When you first sign on to a ship there are a few things you must do, and meetings you must attend.You must also take the mandatory safety training if you are a new hire, or if you last took it more than 2 years ago. I didn't have to take the safety training this time. I just had to attend an orientation meeting, a policy refresher, and a “meet the captain and senior staff” get together.

Non-Americans also had to go through US immigration in St Thomas to be given I-95 ID cards. This card serves as identification in US ports – in our case, in St Thomas and Port Canaveral. You don't want to be late for immigration, or they'll think you're trying to get away with something and put the dogs on you. They'll track you down and accuse you af all kinds of things, like being a wetback, or worse, a terrorist.

That ID card is known as an I-95, but the main gangway is also known as the I-95. You don't need the card to use the main gangway, though. (For you landlubbers, a gangway is simply the nautical term for a hallway). The I-95 gangway runs down the center of the ship from stem to stern on deck 1.

Work so far has been surprisingly challenging. This kind of work, playing shows with minimal rehearsal, requires a lot of concentration and sometimes a little ESP. It's nothing like playing jazz standards in Ellington's – my last gig on the ship. But the orchestra is very good, especially the rhythm section, and nothing I do seems to throw them. I'll be fine after I get a few shows under my belt.

My cabinmate this time is the Sports Supervisor, Octavian. I'll try to get a picture of him for you female readers. Octavian says that, for some reason, women seem to like his “great body”. It causes him no end of trouble, he says as he emptys a bunch of condoms onto the bed from his backpack (he's just checking the dates on them).

Octavian is Roumanian, and he's actually a very nice guy. Friendly, soft spoken and polite. And he smells good, too. Well, he should, considering the number of scented soaps, oils, colognes, and powders he uses.

He's also got a shoe collection to die for.

Octavian is leaving Sunday, and packing up will be a real chore for him. He's got two huge suitcases, but piles and piles of clothes. He's already given me some that he knows he won't be able to fit in, like a very nice Royal Caribbean windbreaker. He had assembled a very serviceable wall unit for his clothes using nothing more than plastic milk crates and duct tape, and then just kept buying clothes to fill it, I suppose.

To tell you the truth, though, he's an ideal cabinmate. He neither drinks nor smokes, unlike my last partner who did both, and corrupted the cabin with his stale smoke and misplaced urine. Yeah, now and then while in some kind of coma, he would piss on the walls of the cabin, or maybe on a chair, usually while I was asleep. I'd hear this telltale sprinkling sound, and fly like an enraged chimpanzee out of my upper bunk to wake him up before too much damage was done. I knew it was dangerous (you don't want to be waking sleepwalkers, you know – they are unpredictable, and have superhuman strength) but it had to be done. Anyway, Octavian doesn't have any of those problems. He is very considerate indeed.

Octavian has his own devils though. In front of his staff he is the quintessential health and fitness freak. Lunch consists of plates piled high with fruit and salads. Oh, he goes on and on about the importance of proper nutrition to a healthy body and a healthy mind. But back in the cabin it's a different story.

He loves football, and he makes sure he's well provisioned with cheese puffs, salted nuts, beef jerky sticks, chocolate bars and Gatorade when he sits down to watch it on TV of an evening. He begs me not to tell anyone. “Andrej didn't tell, and I hope you don't too,” he said. Andrej was the last bass player to share his cabin. Now, why would I tell anybody, dear world?

I'm going to miss Octavian when he leaves on Sunday. I wonder what my next cabinmate will be like???



Octavian, my first cabinmate on my 2nd tour