All aboard !

Joining a working freight ship is a bit of a moveable feast as schedules are constantly changing due to weather, port delays, loading schedules, etc. My embarkation date was moved on Friday from today (Monday) to Tuesday as the Ital Contessa was then expected to leave Thamesport at 1600hrs tomorrow. Now I've just had a call from the travel agency to tell me that I need to board tonight at 2000hrs after all as the ship is due to sail early tomorrow morning so I've just cancelled my overnight hotel reservation in Chatham and am going to leave Tuffnell Park shortly to make my way down to Kent via London Victoria.

Yesterday was a very damp and grey day in London - we went for a walk around Victoria Embankment and the South Bank in a persistent drizzle so I'm looking forward to the southern hemisphere's summer ! Temperatures in Brisbane at the moment are apparently between 22 deg and 26 deg C, according to the BBC.

I suspect that this will be my last post for some time - when we leave Thamesport, our next stop is next Tuesday (25th November) in Port Said at the northern end of the Suez Canal (where I may be able to find an internet café) and then from there to Tanjung Pelepas in Malaysia, expecting to arrive there on Sunday 7th December. Ital Contessa's schedule may be seen here. While we are at sea, communications (as far as passengers are concerned) will be non-existent - the ship has VHF and satellite communications but they're not available for blogging !

More anon....

On the way at last

The journey has finally started ! I was fortunate enough to be able to scrounge a lift by HSS and car to London (thanks, Michael) so left home on Friday morning and reached London that evening. I departed with a mixture of emotions - it's an odd feeling to go away for such a long time as, although I will be home at the end of January for a brief spell, I feel that I really won't be living at home properly for almost another two years. One of this mixture of departing emotions was frustration - as part of my plans to keep in touch I had ordered a Dell mini laptop weeks and weeks ago. When I placed the order, I was quoted a ten day lead time which (if adhered to) would have meant having the machine about three weeks before my departure. However, that was only the start of it... delay followed delay and despite the best efforts of a friend of a friend who works in Dell, my neat little 1kg laptop failed to materialise before departure. Yesterday, I went into London's West End for a wander around and found myself in a Curry's store looking at a range of mini laptops wondering, will I or won't I ? Well, you can probably guess - I did and am now the proud owner of a new Advent 1gB RAM/120 gB hard drive mini laptop, almost as compact as the one I never got from Dell (and a good deal cheaper).

Of course, the real problem is going to be getting my money back from Dell as they've already processed my payment for a machine that I suspect they haven't even started to build yet.

Last night, I enjoyed a great meal with friends at the Prince Albert in Camden, one of the many great gastropubs in London(whole roast partridge for me). Gastropubs seem to be part of a development that hasn't really arrived properly in Dublin for some reason, but I believe that Vaughan's Eagle House (in Terenure) is changing all that and has been getting some great reviews recently.

Final details

Just as I was leaving home, I received a call from the travel agency that I have booked my freighter passage through to give me the latest information about my embarkation details. My ship, the Ital Contessa, is now due to arrive in Thamesport on Monday evening and depart at about 1600hrs on Tuesday afternoon. I'll probably find somewhere to stay on Monday night in Rochester or Chatham, near the Isle of Grain, ready for embarkation on Tuesday morning.

The final preparations

The last few days have been a bit hectic as I make the final preparations for departure on my big holiday trip. My tickets arrived this week and the travel agency has confirmed that my ship is on schedule to arrive in Thamesport early next week. I have now booked all my accommodation and transfers (I hope), researched how I am going to get from Tanjung Pelepas to Singapore, bought supplies of five different foreign currencies (which really makes you appreciate the convenience of living in the Eurozone), and completed most of the other things that need to be done before departure. However, there have also been some recent developments which have made the process even more rushed.

Some months ago, when it was apparent that I was going to be joining the ranks of the unemployed this summer, I started to consider what I was going to do next. I very quickly came to the conclusion that I didn't immediately want to start another job similar to the one I had just finished (especially in the multinational environment). One of the options that I considered was taking on some voluntary work and I went along one evening to an information evening run by VSO. VSO is an international development charity with a very high profile in the UK, but, due to the fact that they have only recently established an office in Ireland, have a lower profile here at the moment. Having attended the information evening and spoken to some friends who are returned volunteers from other agencies, I decided to go ahead and complete the long and detailed application form. Shortly afterwards, I was called to attend an interview and assessment day and a few days after that I was told that I had been selected and would be added to their database of available volunteers. Almost immediately (much to my surprise), I received a placement offer with a very thorough job brief, description of the workplace etc. which I had some time to consider before formally declaring my interest in accepting it. The challenging part is that the time between my return in January after my holiday trip and the start date of the placement is very short indeed, in fact much shorter than I had wanted so I will have only two weeks after getting home before departing again, this time probably for about 16 months (and during that two weeks I have to attend a five day pre-departure VSO training course). I will post more about the placement in due course but for the moment, you can do some homework on Wikipedia on the likely location by clicking here.

The prospect of this placement starting immediately after I returned meant that the bill for my vaccinations climbed substantially and my vaccination certificates now run well into two pages ! While I am now up to date on almost all my jabs, it appears that the vaccination for Japanese Encephalitis is currently unavailable in Ireland.

Last night I attended my last band rehearsal for some time (I have played in The Stedfast Band for many years) and was delighted to receive a most useful present of a Sony SSB radio from my friends in the band. Many thanks to all in Stedfast for their good wishes and generosity - keep practicing while I am away !

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