Swearing like a Fish and Drinking like a Sailor

My how the Time has Flown!

2010-08-06T20:59:00.000-07:00

Man, I haven't updated this thing in... well ages. So...er...here I am. Hi.

The last year with RCCL has been long but productive, I've managed to work my way into a promotion: meaning my own cabin (I'm too old for room mates) and a ten thousand dollar raise in addition to other little perks. I'm off to the Freedom of the Seas out of Port canaveral after a week of training in Las Vegas. As for stories, well, the last year seems like one great big story and it all blurs together so swimmingly it's hard to pick out a few to tell.

Let's see, the Holidays on a ship:

From what I'm told the holidays' were a good time for me on the LB, I say that because most of it we all spent in a drunken stupor. You couldn't go an hour without running into a wandering crew christmas/hanakah/tet/whatever crew party and ng force fed booze by the senior staff. Our days were spent not with the normal work but sitting around Studio B with the department drink beer/wine/eggnog/horse swill/*punch(more on that later) wrapping presents, blowing up balloons, building christmas trees, and trying to get dancers to take their tops off. S the only ones to oblige were the gay men.

Our tech department christmas party is even more of a blur. I have feint memories of a secret santa contest, where you had to guess who bought your present and if you guessed wrong you had to chug an entire solo cup of hard alcohol. (One "shot" per guess until you got it right. My liver decided to spend the holidays in Utah where they don't believe in alcohol. The kidneys were not pleased with this decision by liver and decided to evactuate the only way they knew how: chewing their way through the stomach and out my bellybutton.).

By the next morning I had discovered that I was covered in clever sharpie sayings that I had decided to let one of our ice skaters author. Whilest these hijinks were occuring my friends Oliver, Maryke, and myself were discovering *punch. *Punch is the leftover's from *everyone's* glasses, plus whatever vile sludge was left in the ice bowl mixed together with half a bottle of an undetermined liquor and another substance I can only refer to as "Pud" as I have no idea what it was, but that was the sound you made when you drank it. Obviously this was the most delicious thing we had ever tasted, and drank approximately a gallon of it. This of course made Shawn-the-ice-skater very angry as I was wiggling and giggling too much for him to complete his masterpiece of caligraphy entitled "I love dick" on my backside.

(As a side note, *Punch actually turned out to taste pretty good, somehow. We saved the bowl in our cabin and discovered it two days later; and what do you do when you find strange purple-ish liquid in your bathroom? Drink it of course!)

New years was alright, I ended up standing guard on the promenade for the orchestra until we fired off our balloon drop. At this point it was an "All rules are off" party for guests and crew alike. I tastefully had a glass or two of champagne, witnessed my supervisor get into an argument with the captain over whether it was New Years or Christmas, and went to bed.

"went to bed": English, verb, article and subject. Pronunciation: "full-of-shit" etymology; derived from the latin shitus facedis. Definition: To not remember wandering around the ship with one's suit jacket on backwards and inside out trying to kiss everything in site in a jovial manner. Yep, no desperation there. Authoritative but distracting whistle

So there were the holidays. I'll update again either tomorrow or at the end of next week when I'm on the Freedom with the following stories:

The infamous Gay Cruise: Or "Some Things You Can't Un-See"

My South African Friends Say the Damnedest Things

The Black Cruise: Or "Bitch You did NOT just say that!"

Hope all's well on your end,

Matty

So...so tired

2009-05-11T21:33:00.000-07:00

Sorry I haven't left a lot of witty posts here, but it's been an exhausting few weeks. I honestly just don't have the energy to write about it. The very though of having to revisit the events of the last few weeks makes me want to throw myself overboard. I'll try tomorrow after I've slept.

International stuff.

2009-05-03T08:41:00.000-07:00

Lately I've been taking the time to learn a few languages while I have the opportunity and I'm pleased to report that I can now hold a decent polite conversation in Russian, Tagalog (which is Phillipino), Spanish, and I'm working on German and Jamaican English (which is crazy different than American). Hanging out with these people and watching international CNN all day has really openned my eyes to how sheltered I am (A lot of us suburbanites are) as to the goings on in the world. Did you know there was a major revolution in the Ukraine 3 years ago? I didn't. There are people here from Ethiopia that can name half of the House of Lords and tell you their personal politics, and sometimes their shirt size.

I think it's all terribly fascinating how globalized the community aboard is. Granted when you have people from 74 different nations all stuck on a boat it's bound to happen but it blows my mind that there are rarely incidents regarding racism, sexism, ismism, etc. It's really nice to see as opposed to good ole' Decatur where if you see a black person you turn the other way or in the suburbs where you see a Mexican and mourn the loss of your quiet afternoon. Part of what I think contributes to that is the fact that things here are incredibly un-PC. People aren't afraid to talk about national stereotypes, it's all on the table. We American's are loud mechanical people, no one understands a single damned thing the Jamaicans say, the Russians are always angry, the Aussies are always drunk, and noone cares that you said it.

The other day I was asking a housekeeper where to get the daily coupons to bring to the cruise director and he just turned and stated loudly "Oh, down there where all the blacks are standing" . I was mortified, one of ladies there heard it, turned to us, and just smiled and was like "right here honey, here you go." It blew me away. It might not sound like much, but it just seems like I've been so programmed that if you can *possibly* in ANY way avoid stating anything about a persons race you do it. I think that's a scary thing. It seems like in America we're so force-fed the idea that everyone's the same that we're rocketing right into Huxley's Brave New World.

Anyway, enough blathering to the internet that I'm still incredibly naive, I believe it's time for some Coffee. Later all.

Swine Flu zombies?

2009-05-02T16:31:00.000-07:00

I have a running bet with my boss that the R1N1(N1R1?) virus will turn us all into Zombies by christmas. More to come on that.

The last week has been utterly insane. Because of this virus, we've been in OPP red again (severe health risk) and we're not allowed to go to any ports in Mexico, which apparently includes Puerto Rico, St. Maarten, and Jamaica. Someone needs to teach these people geography. But what that means is serious lack of internet, serious lack of any form of shopping for supplies like, oh, say, Deodorant, a *lot* of bored guests which means a lot more work for the crew, and a complete bleaching of every possible surface in the ship.

On top of this we had one of our guys in Studio B sign off after finishing his contract. Normally this is not an issue (even though we were sad to see Eric go) however his replacement Ronald didn't have his medical completed. This meant he couldn't sign on to the ship, which resulted in us being *yet again* down a man. I put in 87+ hours last week.

Anyhow, on a lighter note things seem to be going well with a Canadian girl I met, so that gives me something to look forward too.

Anyhow, my break is rapidly approaching an end. Sorry for this one just to be a venting session but it's been a hard week. I'll try to post again this week when I feel less like a walking corpse.

Birthday on the High Seas

2009-04-25T17:23:00.000-07:00

Well, it was my birthday yesterday (woo) sand there are many stories to accompany the day, however at the moment the hotwings I ate for lunch are catching up to me, and we're about to lose internet here soon (We lose the internet approx. 10-12 hours a day). So I'll have to tell you all later.

Yes, there were birthday spankings, and I believe they'll be posted on YouTube (everyone decided to get a running start. Cruel cruel world.)

Anyhow, off to the head. See you in an hour.

Illinois Jones at your service.

2009-04-19T07:45:00.000-07:00

Well, it's been about a month and a half at sea now. From what the passengers are saying the ocean is pretty rough right now and I'd have to agree. While I can't feel the ship rocking at all anymore, I can visibly see my Coke sloshing back and forth in my glass and it is a bit disconcerting. Anyhow, on with the weeks events.

Lets talk a bit about Firedoors shall we? Firedoors on the ship are typically thick steel doors that have what is essentially a little doggy door on the bottom corner so you can feed a fire hose through. However what they're *actually* used for is smashing your ankle when you attempt to hold them open with your foot. Sadistic Dutch designers... Anyway, on our Royal Promenade (tm) Which is a giant open space, we have firedoors that come crashing in a la Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.

Now every Saturday night we have a parade who's morning preperation involves putting the equivalent of a giant thong onto one of the bridges on said Promenade (tm) which isn't a big deal, except that you have to hop the railing of the bridge and curl yourself around the edge of the Firedoor track to do it (see where this is going? I thought you might)

To continue with the story building nonsequitors, the Promenade (tm) is your typical large space, so when there are announcements over the loudspeaker that don't relate to the day's Bingo, it sounds more like a robot gargling than an actual person's voice.

So here's the scene: I'm dangling over the edge of this precarious 8-9 foot drop (very dramatic, I know. Next time I'll try to do it from the top of the rockwall) attaching this 30 foot long bridge-thong helf on by velcro while my duty partner Dave is setting up a platform on the bridge itself and bragging about his new cellphone blahblahblah. We're going about our business when we hear the usual garble over the loudspeaker, nothing out of the ordinary: "mutterstuffleblahsquelch" so we continue on attaching Velcro and talking about shiny cellphones. Five minutes later I hear behind me "Mutterstuffleblahsquelch!!!!" (It turns out the loudspeaker works just fine, the bridge first officer just happens to *actually* sound like he swallowed a tin can) anyhow: I look up, and crashing down on me is said unstoppable Firedoor: I reach up and go to grab the railing to ungracefully flop myself back onto the bridge and what do I find purchase on? Dave's shiny new cellphone. Dave looks at me with a mixture of panic and "I can't believe he's stealing my new shiny amidst this crisis" and I, finding myself totally off balance with architectural lingerie in one hand and a brand new motorola in the other, start to fall. Now for the cool part, I start to roll off the bridge clinging to life to this banner-bridge-thong-thing, aqnd the velcro starts to rip off for approximately 3 feet until it hits the safety cable which is a Nico-pressed aircraft cable ordeal at which point I find myself swinging down, level, and back up safely on top of the table in front of the irish pub. I blink and realize I have just pulled the coolest manuever I will ever perform in my life. Cellphone in hand, and the bridge officer (being a suave adventurous 20-something dutch tin can eater) tells me that he'll give me 20 dollars if I can do that again. I learn from him that the announcement was that they were testing all the firedoors in that particular area, and that I should probable avoid movie stunts while working.

Next lesson: Karma. Everything evens out. Everything.

Later on that day I'm working on something for the aforementioned parade down on Deck three. Now the two guys I work with in Studio B aren't exactly the most humorous fellows, however for some reason today they're feeling a bit cheaky. We have these handheld confetti cannons, on Saturday they need multicolored confetti, and on wednesday they need blue, but for some reason the blue confetti never got fired out of two of them. So, my Nicaraguan coworker Stevie thinks this a great excuse to shoot one at Eric. Now, at a range of <20 feet these things are essentially tightly packed paper bullets. So, of course, Eric shouts, says some vulgar things and promptly decides that in retribution he should of course shoot the other one at me. Now I am unaware of this whole process as I'm working out in the hall bent over a cart. As I'm tinkering with the cart Dave turns the corner and the whole thing works out like this:

Dave :"Hey!!"

Me: "Oh He-"

*Eric turns the other corner and fires off the cannon, hitting me square in the berries*

*Matt makes various death gurgles as he collapses to the Floor*

Dave: "There's my cellphone!"

Me: "uunghunghuuuuugh"

So in the end Dave got his heroicly stolen phone back in a rather ironic way, and I'm worried that my future children may be born with confetti-shaped dents in their foreheads; but the saving grace is that in the aftermath I told Eric that one day soon he'd find his headset magically covered in a particularly strong adhesive, or that in his drink he'd suddenly discover some sort of new industrial laxative. While this in itself seems cruel, the fact is I'll never do anything to him and he's spent the last two days paranoid about touching anything for fear of my testicle-vengeance; so I'll let the paranoia be my revenge.

Anyhow, enough of my morning ramblings: I hope everything's going well where you are, and I'd like to open the forum to any questions you have about cruise ships, the life, the vacation, the caribbean, the ports etc. So feel free to leave a comment. Take care

it's been a long month

2009-04-06T10:47:00.000-07:00

So the last few days have been the first since I've gotten here that I haven't been on duty. This means I've slept. a lot. it's been glorious. Everytime I think I just can't sleep anymore, I take a 5 hour nap.

Well, at least in my head that's what I'm doing.

In all reality the days of not being ridiculously busy all day are rather..annoying. I work for about 45 minutes, then have a half hour break, then an hour, then 45 minute break, etc etc ad nauseum. So while I only work 10 hours a day, it takes up the time from 8:30am to well past midnight.

But aside from all the complaining, things are going well. I just had my 30 day evaluation and am apparently doing very well. Unfortunately though the company has put a freeze on merit increases to your pay, so I got hosed out of that one.

Alas, I have to go clean for Captain's inspection but I'll try to update again later today.

Ciao

-Matt

The Matt-a-pult

2009-03-27T17:22:00.001-07:00

Since so many people have emailed me about this, I figured I'd take them time to write out a bit of the Matt-a-pult story.

How I got flung off the deck of the largest ship in the world: A story in three parts.

First off, the first two weeks after signing onto a ship for RCI you are subjected to possibly the most mind numbing training videos in the world. I mean 4 hours a day of bad 70s acting. And to top it off, it starts at 6:30am. There's a reason why a lot of people don't make it through their first two weeks. Anyway, on your last day of training, you go into the training room a virtual zombie and are told that you need to go back to your cabin, and put on something you don't mind getting messed up. Oh god.

So I schlep myself back to my cabin, throw on my bathingsuit and an old T-shirt, and trudge up to Deck 4. There we learn how to depot the emergency rafts for the umpteenth time, and I figure we just get to do it now so we'll be getting a bit greasy. Well, part of the *Last chance off the ship before it explodes* manuevers is this fun little system called the "rapid descent arm". This thing is little more than a pulley on a slingshot with two harnesses, and the safety officer tells us it's "Not for the weak of heart". Great, we learn all about how the premise is you harness two people on either end of this pulley, One long, one short. As the arm swings out the person on the short end is "rapidly but gently" lowered into the water, where he/she can remove the clip, and the next person can descend as their rope has now become short. Sounds simple right? well et me tell you, it's overly simple.

The Matt-a-pult. Our safety officers tells us he'll be demonstrating this principle using two of the more resilient crew members in the training group: (Read: I'm looking for beefcake). As it's me, a few philippinos that weigh as much as my chair, and a few Canadian chicks he decides I make the perfect candidate for projectile. I'm looking forward to getting to boulette down the ship at a civilized speed, so I'm okay with this. I'm paired with said chair-weighing philippino, and we're soon harnessed, this is my approximate memory of what follows:

Safety Officer: "Alright, clip this hook to your lifejacket"

Me: "Alright" *Clip*

Safety Officer "Now I'll gently swing the armiture out over the water"

*Large german safety officer kicking the Davit so hard Chuck Norris is jealous*

Me: "Wha--- WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!!!~!!!!!"

*Matt becomes the first human being to break the sound barrier without a vehicle*

Me: "WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!~!!!"

*Matt hits the water-like concrete and nearly voids his bowels*

At this point my weight has kicked in on the other end of the line, my hook unclips and you can guess what happens.

Poor 70lb Phillipino guy: "WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!~!!!"

After this endeavour, we were required to gather our innards from the sea floor, shove them back into whatever orifice they came out of, and go flip over the now capsized emergency floatation device while the rest of the class takes the elevator to deck 1 and then climbs a ladder into the water.

You sould pray your on-the-job training is so thrilling.

The internet on the ocean, or why I haven't updated

2009-03-26T11:58:00.000-07:00

So it's been about a week since I last wrote in, which is only kind of half true. The internet here is rather troublesome about eatting my posts, I've updated twice this week and both times the internet just grinned and burped at me causing me to spout obscenities the likes of which would make a puerto rican prostitute blush. So unfortunately until i feel like typing out the massive chronicles of Operation Scotland (Scot Ops) and why I got flung off the ship from Deck 4 into the Haitian Sea (I called it the Matt-a-pult), you'll just have to be creative and come up with your own filler.

Things have been *harsh* here, every week one of the three stage staffers that work in Studio B is on Duty, this means that they can't leave the ship, are on call 24/7, and are essentially slave labor to the tune of minion minor. Now, my first week, I was on duty, it also happened to be my training week, and a the charter from hell. Therefore I never slept. The week after Stevie (one of the stage staffers) was on duty. However, stevie is learning a track in the theatre right now (we all have to know multiple tracks so we can fill in if someone gets sick) Soooo, being the FNG (Fun new guy. One of those words isn't correct, I'll let you figure out which) I got to take over all the bitchwork associated to being on duty. woot. Now this week Erik (our Philippino stage staffer who is totally insane, yet incredibly fun) is supposed to be on duty. Sadly, Erik seems to have some form of the Vulcan stomach eatting head melting why-god-why-won't-i-die virus, so we've been down a guy all week (Read: all I do is work to pick up the slack. work work work) so guess who gets to be on duty this week? woo. That's alright, duty shifts tomorrow night, and since I only have to be on duty once every three weeks I finally get to... be.. on duty.

Life's a bitch.

In other news, I've lost about 2 inches off of my waist. Which is both awesome and not so awesome. I'm very pleased that I've lost a god amount of weight, but that uniform I had to buy my first day? Well that doesn't fit so well anymore, so tomorrow I have to go grovel to the quartermaster in hopes that he'll just allow me to swap out the tents that i used to call pants for something a bit slimmer.

Anyhow, I need to go pick up my laundry. I think my cabin steward should have it done by now. As a closing note: ha ha ha, I have a maid and laundry service and you don't. I am so cool.

I promise next time I write in I'll entertain you with further stories of ship life instead of just a post filled with "waaaah I work too much, my cabin attendant didn't fold my sheets right, and the steak was a bit dry with dinner"

2009-03-20T17:28:00.001-07:00

Well it's been a while since I've updated. I guess from my point of view not a lot has happened, but I'm sure I'm overlooking a million and seventeen things. So far I've worked. a lot. I mean I'm breaking my back here, the technicians aboard the ship told me I made a bad move going stage staff, apparently it's harder to move up than get hired to a tech position and in the mean time I get to look forward to a lot of manual labor. Everyone and their mother feels entitled to call stage staff for and variety of mundane and undesireable jobs. We've worked everywhere from Marine Division to the Kitchen, and while the department heads keep telling us it's not our job, they aren't exactly stopping them. I'm going to scream if I get one more call.

Anyway, 15-18 hour days are fun and all, but they really take away any desire to write about them out. Suffice it to say that I'm tired, and way overworked.

Diabetes questions? I can help.

2009-03-14T15:58:00.000-07:00

Well it's been a long week. Since I stepped on the ship I've put in over 90 hours of work because of this diabetes charter. However, now that that's over with we go back to a normal schedule: this means I get to wake up at noon instead of 6:30am. Wooooo. Just left Miami where I went to Hooter's with the Tech guys and I never thought a group of 6 could devour that much chicken, and I remember the marathon eating at thursday wing nights.

A lot of the crew is finally starting to warm up to me, especially the women. Now I don't imply anything by that, it's just that there are 200 women crew, and 1300 males. As you might imagine, girls get hounded quite a bit and so aren't exactly open to being social. Hell, I wouldn't either.

So far everywhere we've been has been beautiful, but then again that's why people pay the big bucks to go there. Thankfully, we get MASSIVE crew discounts on a lot of things in port. Or so I'm told, I was on duty last week so today was the first day I got off the ship.

So I've been looking at what my normal schedule will be throughout the week. I will typically work from 11-3pm until 11-3am. So twelve hours a day. However, I get massibe two, three, four hour breaks in between twenty-thirty minutes of work. Which I'm totally okay with; however doing this seven days a week, I can see how it's easy to burn out. I think that's why our HR is so awesome: it has to be. So far I've only been here a week and we've had two parties, free ice cream day, free donuts, port passes, etc. They sem to do quite a bit around here to keep the crew happy, which is much appreciated.

Blue suited Philpinos. They are everywhere. And without them this ship wouldn't function at all. I mean these guys work *hard*. I feel bad that despite they work harder than most on the ship, they still only get to use the crew mess, the crew bar, the crew workout room etc. instead of being able to go up to the promenade and enjoy things there, or use the Staff + Officer's Mess. The reasoning (besides rank) is that if you don't speak English very well, you're not allowed in public/officer areas. 87% or more of the guests at any given time have English as their primary language and as such the company only wants to put forward those people who can Speak it. As an American, I get special privaledges above and beyond the other staff, as most of our guests also happen to be American (shocking right?) So I get to use the sports center, the higher level bars (read: Black Tie) etc.

Last night, as I was closing up Studio B (Our ice skating rink) I happened to find keys on the floor. Now, our Production manager Charlies has a serious obsession for roosters (his cock, as he puts it.) And with that said, the keys had a rooster on it. I called Charlie (who, by the way, is the best boss I've ever had) and told him I had his keys, I was wrong and they belonged to the light tech. However, he told me it was good to call him first as Tenessee (our light tech) can get Fired (seriously, Fired) for losing his keys in a public area. Therefore Charlie felt it only appropriate to milk it for all it was worth. Therefore, tonight Tenessee owes me my weight in beer, thanks to me saving his ass yesterday with our Head SnL tech, AND finding his keys. Since I don't have call tomorrow until Rock wall at noon, I may just take him up on that.

Anyway, hope all's well with you all, I'll catch you later.

THe internet ate this post

2009-03-12T13:07:00.000-07:00

Lots to update, Blogspot ate my update. I am peeved. Took a while to type. worked until 2:30pm last night, had call at 7am this morning. Will type again after not a zombie. Off to drive the Zamboni.

Day four, I'm still vaguely alive

2009-03-10T17:56:00.000-07:00

Well, it's Day four, and we're in San Juan, Puerto Rico. So far things have been hectic, this week was no normal week on the Liberty; it's been chartered out to a company that sell diabetes medication. I have sat through so many lectures on Diabetes I think I could get my PhD. Because it's a charter, and there are no normal guests, we've had to change a lot of things from standard operating procedure. For one, they've invented so many skits/shows about their products that the stage staff has had little chance to sleep, up until today, yesterday was my easiest day clocking in only 15 hours. Still, things are going well, the food is great, the views are spectacular, and thankfully I'm not seasick.

I have to say, with so many people from so many places, and my direct content with a lot of Canadians that my accent is a total wreck. Still, I like the Canadians and everyone else just fine, and there's a particular Canadian I wouldn't mind getting to know better.

Despite the hours upon hours of heavy work, I can't believe I get paid for this. Everything is very, very laid back. The company is very interested in keeping it's employes safe and happy, which is awesome. This morning I had written down the wrong time for my training and subsequently missed it, and whilest I was panicing like mad the trainer/my boss/coworkers were just telling me to chill out, it's no big deal, it happens to everyone. And I was terrified that it would be a fireable offense. Still, as long as you're polite and admit your mistakes around here the senior staff is willing to work with you.

Oh, and yes, the ice skating rink is full sized and is real ice. I nearly exploded when I saw it. Biggest ship in the world. We pulled up next to an aircraft carrier in port today: we dwarfed it.
In other news, the light tech here is leaving in a few months, and after hearing my various exploits in lighting is willing to train me to hopefully take over as his replacment.

Today I (thankfully) only had to work 7 hours so far, even though I'm on duty which means I have to lock down the theatre and remain on call/on the ship this week. THe downtime today gave me time for three things:

1) a nap.
2) a shower
3) unpack

I now feel like a human being again. Tonight's our first crew party (for me anyway) which means dressing up as a spaceman (Space is the theme, they're playing starwars on the port wall with a projector) and free beer. And tomorrow my call isn't until 1300, so I may go hang out in the crew bar this evening.

Anyway, I need to get over to the promenade and strike a DJ booth. I hope things are going well at home, I think about you all a lot.

Greetings from the Liberty!!

2009-03-07T18:50:00.000-08:00

Hey all, so I made it to the boat on time, and am halfway (yes halfway) through my first day.

Welcome to: My first day OR 27 hours in Hell.

Som I arrive at O'hare airport at 2:30, right on time for my 4:30 flight, which is actually at 6:30, thanks to Delays. Anyhow the lovely desk attendant at my gate listens to my sob story about how I'm travelling on business and don't want to miss the shuttle to my hotel, and bumps me to an earlier flight, which leaves at 5:15, perfect.

The flight goes well, I get off in Miami Int'l airport and promptly make my way to the smoking area (because lets face it, since when does baggage arrive early. More on this later) anyhow, after the best cigarette in my life standing in the open air of the 75 degree smoking hole in Miami airport, I proceed to head to baggage claim. The first thing that greats me on my way? A giant Royal Caribbean sign, over a giant floar mural of a hurricane. Awesome. What kind of airtist says "ya know what would welcome people to Miami? A great big cat5 storm. yup." Reassured of Florida's wonderful weather I plod on down to the claim area. Bags go by, Porters that can't speak English go by, time goes by, no bag. Shit.

I go to the baggage complain area, and am told by very friendly reassuring Jamaican airline workers that there is no way in hell I'm going to get my bags, they didn't get swapped like I did, and I can go fornicate with myself for 2 hours. Wonderful.

Two painfully boring hours and about 30 people waiting to die in cowbow hats later the flight I was supposed to be on arrives. The god's of travel smile on me, and my bag is first out of the little gate thing. I grab my bag and happily book it for the area Im' supposed to meet my bus to the Marriott, which comes every half an hour. Three hours go by with the three Marriott drivers all telling me "Nono, this is the wrong hotel, the one you want is right behind me" every half hour gets old. I call the hotel. The driver for my particular Marriott is already off for the night. Wooonderful. The really nice lady at the desk, however, sent a cab for me at no charge; which was particularly nice of her.

I check into the hotel (which is awesome, btw) at about 2am. After several rounds of verbally abusing the lock on my door I go back to the really nice lady and inform her that my door is racist and will only open for other hardwoods. The inadvertant self depricating innuendo is lost on her, but being a nice lady she gives me another key. Rinse, repeat, 3 times. By this time really nice lady thinks I'm working in the "special employee" section of RCI. After trying my door herself she agrees that the door is in fact racist, and gives me a new room. It is now 2:45am, I place a 7am wake up call for my 8am crew shuttle.

7am comes, and it's staggeringly dark. The phone rings and it feels like my head had just hit the pillow. I look out the window at the strange darkness, shrug and figure that Florida has more than it's share of problems, like the sun being too tired to get up. In my torpor this sounds like a valid argument, and realize that I've wasted half an hour debating this miracle of laziness the sun has accomplished. I rush through the shower, slap on clothes, pack my stuff, and bolt out the door. Once I reach the lobby, Not-so-really-nice lady informs me that she is sorry, she had placed the 5am wakeup that was scheduled to my room because they had not swapped the 7am from my old room. Sumbish, well I'm already up. I go back to my room, try to nap; that doesnt work so I watch TV.

Insert very, very tedious shuttle ride/boarding procedure.

By 10am I've filled out more paperwork than most tax attorneys and am on my way to meet my new boss. He takes the next hour to escort me around the ship and explaining the rules you can break like glass, and how to dodge consequences, I decide I like Jason.

Anyhow, I've learned that today is about the most abnormal day in the ship's history, as the entire boat has been rented out to a diabetes research firm thing. Great. I'm informed by Jason that unlike most New Hire days, when 15 people on the boat don't know what they're doing, EVERYONE on the boat doesn't know what they're doing. People are running around like chickens with their heads cut off. This is the very first night that the Liberty has spent the nigh tin port since..well ever. As a side note I'm constantly reminded that I'm on the biggest most expensive and most green ship in the world. Anyhow, since we have the night in port, everyone and their mother is going to South Beach. And, according to my work schedule I have time to as well: sweet.

The last few minutes of my first shift start dwindling down, and my bosses' boss Charlie (I'm sure I'll have crazy stories about this guy in about 3 days) asks me if I can do him a "little favor". I, being gullible and new, agree to said minute favor. Before I know it some lady from our "Client" (read: pax (passengers(already getting into crew lingo!))) has given me a list of places on the ship to hang this 4 foot long banners. Lots of them. Not only are there lots of them, but this ship is big. I mean super big. And, it is built to be VERY confusing. SUPER confusing as a matter of fact. If I'm on deck 3 forward, qand I want to go to deck three aft, I have a trip that takes me from decks 1-3 with a stop in tween deck. I have just finished said journey, and since my next duty starts in 20 minutes on the other end of the ship, I sadly will miss Miami's South Beach. Thankfully I get done with my next shift at 2am, and I just might in that time be able to locate my luggage from some mythical place in the ships bowels and see my cabin.

Next update: Why you shouldn't poop in the shower, men in blue jumpsuits, and the joys of safety training.

No really, I swear, I'm going.

2009-03-06T11:19:00.001-08:00

About to throw my crap into the car for the plane ride. Here's hoping it doesn't land in a lake, or if it does it's piloted by Chesley B. Sullenburger III.

See you all in Miami. Next update from the big boat.

It's go time.

2009-03-06T08:20:00.000-08:00

Well, after a long week of getting last minute things done and saying goodbye, I'm off to Miami. in 12 hours I'll be having a margarita at some Tiki bar with waitresses dressed as mermaids. Or at least that's how it works in my head, in all likelyhood I'll be staring at the wall of a Marriott half dead to nerves.

Anyhow my medical results got done a day early, which was the cause for a lot of relief; apparently I'm not chock-full o' diseases and am kosher to go on the boat. I got to watch my orientation video yesterday, and to be honest it's not bad.

The one thing I'll miss most about life here in Chicago is getting that random phone call from friends at 11:00pm when they're drunk, or at 11:00am when they'd like to be drunk. For instance last night ZJD called me kinda out of the blue, and even though he was in a noisy bar it was just nice to hear from him. On the ship, there shall be no such dramatic interludes. Phone calls besides emergencies will be limitted to only when I'm in port, unless I feel like paying an arm and a leg to talk to you. Which I don't.

Alright, off to pack up the last of my crap and get on a plane: Next update from the Liberty of the Seas!

Contact Information

2009-03-01T12:07:00.000-08:00

Here's the shipboard address, in case you feel like sending me flowers.

Matt Willer

Stage Crew

Liberty of the Seas

1050 Caribbean Way

Miami, FL 33132

One Week till Blast Off

2009-02-27T12:50:00.000-08:00

Well, really it's one week till I'm on a boat filled with seamen. Hah.

Anyhow, as you all probably know by now, I've gotten a job with Royal Caribbean doing Stage work. I've decided that rather than spending my precious little time writing ten thousand nearly identical emails, I'd just create this handy dandy little blog.

So far the process has been very odd, typically when employers have required drug tests, physicals etc. they tend to foot the bill. Well Royal Caribbean has decided that it's all on me to pay for these mind bogglingly expensive batteries of testing just to make sure I can hear okay and I'm not going to be spreading syphilis to the rest of the crew (probably). My guess is that they get so many new crew members not showing up for their first day's that they've decided not to bother wasting the money. The reason I guess that and one of the many reasons I'm slightly nervous is because we don't actually get to see/sign our contracts until we're physically on the boat, luggage and medical charts in hand.

Anyway, I won't bore you with the mundane details of the whole hiring song and dance, but needless to say it was a bit odd.

Now for the questions everyone's been asking:

-I'll be gone for 6.5 months, and I won't have a phone.

-I'll have access to the internet, and I'll post a mail address soon enough

-Yes I get a discount for family and friends. You can all have a mud wrestling tournament over who gets them.

Anyways, off to take care of more of this medical stuff.

Regards,

Matt