| Subject: First day heaven, second day hell ! ! ! |
Author:
Mark Vassallo
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Date Posted: 19:45:25 03/07/10 Sun
"First day heaven, second day hell !!!" was the graffiti that I saw written in pencil next to my bunk as we left Malta in JAN1976.
Sure enough on our way to Alexandria the sea got rough and we all got sick. I can still remember (aged 11) leaning over the railings and being sick . . . following the sight of mu sick down to the sea and hitting someone being sick on a lower deck!!! Just as I was about to smile, I felt someone else's sick (from a higher deck) hitting me on the back of the head.
I can remember so many details of that trip - the boys in Egypt pesteing us to change money, calling our "Bound, Bound, Bound" (sic. Pound) and offering a good rate of exchange for our Pound.
Sailing past Cyprus on Sunday morning on our way to Mersin. Seeing buses powered by overhead cables. Rhodes and then Athens. Visiting a boys' school in Athens (affiliated to De La Salle). Beleiving more in the Greek gods than the one I had been brought up with and I clearly remember for many years praying to those same gods to help me through my exams!!!
Visiting the bridge abd being told that the shio displaced just under 17,000 tons - I still use this as a yardstick for comparing ship sizes today.
Lectures in the cinema, getting up set at seeing the signs "No school children beyond this point", emergency drill with the crew donning life jackets before the drill started (not fair), quiots, fancy dress night (I dressed up as an arab!!!) . . .
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