Swamped, in More Ways Than One – At Sea – [11/19/2016]

Posted on December 29, 2016 by GypsyShaughnessy

Tired businesswoman with telephones and pen in her mouth sitting

So…many…people.

I know my classes are popular, I’m good at my job, and I like my job, and that equates to people liking the classes. Plus the programs are popular to begin with – but this cruise? The lowest number I have had in a class so far is…35 people. The rest of my classes have been above 40. 40! In a room that comfortably seats 24! And is a sauna at the best of times.

Not overworked, just slightly overwhelmed by the numbers. I don’t think I’ve ever had numbers this high, that said I haven’t been doing the job long; perhaps this is common…but…

We still have four more sea days before we make Honolulu, if they are all like this? I am going to be one sleepy computer girl by the end.

It is insanely rocky – this stretch of water always is. But keeping my footing at the front of the class is a bit of a challenge to say the least. The entertainment was rescheduled for tonight since the show that was originally supposed to run was deemed unsafe for the dancers. The ‘Cats are still playing, but they will at least have chairs.  The pool looks like a cross between a tidal wave and a wave pool – and therefore the pool deck is currently a small lake.

Big numbers and rough weather, this cruise is starting out with a bang!

Can we be in Hawaii yet?

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This is a Recording – At Sea – [12/18/2016]

Posted on December 18, 2016 by GypsyShaughnessy

I suppose everyone has their own idea of what it’s like to record a song. Big head-phones, mounted microphone, madly working sound technician, hopefully a band somewhere in the picture…lay things down in one take, go to lunch.

Which is all well and good, but which barely scratches the surface of what recording something is actually like; as I’ve found out over the past few days. Amras and I are working on a project, the details of which I won’t go into, but which involves recording. And I haven’t recorded anything since high school when my choir did their annual CD (and we thought we were oh so special). I’ve never recorded anything solo, and never with the assistance of any kind of a recording studio.

Oh, we don’t have a recording studio on board, not exactly. We have a cabin, and a laptop, a laptop with high end mixing software, and really good recording tech that Amras packs with him which allows us to turn that cabin into a mini-studio. But heck, I mean I don’t even have good headphones! And it’s not as though the cabin is precisely soundproof, so there’s always the risk of things interrupting us, like knocks on the door, or oh…ringing phones…vacuum cleaners, the occasional alarm from the watertight doors. You really never know what is going to happen.

But the hardest part for me? Is take after take of listening to my own voice. I’m a good singer, I know I am, I’m pretty sure I might have mutant lungs, but actually listening to myself sing on playback? I can barely listen to myself talking into an answering machine!  The first take I squirmed like crazy, the second was not so bad, and by perhaps the third I was able to listen with a bit more of a critical ear

Can I take that last bit again? I can do that better

Okay, get ready I’ll punch you in…and go..

So it gets easier. But it is by far one of the weirdest processes I have ever been through. How do you not feel self-conscious about hearing yourself on tape? Over and over again? And once Amras ran through all the clean-up effects and started balancing out the mix (which still isn’t’ finished, but it’s coming along), I blinked..

That’s…me?

Yeah.

But that sounds…good

Duh!

Okay…so here we go…new adventures…take one…

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Still Foolin’ ‘Em – At Sea – [12/18/2016]

Posted on December 18, 2016 by GypsyShaughnessy

5501618311_1eeec26185_z_largeSo far this cruise I have had nothing but positive comments, and very enthusiastic students. So much so that I don’t really know what to do with all that enthusiasm. Anyone who knows me knows that as much as I like compliments, I really have no idea what to do with them.

I usually manage a few awkward thank-yous and then try to politely remove myself from the conversation. In truth I’m not used to people liking me this much, not at work anyway. And n the ever present performer’s dilemma, “what if they find out I really have no idea what I’m doing?”

I mean, I do know what I’m doing. But not to the extent that people seem to think I do! I mean, I’m self taught! I trained myself, half the stuff I talk about I didn’t even realize I knew until someone asked me!  I’m an ex-dancer for heaven’s sake, and a writer, and a bookworm! What do I know about computers???

Um…well, apparently considerably more than I used to. If, that is, the people telling me that I’m the best instructor they have had on any cruise they’ve taken are to be believed…

*gulp*

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Water Water Everywhere – At Sea – [12/16/2016]

Posted on December 18, 2016 by GypsyShaughnessy

pin_up_by_meddison-d85d6twSea days, lots and lots of sea days. We’ve put paradise to our rudder and our now making our way back to San Diego, where we will all don our Christmas attire and shiny red lipstick and greet the dozens of families mounting our gangway to celebrate the holidays.

It’s also where we’ll do the rest of our supply shopping, not to mention our actual Christmas shopping (I need to pick up wrapping paper! And a gift for my boss, and one for my other boss…and I suppose I really should get something for Amras and blah…too much to do).

But between then and now there are a whole lot of sea days, and a lot of ocean carrying us where we need to go.

Sea days are odd things, the guests love them because it’s a chance for htem to rest up from their adventures in port before they go home. For us? It’s a bit of a climate jolt to go from having no one show up to my classes on port days to suddenly having crowds outside my door almost shoving each other out of the way in their haste to get in! As my Gran always said, it’s swell to be popular, it’s hell to be the rage!

But it does make the days go quickly. And the students are wonderfully enthusiastic and patient – although sometimes they are not all that patient with each other.

And in between times we all amuse ourselves with whatever we can find; raiding each other’s harddrives, watching movies we haven’t watched in years, playing compulsive amounts of video games. Day before yesterday Amras and I watched the original Phsyco  which still has the effect of making me jump out of my skin. Even more so when we were playing C.O.D later and he actually did jump out at me with a battle knife…which caused me to squeal like a small child, and then laugh hysterically.

Hey, we’ve got to pass the time somehow!

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Dust to Dust – At Sea – [12/12/2016]

Posted on December 14, 2016 by GypsyShaughnessy

lavaEvery time I think that this job has run out of wonders to offer me, life offers up something else. In this case, the chance to see the very earth erupting, to see the very way the world was born; millions of years ago.

In six years with the company and multiple occasions to be near or around Hawai’i I’ve never had the opportunity to see an active volcano; whenever we have passed one I’ve been working or the route has been such that we’ve ended up having to bypass. This evening was our last chance to see the active lava flow before we move on from Hawai’i for the season – if I didn’t see it now I wasn’t going to get another chance for a long while.

I have never seen anything like it.

The entire ocean glowing orange, steam billowing up to the sky like the remnants of a fireworks launch only heavier and hotter than anything that we could have created with mere fireworks. This is nature’s fire, volatile, untameable and utterly destructive. And absolutely breathtakingly beautiful.

That’s the very way the world was born…

It comes from millions of miles deep in the earth

Yup, and we’re just floating on top of it….a little tiny thin crust of earth drifting on top of that.

Dust, millions of years of dust floating on top of it

The world is still young and churning beneath the thin skin of dust we tread on every day, I think we forget about that sometimes. I certainly did, until tonight when I was faced with the reminder of it pouring molten hot into the sea.

The movement of the lava behind the steam cast shadows into the air, making it look like there were figures there, dancing, walking, crossing the flames; part of some other world that we are only on the fringes of. It is easy to understand why our ancestors believed such things to be the providence of the Gods…they were not wrong, looking at that volcano tonight I believed in Pele, and I honoured her, and I feared her…

And I am grateful that S/he allows us to walk daily on her back…

 

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Gifts from Beyond the Corner – At Sea – [11/29/2016]

Posted on November 30, 2016 by GypsyShaughnessy

christmas-girlIf there is love in your heart and your mind
You will feel like Christmas all the time

~ “Where are you Christmas”

Today we got a notice in our time capture terminals telling us that only two days hence – on December 1st, we would be asked to come in late to start Christmas decorating. The Holiday Cruise, with it’s velvet hats and red-wax smiles, is almost on top of us…how did it come so fast?

And…where is it? In this crazy, volitale and frankly frightening world, in these tense times, how do we find Christmas, where do we look for it. How do we take time out to even start.

I was walking through port with Amras a few days ago, fending off the burn that the brilliant Hawai’ian sunlight is always determined to give me, and looking at the Christmas trees. It never ceases to strike me as bizarre that in the states Christmas starts in November, right after thanksgiving – but moreso than that, Christmas trees decorated with plumaria and ukelalies always just seem so…bizarre to me. At heart, I will always be a Canadian girl, no matter how far I stray, and Christmas means snow and sleet and rain and hot chocolate in front of the fire.

But the answer to my question didn’t – and doesn’t – rest in any of those things..I found it, or remmebered it in the note that the my debarking boss left in my mailslot before he flew out the last port day of the cruise:

Remember, Christmas is wherever there is love. XO

And that’s what it’s all about isn’t it? That’s what it should be all about. It doesn’t matter does it? It doesn’t matter where you are, or what you have to wrap up or not, because that’s not what Christmas is about. It’s what perhaps, people may try to make it about – people try to make it about black Friday sales and pricetag competitions, but that’s not what it’s about.

It’s about – and this will at first sound strange – that feeling I get in my heart when I take my first sip of eggnog.

Which I did early this year, despite the mild disapproval of my family “Christmas Committee” (sorry Josh), because there was simply not going to be an opportunity to do so at the “right” time. I sat in that blinding hawai’ian sunilight, staring at the drinks menu in disbelief, and when the waitress came to take my order I handed it back to her quietly

One virgin Rum Nog please

Virgin?

Yes please

It arrived at the table, and I stared at it for a minute, then picked it up and took a very deep breath. Amras, being wise about these things, sat across the table from me and said nothing, because I wouldn’t have heard him even if he did. He just sat there and watched me breathe in, and then close my eyes and take that first real sip of Christmas. And I felt the tears well up though no sound came,  because in that sip – I was home. Home with the sleet and the rain and the mud under my shoes as we shopped for the Christmas tree. Home with the boxes and boxes of ornaments where every single thing you unwrap has a story, home where every ornament on the tree represents someone and being on that tree means that whether you like it or not , with all the ups and downs, you are part of the family. Home, with the smell of pine needles and dust and tinsel that always catches in your hair. Home , where my Mum always has flour across the bridge of her nose and my Dad is always complaining about not getting the top of the tree right.  Home, where there is love everywhere,  not just under the tree. Where no one understands the crazy way we do things and that’s fine because that’s the way we do them.  We don’t always understand each other, we very seldom even agree, but we love.

Hello Christmas…

This year, my little tiny christmas tree will be decorated with ornaments bought especially for it, and garlanded with a delicate shell-necklace that I bought speciifically for that purpose. And I will get construction paper and make paperchains to hang from my ceiling, and I will curl up with an eggnog latte (minus the coffee) and watch the movies I grew up with after turning the ship into a fairyland for the guests that will coming streaming on board when we pull into San Diego. We will make it snow, and we will bring Santa on board…we will sing in the christmas concerts and watch the children’s eyes shine.

And it will come, without packages, or boxes, or bags…

As I get older, Christmas is less and less about the Dolly in the Corner, and more and more about those lovely intagibles, as I get older – the things I want can’t be put under the tree. Can’t be wrapped, can’t be bought. But can be ever so freely given…

And giving those things, love, joy, compassion, and the ‘outstretched hand of tolerance’ …that is what Christmas is…

And ever shall be.

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Radio Airwaves – At Sea – [11/14/2016]

Posted on November 15, 2016 by GypsyShaughnessy

71754-461x306We used to turn the dial
And use our imagination
Radio, I miss you so-dee-oh-vo-dee-oh-do-de-oh-do
Radio, I miss you so

The flagship’s radio show dinner theatre performance is always…less of a performance and more of a well-controlled chaotic circus. In the best possible sense.

Yes, the OCD-actress in me sometimes has a hard time with it, because I can’t take scripts of any kind lightly, doesn’t matter if you hand me a farce or a tragedy, I’m going to take it seriously – because we’re there to make the audience laugh not to laugh ourselves. BUT that said…I am willing to admit that my own weirdnesses aside, a fantastic time is always had by all.

I was lucky enough to be part of the original radio show cast years ago when the CD on board first created it. It started out small and relatively humble, and has since grown to a confidently hilarious two and a half hour three act madhouse that makes only the thinnest amount of sense. The more craziness gets added to the script every season, the more the guests love it.

Of course the fact that the dinner comes with free wine probably does help the craziness go down just a bit easier!

This time around, I reprised the role I played the very first time – a petulant love-struck honeybee named Tulipet who is hopeless in love with a wasp. Ye-ah, Shakespeare has nothing on us!  Naturally the honey-dipped love affair does not end any better than the original Romeo and Juliet, but at least we get there in a much more amusing over-the-top way.

By the middle of the third act we’d gone rather hilariously off the rails. Enough lines were being made up that it was impossible to keep track of where the cues used to be, and the guests were throwing in their own lines on top of that.

A throw-back to true radio days perhaps it is not, but never the less , a good time was definitely had by all – and it always feels good to be back behind a character again.

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Lows and Highs – At Sea – [11/13/2016]

Posted on November 13, 2016 by GypsyShaughnessy

[No I don’t know what’s going to happen] it was a feeling, but I can guess. In so much chaos, someone is going to do something stupid. And when they do, it’s going to get nasty…

~ V for Vendetta

As far as I am able, this will be my last words on this subject…for now at least, until something else draws more out of me.

When one thinks about the world changing overnight, one has a tendency to think about of it in the way of good; of things changing for the better. In the last few days, it seems to be becoming more clear that that is all too often not the case.

And now there is before and after, and it will always be remembered as that. Before and after.

I wanted to believe that nothing could happen overnight, I wanted to believe that it had been only campaign promises and hyperbole, but under that; I was afraid, the sinking feeling in my stomach perhaps told me I had reason to be.

I was never afraid of the candidate; I feared what he stood for, what he tacitly gave permission to. The kinds of people who violently support those ideals, who think that all problems can be solved at the end of a gun barrel. I am fully aware that not everyone who voted for him voted for those reasons, I know many people who choose that particular party line for other reasons, but there were enough who did choose his rhetoric specifically. And as a result, I have friends – dear friends – who are trying to figure out how to get themselves out of the country, my facebook feed is filling with news reports of harassment and violence everywhere from gas-stations to college campuses.

You want a woman? Grab her and take her

Someone dresses differently than you? Harass them, threaten them, deport them.

Someone is of a different faith? Demonize them

Someone is of a different skin tone than you? Treat them as less.

This is the mentality that has been voted into office, this is what is the role model for the world to see. This, is post-election USA. The hate was always there, we know that, none of us are ignorant, there have always been individuals in this world who fear what they don’t understand and trumpet their own opinions and values loudly and without care for those who may be effected. I am not saying, nor do I think, are any of those who are fearful or angry or protesting – that one man, no matter how twisted or ignorant – created that anger or that hate. I am saying that his election made it the comfortable norm, made it suddenly and somehow acceptable for these things to take place.

I Canadian, but – as I have said before – I am also a woman, I am also pro-choice, I am LGBTQ, and while I have the blessing of being born Caucasian, I have many many friends on both sides of the border who are not.

Whether or not the man-who-would-be-king is “as bad as we think” is not the point, the wave of hatred that he has caused will be difficult to stop. If it can be stopped.

Because so many are afraid.

And their fear is all our fear.

So what can we – as little tiny individuals do in the face of all that fear? We can stand strong. We can hold the hands of our fellow humans, of all races, of all genders, of all orientations, and we can declare that in the face of adversity, we WILL be fearless, we will be strong, and we will do what’s right, without it costing blood, without it causing violence, without resorting to hatred. In our fear, we can spread love, in our anger we can spread peace. That sounds like an oxymoron, it’s not. Donate to planned parenthood, march in pride rallies, step in when you see bullying of any form, give blood, give money, give of your time and your support.

Even in fear, when they go low…we must go high.

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Still Bravely Singing – At Sea – [11/11/2016]

Posted on November 12, 2016 by GypsyShaughnessy

She_knows_what_freedom_really_means_1942_1_In Flander’s Fields the poppies grow
Between the crosses row on row
That mark our place while in the sky
The lark still bravely singing flies
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

It’s not raining and my feet aren’t slipping in half-frozen mud, but none-the-less, standing in the closest thing I have to a dress uniform, with my feet aching in my good shoes; the cenotaph is still the cenotaph.

When I was little I went to the ceremony because my Gran had decided we must go. It was a family thing, even though I remembered none of my family who had served in any war; except my Gran herself…who was a welder, and who used to say to me

When you’ve lived through two wars and a depression you can do what you want

And she was right. And I am glad – in some ways – that she is not here now to see what the world has come to.

Anyway, when I was little, I felt pretty and grown-up in my pretty clothes; I did not understand it, and if I cried it was likely because I was bored and everyone else was crying and perhaps I thought it was expected of me.

I would give a lot to have that bored naivety back.

As I’ve grown older I attended because I feel compelled to, although explaining why is…perhaps not always.

I go, and I cry because I all too often feel like the lark; still bravely trying to sing over the insane violence that is erupting all around her; all around us.

I cry because even now – perhaps especially now – I do not understand it. Do not understand why every year the list gets longer, why I am still watching friends salute wreathes and choke out names that are not more than a few years gone, why there are more names instead of fewer. Why must people die in the name of freedom? Freedom is a concept created by mankind, no other animal, no other creature, has any concept of freedom – for no other species has a concept of slavery. We created that, all by ourselves, we fight for and against our own creation. How many more people have to perish before we finally learn some kind of a lesson? How many other little girls have to stand in the mud in party shoes, crying for something they do not understand, for Grandmother’s lost and fathers vanished..

Why? Why do we simply never bloody learn?

I stood there, weeping silently in confusion and sorrow and fear, I thought of my Gran, my high school classmates who serve, my colleagues from the military base where I was once a secretary.

It all seems so pointless, year after year, more lives, more hearts broken, more children clinging to hands in the cold looking at weeping angels and lists of names…and never any lessons learned.

When I weep, I truly weep, I make almost no sound. You have to look at my face to see tears. People seldom do. My manager – of all people – did. Walking up beside me without a word, he wrapped and arm through mine and his in mine and held on until I let go.

I explained to him later: I cry because I think, deep down, I am still that little girl in the rain…weeping because no one can explain to her “why”.

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Sink or Swim? – At Sea – [11/10/2016]

Posted on November 12, 2016 by GypsyShaughnessy

NeptuneTechnically we cross the equator tomorrow, but as that date is rightfully reserved for much more important ceremonies – we chose today to welcome his majesty King Neptune to grace our mid-ship pool so that those vile Pollywogs who work among us could be initiated to the lofty heights of the status of trusty shellback.

As always, it was a messy – slightly chaotic – tribute, with many crazy proclamations and many variations of multicoloured slime. What was entertaining for me ws that I was the only one of the ‘medics’ who had performed the service (such as it is) before, so the other five somehow ended up looking to me for random things. Which means I suppose the Pollywogs have me to thank (blame? ) for the fact that the tables got pre-slimed before they even arrived for their treatment.

Hey, if you don’t do that, one whole side of them doesn’t get doused! How unfair would that be? One must be fair with one’s sacrifices after all!

Working our way down through the departments, the squirming ‘victims’ being dragged before Neptune and the ship’s staff in groups of two or three by suitably brutal pirates – we watched the pool get murkier and murkier. While those of our patients who were condemned to be unable to take the plunge baked miserably on the poolside.  Every time a pollywog hit the tables, the band kicked into “What do you do with a Drunken Sailor” which made me giggle somewhat insanely.

Finally we reached the entertainment department; and the rest of my team which included my manager. I mean how often do you get to dump slime on your manager?

Just remember Rye, we love you!

And our librarian, who, in a twist of irony ended up on my table – the ex-flagship librarian initializing one of the last librarians to fill the post.

‘Bienne! Eyes closed, mouth shut, I’m sorry!

And we upended the last of the slime bucket over her head.

Shall they sink? Or shall they stink?!

Let ‘em bake!

Hit the drink!

Of course, the final verdict for the final batch of pollywogs doesn’t make much of a difference as – at that point – everyone  is ending up in the water, pirates, pollywogs, medics alike. Otherwise there’s no way to wash off the multicolored coating of slime! Incidentally my slime was pink – as were my scrubs, I like to be colour co-ordinate.

But also, granting us safe passage home!

Because hey, better safe than sorry any day!

 

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