Of Accents and Bollywood

There are over 50 different nationalities here on this ship. The Doulos Director calls it a 'city on a ship'. With so many people from so many different countries, it is sometimes very hard to understand what people say behind the thick accents that represent the places they come from. Apt examples of difficult situations would be:

1. Me: Would you like me to put some cheese on your plate for you?
Person: Yes, that's right...my name is Alice.

2. Me: Would you like to go to the beach?
Person: What did you just call me??!

* Names have been changed to protect privacy, and situations have been greatly exaggerated to maintain quality of humour. =)

Moving on...
They say walls have ears. Well, on this ship I discovered that 'they' are right. I was resting on my bunk with my cabin-mate in the bunk above me. Suddenly, Bollywood music bursts out of no where. 'Am I really missing Indian culture so much?' I wondered.

I reasoned that maybe my cabin-mate was playing it on her laptop 'cos it sounded like it was coming from somewhere in my room. So I just grin to myself, finding it funny that my Japanese cabin-mate was so into Bollywood music (old Bollywood music on top of that!).

Suddenly, my cabin-mate wakes up and starts knocking on the wall (is she trying to imitate the tabla or something??). Then she picks up the phone and dials a number and I could hear the phone ringing on the other side of the wall. That's when I started to realise that the music was coming from the other side. My room-mate tells him to lower the volume and the episode is over...or is it??

After that, many times I have heard someone knocking on the door and opened it only to find no-one there. It was for the next-door cabin! Or what about the time (times, actually) when I've heard the phone ringing in our cabin only to hear the guy next door pick it up before I can get to the phone.

So yes, in this place, walls do have ears!