Solitary Confinement – Juneau, Alaska – [09/03/2015]

Posted on September 3, 2015 by GypsyShaughnessy

9d729f82557589d86387867ff1afba90_1024Ever since I was a kid, if I get a fever, it’s high. Sky high. I remember being doused in ice baths as a child in an attempt to bring my temperatures down; although in reality there was no ice in the tub, just very luke warm water – I remember the ice because it felt so painfully cold against my very very hot skin.

My mother always says not to let anyone tell me that 105 degree temperature is not possible, because I had one and did not die.

At any rate.

If you have a fever on the ship you have to immediately call into medical, because whatever it is you have may be contagious, if you are found to have had a fever and you *didn’t* call in – no matter what your excuse…you’re in potentially very big trouble. My fevers usually hit hard and die fast…I had one once that literally lasted only two hours before shattering, but last night I knew something was wrong. One minute I was fine, the next I was dizzy and achy and then all the hairs on my arms started standing up…Amras looked at me and immediately asked what was wrong

I think I’m sick…

And I lift my chin so he can check my glands, which are painfully swollen to the touch.

Bloody hell…

Yeah, and feel…I think I have a fever…

At which point he points to the phone

Call.

But…

Call hun, you know you have to.

So I call the front office who calls the first call nurse, who calls me and tells me to make my way up to the infirmary. She gives me a smile and sets the thermometer to my ear…and then her eyes go just that little bit wide

101…

Yeah, that’s what I thought,

I patiently answer all her questions, give her my cabin number, explain that I spent most of my time with Amras so he should probably be checked too.

I’ll have to isolate you up here

Isolation. I HATE isolation. There’s a reason I’ve never allowed myself to become sick enough to be pulled off duty; isolation feels like solitary confinement. I’m a wimp when I’m sick, I deeply need people around me, if they would just let one person in to check on me once in a while…but no, once that door closes you’re on your own except the doctor.

I suppose it isn’t so bad, they tell you to bring everything with you that you’ll need for a few days, so I have my laptop, I have Neverland, I have my own blankets and my teddy bear (yes, I still travel with a teddy bear), Amras brought up my toothbrush because I forgot it last night. I wasn’t allowed to see him of course, the nurse brought it in.

It was a long uncomfortable night, trying to sleep with a high temperature is kind of like trying to sleep on hot coals. I think the worst of the fever broke around 2am, so I did manage to get some actual rest.

The library is running on self-service while I’m off duty, so I’m trying not to think of how much work I’ll have to catch up on when I get back…part of me hopes that they keep me out for the full 72 hours so that I can avoid the insane end-of-cruise rush, but they’ll probably let me out tomorrow morning. I have to go 24 hours without a temperature.

In the meantime it’s movies, embroidery thread and room service…

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Out Like A Lion – Seward, Alaska – [08/30/2015]

Posted on August 30, 2015 by GypsyShaughnessy

The end of seasoOutLikeAn is definitely upon us. This morning when we crawled out of the warmth of our cabins to complete our turn on gangway farewell duty, we were greeted by lashing, freezing wind, howling so loud that the departing guests couldn’t hear us over the roar and the snap of the terminal tent (which, despite being permanently cemented to the ground, sound like it was about to fly away at any second). Our cruise director took one look at the situation and immediately lobbied (and thankfully won) to have us moved inside, where we were plyed with coffee and hot chocolate to keep us warm and awake until the shift was over.

Alaska’s brief season of warmth and sunshine appears to have vanished overnight. It’s still sunny out there, but if you step out into it you find that it’s still lashingly cold. And since the Puget sound is currently being buffeted by similar weather, I can imagine the next few days at sea may be…interesting.

Rather than staying in on one of the few chances we have to go out (though it was tempting to just fall flat back into bed), we took shelter in a local coffee shop that used to be a church. Sipping on mochas and writing home, and updating things that needed to be updated. I don’t normally take my computer ashore, but there are days when needs must.

Of course, when we got back to the ship, easy street is over and embark day starts. Seward embark day remains very odd, because unlike a normal turn around port it doesn’t really start until mid-afternoon. Because the majority of the guests coming on are on the train or bus down from Denali they don’t arrive until much later in the day; so the ship is pratically empty during the morning. Therefore, everything that would normally be done in the morning of an embark day ends up taking place in the afternoon – the passenger safety drill for example doesn’t start until after 7. So the day starts late (well, it does for those who don’t draw gangway farewell that morning), but once it starts, it doesn’t stop until you fall face first into bed at 11:30.

 

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Wolf at the Door – Skagway, Alaska – [09/27/2015]

Posted on August 30, 2015 by GypsyShaughnessy

wolfHenry got up, dressed all in black
Went down to the station
And he never came back
They found his clothes, scattered somewhere down the track
And he won’t be down on wall street in the morning
[…]
You find somebody to love in this world
You better hang on tooth and nail
The wolf is always at the door…
In a New York Minute…everything can change

She was just 24 years old. That’s it. That’s barely enough time to have done anything, barely enough time to step into the world and go “okay, I’m here – what’s next?”. She’d just fallen in love, just moved into her first shared apartment. All she did was get up and go to work in the morning. She was covering a shopping mall for Freya’s sake! Who gets killed covering a shopping mall!?

At first I wasn’t sure if I should say anything about the death of Alison Parker. After all, I do not live in Virginia, I didn’t know her, I didn’t know her friends or her family, I have – perhaps – no right to be grieving. But it’s not Alison Parker I’m grieving for, not really. It’s the world. Truly, what have we become that this kind of thing has become commonplace, that this kind of violence is somehow…seen at all as some kind of a solution, some kind of a way to make a statement.

The newspaper put it very well – you expect this kind of thing when someone is covering a war zone, or even a political rally – you worry that they might get hurt, might somehow get themselves into the line of fire. But local coverage? This is not something that would even cross your mind, and why should it?

We tell our children to be careful with their lives, but how are we supposed to protect them against what the world has so swiftly become right under our noses?

Or was the world always like this? Always this dark and this sharp…and I just live in too much of a bubble to see it?

Because if that’s the case, I’m starting to wonder if perhaps that bubble may not be the safest place to remain…at least there are no guns there…

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Good Time Girls – Skagway, Alaska – [09/27/2015]

Posted on August 30, 2015 by GypsyShaughnessy

ed645da649cac71f4205cf15b9de83e5Raindrops keep falling on my head
But that doesn’t mean my eyes
Will soon be turning red
Cryin s’not for me
‘Cause I’m never gonna stop the rain
By complaining…

It’s true that we were overdue for a little liquid sunshine. A lot of us were wondering what exactly had happened to leave Alaska so breathtakingly sunny in what’s usually the dankest time of the season. Today, the spell broke and we got our share. Skagway was washed clean by a heavy dose of chill August rain…

We found refuge in the local saloon (and yes it really is a saloon, used to be more than just that), and had an early lunch before heading back out into the elements to get to the theatre for one of the last showings of Days of ’98, which has been running since 1937 in the tiny little local Eagle Hall. Still a story that’s “mostly true” it’s a lot of fun to see a bit of history brought to life by a small but determined and talented cast – and at least this time they didn’t try to pull me up on stage. Which is good, because I had promised that if they did I would actually do it, and I was somewhat at a loss as to how to get out of that promise!

We were planning on getting Old Time Photos taken at the local studio, but my camera (which is the only one we had with us) is just about dead and I’m waiting for my replacement charger to arrive (please come in Vancouver please please please), and it was just too wet and rainy to wait for the photographer to open up again anyway – so we decided to leave that for next time. Instead we made our way back to the saloon and took the tour of the ‘upstairs’ museum…

The Red Onion used to be a house of ill-repute (so to speak), in fact one of the original red lanterns is kept hanging on the wall in the museum’s lobby. It’s a tiny little place, the walls for the crib rooms have been mostly taken out, but you can see where they would have been. 10×10 rooms, each decorated to the taste of the girl living and working there. In one room they found 18 layers of wallpaper! Apparently there was a very high turnover rate, which is not exactly surprising. It was a rough time and a rough town, and a very dangerous line of work. No resident doctor, no real medical knowledge of what precautions to take (latex hadn’t been invented yet, they used lambskin…and re-used it, because hey, things were expensive!)…

I can’t imagine…

Of course, the place is haunted, which should come as no surprise. I suspect the reason the girl in question is more prevalent in one particular corner is because she probably lived there, but she didn’t make herself known to me. Except for a vague feeling of someone smiling just over my shoulder. Like there was someone in the room sharing a joke with the tour guide.

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Civilized Freedom – Ketchikan, Alaska – [08/25/2015]

Posted on August 30, 2015 by GypsyShaughnessy

suitcase10They civilize freedom
Till no one is free
no one except by coincidence me

~ Paint Your Wagon

It’s hard to believe how fast this season has gone – I mean wasn’t it only yesterday that I got here?

With September so nearly upon us, Alaska is well…closing down. Soon we will turn the great state over to locals, moose and wolves and the chill of winter. Not for the first time a part of me is tempted to stay here, to see what it’s like after the tourist shops and the endless jewlery stores have packed up and followed us south for the winter. On more than one occasion Amras and I have joked about missing the ship – though really such things are not meant to be joked about.

Every week we come back from now on there will be more empty store fronts, more vacant windows. By the time we leave it really will feel like just us and the timber wolves.

That’s far from a bad thing really, Alaska becomes wonderfully peaceful when all the people have disappeared from it, you start to get a sense of what it must have been like before we somewhat invaded…

I read a travelouge once that said that when cruise ships first started calling here the locals used to be able to walk right on, no security, no nothing…and the ships themselves were lifeboats compared to us. Overnight all that changed, and in came the mega-ships (a classification for which my employer does not qualify and I hope we never will) and then came 9/11 and in came “authorized visitors only”.

I’ll miss Alaska this season; more so than usual. It’s given me a lot, it very nearly took a lot from me – but that’s another story altogether – and I’ve learned never again to question what might be waiting for me at the bottom of a glacier. But really, this Alaska season has been more about cupcakes, pool tables and pinball machines…

I never did win at pinball…but there are still a few calls left to change that.

 

 

 

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Busy, Busy, In A Tizzy – Vancouver, Canada – [08/23/2015]

Posted on August 30, 2015 by GypsyShaughnessy

gilelvgrentypistEmbark day remains crazy, some crazier than others. Last night we said farewell to our manager who had been looking after us for the past two months, this morning we get new management, new guests, new team members, new roommates, new everything…

It always takes us a while to adjust to each other when new people come; and when you’re the one joining mid-way it’s like trying to figure out your role in a play that’s already in progress!

Still, we all have our routines on embark day. I sleep in the mornings, always. I’ll trade away almost any IPM port so that I can have Vancouver mornings off. The only day where I can just sleep till I wake up. Amras gets up early to go into town for internet and such, but I don’t even stir until 10am…

It’s only a 7 hour day, but once it starts it doesn’t stop. Lunch simply doesn’t happen, unless you eat in the half-hour before drill…which is usually the only real option.

Most of the day for me is spent answering questions about the internet system, which I have become startlingly good at since they dropped it on me what feels like years ago (though in reality it was only a year and a half ago I suppose). But at the end of the day your voice is still hoarse and your slugging back Earl Grey with lemon to keep the laryngitis at bay.

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Friends in Low Places – Ketchikan, Alaska – [09/21/2015]

Posted on August 21, 2015 by GypsyShaughnessy

68d6011d78d21b0cae2b5b740185f259I wasn’t planning on heading to the crew party last night; Amras had a well-earned night off and was turning in early, and partying alone isn’t always my style. However, somehow I found myself there – still clad in the red Chinese formal I’d worn to work, perched on a bar stool, sipping corona straight from the bottle (the days of cosmos on tap are long long gone), and chatting with friends I sometimes forget that I have.

Even then I was kind of content to just sit there, the cast are the ones that jump out and burn up the dance floor, I usually don’t venture out until there are more people around. So I just watched, and made the mistake of losing track of one of the dancers…it’s not always the safest bet to lose track of cast member friends at parties, they have a habit of sneaking up behind you…

Literally…

I didn’t know that Eámanë was anywhere near me until I felt the playful smack to get me moving.

Come on you, I know you dance! Come! Now!

Soo…I danced. Maybe a little, maybe a bit like I used to back in the day…

And as a result, hung out much longer than I had planned to; but that’s what always happens with crew parties; put us all together and the departmental dividing lines disappear, the stress lifts (because very few of the people who cause it ever attend), and we’re just people – hanging out, flirting (sometimes with intent, sometimes without), dancing, and generally just existing.

Eámanë was awarded Most Valuable Player for her participation in the tug-o-war, because she was the only girl to sign up – her reward was a faux fur hat and a pashmina scarf. Entertainment department won a package of socks for coming in second. Seriously, socks! Not quite sure precisely what that was supposed to be about, but I suppose the musos can always use new black socks! Maybe we can make sock puppets…

Also, if any more proof was needed that we currently have one of the best Cruise Directors in the fleet, Merenwen could be found sitting cross legged in the front row fringing the dance floor, watching the “Miss Indonesia” performance and hollering at the top of her lungs before jumping back behind the bar to finish serving. It’s…very rare that you get a supervisor who even comes to crew parties, let alone actually has fun at them. I told her that in fact, she just grinned at me and said

Sweetie, I was cast [what feels like] five minutes ago…

Which is a fair point.

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Heave! – Haines, Alaska – [08/19/2015]

Posted on August 21, 2015 by GypsyShaughnessy

tug_o_war___colored__by_taenIt is a rather well known stereotype that entertainment department members are well…entertainers. So for the most part we’re more…watchers when it comes to sporting events. We don’t really play, and if we do – we don’t even come close to winning. Usually we get thrown into team events as a lark, and everyone kind of well…knows that.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my department! But we’re just not…we’re artists, not athletes!

But today was the Indonesia Independence Day celebrations, which is a really big deal on board because so many of the crew members are Indonesian. There’s a formal flag-raising ceremony and several speeches, and then there’s a bunch of games and competitions and such. At the last departmental meeting our supverisor stood at the front of the room and said

Okay guys, I need a team of 6 for the Tug o’war, don’t let me down guys! Be in it to win it.

And a few scattered hands went up, including one dancer, whom no one took seriously because she was a girl (more on that later). The rest of the team was made up of stage crew and musos…including Amras, who even now I’m not sure volunteered or was volunteered (I didn’t volunteer him I swear!). The thing is, our department is small, not weak necessarily but small, that doesn’t necessarily bode well when you’re in a competition that is mostly about brute strength.

Never-the-less we all crowded onto the pier to either compete or cheer (I was cheering, I am of no use whatsoever on a tug-o-war line). The first department we were up against …we won. Even the one dancer who participated shocked all the nay-sayers (but not her fellow dancers, because we know better), but bracing her feet and throwing herself against the line, people forget that dancers are small – and if you go against us in an upper-body strength competition we’ll probably lose – but anything that involves using the muscles in our legs? You’re going down.

And we kept winning.

What the?

Entertainment won? Entertainment never wins! How did we win?!

THOSE ARE MY BOYS!

HA take that!

GLOVES ARE FOR WHIMPS WE DON’T NEED NO STINKIN’ GLOVES!

Somehow, we ended up in the final heat. Now, this meant we were up against one of two departments: the last cut before the finals was between deck and engine. Talk about arch rivals, I have never seen 12 people throw themselves against a rope so hard – at one point the “anchor” of the deck department was literally crawling in the opposite direction with the rope tied around his waist in an attempt to get his team to hold their own! Knowing that we were up against whoever won, we were rooting hard for the deck department, simply because they were a little bit less intimidating.

Engine…Engine is intimidating, I don’t’ think there was a guy on that team under 6 feet or 200lbs.

And naturally we were up against them.

How we made it to the final heat I have no idea, but we lasted all of 5 seconds…perhaps 10. Which was all our Cruise Director asked us for.

Just give me 5 seconds guys, 5 seconds so I can get the pictures!

Of course, all of this took place pier-side, so the passengers were all walking past us to enjoy their day in Haines. This is perhaps the one time that we felt no real guilt at not really acknowledging them directly – which is a good thing, because I’m pretty sure they all thought we were crazy…

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Flooded – Ketchikan, Alaska – [09/21/2015]

Posted on August 21, 2015 by GypsyShaughnessy

92542010Mornings around here don’t normally get very eventful, even when we’re all a little tired from the Crew party the night before, the basic routine still holds; open the gates, put out the trivia, check in at the office…

Wait a second…

It’s not all that uncommon to find the entertainment office empty in the earlier hours of the morning, the supervisors don’t usually come in until about 8:30 or 9:00am – what is unusual is to find our travel expert standing in the middle of said office, watching a maintenance tech try and stem the flood of water from the ceiling. For a few moments I just stood there and stared at the scene in front of me

It would appear we have a leak?

Yup.

I looked up at the ceiling

Busted pipe?

Yup.

Do Idril and Merenwen know?

I called Idril after I cleared everything out of the way and called maintenance…but that phone’s bust, so had to phone her from somewhere else

Desks were flooded, computers saturated, phone busted because it got wet…as it stands right now, the main hub of the entertainment department is unavailable. But they have – it seems – fixed the leak. What we don’t know is how long it will take to fix the computers.

Never a dull moment…

Posted in Alaska, Below the waterline, Northern Exposure 2015 | 1 Comment

Put Your Faith In – Glacier Bay, Alaska – [08/14/2015]

Posted on August 21, 2015 by GypsyShaughnessy

He had alwtumblr_m9j1xalAiG1rf19yko1_500ays felt that books created a force field around him […] he had never had to travel, his conversations with books had been sufficient. Until finally he prized them more highly than people. They were less threatening. ~ The Little Paris Bookshop

Or

Put your faith in books
That’ll protect you
Put your faith in books
And a mind of your own
Neither charm nor looks, will make them respect you
You must learn to stand
You must learn to stand alone
~ Fame, the musical

Amras asked me yesterday how it was that I could have four or five books on the go at once.

“Why would you do that to yourself?”

Now he’s gone and got me thinking…why must he always do that?

An interesting question really; I’ve never really thought of it that way before. As far as how I keep the stories I’m following straight – I don’t know, I just do. I can pick up a book and flip to almost exactly where I left off, with only a few exceptions (Robert Jordon is one of those; he requires a full 12 book re-read and I haven’t had the time). As to why…well…

I guess that has to do with who I used to be, before I became who I am…

My mother taught me to read before I can remember such a thing as being taught. There were just always books in the house, always books for Christmas, for birthdays, for any occasion. I compare myself as a child to Sara Crew in A Little Princess, which was – and still is – my favourite book to be read aloud from. Even now, as an adult, I would treasure being read to. I have only flickering memories of being read ‘real’ children’s books, you know the See Spot, see spot run kind of thing. That didn’t last long. Mum read me real stuff, Treasure Island and The Secret Garden and countless others that I lost track of. I fell asleep to the Oz stories and Kipling’s How the Elephant Got His Skin.

Growing up I didn’t have any friends, the one child on my block despised me and I despised her equally. I wasn’t cool enough to have friends in school, and I wasn’t weird enough to be ‘automatically’ cool…and there was just me. Just me and a big house and two parents and two dogs; and a Grandma who – while she loved me very much – didn’t have much in the way of entertaining a kid; it wasn’t that I wasn’t a nice child, I like to think I was, but I’ve always had that bit of a snobbish tendency and I’ve never let anyone in easily – so I wasn’t well liked. As a teenager I was a diva – a total diva – while at the same time being painfully shy so the only thing I was a diva about was my voice, which was the freak voice that the teachers loved and the other students hated because the teachers loved it and I was a bitch about it…so…again, not really all that well liked. Not avoided exactly just…not liked.

So, since I wasn’t big on making other people see the world as I saw it, and since I seemed to see it differently, and since I wasn’t really big on caring what other people thought as a child…I …ran away.

Books have long been my closest friends. They don’t lie, they don’t cheat, they don’t expect anything from me, they don’t let me down, they don’t trick me or pretend to be anything other than what they are, they don’t hurt me or disappoint me, they are safe. And they’re gateways, I can fall into them, fall through them. I can go to modern day Paris, to Middle Earth or to London in the horrifying stretch of 1888. I can be Alice and fall into Wonderland. I can ride magic carpets, or gain fortunes in diamond mines. I can shadow Catherine as she yearns after Heathcliffe on the moors (Heathcliffe is an ass by the way, I don’t know why Catherine likes him). I can throw myself into a river and learn how to breathe under water. I can see it, all of it, sometimes so vividly that when I lift my eyes from the page I find myself started to still be where I started.

So why would I pick just one? If you could go anywhere, savor everything, taste everything, sample the entire smorgasbord of the universe, would you just go straight for the one you knew? The one that was easy? The one that was safe? Or would you take everything? Pick a door any door, a world through each one, a friend behind each cover…a safe haven in every page. Like diving into a pool in the wood between the worlds, that divides us from Narnia and Charne, and every other world ever written…or in any kind of existence.

Just one? Why would I pick just one?

We are our stories, stories that are not read do not live, and every story deserves to live and be lived.

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