12:09pm ADT/11:09am EDT
Alright then… Here it is, as promised – an overview of the last few weeks here aboard the Norwegian Dawn. I’ve meant to sit down and write on SEVERAL occasions and, for one reason or another, haven’t. And most of those times, it was pretty eventful around here, so hopefully I’ll remember everything and this won’t be too much of a novel at the same time. Ok so… *flashback/dream sequence sound*
New York has been frustrating pretty much every time I’ve been there… Searching for things I can’t find, or finding things that are of no help. I haven’t had an opportunity to venture outside of this rectangle from about 60th-32nd and 12th-7th, wherein you’ll find Times Square, Madison Square Garden, and some of Central Park… So I guess I don’t need to go far from there anyway. Not a whole lot to talk about in New York, really. My attempts to send money and get a haircut amounted to only tired legs for a few weeks in a row, but I was able to manage both eventually. Other than that, I walked past Juliard and bought an H.P. Lovecraft book at Barnes and Noble, so I’d have something interesting to read. And that’s New York.
A few cruises back – three I believe… they all kind of run together – while sailing to Bermuda on Monday evening, the ocean started to get a little bit rocky. It seemed a little odd and out of place but… What do I know. And then Pedro (cruise director) came on the PA and announced that the ship had pulled a U-turn and was headed full steam back towards New York. Apparently there had been a medical emergency onboard with a passenger and we had to get within helicopter-flight distance so that the Coast Guard could land a chopper on the ship and evacuate this passenger. I’ve heard a few different stories about what happened, but it seems either a guy had a stroke, or a lady lied about how far along she was in her pregnancy so that she could come onboard and then had her baby prematurely. Either way, they were airlifted off of the ship late Monday night. The ocean becoming rocky is relevant because you don’t feel it as much when you’re going slow, but it’s more dramatic when you’re going fast. So I’d noticed we were going faster (after the turn) before knowing that we were going faster. Anyway, we didn’t go ALL the way back to New York, just close enough to get the helicopter on. Then we turned back around, and sailed quite a bit faster than our usual cruising speed and arrived in Bermuda on time Wednesday morning. That was the excitement around the ship for a few days.
Then two cruises ago, I was sick for most of the week. It was really going around – lots of sinus pressure and congestion, and a fever. Eventually it dropped into my chest and was a pretty nasty cough and I felt generally horrible for a few days. After about 5 days, I got around to going to the doctor who put me on Zithromax and I started feeling better after a few more days. All better now. But man… Tons of people – passengers and crew – were sick with it that week. It was ugly.
I haven’t had a lot of time to do anything cool in Bermuda. I wanted to go diving and stuff… See the pink sands that I keep hearing about. But truthfully, I kind of enjoy the quaintness of the area where the ship docks and am fairly happy just kind of hanging out there… Which is good because that’s nearly all I’ve done. I did take the ferry into Hamilton one day and went to a Bank of Bermuda. Which was huge. Apparently Bermuda makes a lot of money in the banking industry – there are a lot of banks here, or so I hear. Anyway, where the ship docks is an old naval shipyard. In fact, it’s called Dockyard. Or King’s Wharf. But there are all these old stone buildings and the fortress wall surrounding much of the area. It’s a damn big wall. See pictures. There’s not much here – a few restaurants/bars, a few ship-related businesses (sail makers, painters, etc), and a small mall. Again, see the pictures. It can barely be called a mall at all, but it’s really neat inside. There’s a place inside that has cheap wifi and that’s where this will be posted from… There’s also a couple jewelry stores, an ice cream place, a few touristy stores, a little mini-mart general store thing, a soccer store (?!), a clothing store or two… A kid’s store and a bookstore… And I think that’s about it. But it’s SO quiet and on nice days, I’ve never seen a more gorgeous sky. There is a small beach where I went swimming one day when it was deserted, and then, when I went back to take pictures, it was really busy. Oh well. It’s called Snorkel Park and you have to walk through a gate in the massive stone wall to get to it. There is also a place here called Dolphin Quest, where you can go swimming with dolphins. I wanted to do that but I don’t think I’ll have the time or money… Considering this is our last day in Bermuda haha. Things are very expensive here, I don’t think I mentioned that. A cheeseburger at a sit down restaurant is about 16 bucks. And that’s the cheapest thing on the menu. There are some really cool apartments in Dockyard that were once officer’s quarters when they were built. I mean, I assume they’re cool based on the outsides haha… I’ve no idea what they cost, but I’m curious. And kind of afraid to know! Behind some of them is an area that was called the Victualling Yard, which – to my understanding – is where they prepared and stored the food for the sailors. Now, it’s kind of like ruins. But very pretty. See the pictures! The water here isn’t as clear as I expected, but it’s a really cool jade green color. Oh! Other action – two cruises ago I believe it was… Maybe last week… We left over an hour late because someone had to be evacuated from the ship via ambulance… So we couldn’t leave until the ambulance showed up and they were able to get her off. The captain mentioned something this morning in the monthly meeting commending the medical team for having done a great job and kept her alive… Never heard what happened but it was the buzz around here for a few days.
And I think that’s all I have to say about Bermuda.
Other things about life… Found out the other day that Felix, my roommate, is signing off on Nov. 15. So I assume I’ll be getting a new roommate but it’d sure be nice to have the cabin to myself… Even if just for a week! Uh… A little more about this ship vs. the Jewel. The Jewel is a bigger ship, I don’t know if I mentioned that… or if I was sure about what I was saying if I DID mention it. But the Jewel class of ships are bigger and newer than the Dawn class (those are actually the titles of multiple ships… for example the Norwegian Gem is a Jewel class ship… The Norwegian Spirit, I believe, is a Dawn class ship.) The Dawn has the Jean Ann Ryan Company onboard as well… I assumed all NCL ships did but I was wrong about that. They do three shows here too, but only one is the same. And by the same, I mean the same music and a lot of the same choreography. The set is significantly different, as well as a few other things. Anyway, that’s Band on the Run. Other than that, they do a show called South Beach Rave, and a show called Bollywood, that is their Cirque-style show. I haven’t had a chance to see any of them yet, but I’d like to. We also have a Second City cast onboard… If you’re not familiar with Second City, it’s a Chicago-based comedy troupe where a LOT of famous comedians got their start. Look it up. The cast on the Jewel was funnier overall, but I like these guys. Their improv isn’t the greatest, and I haven’t seen their scripted show but… Either way, I like them as people… They’re all really nice and friendly and whatever. We have a bunch of lounge singers and pianists here – more than on the Jewel I think. The duo, Jose (not José, but Jose… Like “Joe-say”) and Patti, are good and good friends of mine. Patti was actually going to transfer money from their bank account into mine, and let me just give her the cash I had in hand, when I was having problems with that. Very nice people and they’re fun to watch perform. I don’t see most of the other performers more than once a week or so… There’s one guy, Bernie Martini, who is a GREAT singer. He does a phenomenal version of “Georgia on My Mind.” Other than that, we’ve got the showband – which is a lot bigger than the showband on the Jewel. We’ve also got a trio that plays in the atrium, a 4-piece calypso band that plays out by the pool called FLEX, and the main club band, the Sound Bytes. I work mostly with them, because they play in Spinnaker pretty much every night. Other than running sound for them, I do stuff like Bingo, game shows hosted by the cruise staff, the comedy shows there, and any other events. Like once a week, there’s a show called The Liars Club, which is hosted by the assistant cruise director Archie. It’s a panel of four – Pedro, the comedian Dave Heenan, one of the JAR dancers Brian, and the magician Greg – and they’re given a real (but funny sounding) word and must provide a definition. Only one of them gives the real definition and the audience is asked to decide who it is. Some of the stuff they come up with is hilarious. Of course, week after week, it starts to be all the same jokes but it’s still a good time. The words they get are CHUBBLE, TITTUP, TRION, and FULLFART. It’s a good time. After that, we do a show called The Quest, which is hosted by Pedro and Brian… Basically, they divide the audience up into teams and ask them to bring something to the stage… Kind of like a scavenger hunt, but it’s often actions too… And it gets RIDICULOUS. It’s late, people are drunk… It’s fun. They keep score and announce a winner at the end… Give out prizes. It starts out with “I need to see a piece of fruit GO!” and people come running up on stage with their team number and the garnish from their drink… And then “I need to see a piercing other than the ear GO!” – a few weeks ago a lady ran up on stage and just lifted her skirt to Pedro and Brian on that one haha… And then it’ll be like “I need to see a man on all fours with a woman riding on his back GO!” and people scramble and trip over each other… Some others are “A woman doing 10 jumping jacks,” “a man with two bras on his head,” or they’ll get a bald guy up on stage in a chair and say “I need a woman wearing lipstick to kiss the top of his head GO!” followed by “Now I need a MAN wearing lipstick to kiss the top of his head GO!” People just go NUTS and will do some ridiculous stuff haha… The final quest, then, is they get a couple from each team up on stage, and we black out all the lights in the room… And they have to completely exchange clothing. It’s pretty hysterical to see these guys squeezing into their wives’/girlfriends’ clothes…
We also do a show called Newlywed/Not So Newlywed… Which I think was on TV as well? Four couples, usually honeymooners, a couple married 1-25 years, a couple married 25-50 years, and a couple over 50 years… Those old guys are hilarious. They send the men away, ask the women 5 questions and then bring the guys back… Ask the guys the same 5 questions and see if the answers match, then do the same with the women. It’s a good time and causes some trouble occasionally… Especially when they have a bunch of family there, and Pedro asks, “if you were stranded on a desert island, who in her family or in yours would you NOT want to be stuck with?” Or “where is the most unusual place you two have ever made whoopee?” – guys are like “oh man her DAD is here!’ haha… Good times.
The job is still easy… Just spread out throughout the day, which kind of sucks. I usually prefer to get it all done at once, but oh well… It’s not bad. A lot of going up to the cinema and sitting until the movie starts, just to make sure it comes on. Or showing up to a lounge until the singer gets there and saying “need anything from me? Ok cool see ya.” Speaking of the cinema, I fall asleep in those damn chairs all the time. I’ll show up 10-15 min before the movie and doze on and off until about 10-15 min into the movie haha… In Spinnaker, I work mostly with a guy named Dennis. He’s a really nice guy and easily my favorite of the techs, so I’m glad I’m stuck with him haha. I’m the only American and the only honky in my department… And really, the only other non-Filipino is a guy named Alex, who’s Mexican. Think maybe I mentioned that before… Moving on.
Like I said, this is our last week in Bermuda… Our last day in fact, today. After this, we head back to New York one more time, and then we’re on the repositioning cruise to the Caribbean and finally Miami. After that, we’ll be based in Miami until the end of April. Apparently we have to get frisked EVERY time we get off the ship in Miami. They don’t mess around with the drugs thing down there.
On a side note, I’m not big on cigars or anything… But Cuban cigars are perfectly legal here and I kind of wanted to get some to sneak home… Or just one to try, to say I did. But I don’t think there are any in Dockyard and I don’t have time to get to Hamilton again. I had all day duty yesterday, which sucked. The last full day in Bermuda…
Last night was fun though – it was the crew Halloween party. For as much as I love Halloween, I’d been too focused on other things and didn’t really have anything I could wear as a costume. But there was some good and funny stuff last night. They had another raffle – I didn’t win anything this time – and a costume contest. Since I didn’t have a costume, I don’t have a whole lot to say about it… It was fun. There were a lot of other people not in costume as well, so I didn’t feel too bad. If I’d been thinking, I would’ve waited on the haircut, and bought a Superman tshirt and suspenders in New York… And worn my white dress shirt with suspenders, dress pants and shoes, done my hair and put on my glasses… and worn the Superman shirt underneath the white shirt… Left the white shirt unbuttoned halfway. Which is an idea I totally swiped from a guy at Bel’s birthday party, so what! Also, I’ve turned – I’m drinking beer these days. Discovered that I like Corona now, much to my simultaneous dismay and excitement.
Ah yeah – haircut. I finally got fed up with it being so fluffy and a general pain in the ass, and also fed up with trying to find a place in New York to get it cut… So I went up to the salon, which felt weird at first but they were very cool and did a good job so… It’s nice having short, low maintenance hair again.
Shifting gears abruptly, as I’m apt to do – one of the things I really like about the atmosphere here is the general acceptance of people. There is a room steward (I think?) who is VERY flamboyantly gay. Really nice guy and everyone loves him but he’s TOTAL flamer. And when he dresses in drag, goes by the name Jessica… And what’s cool to me is that people call him Jessica on a regular basis, even when he’s not dressed up. Like today in the captain’s meeting, he won a STYLE award for October and was introduced as Jessica on the slide show and on stage. Even last night during the party, that’s what I heard everyone calling him. His/her costume was great too – half and half angel and demon, all homemade. Wings, halo/horns and all. Half of her face painted white and the other black. It was well done… Also, during The Liars Club, there’s usually a “Vannah” who brings the words out and struts them across the stage before the panelists give their definitions. Usually it’s Lisa – my fellow Ohioan – but last night it was one of the cruise staff Mikee. So the first two words he brought out normally… And then the last two, he came out in a wig, miniskirt and makeup… And people went NUTS cheering for him. Er her. Or whatever. Guests, I mean. It was hilarious – though rather a surprise to me. I mean, I knew he was gay, there’s no question about that… But THAT was not something I expected NCL would be ok with, for whatever reason. Anyway, so the general acceptance of people makes me happy, that’s my point.
Ok so there’s 5 more pages about things. Between money issues and them keeping me pretty busy, I just haven’t been in as much communication lately… Which sucks… A lot. I don’t have any idea what the Caribbean is like – hopefully I can find some places with FREE wifi (what a novel concept!) or something. And since several places are American territories, maybe calling won’t be so damn expensive either. They introduced a new thing on the ship where you can use your cell phone to call but… you have to have an unlocked cell phone… And to get mine unlocked I need to pay my last month’s bill with T-mobile. Priority right now is student loans so we’ll see what I’ve got left after I pay them. I’m excited – today is pay day, so hopefully the money will hit my account today or… Maybe Monday since it’s a wire transfer. But then I can FINALLY pay the past due on my loans and get caught up again. Of course that won’t leave me with much – if any – money for the month but whatever. I hear the Caribbean’s cheap and we’ll be there for a while, so I won’t need cash immediately anyway. Getting caught up on back-debt is most important right now.
Ok time to go to work. I spent the better part of an hour and a half writing that, so you better be thankful!
It’ll be Sunday at the earliest before I’ll be able to post again, but probably more like when we get to the Caribbean… I’m not sure when that is – Wednesday or Thursday maybe? Since you can only buy internet cards in $20 increments, that’s cut down on my use a lot… Since I don’t have any twenties haha… Anyway so… Til next time!
OH! Also... There's pictures up from New York now too...
Here's links -
Bermuda
New York
Friday, October 31, 2008
Thursday, October 30, 2008
AH!
Wow... 26 days without an update. I fail. Much apologies.
And now, I don't have much time to post, but I promise I'll write something and put it up tomorrow, of what's happened the last few weeks.
I just wanted to say, check out the pictures page. I put up some shots from Bermuda.
And I'm alive. That too. A lot of you are asking.
So thanks for your concern!
Post tomorrow.
And now, I don't have much time to post, but I promise I'll write something and put it up tomorrow, of what's happened the last few weeks.
I just wanted to say, check out the pictures page. I put up some shots from Bermuda.
And I'm alive. That too. A lot of you are asking.
So thanks for your concern!
Post tomorrow.
Saturday, October 4, 2008
The Switch (and after...)
2:31am ADT/1:31am EDT
Wow… So it’s been almost 2 weeks. Sorry… Kind of been caught up in a lot of things. Eventful day today, and that’s where I’m going to start.
Today was day 3 of Bermuda, so we were departing in the evening… Started out as no big deal – woke up for a training that I thought was at 11 but had been moved to 1… went back to bed and got back up to go to the training… Had a meeting with the tech crew and did some maintenance up in Spinnaker on the lights. It looks like I’m going to be posted in Spinnaker full time – it’s going to be MY room. Which is nice – Matt took some level of ownership for the theater on the Jewel and I like the idea of doing the same in Spinnaker here. Anyway… Did bingo and whatever up there. Ok so more like an eventful evening, how’s that haha
Got the stage all setup for the “famous” NCL “White Hot Party” tonight, which actually was kind of cool. They have these ice sculptures; everyone’s supposed to wear white… They blow “snow” (which is more like very small soapy bubbles) and lots of fog on the dance floor, play non-hip hop dance music all night. I dunno, it was cool… Something different. I wanted to wear my suit and white shirt and a white tie… But I don’t have a white tie. Maybe I’ll pick one up in NYC. Then again, maybe not because… All I really did there was click the mouse once to change some lights, and then get in the DJ’s way… And leave. So I don’t know if it’d be worth changing into a suit for or not… I think I MAY start wearing a suit for the bigger shows in the evenings, though. The booth is right out in the middle of the room and I like the idea of being seen and part of the show instead of being in all black (not that I won’t wear an all black suit of course…) and looking like I’m trying to blend in and not be seen at all.
So then it was a crew party, of sorts. They had a bunch of crew musicians set up in the provisions loading dock area of the ship – a whole PA with two dual 15” JBL mains and two big dual 18” EAW subs – on deck 4. And everybody was going up to the crew bar (on deck 5) for 6 packs, 12 packs, or even full cases of beers, bringing them down to deck 4, and standing around drinking and watching/listening to the music. It was actually a good time. One of the cooler techs here is a guy named Alex (well… Alejandro, but everyone calls him Alex) from Mexico, and apparently he’s a rock guitar player and singer… So he put some guys together and they played 4 covers to close the night out, which was really cool. He’s good and has a really good voice, which is kind of funny because he’s very soft spoken. He actually reminds me a lot of Chris Cornell, watching him play and sing… Anyway, it was good. They closed with Enter Sandman haha
But immediately before them, the Crew Welfare and STYLE Committee did the drawing for a raffle they’d been selling tickets for all week. There were 5 prizes – an HP laptop, a 16GB iPod Touch, a PSP and a few accessories, a JVC mini-DVD video camera, and a Canon SD1000 7.1MP digital camera. It was 5 bucks for a strip of 10 tickets, and I figured what the hell… Bought 10 bucks worth on my account. Wrote my name and cabin number on them and dropped a most in the laptop box, just a couple in the iPod box and the rest in the camera box. Now… I never win at this sort of thing but there weren’t THAT many tickets in the boxes so I thought my odds were pretty ok. I mean I was obviously hopeful. They called the iPod first, and then the PSP, and then the Canon… And lo and behold… They called me! I set down my beer (yes… another revelation… more on that in a moment) and ran up to claim my prize. I got a 1GB memory card along with it, and they took my picture with the Crew Welfare and STYLE Committee chairman. Pretty swell. The battery’s charging right now, but I’ll probably put some pictures up of New York while in New York that’ll be taken on it.
So yeah. I rock.
Pretty awesome, because I’d been thinking about buying a little nicer camera for stills, but money money… My video camera is nice for video, for sure, but the stills aren’t the greatest… As most video cameras seem to be.
Also – I discovered a beer that I kind of dig on. I still am not wild about it and would still take liquor any day but… Seeing as the crew bar doesn’t serve liquor, I’ve come to realize that I need to just learn to like at least SOME beer that they serve. Tonight, one of the techs, Dennis, more or less ordered me to drink a Red Stripe. I’ve never had that one before that I recall… And even just slightly cooler than room temperature – like maybe it’d been sitting in a room that’s a comfortable temperature for me! – it was still pretty damn good. Still had that beer-y aftertaste, but I can live with it. So that’s pretty swell too.
*sigh* so let’s see. What’s new.
Transferring ships was a BITCH. I broke my suitcase, I broke my glasses, I was drenched in sweat and exhausted… We had full crew immigration in New York, which was well over an hour behind. I got up to the crew bar and got in line, and they told signing off crew to come back in an hour. Sweet. So I did that, FINALLY got through the line, and the dude took all of about 7 seconds with me, since I’m a US citizen. So all of that disorganized horseshit for that. Went back to my cabin and started to watch Iron Man on TV… Dave, the sax player in the show band, stopped by and wanted to ask Igor something, but he wasn’t there. Dave had his bag on, like he was about to go out, and I asked him if we’d been cleared by customs. Full crew immigration means EVERY SINGLE crew member has to take their passport, visa, whatever to a customs official and get signed off before they’ll let ANY crew members off the ship. So I was waiting for us to be clear before heading to the gangway. Dave said we had been cleared, just then, so I sat for a few more minutes, gathered the remainder of my things and headed up to the gangway. My big luggage had to be taken to security the night before and “searched” (which was really “open it, ok cool here’s your sticker, put it in that pile”) and then stay there overnight. So I had my backpack and Stephanie’s small carry-on bag. Which was still too damn heavy. Made it up to deck 4 and there was a huge line of crew waiting to get off. Apparently we HADN’T been cleared. Instead of going with my first instinct – go back and sit down in the cabin again – I got in line. And stood. And stood. And stood. Probably for 30-45 minutes. The line FINALLY starts to move and someone (Shawn or Janet or someone) goes “oh Sean! The sign off line is over there!” and points to the other side of the hall. So I pick up my stuff and move to the shorter line on the other side of the hallway that most people assumed were just people from cultures who didn’t comprehend the queue and who were waiting to get out.
Most of the main line goes out, and they keep us there. Finally, someone from personnel comes and says “SIGN OFFS!” and starts leading the group off the ship. Naturally, I follow. We walk ALL the way down to the end of the dock – by the way, I could SEE the side of the Dawn from the exit door of the Jewel – to where the crew luggage was set up… And the personnel office lady comes to me and goes “oh no, you need to go back to the ship and wait for me… I’ll take you over to the Dawn at noon.” Confused and pissed, I start back towards the Jewel – even though I could’ve hit the Dawn with a rock at this point – and look at my watch. 11:15. Seriously? I had to wait til noon for her to come back with my passport and escort 3 of us from the Jewel to the Dawn, through security checkpoints, etc etc etc. First we had to go get our bags. The other guys found theirs right away, but not I. Janet was kind enough to give me a nice duffel bag that NCL had given the crew for Christmas… It’s black and says Jewel Crew on the side. She insisted she wasn’t going to use it ever and it was just taking up space and that I could have it. Of course there were roughly 38938734598701 of them in the crew luggage area. Imagine that. So personnel lady is waiting, rather far around the corner for me, and comes back VERY impatiently, and tries to help me find my bag. Which really only succeeds in making me more anxious and annoyed.
Finally I get everything, and attempt to load it together in a way that’s quasi-ergonomical and not too much of a hassle. And she’s already turned the corner towards the Dawn. I throw my shit together and rush after her. The whole time, she is BOOKING. I mean she is hauling ass. So I’m struggling to keep up with her anyway… But since my bags weighed about a million pounds (or at least more than 85) and one wheel was breaking off of my big suitcase, I was quickly losing ground. Conveniently, the broken wheel on my suitcase popped off about 1/3 of the way to the Dawn. I’ve no idea when I lost the other but somewhere before we got to the K9 unit… Sweating, panting, and carrying my personnel folder now wet from rain, I stumbled into a small lobby area, where they instructed me to un-sling everything and set it on the floor… Which took some effort and I was getting the impatient New Yorker stare. Dog came in, sniffed everything, and walked out. Very pretty yellow lab. So load everything BACK up (again, with not nearly enough time to situate it properly before the personnel lady was nearly out of sight) and go to the passport checkpoint. Right then, 63456 Filipino crew decided to come back onboard and I get cut off from the other guys who were transferring. Personnel lady gets me through passport check, and zooms off even faster through the terminal. By the time I get inside, and she sees me there and turns to leave, I’m sucking wind. Damn near gasping, dripping sweat and rain water… Literally dragging my bag the whole way, through puddles and everything, my personnel folder thoroughly wet. In short, rather miserable.
Drag my bag up the gangway, onto the ship, through security… And relieved to be on. At the personnel office, I sign a few things to get on the ship… They go to give me my cabin assignment, but… No one knows what it is! I hear “we don’t have a bed for you” which to ME means “you’re going to be in a passenger cabin” which is a-ok with me! Of course, THAT doesn’t happen. They find where I’m supposed to be and send me down. Open the door, and there’s my roommate walking around in his boxers, eating something, and looking very confusedly at me. No one informed him he was getting a new roommate, and apparently he’d been living by himself for a few weeks and just assumed it was going to stay that way. There was no room for anything of mine, so he took a few minutes to clean up and I went back to personnel to laugh at the lady working in there about it. After that, safety training and familiarization… Jumping through the hoops, blah blah blah…
Over the first few days, my roommate – Felix, a host (which means Cruise Staff… hosting events and stuff) – made some rather offhand comments that really gave me the impression he wanted me out. Like it was my fault he didn’t have a room to himself anymore. Thankfully, he seems to have accepted it and calmed down, and the last few days have been cool. He’s not such a bad guy after all, thankfully. I have a top bunk though now… Which kind of sucks. I’m acclimating but sometimes I still feel like I’m going to fall off and the ceiling feels lower than it did when I was on the bottom. On the Jewel, I measured the bed to the ceiling, and it was the same for both top and bottom. May have to check that here too… This cabin is definitely bigger, but doesn’t have carpeting… The floor isn’t as cold as I’d anticipated, so I don’t mind the linoleum. And there’s a small fridge which is fan-freakin’-tastic. Still TINY shower though.
After signing on to the ship, I found – much to my dismay – that I wasn’t allowed to get back off. It’d been my plan to sign on, and then head into New York to take care of a bunch of things. Money, phone calls, haircut, bills bills bills… No dice. So now I’m behind on a bunch of things. It’ll have to wait one more day – we’re back in New York on Sunday. And speaking of… I was under the impression I was going to be in the same port as the Jewel every couple weeks… Apparently that doesn’t start til we’re in Miami. Bummer. Anyway…
The last tech – whose spot I took – was also an American guy, named Nick. Apparently he didn’t handle the all-Filipino crew very well. It can be tough sometimes when you’re hanging out with a crew of 10 guys and you’re the only one who doesn’t speak their native tongue. They all speak fluent English but heavily accented and they’re much faster at their own, of course. Anyway, that and some other things contributed to Nick bailing out after only two weeks. Pedro, the Cruise Director, emailed someone shoreside and requested someone specifically trained in audio… And voila, here I be. Pretty sure that’s why I got transferred, instead of bringing the other guy here who ended up on the Jewel. Anyway, all the guys onboard here have been great. I work most closely with 3 guys – Dennis, in Spinnaker, and Alex and Mar if I’m doing anything else. My new boss is a guy named Mike. He’s quiet but jumps right in to help on pretty much everything, which is nice. All the guys have been very welcoming and encouraging for me to hang out with them. They’re always damn near dragging me along with them to go eat or whatever… Not that I have to be dragged to food, mind you. But they’ll just say “come on, we go eat now.” And that’s that. The crew all sticks together most of the time… Eats together, drinks together… It’s cool. You usually don’t see one guy in all black, you see a crew of them. On the Jewel, people would jokingly call the techs the “Men in Black” – but here, you kind of feel like the name means something… Hard to explain, but cool.
Other than that, I like the overall layout of this ship better. I like the atrium really well… The booth in Spinnaker is right in the middle of the room, which is cool. On the Jewel, it’s far off on the house left corner. I like the way the theater is setup better and the décor. The Blue Lagoon restaurant is its own thing and not attached to another restaurant. The wait staff there seems a lot more friendly too, even at 1:30 in the morning. My emergency station sort of sucks, but whatever. It’s inside, in a restaurant all the way aft. Before, I was out on the deck, and didn’t have to move. Now I go to the restaurant and stay there a while… Then go outside for the abandon ship portion of the drill. Anyway, it’s no big deal… QQ, right?
So I think that’s about it. On Word, I’m onto my 5th page, so that’d BETTER be it. Plus I need to sleep. Thankfully, I get an extra hour tonight because we’re headed back into Eastern time. Actually, I’m there. Now. How do ya like this one – I’m going to finish this monster post in less than 15 minutes! (by looking at just the times, not what time zone I was in, of course) I am amazing!
Sorry I haven’t updated pictures in a while either. I got kind of discouraged there at the end and didn’t take as many as I would’ve liked. There are a lot of things that didn’t happen the way I wanted them to but hey… Live and learn, right? Anyway, I should be getting some photos from Shawn, and Brett (Ondine’s, the art auctioneer, brother) from Dover, Oslo, and St. John’s. Had all day duty in Halfax, so I couldn’t go ashore. Anyway, I’ll post the very few I have soon and the rest later. With my new camera, I should have some cool pictures coming up soon of my new locations as well.
Oh speaking of… Bermuda looked nice from the ship. Days 1 and 3 I had to work most of the day. Day 2, I could’ve gotten off… But it rained a lot – actually it rained all 3 days, but most on day 2 - and I needed to do some laundry and other stuff. Anyway we come back here 3 more times so I think I’ll get to do what I wanted to do. The water wasn’t as clear as I’d expected but I think I was anticipating more like the Caribbean – or what I’ve heard the Caribbean is like. It was very gorgeous water, just not as clear as I thought. Definitely had a very nice dark hint to it. There was some cool old stone stuff visible from the ship but, until we come back, I have no idea what it is. Hopefully it’ll cool off some too before we get back… It was pretty damn warm and humid this week… Lots of people out by the pool, which surprised me at first. Mostly because the crowd on the Jewel had been mostly old people. Here, there are younger folks and people who like to party. So things that drew little to no crowds on the Jewel (dancing, the parties, even playing Wii), are SLAMMED here. It’s a nice change of pace in that respect – to really SEE people having fun. A LOT of alcohol being consumed too. Whew. I can’t imagine what some of these peoples’ bar bills look like… I always thought being on a cruise was expensive but once you were there, you didn’t have to pay for anything. I guess there probably ARE all inclusive cruises, but… Not in this company (that I’m aware of) and… Yeah people rack up a LOT of money around here. Must be nice.
Ok, I just jumped onto page 6 in Word. I’m officially done. Hope I didn’t bore you too much. If I left out any big details you’d like to know about, let me know.
I’ll try to keep up posting more frequently too. Now that I’m a little more settled in, it’ll be easier. So til next time… G’night!
(Finished at 2:44am)
Wow… So it’s been almost 2 weeks. Sorry… Kind of been caught up in a lot of things. Eventful day today, and that’s where I’m going to start.
Today was day 3 of Bermuda, so we were departing in the evening… Started out as no big deal – woke up for a training that I thought was at 11 but had been moved to 1… went back to bed and got back up to go to the training… Had a meeting with the tech crew and did some maintenance up in Spinnaker on the lights. It looks like I’m going to be posted in Spinnaker full time – it’s going to be MY room. Which is nice – Matt took some level of ownership for the theater on the Jewel and I like the idea of doing the same in Spinnaker here. Anyway… Did bingo and whatever up there. Ok so more like an eventful evening, how’s that haha
Got the stage all setup for the “famous” NCL “White Hot Party” tonight, which actually was kind of cool. They have these ice sculptures; everyone’s supposed to wear white… They blow “snow” (which is more like very small soapy bubbles) and lots of fog on the dance floor, play non-hip hop dance music all night. I dunno, it was cool… Something different. I wanted to wear my suit and white shirt and a white tie… But I don’t have a white tie. Maybe I’ll pick one up in NYC. Then again, maybe not because… All I really did there was click the mouse once to change some lights, and then get in the DJ’s way… And leave. So I don’t know if it’d be worth changing into a suit for or not… I think I MAY start wearing a suit for the bigger shows in the evenings, though. The booth is right out in the middle of the room and I like the idea of being seen and part of the show instead of being in all black (not that I won’t wear an all black suit of course…) and looking like I’m trying to blend in and not be seen at all.
So then it was a crew party, of sorts. They had a bunch of crew musicians set up in the provisions loading dock area of the ship – a whole PA with two dual 15” JBL mains and two big dual 18” EAW subs – on deck 4. And everybody was going up to the crew bar (on deck 5) for 6 packs, 12 packs, or even full cases of beers, bringing them down to deck 4, and standing around drinking and watching/listening to the music. It was actually a good time. One of the cooler techs here is a guy named Alex (well… Alejandro, but everyone calls him Alex) from Mexico, and apparently he’s a rock guitar player and singer… So he put some guys together and they played 4 covers to close the night out, which was really cool. He’s good and has a really good voice, which is kind of funny because he’s very soft spoken. He actually reminds me a lot of Chris Cornell, watching him play and sing… Anyway, it was good. They closed with Enter Sandman haha
But immediately before them, the Crew Welfare and STYLE Committee did the drawing for a raffle they’d been selling tickets for all week. There were 5 prizes – an HP laptop, a 16GB iPod Touch, a PSP and a few accessories, a JVC mini-DVD video camera, and a Canon SD1000 7.1MP digital camera. It was 5 bucks for a strip of 10 tickets, and I figured what the hell… Bought 10 bucks worth on my account. Wrote my name and cabin number on them and dropped a most in the laptop box, just a couple in the iPod box and the rest in the camera box. Now… I never win at this sort of thing but there weren’t THAT many tickets in the boxes so I thought my odds were pretty ok. I mean I was obviously hopeful. They called the iPod first, and then the PSP, and then the Canon… And lo and behold… They called me! I set down my beer (yes… another revelation… more on that in a moment) and ran up to claim my prize. I got a 1GB memory card along with it, and they took my picture with the Crew Welfare and STYLE Committee chairman. Pretty swell. The battery’s charging right now, but I’ll probably put some pictures up of New York while in New York that’ll be taken on it.
So yeah. I rock.
Pretty awesome, because I’d been thinking about buying a little nicer camera for stills, but money money… My video camera is nice for video, for sure, but the stills aren’t the greatest… As most video cameras seem to be.
Also – I discovered a beer that I kind of dig on. I still am not wild about it and would still take liquor any day but… Seeing as the crew bar doesn’t serve liquor, I’ve come to realize that I need to just learn to like at least SOME beer that they serve. Tonight, one of the techs, Dennis, more or less ordered me to drink a Red Stripe. I’ve never had that one before that I recall… And even just slightly cooler than room temperature – like maybe it’d been sitting in a room that’s a comfortable temperature for me! – it was still pretty damn good. Still had that beer-y aftertaste, but I can live with it. So that’s pretty swell too.
*sigh* so let’s see. What’s new.
Transferring ships was a BITCH. I broke my suitcase, I broke my glasses, I was drenched in sweat and exhausted… We had full crew immigration in New York, which was well over an hour behind. I got up to the crew bar and got in line, and they told signing off crew to come back in an hour. Sweet. So I did that, FINALLY got through the line, and the dude took all of about 7 seconds with me, since I’m a US citizen. So all of that disorganized horseshit for that. Went back to my cabin and started to watch Iron Man on TV… Dave, the sax player in the show band, stopped by and wanted to ask Igor something, but he wasn’t there. Dave had his bag on, like he was about to go out, and I asked him if we’d been cleared by customs. Full crew immigration means EVERY SINGLE crew member has to take their passport, visa, whatever to a customs official and get signed off before they’ll let ANY crew members off the ship. So I was waiting for us to be clear before heading to the gangway. Dave said we had been cleared, just then, so I sat for a few more minutes, gathered the remainder of my things and headed up to the gangway. My big luggage had to be taken to security the night before and “searched” (which was really “open it, ok cool here’s your sticker, put it in that pile”) and then stay there overnight. So I had my backpack and Stephanie’s small carry-on bag. Which was still too damn heavy. Made it up to deck 4 and there was a huge line of crew waiting to get off. Apparently we HADN’T been cleared. Instead of going with my first instinct – go back and sit down in the cabin again – I got in line. And stood. And stood. And stood. Probably for 30-45 minutes. The line FINALLY starts to move and someone (Shawn or Janet or someone) goes “oh Sean! The sign off line is over there!” and points to the other side of the hall. So I pick up my stuff and move to the shorter line on the other side of the hallway that most people assumed were just people from cultures who didn’t comprehend the queue and who were waiting to get out.
Most of the main line goes out, and they keep us there. Finally, someone from personnel comes and says “SIGN OFFS!” and starts leading the group off the ship. Naturally, I follow. We walk ALL the way down to the end of the dock – by the way, I could SEE the side of the Dawn from the exit door of the Jewel – to where the crew luggage was set up… And the personnel office lady comes to me and goes “oh no, you need to go back to the ship and wait for me… I’ll take you over to the Dawn at noon.” Confused and pissed, I start back towards the Jewel – even though I could’ve hit the Dawn with a rock at this point – and look at my watch. 11:15. Seriously? I had to wait til noon for her to come back with my passport and escort 3 of us from the Jewel to the Dawn, through security checkpoints, etc etc etc. First we had to go get our bags. The other guys found theirs right away, but not I. Janet was kind enough to give me a nice duffel bag that NCL had given the crew for Christmas… It’s black and says Jewel Crew on the side. She insisted she wasn’t going to use it ever and it was just taking up space and that I could have it. Of course there were roughly 38938734598701 of them in the crew luggage area. Imagine that. So personnel lady is waiting, rather far around the corner for me, and comes back VERY impatiently, and tries to help me find my bag. Which really only succeeds in making me more anxious and annoyed.
Finally I get everything, and attempt to load it together in a way that’s quasi-ergonomical and not too much of a hassle. And she’s already turned the corner towards the Dawn. I throw my shit together and rush after her. The whole time, she is BOOKING. I mean she is hauling ass. So I’m struggling to keep up with her anyway… But since my bags weighed about a million pounds (or at least more than 85) and one wheel was breaking off of my big suitcase, I was quickly losing ground. Conveniently, the broken wheel on my suitcase popped off about 1/3 of the way to the Dawn. I’ve no idea when I lost the other but somewhere before we got to the K9 unit… Sweating, panting, and carrying my personnel folder now wet from rain, I stumbled into a small lobby area, where they instructed me to un-sling everything and set it on the floor… Which took some effort and I was getting the impatient New Yorker stare. Dog came in, sniffed everything, and walked out. Very pretty yellow lab. So load everything BACK up (again, with not nearly enough time to situate it properly before the personnel lady was nearly out of sight) and go to the passport checkpoint. Right then, 63456 Filipino crew decided to come back onboard and I get cut off from the other guys who were transferring. Personnel lady gets me through passport check, and zooms off even faster through the terminal. By the time I get inside, and she sees me there and turns to leave, I’m sucking wind. Damn near gasping, dripping sweat and rain water… Literally dragging my bag the whole way, through puddles and everything, my personnel folder thoroughly wet. In short, rather miserable.
Drag my bag up the gangway, onto the ship, through security… And relieved to be on. At the personnel office, I sign a few things to get on the ship… They go to give me my cabin assignment, but… No one knows what it is! I hear “we don’t have a bed for you” which to ME means “you’re going to be in a passenger cabin” which is a-ok with me! Of course, THAT doesn’t happen. They find where I’m supposed to be and send me down. Open the door, and there’s my roommate walking around in his boxers, eating something, and looking very confusedly at me. No one informed him he was getting a new roommate, and apparently he’d been living by himself for a few weeks and just assumed it was going to stay that way. There was no room for anything of mine, so he took a few minutes to clean up and I went back to personnel to laugh at the lady working in there about it. After that, safety training and familiarization… Jumping through the hoops, blah blah blah…
Over the first few days, my roommate – Felix, a host (which means Cruise Staff… hosting events and stuff) – made some rather offhand comments that really gave me the impression he wanted me out. Like it was my fault he didn’t have a room to himself anymore. Thankfully, he seems to have accepted it and calmed down, and the last few days have been cool. He’s not such a bad guy after all, thankfully. I have a top bunk though now… Which kind of sucks. I’m acclimating but sometimes I still feel like I’m going to fall off and the ceiling feels lower than it did when I was on the bottom. On the Jewel, I measured the bed to the ceiling, and it was the same for both top and bottom. May have to check that here too… This cabin is definitely bigger, but doesn’t have carpeting… The floor isn’t as cold as I’d anticipated, so I don’t mind the linoleum. And there’s a small fridge which is fan-freakin’-tastic. Still TINY shower though.
After signing on to the ship, I found – much to my dismay – that I wasn’t allowed to get back off. It’d been my plan to sign on, and then head into New York to take care of a bunch of things. Money, phone calls, haircut, bills bills bills… No dice. So now I’m behind on a bunch of things. It’ll have to wait one more day – we’re back in New York on Sunday. And speaking of… I was under the impression I was going to be in the same port as the Jewel every couple weeks… Apparently that doesn’t start til we’re in Miami. Bummer. Anyway…
The last tech – whose spot I took – was also an American guy, named Nick. Apparently he didn’t handle the all-Filipino crew very well. It can be tough sometimes when you’re hanging out with a crew of 10 guys and you’re the only one who doesn’t speak their native tongue. They all speak fluent English but heavily accented and they’re much faster at their own, of course. Anyway, that and some other things contributed to Nick bailing out after only two weeks. Pedro, the Cruise Director, emailed someone shoreside and requested someone specifically trained in audio… And voila, here I be. Pretty sure that’s why I got transferred, instead of bringing the other guy here who ended up on the Jewel. Anyway, all the guys onboard here have been great. I work most closely with 3 guys – Dennis, in Spinnaker, and Alex and Mar if I’m doing anything else. My new boss is a guy named Mike. He’s quiet but jumps right in to help on pretty much everything, which is nice. All the guys have been very welcoming and encouraging for me to hang out with them. They’re always damn near dragging me along with them to go eat or whatever… Not that I have to be dragged to food, mind you. But they’ll just say “come on, we go eat now.” And that’s that. The crew all sticks together most of the time… Eats together, drinks together… It’s cool. You usually don’t see one guy in all black, you see a crew of them. On the Jewel, people would jokingly call the techs the “Men in Black” – but here, you kind of feel like the name means something… Hard to explain, but cool.
Other than that, I like the overall layout of this ship better. I like the atrium really well… The booth in Spinnaker is right in the middle of the room, which is cool. On the Jewel, it’s far off on the house left corner. I like the way the theater is setup better and the décor. The Blue Lagoon restaurant is its own thing and not attached to another restaurant. The wait staff there seems a lot more friendly too, even at 1:30 in the morning. My emergency station sort of sucks, but whatever. It’s inside, in a restaurant all the way aft. Before, I was out on the deck, and didn’t have to move. Now I go to the restaurant and stay there a while… Then go outside for the abandon ship portion of the drill. Anyway, it’s no big deal… QQ, right?
So I think that’s about it. On Word, I’m onto my 5th page, so that’d BETTER be it. Plus I need to sleep. Thankfully, I get an extra hour tonight because we’re headed back into Eastern time. Actually, I’m there. Now. How do ya like this one – I’m going to finish this monster post in less than 15 minutes! (by looking at just the times, not what time zone I was in, of course) I am amazing!
Sorry I haven’t updated pictures in a while either. I got kind of discouraged there at the end and didn’t take as many as I would’ve liked. There are a lot of things that didn’t happen the way I wanted them to but hey… Live and learn, right? Anyway, I should be getting some photos from Shawn, and Brett (Ondine’s, the art auctioneer, brother) from Dover, Oslo, and St. John’s. Had all day duty in Halfax, so I couldn’t go ashore. Anyway, I’ll post the very few I have soon and the rest later. With my new camera, I should have some cool pictures coming up soon of my new locations as well.
Oh speaking of… Bermuda looked nice from the ship. Days 1 and 3 I had to work most of the day. Day 2, I could’ve gotten off… But it rained a lot – actually it rained all 3 days, but most on day 2 - and I needed to do some laundry and other stuff. Anyway we come back here 3 more times so I think I’ll get to do what I wanted to do. The water wasn’t as clear as I’d expected but I think I was anticipating more like the Caribbean – or what I’ve heard the Caribbean is like. It was very gorgeous water, just not as clear as I thought. Definitely had a very nice dark hint to it. There was some cool old stone stuff visible from the ship but, until we come back, I have no idea what it is. Hopefully it’ll cool off some too before we get back… It was pretty damn warm and humid this week… Lots of people out by the pool, which surprised me at first. Mostly because the crowd on the Jewel had been mostly old people. Here, there are younger folks and people who like to party. So things that drew little to no crowds on the Jewel (dancing, the parties, even playing Wii), are SLAMMED here. It’s a nice change of pace in that respect – to really SEE people having fun. A LOT of alcohol being consumed too. Whew. I can’t imagine what some of these peoples’ bar bills look like… I always thought being on a cruise was expensive but once you were there, you didn’t have to pay for anything. I guess there probably ARE all inclusive cruises, but… Not in this company (that I’m aware of) and… Yeah people rack up a LOT of money around here. Must be nice.
Ok, I just jumped onto page 6 in Word. I’m officially done. Hope I didn’t bore you too much. If I left out any big details you’d like to know about, let me know.
I’ll try to keep up posting more frequently too. Now that I’m a little more settled in, it’ll be easier. So til next time… G’night!
(Finished at 2:44am)
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