Christmas cruise & Crayzee passengers

At last! Christmas is over! You know I thought joining on an Xmas cruise would be fine, and for the most part it was! But I forgot just how busy things were the last time I did it. 

Embarkation day, so this day starts at around 7am with the regular’ get off my ship’ procedures.  Then, we clean everything and prepare the ship for the next cruise, and then it all starts again. Now for the Xmas cruise of course there are decorations everywhere, and we had 3 girls dressed up and singing acapella carols as people board the ship. I distinctly remember one guy coming up the gangway and yelling ‘carols....really!’ Why the hell would you come on a xmas cruise and then complain about the xmas stuff..... I don’t get it! One guy explained later on that they had come to sea to escape xmas, well to be honest they would have been better off in their house, because we go full out cheesy xmas here.

Now to be fair, the Australian crowd is SO much nicer than the American, I’ve done over 2 years on American ships and the aussie passengers are simply here to have a good time, and thats exactly what they do. Amercian attitudes can be a little, shall we say challenging. Not all of them mind you. 

So myself and another staff member are the choir directors again and we directed the xmas choir for the past 13 days, somewhat stress full because didn’t have any of the music for the xmas songs so we were pretty much directing as we went along, it was pretty successful though.  However, I was expecting some good comment cards from the singers, they were full of praise after the show and yet we only got 1 official comment. We were a little peeved to say the least. 

Christmas day was insane, we started with mimosas in the office and bacon rolls, little bit of drama with kitchens but nothing major. Secret Santa happened, lots of fun, aided by mimosas of course. Then off to work, we did a ‘Ginger Bread House decorating competition’ very, very busy but so much fun! Also, all of the officers sang carols in the atrium, very cheesy but also, surprisingly fun.  

Now for some reason, on Boxing Day everyone was so miserable! My theories are that they knew they were going home in a few days and realised they were never going to experience my amazing enthusiasm, obviously.  But to be honest usually that does happen on an xmas cruise, for some reason that I really can’t think of, the day we get the most complaints is xmas day. Weird.

So now begis the new years cruise, lets see what crayzeeness this will bring!

Booze Cruise and start to Xmas season

What a crazy couple of days! I joined the ship a few days ago on a two day ‘booze cruise’ sailing from Sydney to Melbourne. I’ve never seen a cruise like it! Passengers are basically there simply to party, one passenger described it to me as a ‘cruise fix’. Cruising can be very addictive I suppose, is such a relaxed way of travelling. Everything is done for you right down to the finest detail, and its actually cheaper than travelling on your own due to all the stuff that’s included in your cruise price. So people do tend to come back again and again, we must be doing something right then.

Anyway, this short one was insane, the night club was going until 4.30 in the morning when usually due to the industries demographic of a more ‘senior’ clientele, the night club doesn’t usually even go until 1am most nights. Well, that and all the early mornings in port, people are slightly less inclined to party all night usually. However this one, right from the word go we were having problems with intoxicated passengers. For example during the safety demonstration we had 2 guys who wouldn’t take their life jackets off when they were asked, he was slurring all over me and smelt like a homeless person. He claimed he thought we were sinking. Anyway we dealt with it but that’s just one example of what happens on a ‘booze cruise'.

Ooh and speaking of the safety stuff, I’ve gone up in the world. I am now 2^nd in charge of my muster stations, this basically means its my job to check off the crew who manage the passengers when they arrive to make sure they’re all accounted for. And then if for some reason the 1^st in charge doesn’t make it to the station, I then take over. No pressure!

Oh yes, and I also have my own room now which was a nice suprise when I arrived, only because the office sent a guy and a girl as the juniors and obviously we cant share, I feel bad though, she has to share with a purser.

So yesterday we sailed out of Melbourne, Australia. Bound for New Zealand, and its the Christmas cruise! So far passengers seem very friendly, not particularly energetic but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. But we did have to turn back to Melbourne after we had sailed because a lady fell in her cabin and injured herself so we had to get her to a hospital in a tender boat, fairly dramatic but such is the cruise life!

I’ve been talking to a few people who have been here for a few months and they say that this is a really quiet ship, and I can see where they’re coming from. The crew bar has been empty 3 nights in a row now, maybe that’s because its been a hectic few days at work I don’t know, but this is very disappointing. I’m used to crew bars having at least more than 5 people in them in the evening, regardless of work stuff.  Oh well, there’s a big crew turnover in the new year so maybe it will liven up, the people here have been here a long time so I suppose they’re over it

.

Anyway those are my musings, at least the jet lag has gone :)

See ya next time!

Flights, hotels and sun burn

So really quickly before my 30 mons of free Internet runs out.

Flight was okay, Korean Air very hospitable, top notch customer service. But really bad turbulence, particularly over the equator which is apparently normal.

Met a new friend in the hotel lobby since we arrived early so they hotel hadn't got our rooms ready yet, out of our frustration we bonded over a rant about hotels....very British of us but there we go.

We then decided not to waste the only full day of Sydney we will have this contract and went to visit the opera house and darling harbour. Had a fantastic time! It's crazy how you an meet someone in a completely random situation and then make an awesome day out of it.

Forgot to put a memory card in my camera though, my bad!

Completely unprepared for the heat, walking around Sydney all day and then experimenting with the hotels disturbingly unimpressive pool, has resulted in a mild case of lobster face. That'll make a good first impression tomorrow.

Now abusing the 30 minutes of free Internet in the lobby, after being disturbed in the shower by an impromptu fire drill by the hotel staff...fun fun.

Got a room mate for the night, from Canada. Teen Dj, nice guy.

Running out of net time now, so ciow xxx

And so it begins....

So I'm leaving for Sydney, Australia tonight.

I've spent the best part of 2 weeks packing for this and I'm still worrying about whether I've forgotten anything. All the familiar anxieties are kicking in, for example..

Will my bags be over weight?
Will the flight get delayed?
Will we get stuck in traffic and miss check in?
Do I have enough cash on me for food?
Etc etc etc

The thing is, after all this panic I know that once I get to my seat on the plane it wont matter any more. So the panic really wasn't worth making myself sick over it all. Still, its a family trait. We like to travel but when we do we turn into quivering wrecks!

Mother's been equally crazy in the last few days, since I'm leaving so close to Christmas she took it upon herself to throw a big Christmas party for the whole family yesterday. So instead of enjoying our time together in my last few days we've been stressing out and at each others throats half the time.

Anyway, right at this moment I'm trying to finalise my packing without the dogs seeing the bags, last time I got the suitcases out they literally sat in front of the door and refused to let me leave.

So tonight I've got a 25 hour journey with 3.5 hours in Seoul, South Korea to break it up. Flying with Korean Air, supposed to be pretty good but we will see.  Here's a taster.

Then a day and a night in Sydney so I'm gearing myself up to hit Sydney big time. If I've only got a day there I am going to make the most of it!  Plan is to get the train into the city, I'm making it my mission to see the Sydney Opera House up close before I join the ship.

So wish me luck, I'll post again once I've made it to the hotel.

Hmm I wonder if I will be sharing a room this time....

'Hello Sailor! Gays at sea!

Firstly, apologies I did a small vanishing act from the blogging world. I've been a little busy keeping myself entertained for the past few weeks, that and house work. A small example of the waiting game in between contracts I spoke about previously.

Anyways those who know me will know I am a big flaming homosexual, and my experience of being such while working at sea is somewhat dramatic to say the least.

Okay, now depending on your rank, you are likely to have a room mate who you share pretty much everything with. Now I've had both gay, and straight room mates and I've never had a really bad experience with a roomie with regards to my being gay, i think if your going to work on a ship your automatically the sort of person who is fairly open minded so usually the gay thing isn't a problem. However, I find that having a straight room mate is far easier, a straight roomie will go out of his way to make sure I know that he doesn't have an issue with it. They tend to be more careful about bringing a girl back, they're not bitchy about silly little things in the cabin i.e mess or leaving the bathroom light on. Generally I've gotten on better with a straight room mate. This is because, with a gay room mate it feels like you are in constant competition with them. The ratio of gay to straight men on board doesn't exactly swing in my favour so there is a natural competition for the attention of guys. Jealousy becomes an issue, meaning bringing someone back to the cabin is of course out of the question. Now I don't mean to pigeon hole my people but the gays tend to be bitchier than the heterosexuals, so when two are sharing a room and a bathroom it gets horribly dramatic. The stupid little things keep coming up, with little remarks and comments until one day theres a massive argument and you end up having to move down to deck 3 because you can't stand to look at him.

Working in the entertainment department as you can imagine is a hell of a lot easier for the gay man. Again I don't like to pigeon hole but there are an awful lot of us in the industry. In the scheme of things I haven't been doing this for long but I can say, that while I've been in the entertainment side of things I haven't had a straight male boss which I'm not going to lie, did make me more comfortable at first. However, for whatever reason, I have ended up very often being the only gay on the team. The bosses are usually big flamers but I've seen more straight guys than ever in the 'lower ranks' of the department than gay. Maybe that's because gays tend to get promoted faster, maybe we live in an increasingly open minded world and more straight guys are applying for the job, I don't know, but there you have it.

 Pic 1 - Half Moon Cay, Bahamas. It's a hard life...

 Now the gay scene on board is actually, pretty fantastic! The company of course has a discrimination policy and an on board human resources manager so even the tiniest hint of homophobic behaviour and that person is on the next flight home. Which is great. It leaves you totally free to be who you are. However, obviously there are a huge amount of nationalities that work on board, and some of these nations are more accepting than others. They know what the rules are and so never actually express their views, but certain cultures tend to keep to themselves. I wont say where these people are from, but there's more than one group that do this. They generally won't interact with people who are not from their own country. This is still a minority but it does happen. Now within these groups guys tend to be less comfortable being themselves as obviously, the culture of their people doesn't accept it as much. But these few individuals then find their place amongst everyone else and then its all good. I've never seen any extreme homophobia on board, another reason why I love my job! I can even DJ in the crew bar, dressed in drag as dolly parton and didn't even get a second glance, its completely the norm. As I said earlier, attitudes on board are extremely open minded across all departments, so the social atmosphere is extremely good fun!

 Pic 2 - The infamous DJ Dolly from the crew's 'Diva Party'
Pic 3 - Hat party from my first contract, no idea who the guy is.......but i blanked his face just in case.

You see what I mean! FUN!

Finally, obviously cruise ships travel. You're usually in a different country every day, and of course some of these countries are less liberal than others. So, you do sometimes need to be careful depending on where in the world you are. For example, I wouldn't walk down the street in Columbia holding a guys hand or Ii might not make it back to the ship alive. One story is from somewhere in the Caribbean (I don't remember which island) I was out browsing the market stalls and I came across a little wicker hand bag which I thought my sister would like, I was with a friend and I made a joke about how if I bought it everyone would know I was gay. The woman behind the stall gave me such a look it made me step back, she then started hounding me saying things like 'god made 1 man and 1 woman in the beggining' and 'do I think that's a good way to live' I just told her that I thought it was a fantastic way to live and went on my way. Not particularly violent but uncomfortable none the less. Now this is just some countries, obviously if your cruising the USA or Canada your not going to have that problem.

Pic 4 -Cartagena, Columbia. Cannon straddling.

So that's it for today, a little slice of gay life for you. I'm still waiting at the moment, I've got my contract through but just waiting for joining instructions and then I'm heading off to Australia!!! 3 weeks and counting!

ta ta!
xxx

Relation....ships 2, two worlds!

Well hello again, I did promise to elaborate on something I touched on in my last post. I mentioned that for some reason a lot of people that choose to work on cruise ships kind of live in 2 worlds. That is, a life on land with a wife and children or at least a long term partner, and a life at sea with a ship board lover.

I really don't understand why these people think that's its ok, but I have a few theories.

They think they won't get caught. I guess I can see why they would think that, when your the other side of the world there's not an awful lot that's going to give you away to a spouse at home. Also, while your at sea you are meeting new people pretty much every day so temptation is going to be pretty high, so that combined with being such a long distance from your spouse for such a long time is a recipe for adultery. Still I do not believe that excuses it!

And I recon they do feel guilty about it, which is the reason they hide it. It's very easy to tell the people you meet on board that your single, they don't know you, they are unlikely to ever bump into you on land. But fate has a funny way of dolling out the justice, I've seen it time and time again:

The wife will come on to sail with husband (unfortunately it is usually men who do this, not all the time, but mostly) and girlfriend gets jealous and spills the beans.

Wife discovers girlfriend through pictures on social media.

Wife calls the guys cabin and ship girlfriend answers phone.

Basically, having an affair at sea is no different from doing it on land. It is still cheating and you are still going to get caught eventually. Loads of people think there is a different set of rules when you work at sea, well those people are stupid. End.

P.s just a reminder, I'm at home waiting for my next contract to begin at the moment to my posts are more about my thoughts at the moment, once I get on board it's going to get a whole lot more eventful!

Relation.....ships O.o

So here's the thing, as you know a contract at sea can last for a bloody long time depending on which company/department your working in. So you can imagine the impact on the social life that can have.

Picture this, it's your first contract, you've never been to sea before, in fact you've never really been away from home before. You have a multitude of close friends at home who of are of course doing as friends should do and celebrating your exotic new job. I don't know you may have a boyfriend or girlfriend in the works as well. Now before you fly off to wherever your being posted you are totally committed to 'staying in touch' by way of postcards or Facebook et because of course these are the people who have helped build your life so far right up to this amazing new job. You might even be promising a partner that you won't 'do' anything while your away.

So you get to the ship, you start work, and you discover this gigantic new social atmosphere on board. You have a room mate who WILL see you at your best and worst, you find the crew bar, crew tours and activities in port, parties every other night, a whole new world has just opened up to you that you were totally un-prepared for. And to top that off everyone is living on top of each other (not literally but I will let you picture that for yourself)

To help me prove my point I'm going to use another example, getting ready to set the scene again....brace yourself.

One of the crew party themes is what we call a traffic light party. The idea is you come dressed in a certain colour that corresponds to your situation.

Red - not available, back the *#¥* off!
Orange - shy
Yellow - taken but probably still would
Green - come and get me

Now as you can imagine most people come wearing green or red, because let's face it who's going to expose themselves by wearing yellow....
However, it's my experience that 'yellows' are everywhere! For some reason people think that just because they're out in the middle of the ocean these things don't get noticed, well they do!! So freakin stop it you cheating, greasy, sleaze balls!!! This is a fairly big subject about ship life but in going to save that for another entry, just setting you up!

What today's is about is this.

On the topic of friendships, you have a few friends at home that you will always stay loyal to. The ones that are real friends you will never loose touch with, but it's a sad fact that about 90% of your social life on land will instantly disintegrate the moment you do a contract at sea. It only took me one contract and when I returned home everyone I knew bar 1 or 2 people had moved away and got lives, because while your away having the time of your life, you forget that life on land carries on.

And also, you will make amazing friends on the ship, however, since its a contract based job friendships on ships do tend to have an expiration date. If your lucky, you'll become good friends with someone who lives in the same country as you, but even then that person is not likely to be in an easily accessible location compared to yours. You might go and visit them while your off work, but its likely to only be once a year, if that. But I suppose that depends on the individual. I have made some fantastic friends on ships and to be honest you do tend to bump into people from past contracts a lot, after all we all work for the same company. Everyone knows the score when you make a friend, you may not be enjoying each others company for long, but it's better than being lonely. The same goes for a partner, you really think a relationship is going to survive while your only in the country for 2 months out of the year? No! And think about it on board, were all adults so fine, meet someone and enjoy each other but be sensible. Discus it. You either both agree that it's temporary and you just have fun with it, or you keep reading and see what my conclusion is :-p

Okay so here's my point, you still reading? Just checking..

I do believe the key to having a successful career on ships without forcing yourself into a life of loneliness, is to maintain a few good friendships at home because if they're good friends they are the ones who helped you get where you are. And at the same time have friends on board but dont get too close because its likely to be temporary. But whatever you do, do not fall in love with someone who is going to stay on land. You will end up killing yourself! I know you can't really control real love but if you do fall for someone on land, that's the end of your career on ships as far as I'm concerned. Ideally you'd meet someone on board and then you can 'link' which means get the same contract lengths and the same ships. I've seen many successful couples do this and I really think its the way to go. I've seen too many people get a relationship at home and spend their entire time on board pining for them. You still have to deal with what happens while your not on a ship but that's up to you to discuss really.

So to wrap it up, 'sail into the sunset together or you'll sink like the titanic'

Cheesy I know but it pleases me!

My life is awesome and everyone should do it :)
I'm loving it!
Until next time.....ciow xxx

The Waiting....

So to tell you the truth I've been cruising in the industry for about 2 years now so I'm by no means a cruise virgin. 3rd contract, 2 different companies, 2 different roles, countless room mates and even more walks of shame down the M1 (cruise lingo for the main crew corridor).

So here's the background check.

Used to be videographer on cruise line number 1, Visited east coast of Canada, Scandinavia/Uk, and the Caribbean including east coast of Mexico. 9 month contract, which by the end of you kind of feel like sleeping with a phillipino and contracting an s.t.i just for the medical dismissal. Ended up making no money and getting the boss demoted.

I QUIT!!!

Next I got a job I actually enjoy, with cruise line number 2. Steady wage, job ladder, the works. Finally there's a multitude of gay colleagues, a decent crew bar and I get to make a tit of myself on stage. Hooray! So with This new cruise line i start on ship number 1,sailing in Alaska and then the Panama Canal route (Columbia, Aruba, Costa Rica etc) 6 months there then off to the next ship for 6 months of fancy dress parties and 'titanic nights', back in Alaska.

So now comes the waiting, I'm at home in the UK at the moment, currently scheduled to head Australia direction in December however, the way this works is head office can call me anytime if a placement opens up and them I'm packing my bags that night! One does need to be flexible ;) so it could change at any time.

So basically, in between contracts it's a waiting game. Waiting to work, waiting to make friends that to be honest after 6 months you might never see again, or to bump into a friend you worked with for a month 3 years ago.

So in conclusion, I'm lovin it!