Hi, I have returned after a little time off to this blogging page. Nice to be here again. It is a relaxed Sunday at our office. Sometimes I am not sure if people are aware that we are actually open during the weekend. Or perhaps it's just an old well-settled thinking pattern,- "I'll call them on Monday, poblems will have to wait". But will they? Most likely not! And especially in maritime profession, when people have to live on edge more or less all the time. Maybe after a while seafarers adupt to such a life and take it as normal?

The answer is "no", clearly NO. Sometimes they are just too tired to ask others for help, too independant, or sadly too afraid! Luckily world around us is slowly becoming aware of this simple truth. Performance of Pata Nostre, the play about daily lives of Filipino seafarers, is one of events that definetely raises public awareness regarding maritime issues. I was happy that the event came to it's logical conclusion during the three nights in Teatro Technis. The group of frts time actors, director-playwright and enthusiasts who stepped in as stage hands and producers staged this big two-act play with rare boldness and commitement.

And although luck of acting experience and technical or textual imperfections couldn't escape my attention, somehow it wasn't important. The very fact that such a huge group of people from totally different walks of life plunged into a busy London existance, still could find time and energy to put on stage this maritime story, is already an extraordinary event. They showed to the audience how lonely life at sea can be, how sometimes families cannot cope with constant absence of their fathers, or what it feels like to have a fare captain, or why ones life turns into a real hell on Earth if captain isn't a good person. Perhaps sometimes point was put accross too bluntly, by charachters proclaiming slogans instead of beliavable real dialogue, but that didn't matter either.

Who knows, maybe society needs to hear the painful truth about life at sea told in a very grotesque, shamelessly streighforward manner? "It is so difficult to be a wife of the seafarer!" "It is terrible that my family only interested in my wages, or the next present I give them, but not in me!" " It is so sad that seafarers have to leave their country to find a good job!"Proclaim, scream and shout characters of Pata Nostre ( "Our Father"in Latin), and although by doing so they might dissapoint some theatre goers, they most certainly will make them hear of what life of seafarers is truly like. And then hopefully more dry land cityzens will gain a deeper inside into why it is so imprtant to respect and support people who's destiny depends on real powerful oceanic waves, and not ones cleverly projected on white theatrical backdrop.