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!