Hi.Today, or rather tonight, I want to tell you about a very special experience that I had a few weeks ago: our office was visited by the crew of a maritime TV channel from Amsterdam. Of course, makes perfect sense,-world's first exclusively maritime channel Sea TV should have been formed in Holland! This small northern country has been battling with and exploring the sea all it's history. God only knows how many maritime words have Dutch origin and how many powerful seascapes were painted by the Dutch masters. In our technological age, Holland presents the mankind with maritime TV.And it so happens that it finds the work we do at Seafarer Help very interesting. Great!But with this interest comes the idea of creating a program in which Seafarer Help should be featured. And that latter turns our humble office into a film studio.

Oh, yes, with all the necessary ingredients- bright, hot and almost blinding lights, attentive cameras, big and small microphones, athmosphere of exitement and of course slight panic. How do we look, are we forgetting our text, are we being convincing, is our articulation good enough? So many questions and doubts!It truly reminds me my training in drama school, and most of all the dreaded outcome of all the lessons, attempts to learn the lines, working with the charachter- the final performance. It is SCARY!

But is it really? It is clearly very enjoyable too!It is so enjoyable to hear my colleagues presenting our service in their native languages, it is so pleasurable to feel how courage awakes within you and just allows you to simply be even in front of the watchful cameras.Especially when our director and a camera man compliment our "performance", the entire process of shooting turns into a pure fun. I can feel that people around me grow bolder and start to "fly". Well,considering the nature of our work, we should be really swimming, or at least sailing, but we clearly were flying.

The day passes quickly. One take is followed by the other, we are asked to repeat our announcements and "scenes" again and again. Finally we are told that everything seems to work, all words are heard and pronounced correctly, everyone is looking into a right direction, the pace and the mood of the filmed material is right...

I hope that this "film" will help to present ISAN to a wider audience and that it'll make more people want to contact us, and that these future contacts will be coloured by trust and true compassion.

Hello and Happy New Year to you! This is my first time here in 2008.And I just would like to mention how much I enjoyed writing on Blogger during the last year.I hope that someone out there might have enjoyed reading it as much as I did enjoy the writing process. If that is the case, then I could say that I fulfilled my mission on the Blogger site. If people found my writings boring, well...I can promise that I'll try to do better in 2008.

The first day of the year started in a very nice way at our office: mail boxes for a change were filled with the greeting messages insted of business ones, the office itself was overwhelmed by the rediculous amount of chocolate and by the sound of joyful radio waves that this time had a slightly classical flavor. This time it was Maria Callas and not Kylie Minogue. I do believe that it makes a refreshing difference!

And of course, people that I had to call, somehow all managed to give me positive news,-someone finally got their salary, another person got repatriated and was meeting the new year with his family and not away from them, one woman found out the truth about the certain issue that was troubling her deeply during the last year...It felt so good!

Let's hope that the entire year will have this light refreshing feel to it, let's believe that everyone on dry land and at sea will live in peace and harmony and that people of our world at some point will stop hirting each other. If it sounds too idealistic to you, please remember that the New Year's Day is a time when we are actually allowed to be somewhat idealistic. Happy 2008 once again, and please don't forget to read some of my bloggs on this very useful site!

Hello. Don't you feel that Christmas is near? I understand that in our fast moving materialistic world it quickly turns into yet another business venture, but when I arrived to work today and saw our office transformed by the golden garlands, red bows and bells, it did feel very festive indeed. Our working space, although nice, is normally very blue and white, minimalist and strictly functional. So the sudden touch of Christmas magic changed it quite a bit.

I thought that it would be really interesting to see how people who are at sea or just arriving to an unfamiliar port, going to celebrate their Christmas? Will they feel slightly homesick and lonely? Will they call their families more often then usual? Or maybe they will be quite content with the company of their colleagues and a port chaplain dressed up like Santa? It’s difficult to say.

As our experience suggests thankfully there are a lot of warm-hearted people all around the world who are ready to provide seafarers with the genuine welcome during the festive season. Missions and seafarer centers in different countries invent various forms of entertainment and host imaginatively conducted parties for the sea workers. Not all the seafarers will join them this year, some due to the work commitments, others due to the lack of festive mood, caused perhaps by the problems they have to face on their vessel.

Obviously that can't be completely changed. But we hope that it can be improved. And we hope to play a part in this improvement. Christmas is a rare opportunity for everyone to reflect on the past year, on their relationships with others and on their relationship with themselves. Hopefully this Christmas most of us will be able to understand, to forgive and find a true joy in our souls. And maybe we will be able to feel this unspoken deep connection between the people on land and at sea. Perhaps we will realise that those at sea need our support and concern. They need it every day of the year, but Christmas time, like a magical lens, allows us to see it clearer and feel it deeper.

Allow me to greet you on this relaxed and chilly Sunday.It's a first day in the office when I can actually say that it's not a lot to do,-a welcome opportunity to do some writing. For the last few weeks either our popularity grew, or problems at sea suddenly became more pronounced, but our phones kept ringing. Sometimes all the four lines were busy at the same time. The mixture of languages and dialects that we spoke reminded me of Tower of Babel. Figuratively speaking of course, as by using all these tangs we were trying to restore the order, or draw the plan towards a solution and to stop the chaos. However the original Tower, as we all know, was the actual symbol of latter.

In it's core that's what our job is about-restoring clarity, fixing the broken chain of events, broken lives. I know that it may sound too bolder statement, but that's what we do. Sadly we don't have much time to reflect on the philosophical side of our work, but it is certainly there.

So, with the growing popularity of Seafarer Help, the demands and complexities are getting bigger too. It is obvious now that as an organisation we are in the rare position of existing on the border of quite a few worlds,- the realm of Science, dimension of Human Rights, kingdom of Art, incloser of Law. And I haven't named all of them. This kind of "location" is surely a challenge, but with that it's a blessing since our organisation can obtain necessary knowledge from all these areas, consult with professionals from each of them.

With the rapid appearence of new posters, marketing materials, titles, photographs a visual profile of Seafarer Help becomes more distinct too. Like a growing person, our organisation finds it's true personality. It is interesting to watch, good to listen to and occasionally a bit annurving. Future is approaching, or our organisation moves towards it's shores.Perhaps this motion is mutual.

Hello.Today's events reminded me that despite the creative and truly mind-expanding nature of the job we are doing here, it can suddenly turn towards you it's dark and somber face. Like some kind of forgotten ancient deity with four different faces that are attached to the same head, it can turn any of them todards you in any time. Thing is, you cannot possibly predict when it's going to happen and which emotion will be depicted on this face. Will it be joy, sadness, grief, dissapointment or triumph? We are not to know, and perhaps this unpredictability is one of the most interesting points of our work.

So today on the other end of the phone line I heard a true voice of pain...Of course it was disguised by the frigile and melodical voice of a woman, and yet her recent loss almost managed to turn her into the archetype. She suddenly rose above the level of daily existance and became a new Antigoni, modern Medea, contemporary Electra. Her emotions were so three-dimentional and her thirst for truth and justice so intence, that I simply couldn't help but to feel it with her. She lost her husband. Sea was cruel once again and took him away. Sea was what it really is- a blind forse of nature, fierce and untaimed element.

All we can do at this stage is to help the widow to find out the truth, to listen and to be understanding. I tried to be and to do all that during our conversation. It is not easy for me to say how successful I was, but the genuine effort was there. I even was able to stay positive and somehow not to give into the dark mood when our conversation was finished. A year ago it would be much more complicated for me to mentain a balance between compassion and actually entering the emotions communicated to me by the caller. I would truly suffer and allow my imagination to take me to the places of their pain. But today I gently asked my imagination to show me the pictures of possible solutions, of ways that could lead to the true information that our caller was longing for. And by doing so I saw the light in the end of the tunnel, but not the tunnel itself. As a professional I am glad to say, that I have certainly achieved something.

Hello. Today is a "regular " day at the office.However we still had two rather urgent calls this morning.It sometimes does happen this way,-you arrive at work and before you even sit down in front of your computer, the phone that was silent perhaps all night starts to ring. As for me, I am always not quite awake on early mornings, but the nervous voice on the other end of the line is the best recipy for becoming truly alert. This abrupt return to reality happens quickly and suddenly all senses become very sharp, especially hearing.

If it carries on like that I might become quite good in voice reading. Some people gain exellent skills in palmistry, or decoding hidden drawings on the tea leaves, but our job makes us very familiar with the secrets of human voice, it's turns and twists, pauses and melodies.Perhaps I mentioned this before, but often I wander what people who call us look like, does mental picture you sometimes unwillingly create match the reality? Probably in some cases it does, and in some doesn't.After all what does that matter? No matter how our callers look, they still need our help. Young or old, men or women, blond or dark, strong or, well...shaken.

But now when I contemplate my upcoming presentation about the Ukrainian trip, I can't help but thinking about the "visual" side. Our colleagues in Ukraine have a drop in service,-thankfully port isn't far from their office. Sea is never far away from you in Odessa. Already during my visit I admired their bravery while observing how they handle the drop in sessions.My colleagues manages to keep their cool when visitor's emotions, or problems they brought with them were becoming overwhelming. Would I be able to keep my cool like they do? Would visual clews like facial expression or movements of their hands help me, or would they distract? I would love to know the answers on these questions. Maybe one day I will.Who knows how far business will go, and how big it will grow?

Perhaps if real, three-dimentional people well familiar with the untaimed forces of sea enter my working hours, it will make me to re-gain my senses during the early shift even faster? Like electrical waves, sudden flush of blinding light, or simply magic of human communication.

Hello. Here I am, back to the waves of the net ocean. It is a relatively easy day today, but the problems of yesterday resoun in my head: now I know that I certainly want to speak as many languages as I can and I always prefer to speak to the people that need our help directly. I suppose I better exlain myself. Yesterday during my shift I had a call from a Spanish speaker. Luckily he had enough English for me to let him know that I would like him to call back later when our Spanish speaker will be in. But what if he had had no English at all? He could easily be in a desperate situation and could have required an urgent help. So, I had a bold desire to speak as many languages as my brain could take in! But after all realistically speaking I could probably take on quite simply a few Slavonic languages and some of West European ones but what would I do if somebody would call up in Chinese or Bengoli?

Yes, there is always a limit after which you desperately need a translator or a help of your colleague. However even if you speak a common language with someone, that does not guarantee you that the person actually really understands you.I don't want to go now into the philosophical issue of achieving true mutual understanding with any other member of human race, but our job occasionally presents us with such riddles. It happens especially when you have to communicate with the seafarer via his relative or a friend. Despite the obvious fact that people who represent seafarers and speak to us on their behalf truly want to help, they often misunderstand, misenturpit given to them information. That can potentially make things more complicated and slow down the process of solving the problem.

But I do understand that sometimes it is not possible to talk to the seafarers directly,- what if their phone is out of reach, what if they don't want their captain to overhear them talking to us, or they could be in hospital and who knows what else. Maritime profession is still very hard and full of hidden and apparent dangers. The fact that world has entered 21st century perhaps only deepens the risk,- sea is more polluted then ever, pirats are equipt with the most modern weapons and the vast majority of the society lives under the illusion that all the seafaring problems that existed in past are now illuminated.

So, thank God for the kind souls who wish to speak to us on behalf of their seafaring friends and family members! But one thing I would love to ask of them: please pass to us the exact information, correct messages and phone numbers. Ask the seafarer you represent as many questions as you can before speaking to us,please try to have their ships correct name and location, and also do ask them what kind of action they would want us to take. It is so very vital that you actually posess the correct and clear information. Everything which is vague and uncertain could cause sometimes very harmful delays!..Returning to the theme of wanting to speak a lot of languages, I wish sometimes that to start with we all could learn one global human language, the language of heart and of mutual trust and respect. If that language would have been widely known our work itself could have become unneccesary as people would stop hirting each other and making each other's existance difficult. But that is not going to happen just yet, so please call us if you have a problem!