A Few Suggestions On What To Do When You Miss Being At Sea:
Invite 200 of your not-so-closest friends to come over, then board up all the windows and doors to your house for 6 moths. after 6 months is up, take down the boards, and since you’re on duty that day, wave at your friends and family through the front window of your home.
Sleep on the shelf in your closet. Replace the closet door with a curtain. Six hours after you go to sleep, have your spouse whip open the curtain, shine a flashlight in your eyes, and mumble “Sorry, wrong rack.”
Have your next door neighbor come over each day at 6am and blow a whistle so loud that Helen Keller could hear it and shout, “Reveille, reveille, all hands heave out.”
Put lube oil in your humidifier instead of water and set it to “High”.
Don’t watch TV except movies in the middle of the night. Also, have your family vote on which movie to watch, then show a different one.
Leave a lawnmower running in your living room six hours a day for proper noise level.
Have the paperboy give you a haircut.
Install a fluorescent light bulb underneath your coffee table. Lie underneath it while reading a book.
Have you mother-in-law write down everything she’s going to do the next day and read it to you.
Submit a written request form to your father-in-law, asking if it’s o.k. for you to leave your house before 3pm.
Have your neighbor collect all your mail for a month, losing every 5th item.
Spend $20,000 on a satellite system for your TV, but only watch CNN and the weather channel.
Renovate your bathroom. Build a wall across the middle of your bathtub and move the shower head down to chest level. When you take showers, make sure you shut off the water while soaping up.
Buy a trash compactor and only use it once a week. Store up garbage in the other side of your bathtub.
Once a month take every major appliance completely apart and them put them back together.
Empty all the garbage bins in your house, and sweep your driveway 3 times a day, whether they need it or not.
" Needle gun " the aluminum siding on your house after your neighbors have gone to bed.
Post a menu on the refrigerator door informing your family that you are having steak for dinner. After making them wait in line for at least an hour, inform them that you are out of steak, but you have dried ham and hot dogs. Repeat daily until they no longer pay attention to the menu and just ask for hot dogs.
Use 18 scoops of coffee per pot and allow it to sit for 5 or 6 hours before drinking.
Wake up every night at midnight and have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on stale bread, if anything. (Optional: Canned ravioli or cold soup).
Make up your family menu a week ahead of time without looking in your food cabinets or refrigerator.
When making cakes, prop up one side of the pan while it is baking. Then spread icing really thick on one side to level off the top.
Every so often, throw your cat into the swimming pool, shout “Man overboard, ship recovery!”, run into the kitchen and sweep all the pots/pans/dishes off of the counter onto the floor, then yell at your spouse for not having the place “stowed for sea”.
Put on the headphones from your stereo (don’t plug them in). Go and stand in front of your stove. Say (to nobody in particular) “Stove manned and ready”. Stand there for 3 or 4 hours. Say (once again to nobody in particular) “Stove secured”. Roll up the headphone cord and put them away.
Do heavy physical labor all day, then stay up all night monitoring a radio tuned in between stations.
Set your alarm clock to go off at random times during the night. When it goes off, jump out of bed and get dressed as fast as you can, then run out into your yard and break out the garden hose.
In the middle of January, place a podium at the end of your driveway. Have your family stand watches at the podium, rotating at 4 hour intervals.
Every couple of weeks, dress up in your best clothes and go to the scummiest part of town, find the most run down, trashy bar you can, pay $10 for a beer until you are hammered, then walk home in the freezing cold.
Lock yourself and your family in your house for 6 weeks. then tell them that at the end of the 6th week, you’re going to take them to Disneyland for " weekend liberty ". when the end of the 6th week rolls around, inform them that Disneyland has been canceled due to the fact that they need to get ready for ORSE, and that it will be another week before they can leave the house.
Eat the raunchiest Mexican food you can find for 3 days straight, then lock the bathroom door for 12 hours, and hang a sign on it that reads “secured, contact OA DIV at X-3053.”
Nothing like stopping off at Phuket Thailand,after a 58 day patrol in the Indian Ocean and having the duty…At 18 years old, that is as close to torture, as I have ever experienced…
But just think, you didn;t have to wait in that long line for shots.
Pink in the morning sailors take warning. PINK the damn thing is purple and looks like it;s going to fall off
[quote=skycowboy;24783]But just think, you didn;t have to wait in that long line for shots.
Pink in the morning sailors take warning. PINK the damn thing is purple and looks like it;s going to fall off[/quote]
Reminds me of one of the funniest moments…I was doing a PM on an air conditioning vent in the passageway outside of sick bay…The ship had been out of Subic for just a couple of days and the lines had started forming at the door,waiting for the Doc to open up shop… Anyway, this older Warrant officer was first in line, this guy was coming up on his 30 and looked every day of it…A real salt…
The Doc opens up the window and asks what the problem is and the CWO tells him he thinks he has the clap…
The Doc asks him why he thinks that and the CWO tells him that he has had it enough times in the past to know…
The Doc says" do you know the name or the place or the girl, that you think that you may have contracted the virus?"
The CWO , thinks for a minute then he says," hell I don’t know we were there for 10 days, and I only remember 2 of them…
[quote=Ordinaryseaman;24808]I’ve been considering buying a house/houses either in Thailand or the Philippines- and spending the winter there. (I’m in Colorado and HATE cold)
I’m thinking either Chiang Mai Thailand or Boracay Philippines- I know locals from my ships there…[/quote]
If you’re not married to a local you wont be buying.
I have 3 beautiful lot’s in a gated community right near the beach in Costa Rica. They adjoin each other so you can buy one or more and put them together.
I also have a beautiful mountain in Northern Costa Rica with 270 degrees of ocean views but that’s pretty pricey. PM me for details if you interested @ Rich7e@gmail.com
[quote=Ordinaryseaman;24828]Hey- thanks for replying!
I’m not an expert- maybe you can suggest some sites to research?
but I’ve heard you can-
*Buy as a foreign owner of a Philippines corporation
*Buy subject to the underlying ground lease (lease-hold) There’s a lot of this in Hawaii…
Marry a local as you suggest…
and that there’s some sort of “special visa” which allows 100% ownership of condos- but not land or houses.
Of course- I’m not over there- and these might just be ploys to encourage foreign investment?
My two loves are ships/traveling and real estate.
Very interested in any light you can shed on the market over there:)
I have properties here-Colorado- would love to get something affordable- somewhere cheaper and warmer- especially if near the beach!
Anyone have suggestions? I’m looking at a few places on the Big Island (Hawaii) and would love to have more options…[/quote]
My ideal spot would be Vieques Island. 8 miles off the Southeast tip of Puerto Rico. I was stationed there in the early 90s when the Navy owned 2/3 of it and just went back for the first time this June for 10 days. It may be the last non-commercialized island left. There is one resort that they’ve been building for the past 5 years or so, but I don’t believe it’s opening anytime soon. And it’s a “W” so ritzy and the guests probably won’t venture beyond the walls. The rest of the island is absolutely beautiful. I was there for 10 days and came across maybe 4 people on the beach at most. It’s where the movies Planet of the Apes and Heartbreak Ridge were filmed. 1 town on the island only, and one other little strip along the south of the island that has a couple guest houses, restaurants and bars. Island is 24 miles x 4 miles and has 9000 permanent residents. INCREDIBLE untouched beaches, great diving and great fishing. Properties tend to be older and there’s definitely a money shortage on the island. Prices are extremely reasonable and the location is perfect. 25 minute plane ride to San Juan or St. Thomas. If you’ve never been, it is DEFINITELY worth taking a peek at. I’ve got pics if you’d like to see the place. Not alot of people in the pics as you see more wild horses than people.
What I don’t miss is the crappers on the old 2100t Fletcher class tin cans.
Just a trough with some commode seats, no partitions, salt water coming in one end, draining at the other end.
Some idiot would wad up some tissue, set it afire, drop it in the trough and singe every butt as it passed by.
Same ship, no inside passageway from aft to bridge. Had to walk the main deck. Forty foot seas in the north Atlantic,
gotta go on watch up forward, freezing waters, holding on to the safety cable, you never make it without getting soaked.
That was back in the good old days. (?)
