Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Crew Funeral

The guy who passed away was named Leonard Alexander, everyone called him Alex. He was from St. Lucia, he was 51, had two twin boys and a wife who was pregnant with another one. He was 2 days away from finishing his contract and had been working with NCL for about 16 years.

 

This is all totally insane, or totally normal. They had a memorial service in the Spinnaker Lounge, the big bar where we were going to have a crew party last night, which got cancelled. I thought of about 55 reasons why we shouldn’t go, even down to “it is against St. Lucian custom, we will insult their culture,” which must be what everyone thinks to try to get out of funerals because they are so upsetting. I also heard an announcement and willed it to be an announcement saying the guy was fine and it was just a serious coma and there was a mistake.

 

My roommate and I got there just as it was starting. The lounge piano player was playing funeral music at the front of the stage on the white show piano. They brought in the flower arrangements from the chapel and set them around the stage. The Crew Welfare guy (who makes sure the crew is happy) went around asking people to sit in the middle of the audience. They were filming the proceedings to send back to his family, and wanted to make sure it didn’t look at all empty, which it wasn’t. Everyone was very somber, and if you thought about anything too long, you wanted to puke.

 

There were some “haha weird” moments, like they used the projection screen to say “Memorial Service” and had a picture of Alex with his birthday and yesterday’s date. They don’t know that you can click “view>full screen” and that will get rid of the toolbars on top and the toolbars on the bottom and the arrow and the selection handles around the picture. This is what I concentrated on, this and the cheeseball theater lighting that they had to use, with flourishes and dramatic spins, and the fact that a woman got up and said “I never met Alex and I wasn’t going to read this poem, but now I will” and made a big deal about how it was written 3,500 years ago by a king and p.s. 3,500 years ago, which is 3,500 years ago. And then she revealed that it was Psalm 23, but it was a crap new translation, so “lo that I walk through the valley of the shadow of death” was something else because that woman has no sense of tradition or ritual and she is tiny and pea brained and if someone got in a fistfight with her, maybe there wouldn’t be a memorial service. These are called misplaced emotions, and the only person I could really beat in a fight is the chaplain or whatever job that foolish simpering ponytailed flake with her crap Bible had.

 

This is basically because everything else was totally heartbreaking. The service was lead by a white woman around 40-ish who had the demeanor of a lounge singer who was used to singing. She was dramatically respectful and handed the mic off to the Swedish captain in his dress uniform, who was monotone and read a few words and a little eulogy and then a poem about life and how you are to live life happily. Then we had a moment of silence and the Ukranian piano player played a jazzy version of “Amazing Grace.” The lounge singer opened up the floor to anyone who wanted to remember him.  No one did for a while, so she smoothly asked people to sign the guest book for his family and that we could stay as long as we wanted. Then a guy came down and took the mic. He was a St. Lucian guy in all light beige, shorts and a short-sleeved shirt. He said Alex liked to give advice and was always giving advice like “save your money” and “buy something you can see, so you know why you’re working.” He talked about Alex’s family and how much he loved them, then how much Alex touched his life and gave him advice that he should have gotten from people closer to him. Then he tearfully talked about his last conversation with Alex, where Alex told him he looked like a monk because he had a bald head, which was the same haircut as Alex. And the guy said “no, I look like you” and Alex said “Well, I’m the old monk. You’re the new monk.” And it was stupid and small and trivial and I think everyone in the stupid Spinnaker was crying.

 

In between people, there was always a pause where the lounge singer wrapped it up, and then another person came down. A tough, rapper-dressed guy came down front, the kind of guy who looks like he would trade iphone porn, and could barely talk because he was so upset about the guy’s baby on the way and how excited he was for his new baby and how much he talked about it and planned, and why couldn’t he have just died NEXT year, which was funny and true and crazy and made me want middle eastern mourners to rend their garments.

 

The lounge singer wrapped it up and then my anger target came down to ruin things with her shit translations.

 

Then another guy from St. Lucia spoke, that Alex said “we’re here for a reason, not a season.” Then two more women spoke, one who read a poem that pointed out how pointless it is to get stressed out, and we all got upset. Then finally a woman came down from the casino, because Alex worked in the casino bar. She said how kind and nice he was and how he always told her that you never know what is going to happen. Then she said “we will really miss him in the casino” which was funny and true and heartfelt and insane and made me want to puke or rend my garments.

 

I then ducked out of there. All of the entertainers were probably over-emoting and I cannot keep it together in those situations. There is a collection for his family, which is very good and crew bar was nice and humane and didn’t have creepy hip hop making our ears bleed. 

 

I talked to our room steward earlier in the day who said “nah, that thing in the Spinnaker sounds…no. I’m just going to drink a couple bottles of wine and go to bed.”

 

So. I read a bunch of Chaucer and learned that “eek” meant also and they say “cleped” for named. Like “he was cleped Tony.” And tomorrow we’ll do improv where the memorial service was and use the same mics. Totally weird. 

Crew loss

A crew member died on the pier today.

 

I was leaving the ship and a passenger coming back on said “someone passed out on the pier. I think it is a crew member.” The gurkha just kind of nodded vaguely. Then as I was walking out, I saw a 60-ish lady with her husband, both of them back from a day of touring, and the lady was crying and not touching her face. I figured she was upset about something absurd and like the way she was pampered. Then I saw the “passed out” guy getting very serious CPR, with two officers standing over him and a small crowd of passengers standing around the guy. He was a tall, thin St. Lucian guy with the white tank top they all love to wear, good shorts and nice leather shoes. They crossed his legs at the ankles and someone said “he’s not breathing” and someone else said the ambulance was on the way. I went on a tour of Antigua this morning and the hospital and ambulance are a mess and in a hassle part of the island with terrible roads, which are quaint on a tour bus, but not if you’re that guy. I didn’t know how to help, so I just kept walking, as did a lot of people who didn’t want to stare at the poor guy. They started to wheel his feet in a circle. A snotty fat old lady pushing her sport walker said “you mean I can’t get to MY SHIP” and then immediately apologized and kept walking. All of the street vendors were worried, looking on, and all of the passengers milling around were worried. You want nothing bad to happen to you in an island. So. We got back on the ship and just got news that he officially passed away.  I hope he’s from St. Lucia, because we’ll be there in 2 days, for the sake of his family. And for his sake, I hope it was zippy and fast and painless and that he was with his buddies and a ladyfriend and had only good news for the past 2 months.

 

So that is completely terrible and upsetting and that poor guy and all of his folks. I am going to do something sensible and get a huge beer and read PG Wodehouse and laugh on the deck. 

Thursday, January 22, 2009

Random information and hilarious persons

We have a few groups onboard this week. The Land O’ Lakes company, which is the same thing as Western Digital Systems [or something] which traffics in manure. Everyone who tells this story says, “so…shit. Haha, they deal in shit.”

I have noticed a high incidence of adult gentlemen picking wedgies from the lower portion of the joint of their two legs and pelvis.

We all get pet projects on the ship that we can focus on with laser intenseness that can frequently turn into violent rage only taken out on a treadmill or punching every human being you see for their sinus problems or making-licking-noise problems. So if you are me and are writing a screenplay, hello Heather, you start to get inexplicably angry at everyone and everything. And if no one wants to fight, you start discussing whether prostitution should be legal in a theoretical sense, which is guaranteed to send me into rage fireworks. Or discussing Israel/Palestine and then the problem of homelessness and then heroin and then the nagging problems of racial tensions and the difficulties of dealing with native populations. This is what I discussed tonight over free drinks in a bar on a cruise ship. It felt normal. Write a screenplay but run 3 miles per day. I did 2.24 miles and it did not do the trick.

Here are more facts about GI. I learned that when there is an outbreak, the ship personnel adds bleach to the water, to kill it. I also learned that they add some kind of a bleach to the air, because sometimes GI goes airborne, and if that happens, we will all be two way fountains and the ship will have to be quarantined.

I have also learned various remedies for colds, since I have had the plague people are passing around. The Russians say (this sounds like a stereotype): do a shot of vodka, pour cayenne pepper on top. “It burns going down and then you feel rrright as rain,” as the singer told me, right after he told me “I have been reading Uncle Tom’s Cabin. It is gooood! I really like it! I mean, it is good!” which was several paragraphs after he told me “I didn’t drink for a month and I saved $3,000. I just stay in my room.” He is a huge sweetheart, who loves Diesel.

I have found people’s various items which ruin their senses of humor. This is unfortunate, because I keep finding them, instead of focusing on shutting up. I am observant, which may be the same thing as annoying. “haha, you touch your watch constantly,” was met with deep irritation and "YOU HAVE TOO MUCH TIME ON YOUR HANDS." “Haha, you hate animals and you make licking noises with your mouth all the time” caused shouting, although it did feature this hilarious logic: “I like animals, they give me the opportunity to learn what it is that makes them likeable.” And “I really love cats! I love them! I just don’t why they are so nervous and they make me uncomfortable and like they are going to do something—I just want to be like ‘I AM NOT GOING TO HURT YOU.’” And it’s not that this person doesn’t like animals, this person just finds petting zoos to be BLATANT HYPOCRACY and refused to touch anything because this person was terrified. This is all delightful to me. Then I found our musical director’s humor deleter is the war on drugs. People are fascinating.

I laughed until I cried when someone got defensive about hair on his toes, which I think is totally normal. I asked him "are you sensitive about your feet?" to which he responded: "WHAT'S THAT SUPPOSED TO MEAN."

 

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Remebering!

I remembered!

During my first contract in the Mexican Rivera, I learned that I did NOT want to see any local color, because it was so depressing and maybe I would get Hepatitis B (which someone got from going to a dentist in Mexico, just saying) (and someone else got from getting something pierced in Mexico. Just saying).  So, during my second contract, I stayed in resorts, particularly after seeing the Dominican Republic’s town Semana, which smells like exhaust and sewage and features 2,000 children selling shells and everything else, and learning the Dominican Republic has an AIDS problem worse than Africa’s. And then there was the matter of almost being killed on a Scooter in Nassau, and going to a gorgeous beach in Tortola that smelled like sewage and featured a confusing camp? Homeless shelter? Camp? What is that? In the surrounding woods. It was enough to make a nice girl who once was a vegan (2 months) and pretends to be rather liberal say “I don’t care anymore, let me live the full fantasy.” So, for the past 6 weeks, I have gone only to beaches and resorts and things via taxi.

Explanatory whining:

I am very fair skinned. This means that I wear long sleeves in 90 degree weather and sometimes jeans and people say “are you going to wear that outside?” or “do you know you’re wearing jeans?” instead of the much more direct “are you insane?” and if it is the morning, I get sarcastic in my responses (“no, I’m just trying it on” or my favorites: “I’m not telling” or “I can’t remember.” Juvenile). Then, whence on the beach, people are confused by my insistence on an umbrella and aversion to tanning (because it is impossible) so I spend a lot of time running into shade, or running from my chair to the water, and spraying myself down again with SPF 50 (and I would prefer SPF 80) and hearing jokes while other people (tan dancers with perfect bodies) cavort in the sun or do handstands. And I’m blinking and frowning like a crabby vampire grandma. And every time, I learn where I forgot with my sunscreen. Right now, I have two boring and misshapen burns on either side of my neck, kind of collarbone-ish. So I have a large pattern of freckles with a white stripe down the middle. Dull. I am completely aware that these problems are absurd, superficial, and silly.

The saving grace to all of this is a book called “Caribbean 2008,” which has explained the wonders available to me in all of these towns. Also, remembering that at the core, I am a geeky 9 year old who wants to ask questions and say “oooh” and then find a craft store.  I enjoy saying “THIS IS CRAZY!” because something is crazy. My point is, there has been a watershed, my stars are in my heavens, I am back to walking around in dangerous parts of towns where I wildly do not belong, and happily geeking out.

ANTIGUA:

We port in [town]. My goals were the church and a museum. 

First of all, hahaha:


Happy Inauguration! Did you know Antigua voted? Me neither.


No, racist. That is not Obama. That is the father of Antigua and Barbuda, a country. I had to start taking pictures quickly, because suddenly I was the only tourist, and someone said "whitey" pretty clearly. This is why the following picture is haphazard.


It is the top of the fountain in front of the father of the nation sculpture. The fountain was beautiful and about 8 feet tall. The top of it is a bathroom faucet from Home Depot.

I then tried to make my way to the church, which obviously was impossible because there are very few road signs and lots of old towns hate having streets in a grid. So I wandered down to a side of town where all signs were hand painted. And I found the cathedral. Doesn't it look deilghtful and romantic?

It was a dump. It has been hit by hurricaines for about 150 years, so everything is falling apart.  









Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Road Town, Tortola

People watching!

 

Today was a delight. First of all, let’s register this complaint, please say this with as much whining as possible and say it to someone starving:

 

When I’m in the Caribbean, sometimes I get tired of going to the beach.

 

First world problem! This is mainly because I am so white, I spend most of my time reapplying spf 50 and hiding under an umbrella. One time, in Barbados, we hid under a boardwalk because that was the only place with shade. Thankfully, there is another redhead albino in my cast with the same problems, so we both got kicked with sand while the guys selling jetskis and people going to the water walked by.

Today we eschewed the beach (first world privledge) and walked around Road Town. I forgot how much fun it is to tool around, so I had no camera. We got really, really local and authentic, so we found a weird building where a bunch of guys were standing around doing nothing. One guy was eating lunch out of a white, fast food Styrofoam clamshell container with a sesame seed bun and a whole fish, head and all. Across the street from them was a parody of a homeless man in tatters. We then got into the residential part of town, along with the graveyard, which looked like it had been totaled by a hurricaine. We saw a local man who was wearing his hat in the fashion of New Jersey, which is now worldwide, so I guess I am missing something obvious in hiphop culture. It is, of course, a sports team baseball hat with the tags still on it and the hologram stickers which indicate authenticity. The care that must go into those hats! Keeping them pristine! Is it more than caring for that egg baby in high school?

There are a ton of little churches in Road Town, most of them with schools attached. Each school has its own uniform. My favorite was the one with green pants/skirts and green checked shirts, little tiny checks like a guy from Yale playing a ukulele. We walked by right when school got out and kids ran down alleys and fake-barked at each other, then said “hahaha HIIII!” We got off the main drag very unintentionally because I decided I had to go to this spice store. We were following Main Street, which flows like a backwards L that got lazy and squiggly at the top and bottom. In other words, it makes no sense. So we were two lost-ish people, one was a gleaming whitie redhead (me) and the other a nervous bald white gentleman (castmate). I will define him as bald, because I saw a wig store and was thrilled and said “oooh! A wig store!” and he said, basically “what’s that supposed to mean…oh, you mean you could get one for you…oh…okay.” We walked around on Main Street, which has a sign about every 10th block. It gets incredibly narrow and residential, and not very pedestrian. People drive vans on the wrong side of the road at what feels like 90 mph when you are walking on that road and it is only about as wide as…the van.  We walked by a decrepit old house with a donkey in the back yard, just hanging out.

There are a great deal of roosters and chickens running around all over the place. Also, quite a few chickens in various stages of life. After finally locating the crap, touristy spice store that wanted $14 for about two tablespoons of tea because it cures a hangover, we went to the bar that is famous for its rum. I finally had the real, official grog, just like they drank on ships in the navy during the triangle trade and all of history and oh oh I am so connected. Trying grog is like trying Johnny cakes. Historical food is always terrible. I enjoyed the nerd out, but rum, water and lemon is not delicious. And apparently, adding lemon means it is tastier. Fascinating. Chickens ran around on the veranda where we had grog, including two chicks and a teenager. Along with a mom and a yappy rooster.

We also attended the Botanical Garden of Tortola. It was hilarious. There were approximately 2 flowers and most of the exhibits were different type of palm trees. They all looked exactly the same, except number 12, which was marked with a placard describing it as a Japanese palm, with it’s latin name. The tree was not there. Instead, it was a foot-high stump that had rotted over on the top. Pretty delightful. There were also 4 love birds in a cage and an iguana with a bunch of green peppers he found uninteresting. Overall, the garden was tended in a very relaxed, island way. I.e. “we’ll water it whenever, we’ll weed it whenever.” O comedy.

 

 

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Wedding Party

There is a wedding party on board this week. The wedding was on the beach in Grand Cayman, and about 40 people made the trip together. The bride wore her dress all day and well into the night, sitting second row center at the show, with her groom and her bridal party on either side of her. They have brought a delightful vibe to the ship and are why a dancer said “I love to see YOUNG people.” At the party after the show, we went to the White Party, which is themed and in a bar upstairs. We talked to a bridesmaid and her friend (both in glow in the dark necklaces) who showed us pictures from the wedding on her camera. About a half an hour later, we saw the friend go “oh—OH” and barf in the hallway, then trip over it and go get food.

If you ever want to watch a man’s face change instantly, go up to an officer and say “hi” and watch him say “well, hellllloooooooo there.” Then you say “someone barfed in the hall.” He’ll go “haha, what, where in the bathroom?” because the music is too loud. And you’ll say “no, the hall. In the hallway.” “What?” “Right outside, in the hallway, just over there on the carpet.” At this point, he will realize that I am serious and I will realize he thought I was making small talk about barf, which broadens my horizons. So, this older dude short dude from Turkey instantly stopped making eye contact and got on his handiphone (the interoffice portable phone on the ship) then turned towards me and said “it’s being taken care of” and went back to being depressed and leaning on the bar. He must be bored out of his mind, as indicated by small talk.

Our castmate has friends on board who are trying to prove how fun they are, and are wildly succeeding. One had about 13 hot dogs (literally) because he loves them and then told us about working for the Democratic National Convention, while burping and feeling hot dog pain and his friends made him go 10 feet away to burp. They had a contest to see who could keep his hands on an ice sculpture the longest, and one has flashcards, so we could discuss my diorama. YES!


Monday, January 5, 2009

POOP STORIES and DANGER STORIES

Since we are a gathering of humanity, we get some bizarre stories, even though some of it comes from people who can spend around a grand for a week’s vacation. Here’s my favorite story from last night, which involves heavy use of the word shit, since it is how it was told to me and adds color:

This started because someone said, “didn’t you hear about the Shitter?” Apparently there was a passenger who took to shitting places. As in, the floor of his room, in his shower, on his balcony. He also did some shitting in various places on the ship, like the casino and around deck 7. He took a shore excursion, where he also took a shit. He took so many shits in so many places, in an environment which is totally observed by surveillance, that the hotel director said “enough” and had him quarantined to his room, since it was too much of a hassle for the people whose job it is to clean. The only problem with this was that he was about $30,000 down in the casino. So the casino manager wanted him gambling. So they worked out an arrangement, through various string pulling and agreements and probably loud arguements, to get the Shitter into the casino. The casino manager got his way. By the end of the cruise, the Shitter won $380,000.

During another cruise that got entirely out of hand, a gentleman was put in the brig, which is barely ever used. This was a cruise where parties that typically last until 2 a.m. went until sunup and were followed by after parties. The gentleman in the brig was very upset about his location, to the point that he “shit everywhere.” But, always the gentleman and excited about his cruise, he wrote “HELLO HAWAII” with his excrement.

There is another ship which ports out of Miami with us. In a week they had a woman fall over board, a crew member had a baby, another crew member ODed, and they picked up a boatload of Cuban refugees, which the Coast Guard picked up and flew where ever they fly them.  I did not fall overboard, that was an entertainer on a Carnival ship, during a New Year’s party who was, apparently, doing something stupid. This fills me with dread and makes me want a safety harness, however. If you fall off you are toast.

And finally, a visual present: today’s gym excursion featured a 20-something-ish gentleman in his surf shorts bathing suit at the lat press. He wore tiny black anklet socks, and a pair of: white flip flops. O PEOPLE.

Saturday, January 3, 2009

New Years

Happy New Year!

The gym is totally packed today, as an impressive testament to all resolutions. I did not notice the smoking deck, but I wouldn’t be shocked if that were empty.

Last night featured a huge party on the pool deck, with trays of champagne and a reggae band and a huge ice 2008. At the stroke of midnight, the cruise director smashed the 8 and brought out a 9. This makes the cruise staff happy, because there was usually a father time and a baby New Year—and the baby New Year was complete with the diaper. Instead, just some smashing. Nice! Rodney, the musical director, and I were running around looking for cronies, so we got stuck on the staircase.

 

The party was huge and very fun. The passengers were all collectively losing their minds, and this is the one party where the crew is allowed to come to the party and dance to the passenger band. The reggae guys played a song called “cent, five cent, ten cent, dollar” with a chorus that goes “dolla, dolla, dolla, dolla.” Two weeks ago, we heard a dirty joke at the passenger talent show, which inspired the reggae song and the dance that goes with it. Here is a short version: a guy is getting married but is a virgin. He asks his friend for advice on carrying out the proceedings. His friend says, “put a penny in your right pocket, put a nickel in your left pocket. Put a dime in your back pocket and put a dollar in your groin. When you get to business, you think to yourself ‘cent’ and move to the right, ‘nickel’ and move to the left, ‘dime’ and move back, and finally ‘dollar’ and (obvious).” When guy gets married, gets to the honeymoon, he does the dance with his wife, but then says “oh forget it (or obscene replacement)—a dollar sixteen! Dollar sixteen!” This is the dance that crew, passengers, and cruise staff all did together. My roommate’s best friend is here, who is a terrific delight. A Jamaican cook in his uniform wanted to dance with her, to which she said “I’m married” which is true, and made him immediately go somewhere else.

We also hit the club section after the deck party which featured us standing around and taking a lot of high tech pictures of each other and then looking at them on the preview screens. It was very friendly.

Today I learned that if a dancer goes over his or her weight limit by five pounds, he or she will be fired. Fired??! Anyway. Contrast that with a castmate who walked around with glazed eyes because he gained 12 pounds in a month and said with terror and no sense of humor “I’m a fatass.”

Also, proof that we are all one human family: You can get a $10 guy’s haircut on deck 3, right by a certain staircase (there are tons of staircases, all numbered, so sometimes you say “what, like by staircase 40?”). Our musical director got one, and he said all the Filipina ladies, whenever they walk by, always say “pallit” (…I think), which is Tagalog for “ugly.” O human family.