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!