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. 

It's hard to believe but I am now over half-way through my contract, and I thought it would be good to summarize what the cruise-ship lifestyle has the potential to offer. Working on a ship has a the potential to be a destructive experience, but it also has a lot of potential be an incredible growth opportunity on many different levels.

The obvious destructive habits that people pick up on these ships begin with heavy drinking. This ship in general is actually not too bad for this, since the access to alcohol is not quite as limitless as it is on some other ships I've heard about, although it still is incredibly prevalent. Musicians and production cast in particular can get into the habit of compulsive drinking even during the day, since there is so much free time to kill to the point that they do it out of boredom. Luckily that has not been the case with the people I've known on this ship, but I've heard many stories about it on other ships.

In addition to excessive drinking as a potential destructive habit on ships is excessive eating. There is 24 hour access to food on this ship of all different kinds, and if you know nothing about nutrition or just don't care, then you can really eat as much as you want of some terribly unhealthy food. Again, the risk is greater for those of us with more free time, and some people get into the habit of watching movies in bed all day, snacking on chips and leading very lethargic lives. This is okay obviously from time to time, but gets pretty bad if it's your entire life. 

A third destructive habit on ships, again specifically for musicians and others who have lots of free time, is a destructive outlook and attitude. For those who have never experienced this kind of lifestyle on a ship, it's pretty difficult to imagine what there is to complain or be negative about, but human beings are incredible at adapting to new situations, and a lot of people seem to forget very quickly just how good they have it on ships. With no real-world problems to complain about, they start to complain about pretty trivial things. This I think is principally a result of wasting their time on the ship and losing motivation to do anything, which is thee danger of having too much unspent free time. 

As I said, there is a lot of potential for a very unhealthy lifestyle. There is, however, plenty of good that can be achieved on ships, and if you decide to focus on these things it is actually a lot easier to get them done here than on land.

For myself, One of my main things that I've been devoting time to on the ship is going to the gym. It adds structure to my days, and obviously has great health benefits not only for my physical health but my mental health as well. The nice thing about having health as a focus on a ship is that, because I don't want to hinder the positive effects of going to the gym, it has encouraged me to eat healthily, and limit my drinking to a reasonable amount.

In addition, for musicians, there is plenty of time to get practicing done. Of course the material that you perform on the ship you will adapt to and learn very quickly and not need to practice after a couple of weeks, and so you will have to come up with your own materials to work on.  Practicing is one thing I would like to focus on more for the last half of my contract.

There are plenty of other good uses of your time to come up with on this ship. Writing a blog is a great habit that I've been able to get into to help keep people up to date about my experience as well as giving me a time to focus and reflect on what I'm experiencing here. I spend a lot of time reading as well. Other people I've talked to have mentioned things like writing music, practicing gymnastics (for the gymnists in the production cast), learning new languages, drawing, playing basketball, watching tv series, and more. 

Perhaps the best experience to get out of working on a ship is life experience. You can become a more worldly person not only from traveling to the different counties, but also from meeting hundreds of new people, forming friendships very quickly and also having to see new friends go home at the end of their contracts. The range of personalities you encounter on ships is pretty vast, and keeps things interesting.

And of course, being on a cruise ship is a very sheltered existence without any real-world stresses, like deadlines, agendas, having to make food, clean stuff, plan stuff, remember anything important, etc, not to mention you have very little access to the media at large which means you are not constantly being overloaded with information. 

I will stop this post here as I could go on and on about this stuff, and I might add more to it later.  

Thanks for reading!

This post is from a couple days ago. Enjoy!

December 2nd

I can't believe that it's been 10 days since I last wrote anything, but the longer I am on this ship the faster the time seems to pass by.

Things have been pretty routine for the greater part of those 10 days, but the last few have had a few blog-worthy happenings.

Tuesday, we were in Grand Caymen. I went to a local bar for internet and some beer with the ship's guest DJ, and had a great time, but came back to the ship about an hour later than I was supposed to. For the most part it turned out okay except that it was payday and I did not get back in time to get my cheque at the alloted time, which really isn't a big deal in the scheme of things but I did get some minor grief for it. It was worth it though, and I had a long un-deserved but definitely appreciated nap upon returning.

The evening brought some new interesting turns of events. We had two sets, one jazz set to back up the ship's comedian, and also our regular Tina Turner set. However, our guitarist, after seeing the nurse, was diagnosed as possibly having G.I (Gastro-instestinal something), and since this ship doesn't take any chances on these things, he was promptly quarantined for 24 hours. To make matters worse, our piano player without warning had to leave the ship to go to hospital for eye surgery. I've been told that he's not coming back, so we are now down a piano player. As a result, we had Fabrizio, the piano-bar entertainer, sit in for our jazz set.  As for our Tina Turner set, we had no piano player, but we did have the guitarist from the ship's cover band, Next Stage, sit in for our guitarist. Despite not being able to read music, he pulled through amazingly after having listened to the recordings and gone over the music with our band, saving the day.

Wednesday we were in Cozumel, which was nice but a little rainy and overcast. I went out only briefly, before returning for a late lunch. I spent the afternoon by watching some tv, and going to the gym. I went to Bamboo Restaurant (the ship's sushi and asian fusion restaurant) for dinner with the now un-quarantined guitarist Andrew. It was excellent sushi except it had far too much rice proportionately on each roll, causing us both to overestimate how much we could eat. It was a good meal nonetheless, but at 15$ a cover charge seemed far too expensive, being accustomed to an overflow of good and cheap sushi in Vancouver. Afterwards we went for some cigars in the cigar lounge, where we chatted with our saxophonist. Later I went to watch the end of rock night, played by Next Stage, and then headed to bed.

The unfortunate result of stuffing myself with sushi, or really anything, right before going to bed, is that my body doesn't let me sleep until it has digested most food, which I apparently have yet to reach. It did however give me an excuse to write this post, which I would have otherwise continued to put off.

There is a huge change-over of crew coming up shortly on this ship. Between December 12th and sometime in early January, no crew finish or start any contracts due to the busy-ness of the Christmas season. As a result, December 12th will be an extremely hectic day of embarkation and disembarkation of not only of 2000+ passengers but hundreds of crew members as well.

Before that, however, on December 3rd, our cover band, Next Stage, leaves and a new one will embark. It will be sad to see them go as they are not only an amazing band are also amazing people who I will miss. However, my experience so far with every change-over of this nature has been positive, and I am sure that the next band, once adjusted to, will rise to the occasion and do a great job.

Something that I just found out recently and am excited about is that in January and February we will be having two chartered cruises. I don't know much about the January one, but the February charter is a Rock cruise, and it is being headlined by The Barenaked Ladies, who will be supported by a number of other bands, including Great Big Sea and The Odds. I am incredibly excited to see these great Canadian bands, and as it will be happening on my last week on the ship it will be a terrific send-off for me.

That is all for now!

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.....