Names

The fact is, there are people who experience the miracle of birth, hold a tiny innocent newborn in their arms and say “let’s call him Igor.” There is an Igor who is the band master—he is a fratty, friendly looking guy from Ukraine. There is also a Croatian Igor who is 6’5” and looks just like my friend’s husband. So much like him that he gave her a pair of blue coveralls to give to her husband. Then I talked to him for a very long time and got the lowdown on hilarious items. Like working on a cargo ship (horrible. Igor “has 3 years. I dropped 20 kilos. I carry a picture of me from then, so when I want to complain, I look at that picture.”) and why you can’t work on cargo ships for too long (“you go crazy or you start to drink. Every one says ‘I’m not crazy [add twitch]!)’” Another engineer, Marius from Romania (we did not bring up gypsies) said he once spent 30 days solid at sea, with 20 other guys. Also, “I’ve seen most of the world, just not the places with cities.”

 

Igor also had a friend who got very excited to go work on oil rigs in the middle of the ocean because you make “one hundred, one hundred fifty thousand dollars.” You work one month on, one month off. The only problem is that the people on the rigs are “crazy shitbags.”

 

The Eastern Europeans are generally rather frustrated with Americans not having any idea about their countries. Do you know what countries are on the Caspian Sea? Or the Adriatic Sea? Me neither. Norwegian Cruise Lines never goes to Norway. The Norwegians find this very interesting and a pickup line for the girls who work on a ship. The Norwegians also say there are only 4 million people in Norway and Oslo is a dump, and they got the hell out of there. One of them lives in Brazil, another lives in the UK. I am getting the idea that being an engineer on a ship is not a terrible job. They usually work 10 weeks on, 10 weeks off. Sometimes more time off. I mean, if you told someone from central Indiana “do you want to be a marine engineer?” I think they would say “what?” or “shutup homo” or similar. What are these jobs? Chief Refrigeration Engineer? 2^nd Engineer? We talked to the guy Ramie who is going on vacation and going to Thailand for a bit and then Carnivale in Brazil and then getting back on a ship.

 

Ashley and I went down and the Norwegians made us their standard sandwich that is not a sandwich. I said “sandwich!” and they humored me, barely. The guy looked at me like I just said “parking lot!” for no reason and like he wanted to hit on my friend. I think it is called “Norwegian Dinner” and I humored them, barely, like they said “parking lot!” and wanted to hit on my friend. It consists of Norwegian Mayonnaise, which is amazing and intense and balklasfjas;lfjsd;fl if you are from Norway and just tastes a little bit richer if you are American. They peel a bunch of tiny shrimp first, then get French bread, slather it with mayo, put a bunch of shrimp on it, then cover it in lemon juice. They said “if you are sick tomorrow, don’t blame me!!” We had white wine and pulled off heads and got legs and everything everywhere. The sandwiches were delicious.

 

The Bulgarian Engineer told us all about Filipinos, that they always sing mournful, romantic karaoke and eat the heads of shrimp. His Filipino assistant did a dead-on great Billy Joel and Tom Jones. We were one of about 4 women there.

 

We met the chief electrical engineer named Bjarte. His friend Ramie got very annoyed when we said “what” about 600 times after Ramie said Bjarte’s name because “Bjarte” is pronounced like a joke about a Norwegian name. “Bee-YOR-tee”—but full on Swedish chef sing song. Ramie told us the American pronunciation, which was “Bee-YORr-tee” and rolled his eyes about how dumb Americans are. Ashley was polite and I didn’t say “buddy, that is a really weird name.” Maybe my name sounds like “Blkkeioorpcl.”