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.
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