Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Mpilo Tutu
The last week has been amazing! Cannot begin to describe how much fun I’ve had since I left America! I was one of the very few that was the first ones on the boat, work study students got to get on early and start helping the staff prepare for more students to arrive later. My work-study was great; I walked into the computer lab and BAM! Desmond Tutu needs help with his computer and iPad! Of course I was very honored in helping the archbishop of South Africa! I was so nervous being in front on such a big religious figurehead, I almost destroyed his iPad by dropping it on the ground, the almighty father was so forgiving and looked right past my clumsiness!
MV Explorer
The drive from San Diego was amazing as we drove down Oceanside and looked at the great wall of Mexico. The bus drivers were a little sketchy though, we almost had three near death experiences while making our way to port, almost fell off cliffs 1-2 thousands feet in the air that literally faced down into jagged rocks and ocean! Ensenada was beautiful! The boat was rocking quite a bit for it still being docked in port. I finally met my roommates and I have to say, these guys are the best! I had the option to get my own room but decided to make this trip even better by sharing this world class experience with a few people and man did I get quite a handful haha. Matt Irish and Philip Bergen are my roommates for the next 100 or so days; we’ve already settled into the room, unpacked and met a lot of new people. They are really outgoing and very energetic! Matt is from Detroit and attends the University of Michigan and Philip is from South Carolina and attends school at the Citadel! The Citadel is a military school so when Matt and I met Phil we imagined him being a hard ass. I guess when you get yelled at on a daily basis, you either get wild or keep composure, Phil has switched to the slightly wild side!
The first two days of Semester at Sea were very boring, as we had to do numerous safety drills and Orientation. I now know how to abandon ship when shit hits the fan I guess, as some would say! Finally on the third day class had started and life had finally begun on this voyage, we began slowly trying to get our sea legs, as weather was absolutely horrendous right as we left from Mexico! Kids were quarantined for 24 hours due to strong seasickness! The ship was pitching and yawing like crazy and no one could walk straight. I didn’t get sick at all, seems like everything I do works out…like a boss! The food has already started to get really repetitive, the three p’s of semester at sea were clearly stated by alumni and should not at all be questioned! Pasta, Pork and Potatoes are clearly the perfect 3 meals a day aboard the MV Explorer! After a while you just eat salad or the occasional hamburger at the poolside bar! Alcohol service had officially commenced on the third day as well, I went to the bar and the line for a beer was incredibly long, people waited up to two hours to get a miller light…what a bunch of alcoholics! I started getting very involved within the shipboard community as sitting around on a ship all day was just not going to cut it for me!
I am officially working with a company currently called Evotech, which is trying to develop a cost efficient way of creating an endoscopy machine that can be used in third world countries. The co-founder and CEO of Evotech (Moshe Zilversmit) and I are working on a new light source to incorporate into his custom made endoscope, the idea is to get more light inside the human body during invasive procedures while also trying to reduce heat being generated by the light! Current endoscopy machines are very expensive and inefficient. Evotech has decided to create a mobile endoscope that can connect to a laptop or tablet to allow surgeons to operate on women during pre-birth. I am slowly starting to work with most of the unreasonable institute companies working on artificial vision for the blind and solar powered hearing aids! I am totally loving every second of this semester so far and already dreading counting down the days. I know it’s just started but I hate to think about it ending. There is so much yet to do but so little time. We have until the end of this voyage to get a prototype built using the light source I have developed to incorporate into something that could possibly save thousands of lives if all goes well. The companies apart of this unreasonable institute program are very excited to be working with students one on one exchanging ideas and possibly creating new ways to change the world thorough social enterprise!
I am very excited to see what there is too look forward to for the rest of the semester but right now I’m just trying to soak it in and live and love every minute of it. Spending roughly six days so far on the open ocean makes me realize how vast the oceans are and actually how big the world really is. I can’t help but to get off topic in class and start looking out the windows to mesmerize the ocean! The girl to guy ratio is exactly what I was expecting and I am loving it! There are very, very cute girls on this voyage and I have the pleasure of getting to know many of them as we travel around the world! On my beijing trip its just me and five girls…what are the odds?
Yeah tons of people are pretty jealous but the same ratio also exists in my classes which I am also not going to complain about. I have met 3 girls that live relatively within an hour from my house which is very interesting, hopefully we stay in touch and meet after the voyage. We are currently less than 4 hours from the port of Hilo, Hawaii and a lot of us are very excited to get off the ship and finally have some fun on land. Classes have temporally ceased until we return to the ship, I will be posting pictures and more as I will have cell phone service one last time in Hawaii before I officially begin my International travels!
Cheers,
Raj Patel