The Cloudscape

Beauty of Nature

The ever evolving clouds in the sky have fascinated me since my early days. Watching clouds change shapes can be very absorbing on a lazy winter afternoon. It’s like watching Mother Nature’s Kaleidoscope. The abstracts sometimes amazingly take form of things which are very close to living and nonliving forms in real life.
During earlier part of my sea life, we had to watch them closely and make observations, to send weather reports from sea when the satellites were still in their infancy. It was then I learned the various types, like the cumulus (my favorite) which are the cauliflower shaped clouds that fill the sky often and can be of a large vertical extent. Then there are the cirrus which resemble the cotton flakes and the earlier generation of seamen used the direction they aligned themselves to tell the centre of a storm. The stratus, which as the name indicates, are the layer type clouds and can be of the dark threatening variety that end up giving heavy downpour. These basic types are categorized further by their height above the earth’s surface. The Cirrostratus are the higher altitude stratus whereas the Altostratus are the medium altitude stratus.
At sea, as a first mate and incharge of getting daily maintenance done on board, I used to get the vessel alter course just to avoid getting drenched under a passing shower, especially if some painting job on deck was planned for the day.

Once on a cloudy day, to my query on picking him up from school, as to what he was doing in the class, my son responded, “I was watching clouds”. Like father like son, I thought. I couldn’t identify more with my son, at that point in time.
I was reading one of my reader’s blogs when the lady in one of her posts described having gone up to the mountain top and wished she could jump to touch the clouds. What an idea! On a trip to Mussourie, a neighborhood tourist attracting hill, I once overheard a local, that clouds often float through their living room. Hey, ain’t that romantic? The family having an after lunch chat and a cloud appears through an open window making things foggy for a few moments. I bet it is.

Humor 360
One day, while in the dry dock at Piraeus, Greece, the local workshop supervisor asked the British Chief engineer to get the bunker tank cleaned for some repairs in the adjacent compartment. Due to heavy work schedule of the Chief , it got overlooked.
The Supervisor when told by his people that the job by the ship staff was not started till late afternoon, came fuming on the ship.
He went straight to Chief Engineer’s cabin and asked “Chief, Do you understand English?”
This from a man who spoke a heavily accented form and requiring much grammatical help to a person whose forefathers gave the world the language.

It is from the time when the cell phones had just become popular and people hadn’t got quite used to the new way of getting call, anyplace. A husband gets a call, from his wife, while shopping at a supermarket. His first response, “How did you know I was here”?

I had been to sea for a couple of months and am back home for a brief holiday. Things haven’t been going quite as planned, I am not incharge of the vessel yet but accepting what comes naturally has been a direction He has been giving me in these recent years. And I am enjoying every bit of that direction. The acceptance preempts any disappointment within.

Today's picture is from the neighborhood of my mother's home.

The Weaver and The Weave

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