From Timor to Darwin

This is the store on Mitchell Street in Darwin, Australia, where I purchased the didgeridoo (GPS S 12 27.8354, E 130 50.4485). It's almost one meter long, and because it is shorter than those used by the Indigenous Australians it yields a higher note than might otherwise be expected.

The port at Darwin welcomes visitors.


The last sunset over Timor-Leste.


Vertical replenishment (VERTREP) by a Puma helicopter (GPS S 8 25.7793 E 125 56.8460) from USNS Niagara Falls, a ship that is due to retire soon, with the Dili "Christ the King" statue in the background.


An army helicopter from Australia (you may be able to see the kangaroo on the fuselage) escorts USNS Mercy eastward along Timor-Leste, then briefly lands on the flight deck before taking off again.


Shell takes a look at one of the church buildings and the lighthouse in Dili.


Shell takes a look at the "Christ the King" statue located on a point near Dili.


Here is a photo from the beach at Dili, Timor-Leste, showing the Mercy at anchor with the Kristu Rei (Christ the King) statue in the background. The statue is still another mile or more past USNS Mercy, so you can see how tall it is.

Life on Timor

This is the Castaway restaurant, where we stopped to have a pizza as we were evaluating communications ashore at Dili, Timor-Leste, on 21 July 2008.

Kids playing soccer at the beach at Dili, Timor-Leste.



The grafitti on the wall says (approximately) "We refugees want judgment and justice." Some of the refugees have been living in tents for 6 years or longer.



This is the Catholic Church building located between the Hotel Timor and the lighthouse in Dili; about 98% of the Timorese are Catholic.



The BLZ at Dili, Timor-Leste, the reception area for people who will be going to USNS Mercy for medical care, on 21 July, 2008.



The Hotel Timor, just a couple of blocks away from the pier in Dili, Timor-Leste.



Here's a photo of me and Thom Pritchett, USNS Mercy Network Admin, taken by IT1 Welling, also of Network Admin, at the Castaway Restaurant in Dili, Timor-Leste (GPS S 8 32.8973 E 125 33.6050) on Monday, 21 July, 2008.

Dili, Timor

This is a Timorese boat that comes out to visit USNS Mercy each evening. That's Atauro island, part of Timor-Leste, at sunset in the background.

Sideflare 64 lifts off from USNS Mercy with Sideflare 74, Mercy's other helicopter, seen in the background.

The sun sets, 17 July 2008, over Indonesia, west of Timor-Leste; LT Seaman took this photo of me and the sunset.

A Band Aid Boat returns to USNS Mercy from the pier at Dili. The large white building to the left is the "Palacio Do Governo". The air was clear enough today that I was able to read the name with my binoculars.


Me on USNS Mercy, with part of Dili in the background.


This is the Kristu Rei (Christ the King) statue on a point of land just to the east of Dili, Timor-Leste. (It's about a mile or two away from us in this photo, so it is a large statue.)

A funny thing happened on the way to Timor

Me, standing on the deck of USNS Mercy at anchor off of Dili, East Timor, (GPS S 8 32.0963 E 125 35.2666) on 11 July 2008.


One last volcano photo, taken from the bridge of USNS Mercy, showing the volcano and its trail of steam and ash in the distance, and the fading sunset off to the right.


This is the sunset that we saw just after we passed the volcano. It looked spectacular, possibly due to the ash in the sky.

Here is a series of three photos showing one of the steam and ash eruptions we saw as we passed the volcano Batu Tara on 10 July 2008.





Here's LT Seaman with the erupting Batu Tara volcano in the background, taken from USNS Mercy just north of Indonesia (GPS S 7 39.9660 E 123 32.7118) on 10 July 2008.

Leaving Singapore

Here's a photo of Sideflare 64, the helicopter that was fired upon over Mindinao, which has been repaired and is flying once more, Flight Ops, just north of Indonesia (GPS S 7 39.9658 E 122 22.0625) on 10 July 2008.


Here's a photo of me at one of my favorite spots on the port side of USNS Mercy from which to take photos during Flight Ops, waiting to get a photo of Sideflare 64, the helicopter that had been fired upon over Mindanao.


9 July 2008 we were supposed to have "Steel Beach" on the flight deck of USNS Mercy. As can be seen from this photo, taken by time-delay camera that is luckily heavy enough to not move under the circumstances, there is no "Steel Beach Party" on the flight deck, only me, being blown about by I would guess a 40 mph wind (GPS S 5 19.1968 E 112 14.9116). We had hamburgers in the Mess Hall instead.


The first evening out from Singapore was overcast, but the second evening out we saw a nice sunset (GPS S 1 50.6007 E 107 39.6569), shown in this photo.


We left Singapore (GPS N 1 27.8374 E 103 50.0414) on Monday, 7 June 2008, and the shipping lanes just east of Singapore (GPS N 1 15.8537 E 104 10.2348) are busy. I think that's a Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) tanker on the right. It's getting dark early; some rain clouds are blowing in over us.

You will never believe who I met in Singapore!

I attended the Woodlands ward meetings on Sunday; their meetings began at 2 pm and ended at 5 pm. (I used Yahoo to find out that the LDS building is only half a kilometer away from the Newton transit center, so it was easy to get there.) It is an English speaking ward, although it is clear that for many of the members, English is their second language. During the announcements, they mentioned that three professors from BYU would be speaking at a fireside about family relationships at the stake center at 6 pm. (The Woodlands ward met on the second floor; the stake center is on the fourth floor of the same building.) One of the professors was named Jeff Hill; I wondered if this was the same Jeff Hill who I had known as a student at BYU. So I stayed in the area after the meetings; I ate a couple of protein bars that I had brought with me, and went outside to take a photo. Elder Nixon and his companion took a photo of me standing in front of the building, and I also got a photo of Shell checking out the building. While I took that photo, a taxi pulled up and dropped off several nicely dressed people who went in the building.

After my photo shoot, I went in the building, and used a restroom to wash the sweat off my face (yes, it is also hot’n’sticky in Singapore ). When I got to the fourth floor, Jeff Hill was walking around introducing himself. I hadn’t seen him for 30 years. We were students at BYU at the same time, and before that, we were both at the National Youth Science Camp in West Virginia in the summer of 1971. (He was one of the two students from Washington , I was from Idaho , of course, and the two students from Utah were both LDS, so there were four of us there who were LDS.) When I had a chance, I introduced myself; he remembered me, and reminded me of the “ West Virginia ” song by John Denver that they had used to awaken us at the science camp each morning.

At the fireside itself, Richard Miller spoke about having zero tolerance for verbal abuse in a relationship. Jeff Hill spoke about finding a balance between career and family. (He had worked for IBM for years, and had been part of a test program for telecommuting at IBM, where he worked out of his home in Logan , UT , but worked as part of the New York office of IBM.) Then the last speaker, Wendy Sheffield, from the Social Work department of BYU spoke. She wrote “The Family Enrichment Program” a number of years ago; it’s kind of an FHE manual for people who aren’t LDS. They had just been to Indonesia , where the Indonesian government had decided to provide her manual to all 280 million Indonesians. (And she doesn’t even get any royalties from it, she said.) She also told a story about meeting a lady on the plane, returning to visit family in Indonesia , who wanted a copy of “The Family Enrichment Program.” In fact, four copies, because she had three sisters. “And would you like a copy of the Book of Mormon also?” Sure, she said, and she mentioned that she had never taken the opportunity to speak to any of the young men who wear the white shirts. Wendy told her that she was pretty sure that she could arrange for that to happen, also.

After the fireside, I decided to ask her if she knew Rebekah Nelson; she said “I taught Rebekah!” And she said that she saw the family resemblance. She said that you had emailed her to let her know that you are starting the graduate program at Utah State . Before they left the building, I took a photo of Dr. Miller, Dr. Hill, and Dr. Sheffield. (By the way, Jeff Hill is still doing research on career/family balance. I told him that I would email him and let him know about this little adventure that our family is doing at the moment.)

All in all, it was a really enjoyable end to a visit to Singapore .

Playing catch-up 3

Here's a photo of me standing in front of the LDS Church building in Singapore; it's just a short walk from the Newton MRT transit station. I walked outside to take a photo after the meeting bloc but before the fireside. The missionaries walked by (Elder Nixon from Alexandria VA and his companion, whose name I forgot, sorry, from Sri Lanka) and offered to take the photo. (I later saw them contacting people at the Yishun MRT transit station, which is where I got off the train to catch the bus back to USNS Mercy.)




Shell waits for the southbound MRT train that travels to Marina Bay. We will get off at Toa Payoh, where there is a park and a shopping center with an outdoor market.



The bus from the Sembawang pier in Singapore drops us off at the Yishun transit center, from where we can take the MTR to anywhere in Singapore. Right across the street from the transit center is the North Point shopping center, with a KFC and a Swensens on the ground floor. Just down the block is a movie theater, where I watched "Get Smart" in English but with Mandarin subtitles.



As we got closer to Singapore, we saw a lot of other ships in the shipping lanes. Here's another ship on the horizon at sunset the second night out from Vietnam.




IT1 Mamer bought a Vietnamese fishing boat; it was delivered to the pier on a scooter. The boat is being stored near our workstations here in Ward 13, because we have room for it down here.

Playing catch-up 2

While in Vietnam I bought a shirt that looks a lot like a Hawaiian shirt, but was made in Vietnam. (Vietnamese sizes are different; the shirt is a Vietnamese XXL, but it just barely fits me.) So now in addition to the red Hawaiian shirt, I have a green Vietnam shirt that I can wear at formal occasions.

This is ET2 Jim Healis and Thom Pritchett, both of Network Administration, at the Sailing Club in Vietnam, holding a my carved turtle. I was going to name it Truculent, after the Navy P2V patrol bomber that flew over 11,000 miles nonstop some years ago, but I realized that it needed a Vietnamese name. I'm thinking about Xanh, pronounced Sang, which means "Green" or "Blue". What do you think?

I was able to go ashore to the Sailing Club in Nha Trang in Vietnam and take my laptop with me. I connected to the internet via the Sailing Club's wireless network and was able to reset a password that I hadn't been able to do aboard ship. That's Xanh, to the left of the laptop, sitting next to a sugar-free Royal Hawaiian smoothie.



This is CAPT Whiting (from Roosevelt, UT) and CDR Esplin (from Redding, CA), both from the U.S. Public Health Service, at the conclusion of our meeting on Sunday, 29 June, 2008. They joined USNS Mercy at Guam, participated in the missions in the Philippines and Vietnam, and will be leaving when we make our next liberty call.


This cute little girl wanted me to buy something from her, but she didn't have anything that I needed. I had a coin in my pocket, and gave it to her in return for letting me take her photo (which unfortunately does not show her beautiful long black ponytail).



There are lots of little shops in Nha Trang where all kinds of clothing can be bought, for the beach or for going out to dinner, like this Sunsport shop.



IT1 Welling and ET2 Healis, two of the Petty Officers who work with Network Administration, having lunch at Louisiane in Nha Trang. I had the Vietnamese Chicken, stir fry chicken with peppers and onions, and it was delicious. (I can neither confirm nor deny that the banana split at the far side of the table was mine, but it was also delicious.)



Two Vietnamese kids wanted me to buy something from them, but they didn't have anything that I was interested in, so I said to them that I would give them 5000 dong (about 30 cents) if they would let me take their photo. They said that I would have to pay EACH of the them 5000 dong. Hmmm, 60 cents, I thought. So I said that was okay but that they would have to let me take TWO photos, and they agreed. So I took one close up, and then this one from a little further out, showing the bike and scooters in the background. So here they are, two future Asian business people with great smiles!



Parasailing at the beach in Vietnam, with USNS Mercy anchored out in the background.



A cricket match between the folks from Australia and the folks from India who are onboard USNS Mercy was held on Wednesday, 25 June, 2008, near the Sailing Club in Nha Trang, Vietnam. In this photo, the ball (a yellow tennis ball was being used) has just been bowled and is in the center of the photo, with the batter getting ready to swing at it. The team from India (and other places as well) reportedly won the match.



Here I am standing next to one of the sculptures in the park by the Nha Trang beach; I'm wearing my Pacific Partnership 2008 shirt and the Vietnam hat that I used to keep the sun out of my face. If you look carefully you can see USNS Mercy near my left elbow.



Shell looks at the scooter traffic on Tran Phu street in Nha Trang, Vietnam, and decides that he wants to go back in his bag before crossing the street. The scooters don't stop, they just weave around the pedestrians who cross at the crosswalk. The banner over the street reminds everyone that the Miss Universe 2008 pageant is going to be held here in July.



Shell sits on the children's slide in the park by the beach in Nha Trang; Shell decides that the slide is too steep for him to try, but he enjoys the view of the island where the Vinpearl resort is located and USNS Mercy anchored out in the bay.