Italian Welding Team

I’ve inherited a new alarm clock. A team of Italian welders wakes me up each morning doing construction to a crew area just outside my door. They’re prepping a pathway to install a huge engine component and must take out a 6X4 slice out of about 7 floors to drop it in. It’s not so much the buzz of their blow torches that wakes me as their muscley foreign jib. I’m sure the powers that be knew about the planned metal work when they decided to put me in the room most adjacent, as I have no justification to complain.

Adding to the drama, we’ve entered some extremely heavy waters outside New Zealand (Tasman Sea) that send the ship back and forth something awful. The massiveness of the vessel creates an ebb and flow of about 5 seconds between incline and decline. Each time the front of the ship reconnects with the water it sounds like a cannonball striking the forward of our massive iron hull. My grandmother gave me a fantastic set of earplugs for Christmas.