here's my back-log of blogs I never get around to posting. I will try to post something with more thought put into it at some point, but this will have to do for now.

March 7th

Apparently they've found my bass, and are sending it to meet up with the ship in Athens. This is excellent news, and now I have nothing left really to worry about.

Today I had early familiarization training, which I had to do because despite having been on the Dawn, the Jade is not technically a 'sister ship', meaning that the layout is ever-so-slightly different. It was no big deal though, since all of the other training I did on the Dawn does apply here and so I shouldn't have to do any more for the duration of my stay.

At noon I had my first gig with the Jade Orchestra, as they are known here. We played on a part of the ship that doesn't exist on the dawn - an outdoor patio extension of the deck 12 buffet, at the very back of the ship. The gig was billed "Beer Fest with the Jade Oompa band", which is exactly what it was - two sets of non-stop Polka music. I was skeptical at first, but it turned out to be a very well received gig by everyone. The other members of the band seem to really enjoy themselves, which I take as a good omen. I mean what's not to love about playing Polka on a sunny outdoor patio in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea?

Actually, I was hardly in the correct mindset to fully appreciate the music, since I was nervous with it being my first gig with the band, and having to sight-read a lot of new charts. Being told that your predecessor was a killer bass player who's a former student of John Pattitucci's is never good for the ego when going into a new gig. 

There were some hiccups but I came through the other side of the gig more or less in one piece. At any right it was a good crash-course in Polka music, and I feel like I have a bit more of a feel for the stylistic idiosyncrasies.

There are some extremely good musicians in this band, which I could already tell based on relatively simple music - I can tell that this band will really shine when we play the jazz sets. That the standard of musicianship is high will hopefully push my own musicianship to a higher level by the end of the contract.

March 8th

In Civitavechia today. Only two hours to spare off the ship before I have to head back and work on music for the first production show, "Showdown". Last night I went over the music with the bandmaster, Alan, and it looks like it'll be a really fun but really challenging show, at least for the first few weeks until I really know how it goes. Since the show is completely live, it's going to take a lot of attention to get through since it is an extremely fast-paced show, and the bass is featured quite prominently since it is mostly Motown music. 

March 10th

So much stuff to learn and see every day, so little time...

Tuesday night, after Showdown rehearsal, we had a Dixieland set. Everybody in the band was telling me how amazing this set is, and I had to see it to believe it, but it really was an amazing show. Passengers really like Dixieland apparently, and combined with the fact that the band's horn section is really quite amazing made for a very high-energy, well-executed show. 

Yesterday we were at sea, and that night we did Showdown. It was a terrific show, and I felt really good about my part. It wasn't just my first time performing it, but also the first time for the entire production cast, who arrived on the ship the same day as me. they did extremely well, and are overall a talented group of singers with good intonation. They are also easy-going and good-natured, and so I look forward to working with them more. 

Today we were in Athens. I went on an excursion that drove us around various parts of the city, and then took us to the Acropolis. I didn't really know what to expect when going to see it, and so I was quite blown away by the spectacle of the temple, and the commanding view that it provided of the entire city of Athens. It was cool to see the nearby hill where the apostle Paul preached the gospel to the locals, in the face of this magnificent monument to the Greek gods. 

As a city, Athens is extremely densely populated, and traffic is lethal. Apparently half of the Greek population lives within the city, which is extremely believable once you are in it. 

The Architecture was distinct - with flat-roofed, short, marble structures packed extremely densely together, giving the city an overwhelming urban look. The spaces between the buildings seem to disappear once they are just a few blocks away  and there is little greenery to speak of. We passed at one point what was apparently the only park in the city of Athens, which to me is incomprehensible. Amazing city, but I would not want to live there.  

March 13th

Last night we played Shout, the second of the two production shows that the band is involved in. It went very well, and while the music (british 60s pop) isn't quite as interesting as in Showdown, It is a fast-paced show with a lot of cues and transitions to keep it interesting.

On friday we arrived at our first port in Turkey, Izmir. I only spent a couple hours out in the city as we had to be back in time for a rehearsal and then some big band jazz sets, but I still got a bit of a feel for it. It has a nice major pedestrian walk-way surrounded by shops and restaurants, and there were a lot of people out and about on the streets. 

Yesterday and today we have been in Istanbul, which has been amazing. Last night me and a few others went out to Taksim Square, the local night-life hub, went to a Hookah Bar and another couple places for a beer and then doners. I could not get over the quantity of people out, the buildings, and the ways that the streets curved into the most bizarre and unlikely ways - it felt very cinematic, and I am at a a loss for words to properly describe it. We got back to the ship around 3:30 and I went straight to bed.

Four hours later I got up and went into town as an escort on a passenger tour to see some of the main tourist attractions of Istanbul - The Blue Mosque, the Agia Maria, the underground cisterns, the spice market. 

The blue Mosque was spectacular in itself, but the Agia Maria really captivated my interest. Having been built 1500 years ago over the span of only five years (after having built and burned down twice), it was the largest cathedral in the world for about a thousand years. It was a Roman Catholic church during this time, until it was taken over by the Ottoman Turks who turned it into a mosque. What is interesting about it is how the Turks' policy on Christian decorations was ambiguous, so that while they covered up the faces of the cherubims on the ceiling, they left untouched all of the many paintings of Jesus Christ being worshipped. 

After going to the spice market, I went back to the ship to catch up on some much needed sleep, before heading out and grabbing some free internet at a nearby Hookah bar.

I promise to write a real blog which doesn't end abruptly one of these days...

It's been an eventful but ultimately good last few days, with moments of stress and excitement intertwining unexpectedly.

In the last week I managed to both lose my passport and chip my tooth, racking up unnecessary bills. The tooth I got fixed extremely quickly if rather expensively, and for an express fee I also managed to get my new passport the day I was leaving Vancouver. Of course, as fate has a twisted sense of humour, I immediately found my old passport upon getting home from getting the new one. I was less than enthusiastic.

My nine hour flight to London was quite enjoyable, and I spent it watching The King's Speech (great movie) and The Black Swan (good, but super creepy if you're in a daze, over the middle of the atlantic ocean, in the dead of night, and everyone around you is asleep...) as well as a few TV shows. My second flight, to Barcelona, was pleasantly short, and I had good conversation with the two people next to me. There was a spectacular view of the snow capped Pyrenees mountains,North of Barcelona. We arrived in Barcelona 7:30pm local time, or 10:30am Vancouver time, which I've decided not to contemplate, with the hope of tricking my body clock into overlooking the anomaly of dealing with effectively 24 straight hours of daylight.

Then my bass decided not show up at the airport - leading to a good hour and a half of waiting and filing the lost luggage report. This was somewhat disturbing as my bass literally is my livelihood on the ship, without which I would be expendable. I decided not to worry about it, and got the shuttle to my hotel, which was a Best Western. It was a nice hotel, and after showering, getting my free meal, and meeting some others who would be on the ship I was feeling pretty good about things again. My bass situation was effectively taken care of with the new knowledge (given to me by the guitarist who I'd just met) that the previous bass player was going to leave his bass on the ship while he was away, so I could use that while waiting for my own bass to turn up.

This morning was asuper early start, though technically by Vancouver time I got up at 8:30 at night, which I guess isn't that bad. We were on the ship before 8 in the morning o'clock local time, and I settled in really quickly, met lots of people, filled out the paperwork, and have now wandered into Barcelona, which is spectacular. 

I feel guilty in saying that of all of the amazing looking cafes on picturesque patios I am at a Macdonalds, ONLY because it was the one place I could tell without a doubt had free wifi. Lame, but practical.

That's all for now. This is just the beginning.

I continue to have lots of free time while I'm in Vancouver, and I've spent a lot of that time reading and assessing my life. I came across a quote in a book which basically states "If you had all of the time and all of the money in the world, what would you do?" Since reading that, I have spent a lot of time trying to figure this out.

 I find that I have subconsciously told myself that whatever it is must be limited to music, but I think it would be beneficial for me to convince myself that that is not true, and that really anything is a possibility. I know for sure that part of what I want will include music because music performance is definitely one of the most exhilarating experiences for me. There is even a good chance that all I do will be music - but giving myself the flexibility of knowing that what I end up doing could be other things too is somewhat liberating. A new question that I found in the book "The Four Hour Work Week" which I think is one degree easier to deal with than " What would you do?" is "What excites you?" 

I know that travel definitely excites me, as does meeting new people. Music excites me as well. Ideas excite me. I continue to toy with the idea of being a high school teacher, but I'm not entirely sure if that's what I want to be doing. I feel like it's something that I wouldn't mind doing, but the thought of it doesn't particularly excite me. Still, volunteering at a school would be a great thing for me to do so as to get a feel for whether I like it or not.

Backtracking to my thoughts about being back on land instead of on the ship. Life is good here, and I've been able to reconnect with a lot of people. One thing that I haven't mentioned which I've  been realizing is the difference between socializing on land and socializing on a ship. It took me a week or so to remember how to do here it properly, because I find that being on a ship makes you perceive people in a different kind of way.  I enjoy the richness of relationships and people back home a lot, because any one single relationship on the ship is rarely quite as deep because you never spend a lot of time with just one other person on the ship. I think you assign more value to time spent with friends on land, simply because it's so much harder to come by. On the ship, you can hardly escape people, so every moment spent with other people becomes devalued due to it's excess, like everything in life. 

Two more days until I am off again, this time to the Mediterranean. I really feel connected again in Vancouver, which is nice because I guess in the back of my mind I was kind of afraid that I would lose contact with people I had spent time with before, but in fact I've had a lot of people contact me who I did not expect to hear from at all, which has been a very pleasant surprise. I feel a little bit guilty leaving again so soon, but it's much better this way rather than getting myself too re-established on land, which would then make it that much harder to pick up and leave again. Better to do my travels and adventuring all at once, I think, in one big chunk, and then somewhere down the road put down roots again and build and rebuild relationships that I will not be disconnecting myself from all of the time.

Tuesday feb 22nd

I've now been back in Vancouver for 11 days.

The first couple of days back home were very strange, and I felt extremely strong nostalgia towards being on the ship, and I also felt completely lost as to what to do with my time, feeling overwhelmingly bored. I guess one of the perks of being on the ship is that, since you are very limited in what you are able to do, the decision of what to do with your time becomes somewhat easier. Whereas, on land, there is infinite possibility of what to do, but any given course of action takes a whole lot more time and commitment to achieve. Since I am only in Vancouver for another couple of weeks before going on another ship again, it doesn't feel like it's worth the effort of investing myself too much into any given course of action while I am here.

As a result I've spent most of my time relaxing and contemplating the future. I did buy the travel-bass that I have been wanting to buy, and now the only thing stopping me from bringing it onto my new ship is the colossal price of the flight-case, which costs almost as much as the bass itself - utterly criminal.

One difficult thing about going on a five month adventure on your own, is that upon returning home, all that you have left of your trip is in your head, and it can be a bit difficult realizing that you have no one with whom you can truly share the experience. On a ship gig you are surrounded by people who are living the same life as you, but once that is done with, it can be a tough realizing that  you must learn to let go of the experience - this is not to say to forget it, but simply to accept where you are, and to accept that it has now become a purely personal experience. I guess that the most valuable lasting quality of such a trip, beyond memories, is the degree to which is changes you and matures you as a person, and the degree to which you retain those changes once you leave. A certain amount of those changes are very context specific, and will probably only reappear for me when I am put again in a similar context, away from the people and places where I grew up. A certain amount of them I think are with me even here, but they are subtle, and require more time spent away from home to develop.

One comforting discovery I have made is that I now know that I am able to function on my own in a completely new environment where I do not know anybody at all, and I am able to recreate a new network of friends and acquaintances. A tough thing about returning home is that it is a lot more difficult here to meet new people, because you do not automatically have something assignificant as a workplace in common with all of the people around you. You really have to go out and make the effort if you want to break into or create new networks of people in the city, involving yourself in things that connect you to new larger circles of people within certain confined area. On the ship, this is already done for you.

I am home for two more days, then I am up on the sunshine coast for a long weekend with family, and then I will be back in Vancouver for a few more days before heading to the Mediterranean. After that, I am not certain what will happen. Being back in Vancouver has gotten me back into thinking about my long-term career and what my dream situation would be, and I seem to change my mind about this every day. One important thing that I have realized is that I need the outside pressure of something unfamiliar to keep me motivated, and I operate much better when I am not in my comfort zone. Unfortunately Vancouver in general has become a giant comfort zone for me, and while I realize that there is a lot more to experience and to do here, I think that for the short term at least it will be very good for me to stay outside of it, so that I can come home and feel that I have changed enough to find it novel again. 

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.