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Seafarer's Friend Employs 21st
Century Communications by Susan Stauss
Chief Officer Gabriel Dermengiv of the container ship Celia
visited the Seafarer's Center in the Port of Boston at Chelsea, and like
most seafarers, went immediately to make a call home. However,
this cyber-savvy seafarer was delighted to discover that he could make
that call using Webcam technology--a live, video phone call--by a few
clicks of a mouse. Internet access and use of Webcam are free to the
seafarers that visit our center.
Gabriel is on a 4 month contract with the Celia and looks forward
to calling his wife and 8 year old daughter when he is in port. Above,
Gabriel enjoys getting an update on his daughter's tennis lessons, and
hopes she will play professionally some day. He feels that our internet
station is an important resource because, in the U.S., you don't find
internet cafes as often as you do in Europe. For him, email is the
preferred method of contact because it is a more private form of
communication, and you can reach more people in a shorter amount of
time.
He related a story of being stuck sitting in the cold
when the military base Argentia had closed. He used his only source of
communication, a laptop, to email his family with a temporary block of
time that he purchased from a service provider over the internet. By
contrast, he was
grateful that here on the Port of Boston he had found a warm, hospitable
Seafarer's Center to make contact with folks back home.
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