Posted by: ushakutti on: July 30, 2008
If you’ve spent 10 minutes with me, you know i’m clumsy. After being embarassed about it all my life, i have finally made peace with my clumsiness. You see, i’ve found out that i’m only clumsy on land! Put me on a ship in the arabian sea, during the southwest monsoon, and apparently, i can stay up and about without feeling sick or throwing up or tripping and falling or dropping things or spilling coffee.
Yep, i’m back from my 3 day cruise which was cut short to 2, due to various reasons. Mostly, it was amazing. Here are some of the amazing things
- How rough the sea was…. to pitch and roll like that, no one can tell you how it feels..
- I did not get seasick!! I ate well, slept well and was up and about the whole time. :) Hope i don’t get sick in the future.
- The dolphins (self explanatory)
- Biolumenesence* takes your breath away. Some 20 miles off kochi, we encountered an algal bloom. Although it was night (2100 hrs), it was hard to miss the bloom, seeing as it was emitting an electric blue light of its own. The bloom was patchy - brilliant in places but dull in others…. but as it was, it took us more than 2 hours to get past it. In other words, freakin’ huge! Standin on the deck watchin the billiant blue ripples, this is what i was humming:
The more you see the less you know
The less you find out as you go
I knew much more then than I do nowNeon heart day-glow eyes
A city lit by fireflies
They’re advertising in the skies
For people like us
- from City of blinding lights by U2
* The phenomenon of emission of light by living organisms.
Posted by: ushakutti on: July 26, 2008
Back when i was an aggressive idealist (i was in high school then), i decided to “blaze my own trail in life”. So, instead of taking up engineering, which was what was expected of me, i enrolled in college to study zoology. Five years, many many lemons and gallons of lemon juice later, I passed out of University with a Masters Degree in Marine Biology. This was last month. More lemons followed. Then, last week, I was appointed Junior Research Fellow at the Center for Marine Living Resources and Ecology (CMLRE), Kochi (under the Ministry of Earth Sciences, Government of India). What this means is that I am an underpaid Indian scientist. A Marine Biologist, to be precise. I try to stop smiling about it, but fail miserably.
My work is expected to involve spending time on board a research vessel (FORV Sagar Sampada) and in laboratories, studying various living things (NOT just fish) from the ocean deapths.
I’ll admit that I’ve spent my first week of work doing absolutely nothing. I expect that to change next week, when I embark on my cruise on board Sampada. We cast off on Monday and i know i’ll probably spend a lot of time being sick, but i’m really looking forward to sailing! Yippie!!
Sipping Lemon Juice, singing One hand in my Pocket, smiling.
Recent Comments