9.29

Today I was suppose to go on a snorkeling trip to swim with stingrays but I found out this morning that the crew excursion was cancelled. Major bummer. I was all set to go snorkeling this morning and now I'm just sitting in a casino bumming free WiFi. Oh Well.

9.28

Last night I was working late in the broadcast room (what's new?) when the cruise director called me around midnight. He was finished with work for the night and wanted to know if I'd like to go out for drinks with him. Of course you say yes to drinks with your boss no matter how much work you have left! So I sprinted down to my cabin, changed into something nicer than my current late night editing outfit (gym shorts and t-shirt) and met him in the Vortex.

The Vortex is a night club on Deck 13. It's surrounded by glass and has really great views in the day time and it is the perfect location for a loud nightclub at night because the noise is isolated from the staterooms. I've been doing a lot of work for Ricky lately but haven't had a chance to talk much with him about things other than work, so it was nice to just talk about random things. After about an hour we met a few other crew members there and all and all it was a great time. 

9.25

Well it's been quite some time since I've written anything. Honestly nothing too noteworthy has happened this past week, but here are a few things you may have "missed":

I am not from England. I have never been from England nor will I ever be from England. I have no idea why, but it's quite often that someone will ask me if I'm from England. At first I thought it was because I was speaking English without some sort of other heavy accent on top, so maybe people just assumed I was from England because of the "clear" sounding accent. However, something happened at dinner last week that got me thinking about my reasoning again. 

I was sitting at dinner with people from all over the world, including another American. She asked me where I was from and I obviously responded with Pennsylvania. The person to my right (who is FROM ENGLAND) turned to me and said, "What? I thought you where from England?" So now someone from England thought I was from England. I clearly don't sound like him, but he said I looked like I was from England. Who knew. 

Typically when we have boat drills and our life boat goes in the water, it's only filled with about 5 crew members so the large boat is quite spacious. Well last week they decided to fill a life boat to it's capacity of 150 people. So they rounded up 150 unlucky crew members and stuffed us inside the boat. Let me be the first to tell you that you don't want to be stuck in a life boat with 149 other people. To say it was cramped would be a gross understatement. We were lucky because most of the crew members were not wearing life jackets, which add a considerable amount of bulk to a person's body. I can only imagine what it's like when all 150 people have life vests on. I think I'll swim. 

The new hotel director wanted to create some videos that highlight crew members who have done something special for guests in which the guests have noticed and reported it to another crew member. This award winning series "Anchored in Excellence" will be on your local cable access channel this spring. The two scenarios I was told to recreate where as follows: Two guests board the Serenade and go order coffees from one of our coffee shops. The barista greets them and takes their very complicated coffee order. The guest's pay with their Sea Pass card and go on their way. Cut to: The next morning, same coffee shop. The barista see's the two guests from the previous night approaching, greets them by name and asks if they want the same order from last night (she recites the order perfectly). Well as you can imagine the guests are BLOWN AWAY that she remembered all this information. Wow, what a great cruise line! 

The other scenario involves a photographer in our photo gallery who comments on how nice a guest's camera is. The guest then explains that the camera broke today and they are worried that they lost all the pictures. The photographer offers to take a look at the camera and we find out the next morning that she has recovered all of the pictures. Hooray! These were actually a lot of fun to shoot because we reenacted the scenes with crew members playing the guests. As you can imagine, there were quite a few outtakes! 

We have a new captain beginning this cruise. I have not met him yet, but I will tomorrow night when I shove a bright camera light in his face. I've only heard him on the PA system, but he sounds like a friendly guy from Canada!

9.17

Today I walked around St. Croix for a while. I had never had the time to get off in St. Croix, so it was my first time. I decided to just walk down the coast to see what I could find. After I was out for about twenty minutes it began to rain. Rain storms in the Caribbean are really intense for about 5 minutes and then it stops and the water instantly evaporates from the heat and in 20 minutes it's like it never rained. So I took cover while it rained and then continued to walk along the water. I came to this really cool fish market where they were selling all sorts of different types of fish. There were also kids walking around with random musical instruments each playing different songs. It was pretty chaotic. I didn't buy any fish and continued to walk past the dock area. I ran out of normal road to walk on so I decided to turn back and walk along the road towards the ship. Because St. Croix is part of the U.S. Virgin Islands, they have a lot American cars so I felt right at home as big F-350s rumbled by me. 

This evening is the farewell show where I get to screen the CIR preview. I made it a little shorter this show because I feel like last time it was starting to feel less like a preview and more like you were beginning to watch it. This week I cut it down from six to four minutes and made each segment about 20 seconds shorter. I think this will (hopefully) hold the audience's attention better. I think tomorrow I have to start work at 700 because we have to run the departure slides. Apparently we'd somehow gotten out of it the past few weeks, but I guess this week we're back to running the slides. I think we basically just hangout in the broadcast room and wait for someone to call me to let me know they're ready for the next group of guests and then I change the information that displays on the TVs and monitors throughout the ship. Sounds like an exciting morning to me. I think after I do that I'm going to go out and try to find a less expensive drug store to buy some supplies I need. Hopefully I can find a place where I don't have to spend half of my life savings on soap. 

I'm getting eaten alive by some sort of flying spider like thing as I write this. This is my first encounter with bugs in the Caribbean and they are not pleasant! Closing my laptop now.

9.17 Finally something to watch, not read.

9.16

Happy Birthday to Allison!!

Today I unintentionally received the shortest haircut of my life. I walked deep out of tourist country in St. Maarten in search of a barber shop. I walked and walked until I saw a small sign with an arrow indicating that haircuts were just around the corner. I walked down a skinny alley and low and behold I found a small sliding glass door that opened up to a women with a pair of clippers. And boy did she like to use those clippers. 

I tried to explain how I wanted my hair to be cut, but I wasn't really sure we understood each other. This became clear moments later. She began to use the clippers on the side of my head which was fine, but then all of a sudden bzzzzzz over the top of my head they went; mountains of hair being removed in one swipe. It happened so fast that it was honestly too late to do anything, so I just settled back and watched my hair come off row by row.  The good news is I won't need another haircut for awhile. The bad news is I'm pretty sure my scalp is going to burn if I'm not careful, but I do feel much cooler now! I also look pretty goofy because you can see the tan line on my forehead from where my hair used to be to where it is now. I have a nice half inch white outline of my hair, but I'm sure 15 minutes outside on Deck 12 will take care of that. 

My latest side project (because I love to make extra work for myself) is to update the video that plays in the beginning of the Welcome Aboard Show. It's projected onto the stage scrim before the singers and dancers come out to do their routine and is essentially a pump the crowd up video that shows all the cool things you can do with Royal Caribbean. The current video looks (is) pretty old, so I've decided to make some new animations, update it with HD footage and put in some better music beds. Hopefully it will be ready to go for this Sunday's show!

9.13

Today I had some time to go exploring in Barbados. After fending off thousands of offers to take a taxi, I walked along the water for about 20 minutes until I reached the town of Bridgeport (I think). The town is very European (as it was settled by the English). The cars are mostly European brands and they drive on the opposite side of the road as we do in America (and they love traffic circles). The streets and buildings also have that close together European feel. 

After I reached the town I continued to walk because I was looking for a beach someone had told me about where a lot of crew members hang out. Well once I walked into the town I couldn't figure out how to get back out to the water as I kept running into little canals and inlets but not the actual coast line, so I just walked around and soaked in the surroundings. There were bridges and draw bridges all over the place and I enjoyed watching all of the water traffic. As I turned around and made my way back towards the ship, I stopped into a "drug store" because I'm running low on soap. Well I'm still running low on soap because I wasn't about to pay the prices that these stores were asking. It was 12 USD for a bottle of body wash!! I could buy an overpriced cheeseburger in St. Maarten for that price! With fries! I know at many of these retailers you heckle to get a better price, but I wasn't sure if that applied at a drug store and frankly I was tired and wasn't in the mood to fight for my Old Spice so I'll keep looking for a better deal. And don't worry, I'm not completely out of soap yet. I may look like I don't shower due to my current overgrown non existent haircut, but I assure you I do multiple times a day. 

Tonight is Rock n Roll night in the Centrum. I've began to notice that if Ricky (new cruise director) really gets into an event, he'll just keep going and going and going and going. And going. Whereas our previous cruise director, "30 minute Mark" as someone referred to him in our conversation about this yesterday, always ran the events on an exact schedule. I was warned that Rock n Roll could go very long, so we'll see what happens! Maybe I'll bring extra batteries and memory to be safe!  

9.12

Last night I was running the Welcome Aboard show. We record the show and then broadcast it for the guests that night and the following day. The beginning of the show always starts with a graphic and then fades into a video roll. The graphic also appears again when the show is complete. So I did just that. After the show ended I started playing the show from our video server. I did a few other things in the office and then went down to my cabin around 0045 to head to bed. Around 100 my phone rang. Apparently instead of using the Welcome Aboard graphic, I used the Farewell Show graphic. The graphics are exactly the same except for the huge letters that read either "Welcome Aboard Show" or "Farewell Show". Apparently I was just looking at the colors of the graphic and not actually reading it because I thought I was using the correct one. Opps. Live and learn. 

This morning we were in some left over rain from Maria, so the outdoor events were cancelled. Luckily the rain let up around noon and we were able to hold the Men's Bellyflop Competition in the afternoon. Ricky, the new cruise director, runs the events differently than Mark but so far I like his changes. 

This evening is the Captain's Welcome Aboard Reception so I have to wear a tuxedo. Last week the button of my tuxedo somehow got caught as I lowered the camera from my shoulder and I ripped the button clean off. Luckily I realized what happened as soon as it happened so I was able to find the button on the ground and save it for repairs. It was slightly embarrassing as this happened right in front of the stage in the theater so everyone was watching me search for my button, but I did find it and was able to have the tailor sew it on today so the jacket is good as new! 

9.8

I finally had a chance to get off the ship in Aruba today for an hour or so. Thing were busy today as I had to record another of the cast's show rehearsals this morning. We were also waiting for a satellite specialist who was flying into Aruba today and will be sailing with us for 3 days to do some work on our satellite system. We're having major issues with one of our satellites so hopefully he can resolve our problems.

We're keeping our eye on Tropical Storm Maria as she moves towards San Jaun. There is talk that we won't be able to return to San Juan on Sunday, but we'll have to wait and see how the weather turns out. If that is the case we'll most likely spend the day at sea until we can sail into the port safely. Never a dull moment at sea!

9.6

Every time we have an all crew drill one side of the ship's life boats go down in the water for practice. This week it was my side of the ship's (starboard) turn to go down. The night before someone told me a story about a cable snapping while lowering a lifeboat and the whole boat rolled over, so I was a little nervous about the drill, but I know that accidents rarely happens so by the morning I had forgotten about it. 

Four other crew members and I loaded into our lifeboat and prepared to descend. The arms above us extended out to swing the boat over the water and then we lowered 60 or so feet into the water. After splashing down we unhooked the huge steel cables holding the 150 person lifeboat and then used oars to push away from the Serenade as we fired up our engine and motored away. The Serenade looks huge when you're up against her side at water level looking straight up. As we began to move out into the harbor, Captain Karen radioed us and told us to maneuver over to another lifeboat and tether to each other, as we would do if we had to move equipment from one boat to another. So we did as we were instructed and then contacted the bridge when we had successfully attached ourself to the other boat. After we completed the exercise we came back along side the Serenade and were hoisted back up to deck 5 where we hopped out of the boat before it was raised into the ceiling for storage. Mission accomplished. 

9.4

Dear Diary, 

It's hard to believe but it's already been more than a month since we started this adventure together. Where has the the time gone? It seems like just yesterday I was stuffing my shoes with sox and packing my life into one small duffle bag. 

But seriously, I have been working at my new job for over a month and it's hard for me to grasp the fact that an entire month has already passed. I work in a world where it is either Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4, Day 5, Day 6 or Day 7. Essentially, I'm back in middle school with "cycle days." That is really my only reference of time. I didn't even know it was Labor Day until my sister mentioned it. Oh yeah, it's September too. I guess this is a good thing as I'm not counting calendar days in a month, just counting on my own calendar that only has one page with one week. I'm told that the last two months of the contract are the slowest because you actually begin to try to keep track of how close you are to the end, but I haven't started the countdown yet so things are good. 

Today I got off the ship in San Juan and took a taxi to this MEGA MALL. I actually wasn't sure I was going to make it to the mall because no one in my taxi spoke English and I wasn't confident that the man who told me to get in "this one" correctly told the driver where I needed to go, but after a short 10 minute driver I was kicked to the curb outside a massive shopping mall. Think King of Prussa but bigger. It was 3 stories and PACKED. I needed to get a pair of pants, a lock for my safe and maybe a haircut, but before I set out to shop I just wandered around to try to get my bearings. They had a ton of stores that I didn't recognize, but also had a bunch of brands I was familiar with like Macys, Sears, Bose, Sony, Apple (can you tell I pay more attention to the stores that sell electronics?).

With my little knowledge of Spanish I was able to make sense of the store signs and find a pair of pants and lock. I was unclear what "haircut" was in Spanish and had trouble finding out how much one would cost, but luckily my translators in Etters were able to assist me. I actually didn't end up getting a haircut because I was running out of time before I had to return to the ship, but hopefully I can try to get one next week.