A lot can happen in 3 days

The last 3 days have been a real adventure. But first, let me pick up where I left off.

The long day in Brisbane this week was a godsend. I found the cigars I was after, I putzed around a did a little shopping, hung out with a few people, and generally had a relaxing day. Toward the end of my time off, I met up with a few other crew members for a beer at a pub not far from the wharf. We discovered that this pub also made a pretty good steak dinner so we ordered. Fantastic! My medium rare New York Strip was a little more medium than rare, but the meal was still great. I pretty much devoured the whole thing and sampled about 5 or 6 Aussie beers I'd never had in the process. Not bad, but the honey wheat was a disappointment.

Needless to say, I was feeling pretty good by the time I got back to the ship, and since all the passengers had already boarded, I cruised right through the terminal without having to play dodgem with a thousand tourists. The passenger boat drill was a joke as most of the pax had been aboard and drinking since about 3. After that, the trio was supposed to play dance music in the nightclub. This is usually giant frustration for us and 3hours of it could have been a disaster, but I was playing really well and the cruise director pulled us off early to open the room as a night club with a DJ as the party in the other bar was overflowing. Fine by me, so Rich and I went out back and smoked the first of our cigars. Arturo Fuente's from the Dominican Republic. Great flavor, and a 2-hour smoke. We have 2 cruises left and have 2 each of the Fuentes remaing for each of those cruises. Should be pretty sweet. (the spacebar on this computer sucks. I'm not on my laptop, in case you hadn't guessed.) So by the end of the night when we finally headed down for bed, I realized that the only thing that could have made it any better was having someone to cuddle with. This was not to be, but oh well.

The next day, we played for Jackie Love's cabaret. Jackie is somewhat famous in Australia and a true professional. Easily the best Guest E we've played for in many many respects. Once again, it was Richard and I holding it together and Jerry screwing things up, but that's nothing new and a badge of honor for Rich and I as other crew members can see and hear what's happening so Jerry isn't fooling anyone. Even passengers pick up on it. We celebrated with a beer, a pizza, and a smaller, cheaper Fuente that was surprisingly quite good. Another good day.

The next day would bring a surprise. Richard woke early with a migraine and was vomitting all day because of it. He wasn't able to play our noon pool set, so Jerry and I played a duet. It went OK. Time was a little wide but we held it together and were more than civil toward each other, so that's good. Come dinner time, we were scheduled to play the steak house, but Richard was quarantined just beforehand, so we had to punt. Jerry decided to play the gig himself on the grand piano so I got the night off. I watched a movie, worked on Kalida's show a bit, then headed up to watch the second sitting of the production show. Now the fun begins.

The house lights above one of the aisles were flickering and I called the production manager over to check it out. He said, "Oh no, those are the emergency lights!" Sure enough, two seconds later, complete power loss to the entire ship. So the passengers are laughing, and most of them drunk as this really was just a booze cruise. (you wouldn't believe all the extra security we brought on for 3 friggin days) Finally the cruise director comes into the showroom and as he does, I'm standing at the edge of the crew stair entrance and hear the GES. ***For those unfamiliar with ships, the GES is the General Emergency Signal which summons all passengers to their lifeboat muster stations. Usually, this signal is proceeded by a crew alert signal to get the crew in place to deal with the passengers before the pax actually are called to action. But not tonight. I said to the Cruise Director that the GES was going off, and he said now it's not. But it turns out, I was right, though it had only sounded in the crew areas. Since the CD is one of the 3 officers on the muster control party, he has to swing into even more action now as crew are scrambling up from the dark with lifejackets and muster hats in hand.

Thankfully, this was a false alarm, triggered by the power loss. Richard, meanwhile, was down in the depths of deck 2 forward in the isolation cabin (vomitting and diaherria are serious threats to the health of the ship, its crew and pax) even though he was not contagious. He had to crawl up from the depths to our room, in the dark as the emergency evacuation lights did not come on, and get his life jacket and what not. I'm sure that was fun.

Meanwhile, they managed to restart the show, which they had to do 2 more times as the captian's announcements killed all the PA equipment on all decks. The cast perservered though. Points for recovery.

Glen, the production manager, is about to have a coronary though, as his phone starts ringing off the hook and he got about 10 pages in these few minutes. You see, the power reset the systems in the night club and the pool deck and no one could get them up and running again. But Glen can't leave the show lounge til the show ends. So that was a bit of a mess.

Then, I walk up and deck and remember that Captain Rivera has returned to take over tomorrow for Captain Paoletti. Sure enough, there sits Rivera, eating a pizza on the open deck while all hell is breaking loose elsewhere. Welcome back!

The rest of the evening passed fairly uneventfully. Just swapping stories of where were you when.....? I found out that several of the dancers were heading to an open audition for Tokyo Disney in the morning and they were also auditioning male musicians/percussionists. Unfortunately, the muso auditions are in the afternoon after we are set to sail, but I sent a resume down with one of the dancers who had worked there before and knew one of the production directors. He said he'd put in a good word for me and see if he couldn't get them to take a look at me. I'm waiting for a phone call regarding that. Not expecting much, but Japan could be fun. My phone is actually on right now....for the first time in over 3 months. It's on Roaming and I don't want to know what a call will cost, but it does actually work.

And that is about it. Amazing what can happen in 3 days. At any rate, just two 7-day cruises remaining and I head home, with considerably less debt and plenty to keep me busy through the end of April. Thinking about a Meditteranean contract starting in early May and ending late July. Just a though for now though.

Man.....long post. Have fun reading that one. See you all soon.

cheers