This is from yesterday:

I have 4 cruises left including this one before getting home. 

Last week we had a charter cruise for a jewelry company called "Silpada", and it was a reward for the top 3% of the company. It was a small but really energetic and appreciative audience. The charter went to Cozumel and then to Key West. I was sick for all of Cozumel, but I got out in Key West. Key West is sort of like Newport with palm trees - it's very much more like the Atlantic Canada and New England ports than it is like the ports in the Caribbean. It has a small town feel with lots of old-school looking bars and pubs, as well as lots of tourist shops. It has quite a strong hippy flavour to it as well, with Bob Marley shops and tie-dye shirts abounding. 

This week takes us back to the kinds of crowds that we had before the busy christmas season, which is to say elderly. Old also means nice and appreciative, however, and our shows have been extremely well attended so far this week. After this week I have only one more regular five day and one more regular nine day cruise, as my last week here is the five-day rock charter.

I was asked just yesterday if I wanted to extend for one more nine day cruise. I was tempted to for the money, but after thinking about it and talking to a few people I decided not to. Extending for the extra cruise would mean I'd only have just over two weeks to spend back home before going on the next ship, rather than three and a half weeks. Also, I feel that I am read to be home again, and that extra nine days would be pushing the limit of my tolerance. I have loved this experience enormously, but I would like to leave it wanting more, not less. I have made some amazing friends on this ship and I hope to keep in contact with them in the future. I am feeling however that I have grown as much as I can from this ship and have become a little too comfortable here, and am no longer operating at all outside of my comfort zone. 

One of the greatest thing about being on this ship is being surrounded by people who don't think like I do. This has forced me to adapt, and it has made me notice new things about myself and how I act. Talking to people who don't think like yourself is incredibly refreshing because your thoughts all of a sudden gain new life in the eyes of others, and their input can be so different from what you would have come up with on your own that they can alter the course of your thinking, give you new lines of thought, or even fundamentally change the way you think. Not just the way people think has influenced me, but seeing different people's habits of day to day living and recreation have had an influence on me too. I am curious to find out how much of this, if indeed any, remains when I get home. An advantage to being away from home is that you are presented with a huge opportunity for uninhibited growth. The expectations and assumptions about yourself held by your friends and family can limit your potential to change as a person. If you take all of that away, you are left with nobody but yourself who knows the person that you think you are or have been in the past, leaving you free to define yourself as you so choose. 

Today has been a great day for music. A group of us sat in on our guitarist's solo set and played jazz as a quartet, something I haven't done much of at all since being here, and it was a lot of fun to play some jazz tunes and exercise my technique a little bit. After that we played two South Beach Rave shows, the second of which was really high energy and a lot of fun to perform. Tonight's been one of those good-feeling kind of nights, filled with slightly inebriated heart-felt good conversation about life and ships and everything else. These are the nights where I feel like I could do this forever, and when I really appreciate the full scope of how good I have it here. 

Tomorrow we're back in Barbados, and I'm thinking about hitting up a new beach and doing some snorkeling after our morning Neil Diamond rehearsal. Tomorrow night we have our Neil Diamond show, and then our Blues Night, shi which should be a grand old time.

Here's a post that I wrote about a week ago which I wanted to keep writing on but never got around to it. I'll post the unfinished post now seeing as I will probably never get around to adding to it.

Friday January 7th

Yesterday I went Jet-skying in Barbados. It was my first time Jet-skying on my own (the last time having been with my dad when I was probably around 8 years old, clinging to the back and terrified), and to get to do it in the warm Caribbean water was incredible.

Today I went to a new beach in St. Kitts which was beautiful but pretty standard tourist fare. After having spent three full months in the Caribbean I am finally taking advantage of all of the beaches, and they have taken up the majority of my free time for the last two weeks. I have to say that before coming here I was never a big fan of beach-going, but I think I have finally been converted. The warm turquoise water has definitely helped, not to mention my sudden realization that if I don't have at least the vague beginnings of a tan when I return home then people might doubt that I ever really came to the Caribbean.

Due to the ludicrous sleeping schedule that I  find myself on in the ship (which I justify by saying that I am still on Vancouver time), I have gotten in the habit of hunting for food around 2:00am, and I've discovered that, in addition to the random late night food that is provided in the messes for late shift workers, there are additional windows of time where the cooks make food for themselves to eat - stuff that is off of the regular menu. Between 1:30 and 2:00 is the time that a group of Indian cooks make their food, and I have lately started crashing their meal, which has been a surprisingly good experience. The first time I did it, I was with one of the lounge pianists, and the Indian cooks beckoned us over to take a seat and eat with them. We both ate the amazing food (Lobster and yogurt rice - hot and cold in a most refreshing blend), and only discovered upon cleaning our plates that they were waiting for us to eat our fill before they even touched their own food! The respect that they showed for two complete strangers was amazing, and I only later discovered that they hadn't eaten anything since 3:00pm before that, and in one guy's case it was his first meal of the day. These cooks who had been working the entire day while I had been lounging at the beach, eating meals every few hours, had still waited for us to eat before them, as guests. We made sure that in the future they would not wait for us, since we would no longer be guests but hopefully viewed as part of their own group. 

At this point maybe I should write something about my impression of the different cultures on the ship. As I have just mentioned, the Indians have shown the utmost respect and been incredibly polite and interesting to talk with.  I have befriended the Caribbean band all of whom are from Jamaica, and they as well as others from Jamaica on the ship have essentially fulfilled the stereotype of being an easy going and relaxed people. I have really appreciated their pleasant attitude and openness to conversation, and had some great conversations with the drummer and singer of the band about different kinds of music. 

I have already talked about Filipinos who work on the ship, but as I said before, they are very hard-working people, and are generally quite outgoing. They are very talented musically as a culture, and they overall have quite a good attitude about their work on the ship. 

I will have to generalize a lot of eastern European countries into a single stereotype, mainly because it is pretty accurate on this ship. In general, they at first seem intense and reserved, but once you get to talk to them they all turn out to have great senses of humour and are generally quite nice people. Of course, the funniest stuff they say is always the unintentional result of their hilarious broken English. Our saxophone player, Yurie, who is from the Ukraine, has a large collection of amazing quotes and I will do my best to record as many of them as I can before he leaves.

The people from South African are generally nice people but intense. 

The Canadians, Americans and people from the UK are much harder for me to generalize and so I will avoid it for the time being, and most of whoever reads this is Canadian or American anyways. 

There are a fair number of Peruvians, Indonesians, and Africans, but I haven't had as many opportunities to interact with them and so am unable to make any generalizations.

I've been very lazy about posting my blogs lately, but I have written a few entries over the last month, so here they are, starting from early December and ending with today Enjoy!

December 9th

On monday, we got our new piano player, the replacement for the previous one who had to leave for emergency eye surgery. He is a good pianist, but more importantly he has a great attitude and really has fun when he's playing on stage, which is infectious. 

All week long I've been in basic safety training, STCW, which stands for Seafarers Training Certification and Watch keeping. It is a general safety course that spans a couple of weeks that in theory everyone who works on ships is required to take. In theory because there are always a few people who manage to sneak by under the radar without anyone every realizing that they haven't taken it. I was not one such person, and so have been in the Learning Centre on just about every port day this week. 

So far I have taken Personal Saftey and Social Responsibility, first aid, and fire fighting. With the exception of the first, it's been a interesting and informative experience. I relearned CPR after forgetting what I knew from high school, as well as re-learning the Heimlich Maneuver and how to treat/ respond to a few other basic injuries. 

For fire fighting, we spent the first day learning the theory behind it, such as how smoke will accumulate to the ceiling until it layers and heats up to 650 degrees C at which point the smoke itself catches fire and shoots a fireball downward - or about back drafts, which will do a similar thing to anyone who opens the door on a room in which there was a fire which has burned out all of the oxygen and appears to have gone out. 

The next day we dressed up in full Firemen's gear, oxygen mask and all. After that, we were sent through a room filled with fake smoke, still donning our oxygen masks, and required to find our way out to the other side without being able to see anything. We then briefly got to play with a firemen's hose before finishing for the day. Only two more days of training and then I'm done. 

On tuesday, myself, the showband guitarist, one of our lounge pianists, and two of the cast of the comedy troupe Second City who happen to play drums and guitar respectively, got to perform a blues tribute night. The blues tribute is a very new show on this ship, started up a few weeks ago by our lounge pianist, and he had been backed by our old cover band Next Stage. Since they just left the ship, the aforementioned group of us filled in and have become the new blues tribute band.

It was a good show - actually it was an amazing show. It really shouldn't have gone nearly as well as it did, considering we only ran through the first 15 seconds or so of each song earlier that day, and no one really knew what was going to happen. But, for whatever reason, the audience just ate up every second of it, from greasy riffs to over-the-top endings to every guitar playing gimmick you can think of, such as Andrew using a shot glass with which to play slide guitar. The room was packed and we got a standing ovation at the end, which left me baffled but ecstatic. Overall an amazing night for everyone involved, and I am really looking forward to not only the continuation of blues night but also the same band will hopefully get to play other rock music in the crew bar on a weekly basis as well - a very therapeutic contrast to the great but less inspired music that we usually play in the showband. 

This morning I got up at 7 because I was convinced that I had safety training, only to discover upon entering the class at 8 that there had been a typo in schedule and that it was in fact tomorrow. I promtply returned to bed until 12:30. 

I went out into St. Kitts today briefly to use the internet, and on my way back I ran into Zuriel, one of the shore excursion workers from the ship, asking if I wanted to go on a Scenic Rail Tour, to which I obviously said yes.

We left around 2:30 on a bus that took us on a 45 minute ride to a train station, all the while the driver was filling us in on the history of St. Kitts. The train ride itself was incredible. It was a two hour train ride that took us all the way around St. Kitts, just a little inland from the coast. The geography of the island is spectacular, filled with mountains, hills, beaches, palm trees, cedars, and vast farmlands of sugar cane, which are apparently no longer harvested because they are no longer profitable in that area. There was a complimentary bar which supplied us with Pina Coladas for the trip, and we had another local with a Morgan Freeman voice as a tour guide, telling us more about the island, and about our train, traveling around 15 mph, "vacation speed", as he liked to call it. There was even an a-cappela quartet that came and sang for us a couple of times. All of the locals of the island were very friendly, waving happily at us as we road by on what is apparently the last railroad of the Caribbean. 

We returned to the ship at six o'clock. 

December 27th

Hello again.

Time has been flying by so fast this last month and I can hardly believe it's been this long since I last wrote a blog.

I have a new room-mate on the ship, Bryant, who is a trombone player from Chicago. 

The new production cast has come and the old cast has left, which has made each of the shows feel very different. The choreography to Band on the Run was changed a lot for the worse, unfortunately, by the new choreographer who came onto the ship with the cast; a lot of the best moments of the show were removed or tampered with. Other than that the shows are relatively similar but they definitely feel a lot different with the new group.

Christmas has come and gone now - the week leading up to christmas was a little crazy because we had the christmas show to rehearse and get together with only a couple days preparation on the part of the cast. All things considered it went quite well, with one show for the crew on the 23rd and then two shows for the passengers on christmas Eve. It contained a balance of different music, from traditional ("O Holy Night") to comtemporary ("Santa Baby"), and it also contained some comedy sketches provided by Second City. All in all it helped create a more authentic Christmas atmosphere on the ship. Christmas day felt a little weird since we had to player several different shows and it ended with a crew party rather than a family dinner, but the comradery of the group made it a lot easier to deal with. It was a week of parties though and so the 5 days off before new years will be a much needed break from all of the festivities.

I still have another month and a half left on the ship, but at the rate time is passing I know that it will be over before I know it. I know I will definitely have a lot of mixed feelings about being done. I feel like I have grown as a person since I've been here, and whatever happens next I don't want to return to everything as normal, which I am afraid is what it will feel like when I get back. The biggest concern I had about coming on the ship before I arrived was what the people would be like, and as it has turned out they have been the best thing about being here. Of course being able to perform on the bass every day and see other parts of the world have been good, but the lifestyle and fellowship of being on the ship has been it's most endearing quality. 

Saturday Jan 1st

Every day my opinion of being on the ship seems to switch, from loving everything about it to really wanting to be home. I expect and hope that over the course of this last month I will become more and more ready to be done with it all. Five months is a long time to be on a ship and I don't know if I would want to go on for quite that long again, but for a first contract I think it will turn out to be just about perfect. I have also just agreed to take a short contract on another Norwegian Ship, The Jade. Just like with my current contract, the timing of it fell into place perfectly and so I found it impossible to say no.  The Jade contract goes from early March to late April, and I am very much looking forward to the itinerary, which is in the Mediterranean. That means that I will have a full month off back in Vancouver before starting again, which I hope will make me appreciate being in Vancouver as much as possible while I am there. 

The last few days have been really busy for the showband, between our regular shows and New Years Eve. We played last night from 10:30pm-1:30am in The Atrium, which was a bit of a marathon, but at least we got to spend some time with friends afterwards as the New Years parties went on long into the night. This morning we had to be up in good time to play the Big Band Brunch from 11-1, which in my opinion was a bad move since most sensible people would not want to be up before the afternoon of New Years Day, but the turnout actually was not too bad. The trade-off for having had such a crazy past couple of days is that we will hopefully have the next day and a half completely off to recuperate. 

Monday Jan 3rd

I was just thinking about how life on a cruise ship could be looked at either as a relapse of childhood, or else as an early experience of retirement - the common factor being that you do not have any of the usual responsibilities of life that most people do. The amount of  guilt-free wasted time altogether on a ship by almost all people is really quite astounding, but because of the lifestyle and amenities provided, you really get away with it. While I am starting to look forward to a return to regular life, the everyday routine things that I've completely taken for granted here are going to give me a rude awakening back home. Cooking, cleaning, paying rent, commuting and traveling around town, having to answer phone calls and emails, find work and keep in touch with people, and just dealing with all of the unforeseen circumstances that come up all the time living with millions of other people that are not a part of the controlled, small-town life that is part of living on a cruise ship.

What I most look forward to upon returning home is a return to permanent relationships with people, and the idea of making new friends that you know you will be able to keep for the foreseeable future. Not to say that I won't still be friends with the people I've met on the ship, but the quality of relationships that really matter cannot easily be maintained properly with facebook, skype or phone-calls.