Posting Other People's Stories Is Not A Habit Here. This Is Not That Sort Of Blog. This Is An Exception. With Good Reason.

Chief engineer Ake (pronounced OK) got really drunk before our taxi ride to the airport. Flights are delayed. Hours have passed. Now he is passed out on a couch in the airport. He calls me Steve. He tells me 'Steve, the movie is so pretty. How do you make the music like that?'

Ake told me a joke. All the jokes he tells contextual to our conversations. He uses them to explain engineering. This one goes: A farmer wants to show his new son-in-law his land. So they get in a car and drive around the property. It takes about an hour. The son-in-law says 'that's all your land?'
"Yes, all of that," the farmer replies, motioning widely with his arms. The son in law says, " it would take the whole day to drive around my farm."
The farmer replies, "I too have such a car"

Ake tells this joke and repeats the punchline. He explains it halfway. "You know these cars? You say to them, check the gas and fill the oil. You know, the smoke."

Ake calls me Steve. Perhaps when he awakes I will tell him my name is Kevin. He will like that. Like one of his jokes.

Ake loves to drink.

Chief mate Martin is a German. He goes on and on. I was told by barman Anders to "have a plan" if he starts telling a story. Last night my plan was foiled. It was just martin and me in the officer's mess last night. We both ordered beef tenderloin. We finished at the same time. He'd begun a story about hooking up with a young woman onboard in Antarctica. It was a dull story. He was tooting his own horn as slyly as a German can. I left the officer's mess and went to the bar. HE followed me, talking all the way. I then told him I'm going up to the dive locker. And he nodded, still talking. I left abruptly as if I'd suddenly remembered something. I arrived at the dive locker and he was there moments later. Same story. Now just a series of adjectives and modified adjectives, adverbs and participles (verbs used as adjectives--clever but often annoyingly unnecessary). Luckily Dennis Cornejo--who basically lives in the dive locker with his Mac laptop and endless bottles of wine--came out, looked at martin and told him to stop talking. Martin laughed. Dennis was drunk. Dennis kept telling him to stop talking and Martin eventually quieted. Dennis looked at me and smiled. Then he turned around and went back to his laptop.

Dennis edits the underwater footage from his dives. His final product usually has a doors song playing over the shots of fish and coral and other divers. He gives them away. Doors music does not fit with underwater footage. It is perhaps one of the more hilarious mismatches I've seen. Dennis wears the same red shirt everyday. Other naturalists give him shirts to wear. He wears them once then puts on his red shirt. The shirt he always wears says "nitrogen narcosis" on the front. On the back it says "mad for it." Dennis may have a permanent form of nitrogen narcosis. It suits him.

Aug 12 for me is gonna be super long, and among the many things I will not be doing is a proper end to this email.

Barman Anders and Ake and Dennis went fishing for wahoo at Beveridge Reef and when they came back empty handed hotel manager Willy was a little pissy. But that is Willy for you. Biting tits one day, cranky the next. Willy is a German in exile. He lives in Ecuador and Miami. He is as queer as a three dollar bill. And his dance moves are record breaking.


-Kevin
Nadi, Fiji
Aug 12, 2006 2:36 AM