Ten days and I'm outta here! It's funny how your attitude changes near the end of the contract, when sign-off is in sight. I can hardly wait to get off this tub!
Starting yesterday I'm visiting each port for the last time. In Labadee I saw no reason to get off the ship, so I stayed aboard. Today, in Ocho Rios, I left the ship for awhile, but nothing appealed to me, and as it was quite noisy and unpleasant, as usual, I returned to the ship before noon and remained aboard for the rest of the day.
Tomorrow we're in Grand Cayman again, and going ashore doesn't interest me much there, either. I'm looking forward to Cozumel on Friday, though. Now that's a port I never get tired of. And I enjoy both St Thomas and St Maarten, too, which I'll be visiting for the last time next week.
Suddenly I realize that the way I'm talking, you'd think I never work – that it's all vacation and empty hours. And you'd almost be right! But not quite. Sometimes, like this coming Friday morning, we have to work while we're in port. We have to rehearse the guest star's show that we are to play Friday night.
But we've played the show several times now (she's been here before) and the rehearsal shouldn't last more than an hour or so. We're trying to schedule it for first thing in the morning so as not to interfere too much with our shore time. (We have to be finished by12:00 noon at the latest, due to a football match between our boys and the Carnival team at a soccer field in Cozumel.)
And of course, sometimes we work at night, often as much as two hours (but not consecutively). People tend to forget that.
We musicians try to keep out of sight as much as possible when we're not working so as not to make other crew and officers envious or resentful. But this afternoon I was up on deck 5 forward, usually a safe area, listening to my shortwave radio in a lounge chair when a couple of senior officers suddenly materialized. I wasn't expecting to see any officers up there, but I opened my eyes, and there they were!
One of them looked over at me, plainly disgusted, and snorted in his British accent, “Well, look at you! This is the life, eh?!”.
The other one said, “Leave 'em be. He's a,” he made a pair of finger quotes, “musician.”
I removed my headphones and sputtered out something about how time off wasn't all it's cracked up to be, what with the potential for sunburn and boredom and so on. It didn't wash, though. I wished I'd had a chance to hide from them.
But soon I'll be off the ship, and I won't have to hide any more!
***
So what do I have to report? Well, I just heard at dinner that one of the dancers, Amber, was caught “kissing a guest in the Jacuzzi” and fired. She was put ashore today in Ocho Rios. So it's not just musicians, and not just males, that get fired for consorting with guests. Too bad. Spring is in the air; couldn't they just ease up a tad at this time of year?
I also feel a little guilty for the way I talked about Kamal here on the blog the other day. After I wrote my piece, and posted it, Kamal surprised me with an Easter present – a framed picture of him and me that he printed with his new printer. The card said, “Gracias Ricardo – Happy Easter”. I think he was thanking me for fixing his printer (which, I confess, I did, against my better judgment).
Kamal, poor thing, looks up to me. I think I'm older than his father. I look older (I've seen a picture of his father). Well, I'm glad he seems to respect his elders.
He often joins me back on deck 5 aft for tea at sunset. We talk. It's nice, I guess. I'm sorry I said those things about those habits of his that drive me absolutely crazy.
Omar's Easter picture to Ricardo
