Getting here and getting onboard

28th April 2007

Evenin’ all,

I sit here in my cabin (or shoe box as I prefer to call it) at about 17.00 and start this, the first of the real emails. I only managed to figure out how to get access to the net this morning and it is going to be a bit limited and a bit expensive so I may not be sending overly regular messages but it does mean that when I do they should have a bit of substance to them. I’m starting work at 18.30 and want to be in the officer’s mess (I get to eat in the officer’s mess!! But more of that later) when it opens at 18.00, so I’ll try and write as much as I can now and continue later on. If you can, try and imagine me sitting at a tiny little desk at my laptop with the sound of waves crashing against the hull literally inches away from my head on the other side of the cabin wall. We have just left Miami for Key West, arriving there in the morning. Unfortunately I won’t get to see any of it because I’m going to be spending the whole day at various training courses before going to work that night. Then I have to repeat the whole thing the next day while we are in Mexico, so no exciting stories from exotic ports this trip, well maybe one but more of that later.

I guess I better explain the rubber glove comment from my last email. The cruise line had arranged all my flights and the way they had it set up didn’t allow for a lot of free time at any of the stops I had. This can be a good thing if you want to get the whole flight over with faster and don’t want to waste time sitting in airports waiting for the next plane to leave. For me it’s not such a good thing since I quite enjoy sitting in airports and also enjoy the opportunity to have a bit of a walk around to try and work the “cattle class” kinks out of my legs and back. I also hate to be rushed, I like to be able to figure out where I am and where I’m going in such a way that I can leisurely make my way there and be calm, cool and collected before I get on the next flight. Sitting in the departure lounge is no great hassle as long as I have access to a drink and some reading material.

Unfortunately this wasn’t the case in Sydney. By the time the flight from Brisbane landed and I managed to beat a few elderly Japanese tourists to the ground in order to get on the shuttle bus from the domestic to the international terminals, I wasn’t going to have much time before the next flight left. With all the security involved these days the queues to get anywhere are even longer than they used to be and I found out that travelling with a laptop was going to be a problem. Every check point with an x-ray machine necessitated taking the laptop out of my pack, out of its bag and putting it through on its own. Add in the fact that I had to take my boots off and sometimes my belt because it set off the metal detector and you can imagine how long it took to sort myself out each time. I eventually made it to the appropriate lounge for the LA flight, sat down and then suddenly realized I didn’t have my hat. I’ve bought my akubra with me, it’s travelled all over the world and been photographed in front of monuments and geographic wonders from everywhere so I figured that even if I didn’t wear it the hat should make the trip for good luck at least. Panic sets in as soon as I realise I don’t have it. I rush back to the last security point, ask if they’ve found it and, to my relief, I’m told that they have. “Go and stand over there, someone will be with you in a moment”. I stand in the appropriate place and soon a large black man with an African accent of some sort and a security uniform approaches and asks me to go with him into a small cubicle. He asks if I speak English and when I say that I do he hands me a card to read. “You are about to be searched for security reasons which may include the searching of any bodily orifices deemed necessary” the card says. He smiles at the look on my face and asks if I have any objections. Damned right I did, I was only after my hat! I have to submit to the search before I can get it back though and realising that arguing the point wasn’t going to be real helpful I said okay and watched while my pack was tested for explosive residue. I then had to stand with my arms out while he patted me down. It turned out that that was the entirety of the search and I got my hat back. Major relief and an unclenching before I head back to the lounge and manage to get on the flight.

The flight to LA was full and I mean packed to the rafters. There wasn’t an empty seat to be seen anywhere. I had an aisle seat so I could at least stick one leg out even if it did mean that people were constantly tripping over my foot on their way to the toilet. The problem, however, was my complete inability to sleep on a plane. There were plenty of movies to watch but by the time we were coming into LA my eyes were starting to hang slightly out of their sockets and feel more than a bit like the sockets themselves were lined with a fine grained sandpaper. Add to all that the fact that 2 planes from Australia had landed at the exact same time and disgorged hundreds of cranky Australians into a very long queue at customs and my introduction to the whole cruise ship life was a less than happy one. Having worked in positions like this I can appreciate the roster, breaks, sickies problems that all bureaucracies have but to only have 4 customs guys working when there are that many people queued up seems crazy. You can see the people who have connecting flights (me for instance) getting more and more agitated as time goes on and the queue doesn’t seem to be moving. At first the announcements over the PA are that the bags for the flight I was on are available at a certain carousel. Then a while later they repeat the same message and I can hear a few people around me commenting that it’s of little use making announcements like that when we are still so far away from even getting to our bags. Then, while I’m still a while a distance from the front of the queue, there is another announcement saying that the bags for my flight have been removed from the carousel and are now piled up against the wall, an announcement greeted with amusement by some and dismay by others. All I can think is “I just hope that it’s there. I don’t really care if it’s on the carousel or not just as long as it’s there” because a week on a ship with no clothes and no access to anything other than the stuff they sell to tourists is a scary thought. I’m not really the loud Hawaiian shirt and shorts type.

Finally I get to the customs guy. At this point I’m a bit worried because I had to fill out a special immigration form because I have a US visa and I’m not simply travelling as a tourist. On the plane they had emphasized that if you make a mistake on the form they will simply tell you to go and fill out another one and then get back in the queue. Looking back at all the people behind me I probably would have burst into tears if he’d told me to redo it, given my tired and emotional state at this point. He looked over all the forms, compared me to my passport, made me stick my index fingers into a scanner and then took my photo. At this point I’m starting to feel that things may be okay when he suddenly says, “please come with me Mr. Wright, we’ll just have to verify this”. With memories of Sydney flashing through my mind I followed him to a little office where he left me with another customs guy. This one doesn’t even look up as he checks all the paperwork, asks me where I’ll be working, what I’ll be doing, how I got the job and how long I’m going to be doing it. Half way through all this a customs girl came in and told me that she had put my bag outside the office since it was the only one left from my flight. Eventually I was let go but I really got the feeling that I wasn’t overly welcome in the country.

Now all I have to do is get to the American Airlines desk and check in for my next 2 flights. I didn’t have a boarding pass for them and I had visions of the flight having been overbooked and being told that there was no seat for me. Not a problem as it turned out although it was the last seat they had so I ended up in the middle seat in the middle of the plane. While I was waiting for the boarding pass the check in guy was asking me why I was going to Miami. When I said it was for a job he was a bit surprised. It turned out that just about every Australian going through LAX for the last few weeks had been flying to Miami and then on to Barbados for the cricket. He’d had a bit of an education as to what cricket was from all the Aussies he’d been dealing with and said that he’d even had a flight of 400 odd where every person had transferred on to Miami.

I eventually made it to Miami, having fallen asleep finally but in such an awkward position that my back and neck now had amazing levels of pain shooting up and down them every time I moved my head. It was quite a wait for my bag with the carousel starting and stopping and the Americans gathered around getting really agro in the charming way that only Americans seem to manage when something doesn’t run absolutely perfectly. Is it that Australians and New Zealanders are better able to take things in their stride or that Americans are used to some sort of Disneyfied perfection that just isn’t obtainable in the real world? I half expected to hear the threats of lawsuits for mental anguish because they had to wait those extra minutes for their bags.

Wheeling my bag behind me (if you don’t have wheels and an extendable handle you just aren’t “in” these days) I made my way out of the terminal to try and find the complimentary transportation to my hotel. There were dozens of mini buses cruising up and down outside so it was just a matter of attracting the attention of the one with the name of the hotel painted on the side. After I got in we did a bit more trolling, picking up an elderly couple with African accents, before he was satisfied and we headed off. We drove and we drove and we drove. It must have taken about half an hour to get to the hotel and it had been advertised as being next to the airport. It turned out that it was next to the airport, it’s just that the airport is so big and we started at the opposite side to the hotel, that it took that long just to go around. On the way I saw a car pulled over and a cop out shining his torch on the license plate with one hand while his other hand rested on the butt of his gun. It was just like a scene out of “Cops”.

The hotel was pretty good, especially for a freebie, although I didn’t really get to see much of it having arrived about 22.00 and having to be in the lobby to get picked up at 08.00. The problem was that I was awake, showered, and shaved and ready to go at 06.00. Breakfast sounded good so I set off to try and find something open at that time of the morning. I walked right past Burger King and found a place called “The Latin American Grill”. It was open, although empty and I ventured in and took a seat at the counter. The waitress came over and immediately started talking to me in Spanish. She looked pretty surprised when I said that I was sorry but I didn’t understand and with a confused look she said “no Cuban?” I guess I can now add another nationality to the list that I can pass for along with Egyptian. I must have one of those sorts of faces. It turned out that she didn’t speak English at all so we had to do the sign language thing, much to her amusement, so that I could order food. I got a Cuban roast pork sandwich and a Cuban coffee. The sandwich was toasted on some sort of bread that I didn’t recognize but was really good and the Cuban coffee came in a little espresso type cup and was incredibly strong and sweet. It was so good that I had another one and managed to cement my place as an honorary Cuban with the waitress since she’d given me an “are you sure” type of look when I’d ordered the coffee in the first place. I walked out feeling that Tony Bourdain would have been proud of me.

When the bus arrived to take me to the Port it turned out to be a big one and the only other person on it was a South African who was getting onboard to do environmental checks. He had a job of going from ship to ship and making sure that each one was doing the right thing and all the appropriate procedures were in place. This was his first assignment so he was as unsure of where we were going as I was. It turned out that one of the perks of his job was an officer’s rank aboard and he had been put up in a better hotel than mine which is why he’d been picked up first. We then proceeded to stop at a number of other hotels and pick up people with the quality of the hotels and the nationalities of the people changing at each one. Eventually the bus was full and we headed into downtown Miami. Or at least we tried to head into downtown Miami. The traffic was horrendous but eventually we made it to the port and I had my first glimpse of the MS Fascination, my home for the foreseeable future.

It was huge. I had never seen a cruise ship in person and about my only other exposure was watching the Love Boat. This ship towered up, as it turned out, about 12 stories above where we were standing. A good looking ship, as these things go, but still pretty daunting to stand there and look up at all those decks and try to imagine what it must look like on the inside and then to look down below the waterline and try to imagine where my cabin was going to be and what it was going to look like. We all had to queue up, get checked off a list by the US border patrol officer at the gate and then get escorted to the ship. One at a time we got to go up the gangway (please note the proper nautical terms being used) to be checked in by the ship security officers. From there it was on to a small waiting room outside the ships equivalent of an HR office. This is where all semblance of an orderly queue broke down. It was every man for himself as a harried looking woman tried to hand us all our appropriate forms. Luckily I had a pen in my pocket (thinking ahead) so I was able to fill my forms out fairly quickly, not having to wait for someone else to give up the communal pen. Once I’d filled them in handed them back to the woman, along with all my medical records and my letter of employment, I got in another queue, had my photo taken and was given 2 name badges with my name, position and nationality on them. It turns out that the only ID you need to prove that you are a crew member is a name badge. You wear this at work and also when you are off work and in the crew areas which is why you get 2, one for your uniform and one for off duty. I was told to come back the next day to pick up my ID which is one like the casino ID but which is only used when you go off the ship in port and it acts as a type of passport since I had to give up my actual passport along with all my paperwork.

Having been given my badges, given up all my paperwork and been given a key to cabin 180 I was let loose and pushed gently out of the way by the next person in line. Luckily I was approached by a guy who introduced himself as another casino person who had the job of getting me to my cabin and giving me an introduction to the ship. I grabbed my bags and off we went. I’d made it onboard and a brand new life was about to begin.

I might leave it here for the moment. It seems an appropriate place to end this email before starting the next one detailing my first week. It’s been a pretty full on week with a somewhat strange end to it but all will be revealed in the next instalment.