It's been awhile since I've posted anything about the happenings on the ship, so I thought I'd try and come up with a few details to let people know that I am still alive and doing things.

I am obviously very settled into ship life at this point, and feeling very at home, but no matter how long I am here I never cease to reflect on the whole experience and life on the ship, because it is still a very surreal and unique sort of experience. One thing about it is that the time goes by very very quickly because there are so many ship routines that are repeated every week that start to blend together. Our tribute and production shows, boat drills, other entertainment acts on the ship, the coming and going each set of passengers, weekly cabin inspections, episodes of Two and a Half Men and The Office, weekly entertainment meetings, the rush to get free internet at a lucrative port, drinking coffee and reading outside of Blue Lagoon Restaurant, going to the gym, hanging out in crew bar, and of course meals and sleep.

The one thing that doesn't feel routine yet, is the ports themselves. Between the actually cities we dock at, the surrounding areas, and the shore excursions, there is really quite a lot to explore and experience and there is always a new side to see of these islands.  I would very much like to go on some hikes through the mountains in Tortolla and St Kitts, both of which have port cities surrounded by very close-by mountains.

The biggest recent change is that two days ago our old guitarist, Glenn, finished his contract and has gone to England to play some jazz there for six months. Our new guitarist, Andrew, is now on board, and he is a fellow Canadian from Toronto, dismantling my status as the only Canadian musician onboard. He is also in his 20s and so I am no longer the youngest by 20 years, as I had been for the last few weeks since we got our new sax and piano players. While Glenn was predominantly a jazz player, Andrew is definitely a rocker. They are both good players with their own personality in their playing, and so more than anything it gives a different colour to the sound of the band, which will keep things interesting for the rest of us as we adjust to it.

The key cards that we are given to open our cabins and to buy things on the ship have the weakest magnetic strips you could imagine, and if they come in the faintest of contact with anything electronic they de-magnetize. I got to experience this all too annoyingly at 2:30am last night (the fifth time so far on this contract), when, after briefly leaving my cabin to get a drink of water at the nearby fountain, I discovered that my card wouldn't open up my door. I knocked and knocked on the door and went to a nearby phone to call my cabin, but my roommate was passed out stone cold. 

I went to find the security guard on duty, who told me that he wasn't authorized to open it and that I should go get my roommate. Having already tried to contact my roommate multiple times, I politely told him so, which he seemed to completely disregard and told me to contact my roommate. I humoured him and returned to my cabin with more knocking, and then more phone calls, and then more knocking, but to no avail. I returned to the man, who unhelpfully gave me the same frustratingly stupid and blatantly wrong answer as before, because as the security guard on duty it is in fact his job to let in people who get stuck out of their cabins.

At any rate, after posting at the top of my staircase waiting to see if anyone more helpful would walk by, I eventually spotted another security guard, who promptly called the first one and told him to come open my cabin. 

When the first one came and recognized me as the one who had asked him in the first place he was quite definitively pissed off, although for no reason that I can quite fathom. He made some vague threat about what he'd do if my roommate was in fact in the cabin, to which I responded for the umpteenth time that yes, he in fact was in the cabin, but was fast asleep and seemingly unwakeable. He didn't seem to know what to do with this brand new piece of information, mumbled something about the crew bar and after opening my room, searching it briefly and spotting the passed out form of my roommate, he left, angrily.

Needless to say I didn't dare leave my room for anything else, until the Personnel office opened in the morning and I went to get a new card. In the past whenever I've gone to get a new card I've tried to come up with some excuse as to how it got demagnitized so that I don't feel quite as foolish, but today I just handed it over, grunted and left without a word, still annoyed about last night's episode.

My fun episode of today immediately following, when I went on deck to wait for the sound of the emergency alarm, being under the impression that we had a boat drill at 10am. I waited a good 20 minutes (boat drills always start late) before realizing that no one else seemed to be waiting for it, at which point I went back downstairs, discovered that the boat drill wasn't until tomorrow, and that I was now 30 minutes late for a rehearsal with the rest of the band and the production cast in the theatre for tonight's shows.

Dramatic as it sounds, everyone was good-humoured and amused as I discreetly walked onto stage in the middle of one of the numbers, although the deal in the band is that you buy a round of drinks for the others when you miss a rehearsal, which is perfectly justified and that I will honour when I get the chance.

All in all, nothing too bad, and at least I got some fresh material for my blog. 

I am currently sitting on a patio in Tortolla, just outside a "Best of British" shop, which exists in honour of the fact that Tortolla is one of the British Virgin Islands, and is well stocked with things like tea, british magazines, canned soup, and advent calendars (which look very out of place in this climate).

I intend to go walk around and explore Tortolla a bit more before heading back and probably napping/reading/watching tv series until our shows tonight. There is a crew/passenger deck party afterwards which should be a fun time.

That's all for now!

With all of my free time on this ship, I have slipped into the pleasant habit of reading quite a bit. I find that on a ship of thousands of people, finding somewhere quiet to read is one of the most restful and relaxing activities available to me, and happily there is not only a bookshelf from which to borrow books for crew in the staff mess, but we can also take books from the passenger library which has a much larger selection. Being a sucker for psychological self-help type books, I took out a book called "Play" a few weeks ago, and have just finished it, and decided to inflict my thoughts upon this blog.

Play, as defined by author Stuart Brown, is one of the most defining attributes of human beings, and is what likely has put us so far ahead of any other species on earth. Play and learning go hand in hand - hence infants and children who are learning at the quickest rate do so by playing and exploring to the greatest extent. As centuries go by, humans have started to extend this period of play and learning for longer and longer, and this has been a great asset to us, and has led to the varied achievements of technology, art, culture and more that we have attained. 

Brown talks about how most animals grow new nerve connections extensively only during their juvenile period. When their period of play stops, their brains effectively stop growing. 

The reason that animals stop playing is that eventually the benefits of learning and growing smarter are outweighed by the inherent dangers of play, such as its distraction from other critical activities like protecting the young, finding food and shelter, etc. Eventually they reach a point where they descend into narrower, more compulsive behaviour patterns. 

This is not as much the case with the most intelligent types of animals, such as dogs and dolphins. Both of these animals are extremely playful for most of their lives, and are thus always learning and reaching new levels of mental sophistication.

Brown makes a comparison between dogs and wolves. Wolf and dog pups are very similar when they are still young, but as they grow they start to become very distinct. Dogs, which have been bred to coexist with humans, have a much more fluid and flexible social structure, are more adaptable to strangers and new situations, and are obviously much more playful. Wolves on the other hand have a rigid hierarchal system, are generally hostile to strangers, and as they grow up lose most of their early playful nature. 

Of course, in the wild, this is to the benefit of wolves, and most domestic dogs would not last long in such conditions. But since dogs are given the luxury of a relatively safe environment to grow within, they are free to explore, play, and learn throughout their lives. 

Humans have stretched the juvenile period longer than any other species - to 15 years at least, and usually much longer For people who are well adjusted and who are safe, play can prompt continued neurogenesis throughout our entire lives.

So, on to Brown's description of play. As a general guideline, he says to look for the following characteristics in play: 

Apparently purposeless ( done for it's own sake), 

Voluntary

Inherent attraction

Freedom from time

 Diminished consciousness of self

Improvisational potential

and Continuation desire (we want to keep doing it).

The Benefits of play according to Brown are that it provides a safe environment within which we can explore and evolve social boundaries, and also puts us in a frame of mind where we are opening ourselves up to new possibilities, or thinking outside the box. In the words of animal play scholar Bob Fagen, "In a world continuously presenting unique challenges and ambiguity, play prepares [animals] for an evolving planet."

In a nutshell, the idea I found the most captivating of this book is that the activities that you are drawn to the most for their own pure pleasure to you are the activities that your mind already knows will stimulate the most brain growth and learning. There are some obvious limits to this, but to simplify, the notion of pursuing your passions and hoping for the best has been given a new degree of merit.

The important thing that he stresses throughout the book is that you don't want to look for anything productive in the play activity - the need to be productive is an unfortunate thing that our modern society has imposed upon us, driving us to feel guilty about the idea of doing something just for the sake of enjoyment. The fact is that in the most seemingly trivial and impractical of play activities your brain is being activated and making new neural connections, filling in gaps and preparing you for life's challenges in ways that we are only just beginning to understand. Enjoyment of play activities is not an arbitrary neurological phenomena, but is rather our brain's way of trying to steer us into activities that will stimulate it's own growth. 

A playful attitude also lends resilience to life's challenges, and a sense of irony and humour helps us to deal with failures and unexpected circumstances without taking ourselves too seriously.

One other thing to keep in mind is that anything at all can be a play activity, it just depends on the individual person's perception of it.

Anyways, that's all for now. Next up is "A Tale of Two Cities" - this will take me just a little bit longer.....

Well, this has been my longest break so far without writing a blog, but that's because I've had the distraction of entertaining my parents on board. It has been a very full but fun week spent with them, aided by the fact that they came on the nine-day cruise in which my work schedule tends to be quite sparse.

In our first port, Samana, we went on an excursion called "Discover Samana", which was a bus tour which took us all around the Samana peninsula, starting at the first Church of Samana ("El Churcho"), before going to a place that sold local crafts, jewelery, and cigars. We were then taken to an area with a beach, restaurant and a few other stores. The majority of the tour took place in the bus, in which our tour guide, Carlito, gave us a very detailed history of Samana, about it's education system, economy, and culture. Overall it gave me a much greater appreciation of the port that has been the butt of many jokes on the ship for it's seemingly lack of appeal to tourists. 

Just about every night we went to one of the fine dining restaurants, from The Venetian which is free but still probably the most elegant of the restaurants, with a spectacular menu with specials that change daily, to Salsa, the text-mex restaurant which overlooks the centre atrium of the ship, to Impressions, the local italian restaurant with an excellent selection of food and decorated by some amazing pieces of art. 

Usually after dinner and my shows for the evening we hung out in a lounge drinking either wine or whiskey and listening to a piano player, whether it be Ariel playing old jazz and pop standards, or Fabrizio, the ship's "Italian Stallion", spreading love and playing just about every popular tune you can think of.  

In Barbados, me and my parents went to visit the parents of some of our friends from church, the Goodriges. We had a great time with them, and it was a refreshing break for me because it was the first time I had eaten or really set food in a private residence in two months. 

One of the highlights for all of us this week was the excursion we went on in St Kitts. It was a Cattemaran ride which first took us to a spectacular snorkeling spot, and then to a remote beach resort on the nearby island called Nevis. The Rum-punch and beers were limitless, and lounging on the netting at the front of the boat with rum in hand under the Caribbean sun was definitely among the most perfect Caribbean experiences I've had. 

Another interesting element of the week for me has been being able to see the ship a little bit more from the passengers' perspective. This has been the result of spending time in my parents stateroom (which made me feel less bad about the small size of my own room), eating in formal restaurants each day rather than just getting a quick bite at one of the buffet's as I normally would do, going on several shore excursions, and generally mingling more with the passengers. I have also indulged in far more food this week than is my norm as I have been eating vacationing passenger portions rather than everyday life portions, which has been pleasant but is not really sustainable all year round.

I managed to get my parents VIP passenger status, which among other things let them (and by extension, me) eat every breakfast and lunch at the most upscale restaurant on the ship, Cagney's Steakhouse. Cagney's is an exceptional restaurant with amazing steak, egg dishes and other things, but probably best of all is the privacy it gives from the rest of the ship which is always bustling. 

Today is sunday and so my parents disembarked, and I hung out with them briefly in Miami before heading back to the ship, leaving them to make their way back home. It has been a great week and has been nice to have a reminder of home from hanging out with them for the week, and I feel like I've had my fill of home again and am happy to be on the ship still for a few more months. My schedule is looking promisingly different this week too which should keep things fun.

That's all for now - I swear I will get some more pictures up one of these days...

St Kitts is a pretty cool place, and went way up in my books after I discovered the potentially endless free rum samples of many different kinds right near the ship.

 As a town, St Kitts seems decently well off, although some of the houses were pretty run-down. I did manage to find free internet which was a plus, but it is a relatively expensive area so I think I will leave most of my shopping for Miami and Cozumel, Mexico. 

The last two days of the nine-day cruise were relatively quiet and uneventful. Sunday we began our first five day-cruise, which heads down to Grand Caymen and then to Cozumel. That evening we had a passenger halloween party, which was pretty entertaining. Monday was a sea day, and was back to our usual monday routines of busyness - Big band brunch, two Band on the Run shows, and Viva Las Vegas. The difference this time however was that everything was quite poorly attended in comparison to normal. The passengers of the five day cruise are a different sort of clientele from those of the nine day cruise. Since it's cheaper it caters to younger crowds as well as a more diverse group ethnically, both of which are great things: however, the one advantage of having an old white audience, as in our 9-day, is that they are a very appreciative and attentive audience, and on the nine day cruise all of our shows had a much greater attendance. This cruise attendance has been slimmer although the people who do come bring a lot of energy.

Yesterday, Tuesday, we were in Grand Caymen, of the Caymen Islands. Grand Caymen is very wealthy, with the 12th highest household income in the world. It was also struck by a Hurricane six years ago that destroyed or damanged 95% of the buildings in the main town, and so it is a very new looking place. Again, it is not a place to go buy stuff, but it is a beautiful, modern town with a lot of good places to eat and explore. 

Tuesday evening, after playing a dance set and a Tina Turner tribute set, we had our crew Halloween party, which was great fun what with the free drinks and high spirits of everyone there. I attempted to go dressed as a hobbit but ended up looking like Sherlock Holmes and ended up introducing myself as him. It was a fun night and I had a really good conversation with Clayton, the drummer of the Jamaican calypso band, Caribbean Wave. We talked a lot about music, Reggae in particular, and also Jamaica and it's history and culture. 

Today we were in Cozumel, Mexico again, which is my second visit there. it is a great port with some excellent shopping for good prices. I did a little bit of christmas shopping for some things that I will turn over to my parents when they arrive on friday, and I also bought some cheap cigars for smoking in the Havana Lounge on the ship (which I am in fact doing right now as I write this). 

After hanging out in Cozumel I went back to the ship and relaxed for awhile and watched some tv, before eating dinner and playing our one show of the day, supporting the comedian as he switched between jazz standards and his stand-up routine.

I am doing my best to keep everything up to date on this blog. My entries are becoming less frequent not because less things are happening, but I don't want to bore those of you who keep up with this regularly with details on shows that I have already described before - I am trying to limit this mostly to new events and reflections. I still very much enjoy writing this, as it makes my adventure on this ship feel like it is serving a greater purpose, though what that might be I am not quite sure. At the very least I hope I am entertaining you and giving you a happy distraction from everyday life.

Tomorrow is a sea day on our way back to Miami, and I have the entire day off. I am very much looking forward to getting to Miami on friday since parents will finally be getting on for their nine-day cruise. At the same time it will be a sad day because one of my good friends on the ship, Anton, who is the piano player from the showband, is heading back home to the Ukraine. Another big change will be that we will be getting a new cruise director in Miami while our current director goes on a two month vacation with his girlfriend, who is the current saxophonist of the showband. On top of the arrival of parents, departing friends and a new cruise director, I am also starting a marathon of general safety training courses including things like basic first aid and firefighting, which will be a pain but is probably good stuff to know.

I hope that everything is going well with everyone who's reading, and I really appreciate all comments and feedback I have gotten from this blog. I would love to get emails (sent to M_J_W_87@hotmail.com) from you filling me in on anything new happening in your lives, and I promise I will respond to them. 

Also, just so you know, if you click the "follow" button on the right hand side of the blog, you can have the site inform you whenever I write something new.

That's all for now!

This is from yesterday:

October 27th

Sunday we were in Samana again, where I just went off very briefly to get some free internet at a local restaurant. 

On Monday we went to Tortolla Island, which is one of the British Virgin Islands. Since it is a bigger and wealthier place were were able to dock right at a pier instead of having to take tender boats, which made it much less of a headache going ashore.

Compared to Samana, Tortolla quite a wealthy island, and it obviously gets a lot of tourism. It is situated in a beautiful cove of a small valley surrounded by mountains lush with greenery, and the water is a piercing shade of blue. Immediately outside the ship is a row of vendor stalls selling clothing, souvenirs, jewelery, sunglasses, hats, and various other accessories at inflated tourist prices.  As you kept walking in you approached a main street which is full principally of clothing stores. Tortolla is under Britain's jurisdiction but nonetheless it uses the american dollar for it's local currency. One of the principal clues that it is under British rule is that people drive on the left side of the street there, which is surprisingly disorienting. Tortolla, like most of the islands in the Carribean, has a history that is very much entwined with the slave trade, and as such a vast majority of the locals are descendants of African slaves, with an extremely small minority of white people who's principal role seems to be to run a few English style restaurants for tourist appeal. My overall opinion of Tortolla as a tourist was that it's greatest asset is it's natural beauty, cleanliness of the city and a some interesting looking buildings. However, it is quite a small town with pretty limited retail outlets, and I found it to be eerily empty of pedestrians relative to every other Caribbean port. A more positive way of looking at it is that it is less of a tourist trap and has other means of making money.

Next, on Tuesday, we were in Antigua. While not having quite the same degree of natural beauty as Tortolla, Antigua is a much bigger and denser town, filled with shops of very kind. The streets are narrow and bustling with pedestrians which I always find comforting in a place. I found it to be most reminiscent of Coracao as far as the layout of the city. It is clearly too intriguing a place to take in one short visit so after walking around for a little under an hour I settled down for a Pina Colada and some free wifi usage. It will be an interesting port to explore each week. My main criticism of Antigua is that it is surprisingly expensive, but I expect that if you know where to look you can find most things, and if you are patient and walk further in I wouldn't be surprised to find some much better prices.

Today (Wednesday), we were in Barbados. Barbados I believe is the most well developed country in the Caribbean, and one of the largest. We docked in Bridgetown which is it's capital, which is an extremely popular cruise ship destination. As such, the port is large and a little bit removed from the downtown core. Still, it is a pleasurable 20 minute waterfront walk into town and if you go just a little bit further there is a beautiful scenic beach overlooked by restaurant patios. I went to one, The Boat Yard, which is the local hangout area for crew, with a 5$ admission which includes a drink, access to their waterfront facilities, internet access, and a shuttle back to the ship afterwards. In the future I intend to do some biking around Barbados to so as to see further into the downtown area. 

After going into Barbados I came back and played a jazz set with the ship's comedian as well as our Tina Turner Tribute set. It was rock knight for the ship's cover band who were playing outside by the pool, so I checked that out for awhile before coming down to get some food and do some writing.

Tomorrow we are in St. Kitt, which is the final port of the nine day cruise, before we make our two day journey back into Miami. The showband will be supporting a guest singer tomorrow night for two shows in the Stardust Theatre, so that will be nice to look at some fresh material. 

Time for another update. 

After Roatan we went to Cozumel, Mexico, which is so far my favourite port of the Carribean. It has a lot of good gift shops and things to buy for cheap, a lot of great looking restaurants with nice patios, and best of all there's a hotel right next to the port with a waterfront restaurant called "No-name Bar" which is a bar designed for ship crew by ship crew, with wireless internet access, amazing waterfront access, good drinks and a picture-perfect patio atmosphere. I look forward to being able to return to Cozumel every second week.

We arrived in Miami on friday, which was a bit of a pain since we had a US cost guard inspection and boat drill, which left us with only 1 hour to get off the ship. I walked around the port area a little bit and found a wifi hotspot not far away, but it wasn't enough time to get into downtown Miami and properly explore it - I will hopefully get a chance to do so at the end of this cruise.

Today is our first sea day of our first nine-day cruise out of our new home port of Miami. The nine-day cruises look like they will be a pretty relaxing itinerary for the showband (not that the 7-day cruises weren't already), as we are essentially playing all of the same shows but spread out over the whole nine days. As such, today, which would have ordinarily been extremely busy (with a big band brunch, two production shows and a casino show) was pretty light with just the two production shows (band on the run). Today was my first day running the show without any sheet music to fall back on, which was a little intimidating and was not helped by the fact that the sound guys got a new mixing board which in short has completely changed the sound that the band hears on stage. All of this is just a convoluted excuse for why I came in early on my bass line for "YMCA". Luckily I fixed it pretty quick and everyone else on stage caught on and kept it smooth, and hopefully the audience didn't notice. At any rate, I will definitely not make that mistake again.

Afterwards I played in the Gatsby's Lounge with Ariel the piano player, and am currently hanging out in the 24-hour comfort-food place, which has become my favourite late-night hang spot and has somehow been the spot where I've had the best conversations on the ship.

Tomorrow we are back in Samana, where if I am organized and motivated enough in the morning I might sneak onto a shore excursion, but if not I will go into town for some free internet and whatever else I can find.

Today we are in Roatan, Honduras, which is a very poor place, not unlike Samana. 

Yesterday we backed up a Celine Dion tribute singer, which surprisingly to me turned out to be a fantastic show with great energy. It turns out that Celine Dion's songs actually are pretty fun to play on stage, and everyone appreciated the humour of playing "My Heart Will Go On" on a cruise ship in the atlantic.

The last three days of this repo cruise are extremely relaxed for the showband with very few shows and a lot of free time, which is nice although also means having to find ways to entertain myself. 

I've been noticing a lot lately how important it is to find time to be away from crowds of people, which can be difficult on these ships. I really love being around all of the people here, but being an introvert at heart, I really need to have quite a few hours in a day to myself to just relax and recharge. 

That's enough musing for now. I have posted a number of Caribbean photos and will continue to post more as I accumulate worthwhile amounts.

Here is another post from two days ago:

October 17th

Today was a sea day. This morning we had a soundcheck at 12:30 for our Neil Diamond tribute shows tonight. I spent the day doing laundry, playing ping-pong, sleeping, watching tv, eating and reading - very relaxing.

 One of the guest performers on the ship during our repositioning cruise is a hypnotist named Brenda Kaye, and she put on three shows tonight - two passenger shows, and then a special crew show at 11:30. I checked out part of one of the passenger shows before going to play my two Neil Diamond tribute shows. 

The passenger show was pretty funny, but the crew show was absolutely hysterical. Brenda had a group of volunteers (for someone to be hypnotized they have to be completely willing and wanting) come on stage and slowly put them into a trance, which was ultimately effective on all but two out of about eight people. She had them playing imaginary pianos and guitars to start, and then got progressively more ridiculous as the night went on. She had one person shouting "man overboard" whenever the acronym "NCL" was said (Norwegian Cruise Line), which in turn would trigger two other people to feel that someone had pinched their butts. 

One girl was convinced that her belly button had disappeared, while two others were given imaginary m & m s which would pleasure them. One guy was made into the laughter police and he started to get quite upset with the audience whenever they would laugh. Another guy was speaking in his perception of a martian dialect while another girl was told she could translate it, which she did. She had them believing a number of other hilarious things, before snapping them out of it, with a parting shot to one guy of having him convinced that he was stuck to his chair until the cruise director came up and shook his hand, which he did. Another was told that she couldn't leave the stage before doing three jumping jacks, which she performed, and finally another girl was told to bark three times whenever she went through a doorway on her way back to her cabin, which I found out later that she did.

I've never seen anything like it - I spoke to several of the hypnotees about it afterwards and they said they felt extremely relaxed, and most of them remembered everything and felt conscious during but also said that they felt compulsed to do what the hypnotist asked or said. It was fascinating and really good-natured fun for everyone involved, and they all enjoyed themselves immensely. I spoke to the hypnotist about it later and she said that people who are hypnotized will not do anything they feel completely uncomfortable or unethical doing, and that they still ultimately can prevent themselves from doing things if they are very much against them. She also spoke of how it can be used to help people quit smoking, help with weight loss, and a number of other things. She is doing  a few seminars on it this week which I will try to check out if I get the chance. 

Afterwards I went out on deck to check out a a thunderstorm. Lightning looks amazing from the deck of a ship in the middle of the night, since you are surrounded by complete darkness, and when a sheet of lightning darts across the sky the entire world around you is illuminated in an awesome bright light and you see everything up to the horizon for many miles. It is a spectacular sight.