The first one is never good

12 December 2007

Day one is over now and I have a few minutes before day 2 starts.

At the moment there are good things and bad things, it’s just a matter of sorting out the good from the bad and trying to make sense of it all.

The good: The food appears to be better and we eat in the Lido Restaurant (buffet) which is the passenger one. This is much bigger and there seems to be better variety than there was on the Caribbean Princess, the quality is yet to be tested because there was not a spare table to be had when I went up there yesterday with another couple of new joiners. We ended up having lunch at the burger bar by the pool and that is not a good way to judge a ships culliineray skills. The bad: there is not food available 24 hours like the Princess. That means that I won’t be eating at the end of a long shift like I used to. The other problem is that the restaurant is only available to us for very short periods of a couple of hours, 3 times a day, so it will probably be easy to miss meal times if I’m working or so tired that I just want to use those couple of hours break to get some sleep.

The good: the casino is small compared to the Princess and minuscule compared to Jupiters. Only 7 tables and about 100 machines. Apparently it dies down pretty early so I may not get those 4 or 5am finishes. The bad: I am the only cashier, plus the Head cashier. That means that if either of us gets sick we may be in a bit of strife and it also means that the roster, having to cover a lot of hours with just the two of us, puts us on apart a lot of the time. It means I am standing there on my own with no one to talk to (or in my case listen to) for most of the time. The cage is also positioned in such a way that I can’t see out the window so I don’t have much too even look at to amuse myself. Those long and quiet sea days may be even longer.

The good: My cabin mate is a polite, quiet Filipino guy who got on yesterday as well. He has volunteered (due to my age and size!) to take the top bunk so I managed to score the premium bed. The cabin is cleaned by a company provided steward but I don’t know yet if we have to tip him, although it may be a good thing just so we get nice towels. The bathroom in the cabin is huge, by cabin standards. I can have a shower and not touch the walls! It is oddly decorated though, with tiles, fittings and a colour scheme that make it feel like a bad taste 70’s motel room. The size is good in its own right but that brings me to the bad. The bad: The cabin is small, by even the standards of what I have seen so far. It has a hard floor, no fridge and about half the storage space that I had on the Caribbean Princess. The desk is literally half the size and taken up with a TV, not leaving even enough room for me to put my laptop. I am typing this with it sitting on chair while I perch on the edge of my bunk. It appears that we can not get our laundry done, which is a major blow for me since I really hate doing laundry and have next to no ironing technique. At the moment there is no vest available large enough for me to wear so I am working in just my tuxedo shirt which makes all the ironing errors that much more noticeable.

The good: the ship is much smaller so I may be able to start to find my way around before the end of the contract. The bad: I don’t know if it’s the size of the ship or the weather outside but last night was the most movement I have experienced so far. Things were actually shifting around inside the cabin.

The good: There is no embarkation on this ship!!! I have also been given no safety duties so I don’t even have to do passenger boat drills. All I have to worry about is crew drills on how to get into a life raft (coming up this week) and general fire stuff etc.  The bad: there is nothing bad about that.

The good: I’m going to be visiting lots of ports I haven’t seen. The bad: I have port manning twice this week already.

The interesting: When we got picked up at the hotel yesterday morning there were 6 of us going to the Amsterdam and we were all casino. That meant that a third of the staff changed in one day. It also meant a completely new cage crew as both the existing cashier and head cashier left. Interesting for me as we both try to figure out how they had things laid out and where things are.

Oh well, better go. I start in a little while and I still have to figure out where the casino is.

Greg