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)