Ну вот и все, дружок...

Этот пост я пишу уже в аэропорту - у меня пересадка по дороге домой. В аэропорту все очень странное: куча людей куда-то спешат, все суетятся и толкаются. И все незнакомые!!!! А знакомого - никого. Ведь совсем недавно, меня окружали только знакомые, свои, родные уже лица:

 Фотография всех участников третьей "ноги" нашей экспедиции (с) Шариф Миршак.

После возвращения из экспедиции какое-то время находишься в таком странном "междумирье", когда того, рейсового мира уже больше нет, а в "реальный" ты вроде как вернулся немного другим человеком. Потом все сглаживается и забывается. Постепенно вписываешься в свой привычный мир, постепенно забываешь тот волшебный другой, как будто и не было его вовсе, так приснилось что-то. 

Кто-то из новых экспедиционных знакомых переходит в разряд друзей, к ним потом ездишь в гости и вспоминаешь "минувшие дни". Кого-то потом изредка встречаешь на конференциях, тогда внезапно накатывают воспоминания и становится тепло-тепло где-то глубоко внутри. А кого-то вообще уже никогда не увидишь. Это с одной стороны обидно, а с другой стороны мы ведь там случайным образом все собрались. Главное чтобы те, из первой категории, остались близкими - они самые главные и их будет жалко растерять. 

У меня, кстати, тут родилась идея поехать в Париж на свой следующий день рождения. Так как экспедиция у нас была в большой степени европейская, то многие поддержали это мое начинание :). Одна девочка лучше всего сказала на прощание - ты как хочешь, а я еду в Париж в сентябре праздновать твой день рождения %). Чувствуется пора, наконец, выучить французский.

На самом деле я хотела что-то более толковое написать, но как-то не получается. Скоро уже объявляют посадку на мой самолет. Не знаю получится ли еще писать что-то в этом блоге - его главная ценность была в том, что я записывала все в реальном времени. Воспоминания о "минувших днях" придают другой оттенок. Но может я зря так думаю, пока ничего не обещаю. Главное фотку выложила :) Здравствуй, привычный мир! Такой чужой и незнакомый, хотя вроде бы всю жизнь в нем прожила...

A short update while still in port

Hello, everyone.

I haven't updated for a while, cause I was super busy trying to get ready. It is not easy in so many ways. I am also spreading myself way too thin trying to organize my own program while helping out my colleagues.

The ship was never meant to have a large science group like ours and even the small amounts of space they have have not been properly maintained. Science instruments the ship nominally has are mostly in a very bad condition. Again, cause there is nobody to take care of it and somehow when people do use them they don't clean up after themselves, don't drain salty water off to prevent rusting and so on. 

The crew for the most part are extremely accommodating, I have a lot of THANK YOUs to give and need to seriously stock up on thank you bottles and thank you cigarette packs ;). But unfortunately sometimes there is a limit on what they can do... The ship will not magically become bigger and the hold is not going to magically get an inside door.

The best word to describe the whole expedition is "opportunistic". I have to say this word worries me. It might result in good science, but most likely it will result in a lot of lost opportunities. Something we could have done along the way, but did not have enough preparation/planning to make it happen. Normally such cruises have a few years to prepare, this one was put together under an extremely tight schedule. Oh well...

NOTE TO MY FRIENDS AND FAMILY: Please don't be worried about safety, I am talking about lost science opportunities. We will be keeping as safe as we can in the Southern Ocean and I do have trust in the crew/operations people.

Another point I wanted to make is a language/cultural barrier. I tried to be really helpful to many-many people, but I am just one and somehow a lot of times I'm getting ignored by some important people, who should have listened. One thing I'm trying to explain over and over again is a cultural difference. In Russian culture we all grew up to answer NO to a question we don't quite understand/know how to answer. So my fellow colleagues and upper management have been getting a lot of unreasonable NOs. I can see how frustrating it can be, I just wish some of them would have taken my advise earlier. Knowing how to ask "but why" is a skill, which I have been offering to share for a few months now. However, I am a single person running my own science project, I can not solve too many issues at once. I could have solved a lot more early on. Another oh well... 

What I am trying to say I guess is this. On a Russian ship sometimes NO does mean NO, but sometimes NO can be negotiated to a YES under specific conditions. We can not risk the safety of people, but we are willingly going to the Southern Ocean to do science, so might as well try to negotiate getting the largest return possible. I am working really hard to make it happen.

On that note, I have to stop, cause we are leaving tomorrow and there's too many things to do.

Thanks for reading!
Masha

First impressions of Cape Town now and then

My grandfather's journal entry about Cape Town is anticlimactic. This was the first country he ever visited outside the USSR and one would imagine that he was overwhelmed. Plus, South Africa was in the midst of apartheid, it would have been a very different experience to visit it back then. Instead of listing his impressions or feelings, Vitaly admits being overwhelmed. I am not going to translate it word by word, but basically it sums up to my grandfather’s frustration with their ship’s “political leader (aka KGB officer)” who failed to send letters home. 

13 декабря 1959 года

Южный Ледовитый океан

Район 55 градусов южной широты

С большим опозданием и без всякого энтузиазма возвращаюсь я к этой тетради, в которую не заглядывал уже больше недели.

Посетили Кейптаун. Впечатлений масса… О них можно было бы писать десятки страниц, они многогранны и разнообразны, имеют и положительные и (ещё больше) отрицательные стороны словом первые впечатления от заграницы, да ещё такой кондовой капиталистической – оглушает. Другим словом я затрудняюсь определить этот комплекс впечатлений. Запомнилось масса деталей, куча интересных (по крайней мере на мой взгляд) подробностей как о городе и его окрестностях, которые мы видели при подъезде на мыс Доброй Надежды через весь полуостров, так и о населяющих город людях, их одежде, привычках, некоторых мыслях… Конечно все это (или часть хотя бы) надо было бы обязательно записать, потому что детали забудутся, а общее впечатление может исказиться. Первое впечатление всегда самое полное и интересное, что больше не повторится.

И все же не могу, не поднимается перо все это описать. Испорчено впечатление, отравлено настроение, подорвано доверие, испорченные сложившиеся хорошие отношения между людьми. А всё из-за одного мерзавца, испортившего настроение полутораста человекам из экспедиции и экипажа судна, доставившего беспокойство им и их близким.

A SIDE NOTE FROM  MASHA IN 2016:

Communicating with family and friends from outside of the USSR was extremely difficult. All letters were censored and nobody was allowed to send letters directly, only "official diplomatic channels" were used. The USSR had no diplomatic relationship with South Africa back in 1959, so my grandfather's letters had no embassy to go through. The "political leader/KGB officer" was supposed to talk to the Czechoslovakian embassy and have them mail the letters back to Moscow, but somehow this did not happen in December of 1959. Considering that Vitaly could only send letters home from ports (i.e. once in a few months if he was lucky), one can understand his frustration and lack of enthusiasm to continue writing in his journal, which he considered a "very long letter to family and friends".

***

This frustration got me thinking about the luxury of social media nowadays. The first thing I did in South Africa was obtain a sim-card with an extensive data plan (BIG THANK YOU TO MY FRIENDS! Sim-cards are not so easy to obtain for a foreigner in South Africa), which allows me to keep in touch with my family and friends all over the world. I send them pictures and notes about things I see, and it makes my experiences traveling around Cape Town so much more meaningful. And this is exactly what my grandfather was lacking. I feel so lucky! 

***
So not to leave this post similarly anticlimactic, I will write about some of my first impressions of Cape Town below. 

Flying into Cape Town I was completely smitten by Table Mountain: 

View of Cape Town and the gorgeous Table Mountain from my airplane window

Table mountain is everywhere:

My first trip to the beach with my new south african friends. 
Sunset beach provides great views of Table Mountain. The water was unexpectedly cold, reminded me of swimming in San Francisco bay without a wet suit. I basically ran in and ran out, just enough to mess up my hair ;).

So since Table Mountain was calling me from everywhere, naturally I had to go on top of it and look around:

This is the first view you see as you get off the cable car - featuring Lion's Head, Signal hill and parts of Cape Town city. The island you see off the bay is called Robben island the most infamous political prison in South Africa. This is where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned. The prison is now a museum.

This picture is taken looking just the west of the previous view. There are multiple hiking paths coming to the top of Table Mountain, something to keep in mind for the time my knee completely heals up. Devil's peak is the name of the neighboring mountain currently in the clouds - hiking Devil's peak has been the top one hiking recommendation from many friends. Next time!

This is a view due west from the top of Table Mountain, featuring 

Camps Bay suburb and beach - a very nice place by the looks of it.

 Looking south on a cloud-free day one can see the tip of the peninsula - Cape of Good Hope and Cape Point. It is somewhat obscured by clouds in my picture. That area is a national park, featuring magnificent views and many hiking trails of its own.

Table Mountain is dissected in the middle by a narrow canyon, this is where one the hiking trails, Patteklip Gorge comes up. 

I don't know the name of this flower, but it looked like a real trooper surviving high winds atop Table Mountain. 

There is a lot a lot more to describe and to see in Cape Town besides Table Mountain, but this post is getting too long as it is. I will write up a story about a drive to the Cape of Good Hope, but for now let me just show you a panoramic view from the top. Breathtaking:

Panoramic view from atop Table mountain overlooking Cape Town.

Thanks for reading!
Masha

Running around and trying to be more prepared

Hello,

I am in the middle of running around, getting ready to leave for more than three months. It is amazing to realize how much we rely on always staying connected nowadays. Always finding manuals, answers to error messages on various equipment, writing emails and messages to the loved ones and receiving their supportive answers. And streaming, don't forget all the streaming we do. I realized a few weeks ago that I don't have any music/movies downloaded anymore, I subscribe to Netflix, Amazon, Spotify, Pandora and various podcasts. All of it requires internet. I am surrounded by the web!

First of all, I want to say the biggest THANK YOU to my friends, who shared/downloaded their music and movies for me. Thanks to all of you, I now have a small music and movie library that will keep me going during my downtime on the ship. I mean I'm not sure how much downtime I will have, but it is good to be prepared. And also a big THANK YOU to those who helped me deal with multiple software issues. I really appreciate your time!

Secondly, I am amazed at the amount of information I downloaded over the last few weeks. Various manuals for equipment/procedures on board; many-many libraries for Python (and I'm sure I forgot a lot and will suffer because of that ;). Datasets. Again, hard to predict how much time I will have to write meaningful code and process data, but I need to think in advance and be prepared. Related to this notion of being prepared and learning about equipment failure the hard way, I am buying spare cables, connectors and everything to take on the ship with me. Things break. Somehow this concept is very hard for me to process in my normal life, so the Universe has been sending me hints in advance. First, my laptop died while I was in Germany. Then my car died as I was planing to drive to the office upon my return. So things break - I accept it now. And there's no Amazon prime to the rescue. All I can do is to prepare as much as I can now and to learn to be creative/ to live without this piece of equipment while on the ship.

My post is very indicative of what my life is right now - I'm constantly making lists, prioritizing tasks and trying to squeeze too many things into an hour, a day, a week. And e-mails! I'm writing and replying to way too many e-mails. I'm really glad that I started reading my grandfather's journal, I can totally relate to the atmosphere he describes, even though he did not know about e-mails, cell-phones and such. Here's a quote from his first entry:

Борт дизель электрохода "Обь". 

16 ноября 1959г. 

Северное море 

Вряд ли стоит теперь восстанавливать в памяти суматошную и безалаберную атмосферу подготовки к отъезду в экспедицию,в которую мы попали сразу по приезду в Ленинград. От всего этого промежутка времени (начиная с 30 октября) осталось тяжелое впечатление бессмысленной неразберихи, нераспорядительности и безответственности начальства. Только большое желание и добрый характер подавляющего большинства участников экспедиции так называемый "трудовой энтузиазм" позволили все это преодолеть.

Wish me luck and "трудовой энтузиазм"

Masha

PS
Let me know if google can handle non-translated quotes...