...for I must be traveling on now, there's too many places I gotta see...
So... back in Dubai again, but leaving tomorrow. Just wrapped up a mid to four sea watch... we've been here four days now, two day watches (counting our arrival day) and two mid watches. Went out the first night we were here, after I got off the day watch; the watch officer had told me about a rock and roll cover band he enjoyed, a group called the Rock Spiders. Turns out they were all Filipino - yeah, a Filipino cover band in Dubai, how good can they be?
Abso-fucking-lutely awesome. One of the best live shows I've seen, bar none - and while I admittedly haven't seen too many live shows, I think I know my music enough to say 'wow.' Great band, the vocals were a little odd sometimes but their accents didn't get in the way half as much as I would have feared - they rocked out with my two favorite Pink Floyd songs ("Comfortably Numb" and "Wish You Were Here"), lots of old-school Guns 'n Roses, a little bit of Metallica and Iron Maiden, and closed up with "Freebird" and "Smells Like Teen Spirit" - all of which were excellent (especially the GNR and Iron Maiden). So, if some by some godawful chance you find yourself in the UAE - look up the Rock Spiders, playing pretty much every night from 10 'till 2, at the Music Room next to the Majestic hotel. You'll not be disappointed.
Stood the day watch the next day, barely managing to drag myself along after rolling back to the ship at four in the morning; crashed after watch, rousted out again for the mid to eight watch, caught a bus into town about ten that day to do some shopping. Hit the Dubai Harley Davidson to get some t-shirts for my dad, then wandered around one of the two (or three) ginormous malls in the city for a bit... hit Starbucks, a couple bookstores, a Woolworths (!) and a department store, gathering the necessities, then went back to the ship after lunch - slept a bit, dragged myself through watch again, then slept all day yesterday... roused up again about sevenish.
Got a bit more writing done for my NaNovel, though I am still horrendously behind - just a tad over 15K as of last counting, with hopefully more to come. Despite the great start I had, I'm falling further and further behind, and can't seem to get my head in the right place - barely five thousand words in nine days. But - whinewhinewhine, I can't get my wordcount high enough, it's NaNoWriMo, same old song. If I can't finish this beast by the 30th, I'm going to hate myself the rest of the year... so here's hoping I get my arse in gear soon.
Sorrowfell continues on nicely; not a lot more to say about that, other than that the pace seems to have sped up a bit and yet is still too slow for my tastes. I keep finding myself checking back on it almost religiously, the same way I look for e-mails from home - hoping that someone else will have posted, so that I can jump in with something new. I swear, I'm like one of Pavlov's dogs...
But I guess that's about it. Over to another berth in a few hours, then I believe out of here tonight... back to sea. Still not much new in the way of news on our homecoming, I heard some scuttlebutt that we'll be shifting down to Norfolk after offloading our ammo in Jersey, but the old hands are skeptical - thinking it'll take much, much longer than a week to get everything off here. :( This makes J der sad bunny, because it's beginning to look more and more like my chances of getting this Christmas at home are hosed. Eh, that's what I get for being a sailor, hey?
No comments:
Post a Comment