Short and sweet…just like me
September 4 2007
I’m going to try a different tack this time. Instead of sitting under some tree and writing with the tickle of a tropical breeze on my neck or staring across white sand at the impossible blue of a Caribbean sea and having incredibly poetic prose flow from my fingertips I’m going to write this one in the most unlikely of places to create flowery phrases: I’m going to do it at work.
Here I stand, in a small cage in the centre of the casino, at 10.30 am. I’ve been here since 8.45, getting ready for a 9.00 open and dealing with the dozen or so people who are actually here at this time of the day. Now let’s take a second to examine this. I said that there are a dozen people in here (maybe 20) and its 10.30 in the morning. Admittedly it’s a sea day and there is no option to get off the ship and see a port but they have still paid money to do a cruise and yet these people, who most likely have one of the ubiquitous Indian casinos within walking distance of their homes, are in a small, dark, smoke filled room staring fixedly at some of the most uninteresting gaming machines ever built. They have the entire run of the ship and a myriad of activities that they wouldn’t have access to at home and yet they insist on coming in here at this ungodly hour of the morning and giving away their money. I guess it’s something that happens in any casino and I’ve certainly spent enough years seeing the avarice and desperation on faces to realise that there are people who just can’t help themselves but the idea of paying money to cruise and then not taking advantage of the new experiences that are on offer is still hard to fathom. Every morning there is a 4 page glossy ‘magazine’ called the “Princess Patter” delivered to every cabin. In it is all the information you need for what’s on offer that day aboard. Looking at today’s there are 16 things listed between 8am and 5pm in addition to all of the standard food/spa/pool/show/movie/courses/sport/shopping that happens every day anyway. Why, oh why, are these people in here instead of soaking up the sun or just relaxing with a drink, a good book and a view of the ocean. Or maybe I’m just not getting it and I’ve spent too long in here and would love the opportunity to sit on deck and see the world going by or even on my cabin balcony with free room service.
But enough of me whining about the inanities of human nature. Most of the things that make me shake my head are not peculiar to the American animal but seem common to people who go into casinos in general. The things that set the Americans apart are less casino and more world or travel oriented. On my name badge it says that I’m from New Zealand and I’ve been asked what language we speak there. I looked him in the eye and said Maori and he went away looking very impressed with my grasp of English. While the Lord of the Rings and other things have made New Zealand a much better known place there still seems to be a belief that, outside the USA, the rest of the world is some homogonous mass of land peopled by non-Americans. The number of comments I’ve gotten regarding some perceived amalgamation of New Zealand and Australia are amazing. “Oh, you’re from New Zealand? I’ve been to Sydney.” “Uh huh, so?” I have now taken to making return comments comparing the US to Mexico and expressing surprise when people get upset and say that they are two different countries.
Anyway, so here I am. My day started at 8.45, I get a break from 14.30 until 18.00 and then I’m back until some unspecified time after midnight. All that and not even a chair to sit on, no wonder my knees are going on me. The good thing is that I have just been handed the Port Manning and Embarkation schedule for next week and I don’t have to do embarkations. That means I can get off in Port Lauderdale and go to my favourite little diner for breakfast. I probably haven’t mentioned my favourite little diner so remind me to do that later. Starting at 8.45 means waking at 8.00 (after finishing sometime after midnight), showering and shaving in a bathroom that is so small I have to tilt my head sideways while I’m brushing my teeth to stop the end of the brush hitting the wall each stroke. Then I get dressed in the semi dark with the only light from a small lamp at the end of my bunk, trying not to wake up my roommate who probably didn’t finish until 4 or 5 am. A handful of jellybeans and a can of coke for breakfast and I make the walk to the casino. The corridors are narrow, blue painted steel in the crew area and carpeted in the passenger area, probably as much a space saving thing as to give people less space to be thrown around in when the weather gets rough. There is a handrail down one side of the corridor but I haven’t had to use it to steady myself because of the conditions, only as a guide when I’ve been too tired to bother opening my eyes. At the casino I collect my cash and get escorted to the cage. From that point on the fun begins. For anyone thinking of doing this the learning curve may be steep but once you’ve figured out the answers to the 20 or 30 basic questions then you never have to think again. It’s just a matter of matching up the right answer with the right question as you get asked them over and over. The only tricky part is remembering that Americans don’t seem to speak English and even have to have the BBC news reports subtitled.
The work is not exciting or glamorous and it’s the people you would never expect who turn out to be the nicest or the ones that tip. Luckily the other cashier I work with is a really nice person and we seem to work well as a team, both talking to each other when it’s quiet and supporting each other when it’s busy. It would be a horrible place to be stuck for hours on end when you don’t get on with the other person. She even took me to what could best be described as ‘Little Manilla’ in Port Lauderdale. It’s an area with a few Filipino restaurants and grocery stores that cater to all the crew from the cruise ships. We went to one restaurant/store and had breakfast. She and the other girl with us were amazed when I happily ordered and ate pigs intestines cooked in pig’s blood. They said it was the first time that they had ever seen a non Filipino even try the stuff let alone finish it and say that it wasn’t bad.
Well, it is now another day and I’m in my cabin. I have a 22.00 start tonight so I have a bit of time to kill now. CNN is on the TV beside me and there is a news report about cyclone Felix and the fact that it is heading through roughly the area that we are due in the next few days. I don’t think it will affect this cruise too much but there is a rumour floating around that this may be the last time we do this particular run for a while as there seem to be a lot of storms brewing at the moment. Nobody is really happy about that because this is the preferred run of the two that we do because of the ports and the less sea days. For me it would be the lack of variety that would be the worst thing (along with the extra sea days) and the idea that this may very well be the last time I see Grand Cayman and Cozumel is a bit sad. I’m also going to have to remember to use all the Cayman dollars I have in my wallet when we get there because I think I may have trouble changing them anywhere else and they are actually worth more than US dollars. I have an idea of what I might spend the money on but more of that later.
Well, maybe more of that now. I have made my first major purchase. I spent a large sum of money on a new camera. I’ve spent a number of months doing my research, as I am wont to do, and finally decided on the make and model I wanted. I then spent a few weeks playing various duty free stores in different ports off against one another to get the best deal and then bought it. It’s described as being ‘pro-sumer’ which is a buzz term for being somewhere above typical consumer quality and slightly below typical professional quality. Essentially it is bigger, better and has more options than my old camera. Plus it’s good to have a new toy to play with. The quality of the photos it’s taking (at least technically if not artistically) is noticeably better than my old camera and I was always pretty happy with the shots I used to get with that. I’ve now been getting snap happy again and been taking, or in a lot of cases retaking, lots of photos after having slowed down through familiarity of the ports lately. It’s also going to see a lot of use once I get to Walt Disney World which leads me to the next bit of news.
I went to Sawgrass on Sunday. I went with Maria (the other cashier) and her boyfriend on the ‘Filipino express’ which is a minivan full of Filipinos and is by far the cheapest way to get there. You get dropped off and then picked up and taken back to the ship. What is Sawgrass I hear you asking? It’s a very large shopping centre. Essentially it is a big and slightly upmarket outlet shopping mall. Like most places it is a clothes shopper’s heaven but there are enough other places to even keep someone like me entertained for a few hours. What I went looking for specifically was a Lowepro camera backpack. Kylie is probably nodding her head at the moment in recognition but for those in the dark it’s a name brand for camera specific bags and packs and would be handy for me to put my new camera, a couple of lens and other accessories and still be able to walk around comfortably with them. Unfortunately, despite three hours of diligently searching every shop that might have even had the faintest chance of having what I wanted, I couldn’t find any. The only specialist camera place had a few but not the style I was after so the search will have to continue.
What I did find, happily, was a Walt Disney World outlet store. Of course the theme park is just up the road and an outlet store makes sense for them to get rid of a lot of merchandise that they can’t shift in the park itself. A lot of the stuff is there because no one wants it or it’s out of date but I did buy a shot glass and a pin for about a 5th of the marked price that it would have cost me in the park itself. As nice as these things are I also picked up, for free, a park map and guide. Not too exciting to most people but bringing it a little bit closer for me. I’ve been sitting here poring over it for the last couple of days. I really hope I make it.
Not much else to say off the top of my head. I know that these emails are getting shorter as time goes on but just wait until Walt Disney World!
Greg