satisfying my inner ship geek

i've been in copenhagen for a few wonderful days. i was working with some of the most creative people in denmark and i get to keep doing so! what more could a girl ask? a little walk along the quayside at nordhavn. i encountered this rather rusty barge and remembered all the beauty of rusty metal. in all, a very wonderful few days. 

random guys take ephesus seaways!

 i absolutely love that my former company made this happen:

seriously worth watching!

history is a matter of perspective

the angle taken by a museum is very often through the lens of where it's located. we went to the maritime museum in barcelona yesterday. since i'm currently writing about the long voyage from amsterdam to the cape in 1723, i'm very keen on learning i can about what ships and life on ships were like back then. i didn't exactly learn that at the maritime museum in barcelona.

it was a beautiful building, almost danish in its skillful combination of old and new architecture. the main feature was a 60-meter long replica of a galley, an oared warship, made to fight the ottomans in the mediterannean in the 1500s. those oarsmen were slaves and did not have a good life. the captain, however, did, with fine inlaid wood floors and art up in the quarters on the stern, from which he dictated the battle. it was elaborately decorated with both painting and carved reliefs. there was a medusa's head on the back, to strike terror in all who approached from the back. the figurehead was a beautiful carved neptune, riding a fish and covered in gold leaf, showing undoubted dominion over the sea.

it was a confusing exhibition, and hard to find the way through to see all of the exhibits. we finally did, but not in the right order of things and it did get a bit hazy as they leaped from those mediterranean incursions to trade with the americas. because they were focused on ships built in barcelona and the catalonian sailor in general, they skimmed over that whole thing with the spaniard columbus and his role in accidentally discovering the new world when he tried to find a new passage to india, undoubtedly because the spaniards couldn't keep up with the portugese and dutch on their well-established routes around the cape to the far east. (phew, that was a long sentence.)

there were displays about the trade with the new world and the goods that went back and forth - sugar, cotton, tobacco and yes, they even mentioned the slave trade. i think they handled it well. you stepped into a little room, where the walls were covered with official documents regarding the slave trade, and a whispered voice said that it was an ugly bit of history that no one really wished to talk about, but it needed to be done, and it was a dark time for humanity. those plantations in the american south could do with a bit of inspiration there.

and it all had me thinking, once again, about how history and how the story is told, is a matter of who is telling the story. maybe i need to head to amsterdam to hear their perspective, they must have a maritime museum there.

ghost ship

photo from the Irish Times article

i'm a bit obsessed with the story of the M/V Alta, a ghost ship that washed up on a remote shore in ireland after last weekend's storm dennis. it was unmanned and had been abandoned and floating derelict in the atlantic for 17 months. it's 77 meters long, built in 1976 and last registered to an unknown company under tanzanian flag. its last voyage was said to be from greece to haiti, which seems a strange route. it had some kind of irreparable engine failure somewhere off bermuda and the 10-person crew (i cannot find any info about the nationality of said crew) first had supplies air-lifted to them and then was rescued by the US coast guard ahead of an oncoming hurricane in september 2018. the owner was supposed to tow the ship somewhere for repairs, but it seems that never happened. there are rumors that it was being towed to guyana when it was hijacked and then left to drift again. none of the reports mention what cargo was onboard at its abandonment, nor have i been able to learn the nationalities of the crew. it's all very mysterious. the last sighting of the ship was by a british navy vessel at some undisclosed location last august-september (they're very cagey about precisely when and where). in a couple of the articles, it was mentioned that it was sighted off africa and spain (possibly out near the azores or canaries?) in recent months. it must have been caught in the gulf stream and carried north. another article i read suggested it went north along the US coast and then crossed the Atlantic from higher up.

the other night at the bar, an old maersk captain came in and i asked him what he thought about it. he immediately grinned and said, "it's the flying dutchman!" - the legendary ghost ship! he also said that such vessels are not at all unusual. some nefarious character picks up a ship for cheap, hauls one illicit cargo - drugs, weapons, supplies that are under embargo, etc. - and then abandons the ship. it would stand to reason that sailing between greece and haiti, it could have had some unusual cargo on board, as that doesn't seem like a normal trade route. but, i wonder what happened to that cargo? perhaps the reports of the ship being towed to guyana are actually a rendezvous with another ship that offloaded the cargo and sailed off with it, leaving the ship.

it seems strange that the owner is so hard to trace and strangely enough, an owner seems to have presented themselves to the irish authorities and was awaiting verification. that could be anyone, wanting a ship - that was my brother-in-law's first idea, that we should claim it and then we'd have a ship - a 44-year-old ship that had been abandoned and drifting for a year and a half. when i showed the maersk captain the picture, he said, it was a "russer" - at least built in russia, just by looking at it. i haven't read that, but it could be. none of the articles have talked about earlier names or owners through the years, but there must have been many. i just can't stop thinking about it. there must be more to the story. so many unanswered questions.

if it was a nefarious owner, wanting to use it for one illicit cargo, i imagine the crew was filipino and i wonder what their fate was - how did they get back home if the owner had abandoned them and the ship? and what about the cargo? they hadn't yet reached their destination when they broke down, so there had to be a cargo on board. i'm imagining all kinds of stories for this! maybe i need to work in such a storyline to our story. we have lumke's voyage in 1723 and a contemporary voyage - hmmm, how to connect them? or is this a whole new story? i was always fascinated by the kursk sinking as well and voraciously read everything about that back when it happened. if you told that story, you'd want them to be rescued though, as the ending there wasn't a good one for everyone on board. that was in putin's early days and he didn't handle that very well - he handled it like a KGB agent, not a leader.

but, back to the alta. what was it that broke down and couldn't be fixed? were there no spares on board, so the crew couldn't get it running again, or was it a cheap, third-rate crew that didn't have the know-how? the owner, wanting it for just the one voyage, didn't plan on needing to repair it. anyway, it's all very interesting and would be a story worth telling - even if i have to make up most of the details.

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new information from marine traffic - it was panama flag, not tanzania. and there is a list of the names the ship has had...

very weird with a norwegian flag and name after the alta name...this story is so very curious.

wait! more from marine traffic: "She was also in the news in 1983 when she sank off Norway. Raised and repaired she continued trading." this story gets better and better!

bittersweet ending

i made a short journey yesterday in a truck. it's the last journey that "my" lego ship will ever make. after three long years, thousands of kilometers traveled on the wheels of the curtain-side trailer beneath her, she's going to be dismantled, her bricks going to a good cause. when she wasn't being pulled by a truck, she traveled by ferry and rail. she visited the far corners of europe, from istanbul and italy in the south, to estonia, latvia and lithuania in the east to norway in the north. she was seen by crowds of people on trafalgar square in london, in front of the european parliament in brussels and near the brandenburg gate in berlin. and i was with her pretty much the whole way. probably the crowd i remember best was on a glorious, sunny autumn day in klaipeda - there were balloons, music playing and children looking on in wonder. that was just over three years ago.

but even as i write this, she's being broken down. i don't have the heart to go down and witness it. the fans at the lego fan weekend in the little town of skærbæk will have the chance to buy her bricks that aren't glued, by the kilo, and some of the cars and one of the lifeboats will be auctioned for a good cause - fairy bricks - an organization that gives lego sets to children who are hospitalized. the bricks that are glued, which is about half of them, will be recycled by lego themselves, and turned back into lego bricks that will go into sets and have a new life with children all over the world. that makes me happy.

this is probably the project i'm most proud to have been part of in my working life. the seed of the idea was one i presented in my job interview and it became so much more in collaboration with the ideas of the amazing creative people i worked with. and it was such a privilege to see it come to fruition beyond my wildest dreams. so i feel sad that it's really truly over now, but so happy that the ending is such a worthy one that will bring joy to so many, who may not even know the source of the joy, but who will undoubtedly feel it. goodbye, jubilee, you were amazing.

a fresh start

i spent most of july on a freight ferry. now, i've been on freight ferries before, usually with a film crew in tow, but this time was different. this time, i was a member of the crew. lowest on the totem pole - but i finally got that elusive title that i'd never had - stewardess. or the very elevated "ship owner's assistant," that they tried to upgrade the title to at some point along the way. but that doesn't hide that the job consists of cleaning cabins and helping in the mess with dishes and such.

you might be thinking, "are you completely crazy? why would you do a job like that?" but, i can tell you that it was so good for me. after the past few tumultuous months, realizing the new job i took in january wasn't at all what they promised and that the guy at the helm was quite likely a ruthless psychopath, add to that my mother's death, and my only child's impending move to arizona, i needed to do something completely different. something where the only thing that mattered was the routine and where i wouldn't get embroiled in any foolish office politics. to be a place where i'd have plenty of time to think, listen to podcasts and stare out at the sea and maybe write a bit and find my way back to myself. and so, for two weeks, i sailed between gothenburg and ghent with a stop once a week in norway and then the final week, we sailed between gothenburg and immingham on the humber river in the uk, also with the stop in brevik. and just look at the fjord up to brevik, it's stunning:

i fell into the rhythms of the journey. up at 6, working until 1 or 1:30, a break until 4, then working again until 7 or so. long days, but i went to bed tired from physical work that somehow seems more honest than the kind of tired you get from sitting in front of a computer all day or gossiping with colleagues around the coffee machine. when the weather was fine, i sat out on the top deck during my breaks, reading a book or writing. i wrote a daily diary entry while i was on board and it felt good to be writing regularly again, even if it much of it was boring drivel. it's something i want to get back to and there's no reason not to do it right here.

i was heartened by a recent post on exactly this over topic on pret a voyager. a blog is the perfect place to do daily writing, and even though blogging has changed dramatically over the years, i was always doing this primarily for me anyway. i just somehow let it slip away from me and i got out of the habit. and when i really think about it, i miss figuring out what i think about the world through blogging. so i'm going to make a daily practice again. starting right here and now.

catalog of a day :: the natural order of things

my child is in new york city. she bought me a stick of the milk holographic highlighter, it's hard to find, but she found it at urban outfitters. you can never have too much highlighter. i spent the day at a shipyard. it was full of the acrid smell of welding, containers filled with piping, miles of wires, the clang of metal on metal and beeping cranes. i loved every minute of it. it's raining. i'm watching billions on hbo nordic. and drinking a g&t, made with...wait for it...belgian...gin. it's not bad. it's nice to be home with the cats. and husband (tho' he's at a meeting, so technically, he's not home right now.) if the photo above were a loft you could live in, i'd move there. instead, it's the upper deck of a ship that will be delivered in may. they have a bit more work to do. but look at that light. and that height to the ceiling. i could deal with both of those. tho' i'd probably need glass in the windows. i can't get enough of the marvelous vinyl café. today on the way home, husband laughed so hard at the story about the carwash that he cried and could almost not see to drive. i went to yoga three times this week. the light is returning. i am in the final days of my 40s and honestly, it feels fine. like the natural order of things.

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interesting things to read: 11 non-political stories. this terrifying piece on trump's puppetmaster's plan to destroy the eu. and because you'll need to think about something light-hearted after reading that - this piece on the locations of 80s movies. and this totally amusing piece on (possibly) the world's smallest lego ship.

two grand old ladies meet

this grand lady is 27 years old. while it would be nice to be that young again from my perspective, it's pretty old for a ship, but she's in beautiful shape and carries 1800 pax daily between oslo and copenhagen. and i was standing quayside with camera in hand this beautiful winter morning in copenhagen - just a couple of grand old ladies, meeting at the docks.

photography lately

summer in dry dock

i got to spend a good chunk of my summer at a shipyard. i know it sounds weird, but i love shipyards. ships on an ordinary day are cool, but in a dry dock, when you can stand underneath and take in the immensity of them, that's the best. in a dry dock those over-dimensioned hunks of steel are somehow just....well....sexy. even when they're cut in half, covered in scaffolding and exuding the acrid scent of welding. even in the rain. even at 4:30 a.m.

you can see what i was working on at the shipyard here and here.  and there's more to come, so why don't you subscribe while you're over there? and watch this video too, it's a really cool time lapse (that was made before my time). we'll have to arrange a new one now that the ship will be 30 meters longer.

a to å challenge: a is for awesome

it's a bit predictable, i realize, me, saying things are awesome. everything is awesome, as they sang in the lego movie. and things were awesome in those days (2014), then late in 2014, things got less awesome when they (read: an uncommunicative, short-sighted middle manager with no vision who had only worked in lego in all his life and never had any other job) decided to do away with my awesome job. and then my father died. and then i worked for the lego.com team (which was decidedly not an awesome place) as a freelancer (can you say incompent psychopath at the helm?). but then, in august 2015, i decided to listen to what my fatalist presbyterian soul was telling me and look for something else. and that something else led to me awesome job back in shipping. a job where i'm using all those skills i honed right here on mpc - writing and photography and generally being creative. things really couldn't be better. in the next week, i'll spend a couple of days in a creative workshop on a ship, then i'll fly to london and spend a couple more days sailing back and forth on the english channel on another ship (or two) taking photos and then head home. it's hard to imagine that life could be any better. so for now, everything really is awesome. and i'm definitely well on the road to healed (and wiser) from the wounds inflicted by my lego experience.

i have to thank my awesome friend amy from tilting at windmills for tipping me off to this little blog challenge. because goodness knows, i'm a girl in need of an assignment.

*this is really supposed to be the #atozchallenge, but here in denmark, the alphabet ends in å, so i'm gonna go native.

nordic blue is my color

i took this photo yesterday evening from the bridge of pearl seaways. the waning wintery light was really that blue in the calm, gorgeous oslo fjord (this photo is SOOC). the bridge was dark and oh-so-calm. i had a great conversation with the captain, who was alone on the bridge, while everyone else ate dinner. it was a little bit like the kind of zen moment that yoga has given me of late. a calm, easy, yet meaningful, deep conversation after a very busy day, full of so much goodness, but also non-stop and stressful in its own way, filled up my heart and my energy reserves. namaste.

a new happiness wardrobe or is it the happiness of a new wardrobe?

i did not buy all these dresses, but i wanted to. i do have some restraint. but at the same time, i am working in the more dressed-up world of shipping again and i needed some new work clothes. my old shipping wardrobe had been hanging in the closet for ages and was pretty out-of-date and just didn't feel like me anymore. i'm a different person now than i was then. and this person needed some new clothes.

i've been drawn to navy blue for awhile now, i think it's since i picked navy blue glasses about a year go. slowly, i've added blue items to my wardrobe. today, i went in to my current favorite store (COS, which is H&M's answer to banana republic) to have them remove the anti-theft device they forgot to remove from a necklace i bought the last time and there were new styles in the store. and frankly, i couldn't resist them. black isn't far from navy blue, but everyone needs a good little black dress and the cut of this dress? swoon! and to push myself out of the blue rut, i grabbed the mustard dress (those pockets are dark blue in reality, tho' they look black in this instagram photo, so there's still a bit of navy) and made myself try it. it didn't look like much on the hanger, but i fell in love with it. i didn't fall in love with the one in the middle, so it stayed in the store, but i did like the burgundy, pink and navy combo.

i think best of all, i realize in looking at these photos, snapped in a dressing room mirror, that i look happy again. and feel worthy of pretty new clothes. it's been far too long since that happened. i think it might have something to do with all those ships.

taking pictures of ships

did i mention that my molecules are humming in alignment these days? i think it's probably mostly because i get to take pictures of ships. for a living. is there anything more a girl from the prairie could ask?

more soon. it's been busy and i'm spending the evening eating sushi with sabin and watching a webinar with lea thau (of the fabulous podcast strangers) about storytelling.

ship shape

tho' i'd love to have stayed at the shipyard forever, it is nice to be home. standing outside, filming the painting of the ship for several days did not improve my cough. but seriously, a shipyard is a fantastic place. there are not really any weekends or even nights - there are people working flat out on the ship around the clock - working to meet the deadline for when the ship has to go back into service. it's not really that different than shipping in general - ships run around the clock, not really cognizant of weekends  or holidays - arriving in ports, moving cargo, taking people and cars back and forth like clockwork, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. it's really the industry making the world go around and yet it's rather invisible to us as we make our way through shops, buying new clothes, picking up bananas or avocados or wine, never thinking about how all of those things got to us. well, usually, some link in how they got here is via a ship.

i had been out to the big shipyards in busan, south korea before, but i hadn't really been at a repair yard and not to a dry docking. there's something amazing about the way they line up the supports before backing the ship into the dock and then drain it slowly of water, gently setting the ship down precisely on the heavy steel and wood supports. it's amazing that a 40,000+ ton ship is balancing so precisely on so little. and yet it does. and there are hundreds of people moving in and around the ship all day long and it doesn't budge. it's quite awe-inspiring. and all the while, the ship is functioning as a hotel as well, with nearly 100 staff, and another 100 or so contractors staying and eating onboard on a daily basis. what an operation! what a privilege to get to be a part of it! i'll be sharing what we were doing there in the coming days as we release the content. i'm pretty excited about the work we did. 

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the danish concept of hygge will get you through winter with your sanity intact.

at least that's what wired thinks.

i'm inclined to light a few candles and agree.

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interesting photos (tho' they're in that crappy HDR that i loathe) of the inside of the costa concordia.

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finally, some substantial critique of the mindfulness movement.

just when i needed it most

you know that thing where you spend time with precisely the people you need to spend time with? and they just lift you up and make you recognize yourself again (even tho' they themselves are totally different). and you can't feel other than grateful. and a little bit your old self again. and by you, i mean me. and me? i'm settling back into myself. finding comfort there again, after far too long.

geeking out at a shipyard

so much to write about (after a long, dry spell, i've got a ton of notes in my little bloggy notebook), but my connection is a bit iffy and they're going to black out the starboard side of the ship to change some breakers, so these photos of the fabulous remontowa shipyard in gdansk will have to suffice for now. this is from the back deck, tenth story of our ship.

and a view in the other direction. there's a big floating offshore rig in for repairs next to us and a lot of other ships. some of them don't even show up on marine traffic (the best app for shipspotting geeks), so they're so out of service their ais systems must be turned off.

in the dry dock, the ship rests on these big steel beams, topped with wood. and nothing else. it's amazing they can hold an enormous ship!

and here, i even dared to walk around down underneath the ship, even tho' it's balancing on so little. so utterly amazing to walk around underneath a ship.

all of this is making my molecules hum in alignment once again. turns out what it took to make all things right in my little world, was a bit of quality time in the company of ships (and some of the pretty cool people who make them run).

surfacing

when i was informed nearly a year ago that my wonderful job was going away, i was given a couple of disingenuous excuses. they assured me that it was nothing i had done, i had performed at a high level, it was just a new course that was being charted because "LEGO isn't ready for co-creation." this despite countless articles by business journals and sites to the contrary (i link to just one of dozens). the other thing i was told is that my position was being converted to a marketing job and that i just didn't really fit with that because, "you're not commercial." i ran through my cv in my head, stumbling over decidedly commercially-minded companies like microsoft and maersk along the way and felt bewildered. i numbly accepted that news, because what else could i do. i was in a state of shock.

i had sensed that there was a reorg in the air in the weeks leading up to that fateful day, but i hadn't at all seen it coming that there would be no place for me in that reorg. it left me feeling not only sorrowful that my wonderful job had disappeared for reasons that seemed lame at best, but also that i had lost my ability to read people and situations and quickly understand them. and it has, i admit, knocked me off balance for nearly a year.

over the past year, on three occasions, i've been in the final pool for a new position with our favorite maker of plastic bricks and on every occasion, i came in first runner-up. it felt like i was beating my head against a (plastic) brick wall. the only feedback i've received on any of those losing propositions was that i was "too intimidating." a piece of information that is so far from how i feel on the inside, that i didn't know what to do with it, other than stir it up with the other oblique statements i had been given and try to make sense of it. that proved impossible, so what i did is that i gave up and started looking for jobs outside of LEGO.

one month ago, i applied for a very interesting-sounding marketing content position with one of the oldest shipowners in denmark. as you know, i'm a bit of a ship geek from previous jobs in the industry, and i'd long missed that world. just a few days after i sent my application, i was invited for an interview for a different position than the one i'd applied for - one which had been advertised earlier, but which i'd missed. i gratefully accepted and it went well and i was invited for the second round last week. and lo and behold, i was offered the job yesterday. and guess what? it's a marketing job. so i guess it turns out that i am commercial after all.

a delightful and quick process (getting hired into LEGO took more than six months from application to contract) goes a long way towards healing the wounds caused by those disingenuous excuses about my co-creation job. it makes me feel that i can once again trust my inner voice, read situations and that i am once again seen and valued for who i am and for my experience. it makes me sad to admit that the way i was treated by LEGO made me doubt all those things and feel strangely invisible. this was compounded by running into that duplicitous manager the other day and having him nearly refuse to shake my hand in greeting, even tho' he was shaking the hands of everyone else i was standing and talking to. i actually had a nightmare about that the night before last. but now, those nightmares can be put behind me.

i will still love the ingenuity and cleverness of the plastic brick and i am happy to have had the year i had as LEGO's co-creation manager and my immediate boss there was probably the best boss i've ever had, but i am also happy to be putting it all behind and returning to the world of shipping.

it helps a little bit that the new job is in copenhagen, so i'll get to return to the real world, at least during the week, a bit as well.

running (or is it sailing?) away

i'm pondering running away on one of these. that big one in the foreground actually had a sign saying, "ask the crew if you want to ride along to bergen." of course, if i'm running away, i'm not really going to say where i'm going, as that's surely half the fun.

but since life is actually pretty good and i don't really have a very good reason for running away, i think i'll only do so if i get to wear one of these hats. aren't they awesome?

if i'm honest, this boat is probably more my speed, but first, we gotta get rid of that wanker that's onboard. how much of a tosser does he appear to be?

what about you, do you sometimes consider running away?

i can die happy as soon as i build this

could there be anything better than combining my two favorite jobs i've ever had into one fabulous LEGO set? only if this was an LNG carrier instead of a container vessel would it be more perfect.