Windy II. An unshapely lump of steel today but when we are finished with her, she will be the pride and beauty of Singapore!
My room. A bunk, a plastic chair and a table that I made the day before yesterday.
View from my window in the morning
Malaysia is an interesting country and I really look forward to spending some time exploring. Of course it is poor by European standards, but people appear to have what they need for a good living and it seems that there is some serious hi-tech too. Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur (aka KL) were the tallest skyscrapers in the world for many years, an iconic picture of the boom of the Southeast Asian tiger economies. Malaysia is located just a tiny bit north of the equator, tropical, hot and humid. The country is divided into peninsular Malaysia, bordering Thailand, and the two states of Sarawak and Sabah on Borneo, an island which Malaysia shares with Indonesia and with the miniature kingdom of Brunei Darussalam. Lumut is on the west coast of peninsular Malaysia, halfway from KL to the Thai border. This is where the Straits of Melaka connect the Indian Ocean with the South Chinese Sea, a cultural crossroad and a region soaked in history. Here, Europe has mingled with Asia for hundreds of years. The waters are sheltered and Portuguese, Dutch and British ships have come here for local trade, or more often on their way to China. The Eastindiaman Götheborg sailed here on her reenactment voyage to China a few years ago, following the old routes of the Swedish East Indian Company (see the list of links to the left). Up until recently, the Straits of Melaka were infamous for pirate attacks on modern cargo vessels. Last Saturday I met a German engineer at Dooke’s bar in Lumut, who worked on a pirate hunting navy ship. Apparently, the hunt has been successful the last few years and the area is now regarded as safe. Pirating has moved on to the coasts of Somalia. Malaysia is officially a Muslim country, but all religions are practiced freely. People from the large populations of Indians and Chinese are usually Hindu, Buddhists or Taoists. Occasionally, some serious tension surfaced during the previous century, but today the country looks like a role model of cultural, ethnical and religious tolerance. It is supposed to be a democracy, with freedom of speech and so on, but I actually have to access the Internet over a proxy server to be able to reach many sites, including Facebook and this blog. Censorship and control of information is an ugly bastard. The area around Lumut is a sprawling mix of city and countryside. Almost everywhere is some sort of industrial presence and residential areas. The rest of the landscape is covered by oil palm plantations and small hills with remnants of primordial rain forest vegetation.
Night at the market in Sitiawan
Monkeys on the side of the road opposite of the campus
The waves of the Straits of Melaka, rinsing over my feet.
I have been on Windy one week now. The workforce is an international bunch. The owner is from the UK, and so is the surveyor who is here as a consultant, but they live in Singapore and Hong Kong respectively. Captain Ulf is a Swede like me. We have group of Filipinos, including an architect and a mechanical engineer doing CAD-drawings, a team of welders and the owners wife who does cooking and a little bit of everything. The deckhands, Mel and Ikrom, are from different parts of Indonesia but have worked many years in Singapore. Esther, Chinese Singaporean, takes care of our economy. The only Malaysian here is Bas, our storekeeper. I really enjoy work and life here, even though I miss the people from Søren Larsen a lot. All the colleagues are super nice and friendly. There is a playful, happy and very welcoming atmosphere. Of course there are differences in work attitudes and communication, but I am sure we will sort those things out. I have been given a lot of responsibility from day one, which is incredibly inspiring. Most of my time has been spent doing a very thorough inventory of all the rigging equipment. Apart from that I have done some shopping, assisted Ulf with calculations and discussed various solutions, rigged a mock-up for a sail plan suggestion and so on. A little bit of everything, really.
Mel on the beach last Sunday
Ikrom and Ulf at the market in Sitiawan, last Thursday.
Our living room in the evening. Allan, Kenneth, Lee-Ann and Ikrom are turning it in to an internet cafe.
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