luckily, i never really got hazed in high school. (and probably karmic-ly for that matter, i'm getting hazed as an adult; alcoholic consumption-wise) however, if i were to describe this past trip to bangkok, i'd do a first person narration ala 'kevin arnold' and start with me sitting on board the MT AULAC VENUS, in the mess room of a 15k+dwt chemical tanker, slumped over in the corner of the room filled with 11 vietnamese crew, chowin' chattin' and obviously talking about me; wondering who the hell was this kid on board their vessel. (imagine a freshmen in high school sitting at lunch next to the varsity football team....)...
FLASHBACK to the beginning....
as soon as i landed in bangkok @ 10am monday morning, the black mercedes van license plate 855, scooped me up and proceeded south. driver khun supchai, familiar with some of my colleagues, put in a dvd and let me chill out in the backseat of the over air conditioned vehicle. any sort of comfort at this point wasn't enough to calm the nerves on a last minute "makeshift" trip down to rayong. as i didn't know where i would be going at any juncture until an hour beforehand the entire trip.
maybe it's the way i present myself, and maybe it's that i look like a thai teenager (as pointed out by khun benz), but it definitely took a while for people at the terminal to get the gist that I, yes lil' ole me...was the charterer. why couldn't i be there? (<<~that was rhetorical) RAWR! after some paper work...and some hand shaking...and me flexing my american english....khun tipparat and the agent smoothed things over for me to board....(i was perplexed at DENIM UPON DENIM for every thai @ the terminal...until i was informed that was the uniform...frank woulda had a field day with the canadian tuxedo)
i arrived just as the mooring ropes were being hoisted. i took a slow drive around a clean compact scg plant before hopping on board and proceeded to meet the crew. after being rudely greeted by the master and led to my room, i scurriedly got my fingers pumping on my text messaging phone, sorted out some details and el jefe and proceeded to scour around the vsl. i'm sure the master was wary that i was on board to inspect the vsl, instructing the 3rd mate to chaperone me around at all times, but even after short friendly banter on the banter, i sent him back to his room to be left alone, free to roam.
china built, new and clean (as for now), the vsl seemed quite pleasing to be aboard as compared to some of the other shit vsls i've been on the past 12 months. but once the pipes were connected and things were going smoothly....i retreated back to my room, waiting for dinner....
my room, right next to the masters room, was quite a clean accomodation even with the laundry machine lodged in my personal bathroom (which is a luxury to say the least). i sat on the bed, twiddling my toes, writing in the diary, reading a bit, sms'ing a bit...and waited for dinner..
i don't eat rice. for whatever reason u'd like to believe. but i ate rice during that meal. this is a mans world. man's man industry (shipping, tanking, refining etc). one step out of the norm, u're bound to be castrated for homo tendencies. maybe i've just watched too many movies, but the skinny guy sitting across from me with his fu man chu moustache, and tumor like pimple with 3" hair streaming out of it seemed to have either a neck twitch or a polar affinity towards staring at me. his vietnamese cackle resembling that of rambo 2 movies shouting at unecessary decibels in the tiny room at the people across the room had me desparately searching for inferences that involved me. the other 2 guys to my left seated on the aluminum bench in white jumpsuits shifted their backs away from me as if for fear of outbreak. politely, i took my food, ate it at a decent pace, consciously timed my trips to get up and get utensils, another trip to get napkins and sat down drinking the vege/seafood soup, white rice, salty egg omlette and 4 pieces of boiled shrimp. how the vietnamese got by 100 years of war on this kind of diet, i have no clue. but it's a testament to their die hard resiliency to their cutthroat way of survival. if only they had the r&d know-how of the japs, think of how much they'd accel......shh...but don't tell them that, at least not until i get a piece of the pie =)
