Terrible, terrible things

Kwuna (job 1)	New West. (job 2)	Quinsam (job 3)

I've been trying to get back aboard a ship since the end of November. Not that I love working aboard ships, but the money is good! Still, things weren't working out. I applied several times to the last place I worked but never got a call back. After three months of trying I sort of gave up hope. I figured I must have made a bad impression, despite all the attaboys I got when I was there. I began to think they must "attaboy" anyone they don't outright fire, despite my observations below.

Well, it turns out the reason they weren't responding was that they didn't have any ships in. Normally their schedule's pretty busy and this was an unusual lull. Wouldn't you know it, they called as soon as the next ship was in. Yay!

Also as it turns out, they only called back a dozen or so people (out of more than 75). So those kudos were sincere after all. Neat, and a nice ego boost.

The owner of the shipyard is a hands-on kinda guy, always poking around and watching what's going on like a hawk. A hard guy to please and even harder to get to know. Anyway, he seems to be trying to round out my resume. On his last ship I went from (comparatively) low-wage laborer to significantly higher-wage painter. I loved the raise. This guy watches everything and he's far more likely to give you a pink slip than a shot at learning something new, because there are a million guys standing in line behind you for the job. There's no reason to hang onto deadweight workers. Yesterday he came up to me and told me I'd be spending most of my time working with the engineer in this room. I told him I don't know mechanics from Meccano, but he said "you'll learn." Coming from this guy that's like hearing "I love you and I would like to give you every opportunity I can think of and, oh, here's a garbage bag full of money."

I'm feeling pretty stoked. :)

I should be kept busy on the Quinsam until April 7th. Rumor has it that two more boats are waiting for this one to pull out, so I might get lucky and work on one of them, too. Yeah, I'll be puttin' out on this one. I want him to call me back again.

Oh, the ship itself is an ugly piece of shit. Ask me if I care.