackle this thing.
The knife provided to us in the apartment kitchen was simply not up to the task, partly, I’m sure, from Madison the Chuukese dive master using it to open cans of potted meat, but I doubt it was all that sharp to start. So, out with the new dive knife and into the durian.
From all the hype, I’d expected a worse stink once I finally got past the spikes and the tough skin to the pale yellow flesh. Though pungent, it was not off-putting. It smelled, I dunno, ripe? Like a mixture of freshly washed baby and banana just starting to turn brown, promise with a hint of danger echoing deep in the hippocampus. The meat, wrapped in segments around large, hard, khaki seeds, was firm yet yielding to the touch, like a mango in consistency.
Not knowing what else to do, I dove in. The taste was a strong combination of equal parts passion fruit, feet, the crust on top of the cream cheese, and my great grandfather’s basement. Somehow that description does not sound as tasty as the fruit was, but all those flavors were present. It was remarkable, memorable, delicious, nasty, and utterly unique, like eating foie gras. Not something you want to do every day, but a good experience and an exotic treat. Only Mike the Filipino and Madison would come near the thing. We put the durian down and then disposed of the skin and seeds as you would crab leftovers, sneaking them into a garbage can down the block as quickly as possible. What, you don’t throw stuff in your neighbor’s garbage? Now, to get the stink off my new dive knife. Apologies to Wilde on the title.
Imagine my surprise and excitement when I passed by a whole passel of durians at the grocery store. I hiked up my skirt, asked the lady in the produce section to pick me a good one, gathered that she didn’t touch the stuff, and picked one out myself, going on…nothing.
Next came the adventure of getting it home. The durian is just plain dangerous. It is a medium green color, about a foot tall, eight inches in diameter, and would not look out of place on the end of a chain attached to a wooden handle in the hands of a medieval knight looking to stove in the helm of an armored opponent. That is to say, it is covered in small, hard, sharp spikes and is heavy enough that holding it pushes those spikes into a hand with enough weight to hurt. Pure murder on a plastic grocery bag, but better than an umbrella or walking stick any day to discourage would be muggers or aggressive wildlife.
Assuming that this thing would be better cold, I displaced some stuff in the fridge to make room for my new durian, which mainly meant moving beer around. I live with five guys. Got up early the next morning and went out to tackle this thing.
The knife provided to us in the apartment kitchen was simply not up to the task, partly, I’m sure, from Madison the Chuukese dive master using it to open cans of potted meat, but I doubt it was all that sharp to start. So, out with the new dive knife and into the durian.
From all the hype, I’d expected a worse stink once I finally got past the spikes and the tough skin to the pale yellow flesh. Though pungent, it was not off-putting. It smelled, I dunno, ripe? Like a mixture of freshly washed baby and banana just starting to turn brown, promise with a hint of danger echoing deep in the hippocampus. The meat, wrapped in segments around large, hard, khaki seeds, was firm yet yielding to the touch, like a mango in consistency.
Not knowing what else to do, I dove in. The taste was a strong combination of equal parts passion fruit, feet, the crust on top of the cream cheese, and my great grandfather’s basement. Somehow that description does not sound as tasty as the fruit was, but all those flavors were present. It was remarkable, memorable, delicious, nasty, and utterly unique, like eating foie gras. Not something you want to do every day, but a good experience and an exotic treat. Only Mike the Filipino and Madison would come near the thing. We put the durian down and then disposed of the skin and seeds as you would crab leftovers, sneaking them into a garbage can down the block as quickly as possible. What, you don’t throw stuff in your neighbor’s garbage? Now, to get the stink off my new dive knife. Apologies to Wilde on the title.
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