Ship Life

There's a big deal with hierarchy here on ships. Firstly to do with stripes, how many you have (or don't) and their colour. Whether you can eat in the officer mess, staff or crew mess. So obviously you have to conduct yourself in certain ways around certain members of staff. There's staff who you can get away with being a bit cheeky with, and some you can't. It's funny because I can have a laugh and be cheeky with some really senior people on the ship cause they're not my department but when my engineer friends see me sitting on the lap of the senior 1st or cracking a joke with the staff captain they freak outs. Sometimes the kids on my activities definitely push the boundaries..not we me but sassing the Captain and co. is something that takes a fair bit of guts. So I'm on this one activity- The Bow Ladder- and Captain Alan (1) comes down to the front of the ship and is making some small talk with me and the kids. He goes to one of the girls "How's the view from up there?" she turns around and goes "Well, you should know because shouldn't you sit in the bridge and look at it all day?" SHOTS. FIRED.  Or the kid that sassed the Senior First Officer "I bet you're gutted you're not the Captain, you can't even drive the ship...."

Me and Pip impersonating officers at the Uniform Swap

TALKING OF DRIVING THE SHIP guess what idiot was allowed to drive the ship? This one. Right here. Well, I changed to degrees on the autopilot hahaha. More than most can say.
But since that monumental moment I have been taken way more seriously on board. First of all, I was assigned a pager. Which is quite a big deal. I'm a big deal guys. It means that when someone wants me they can get hold of me, usually it means I have to call them back on 3050(the bar) and meet up for a cheeky drink. Or it means the Bridge or the Engine page me in the mornings mocking my haircut and calling me a pineapple. And since then I've moved up in terms of the emergency drill. After doing our bomb drill the other week which resulted in me running around Deck 15 looking for

In the early hours looking for the damn pager somewhere in the room 

a piece of paper with "bomb" written on in a tropical storm... I've now been promoted from answering the phones in Passenger HQ to being given my very own Muster Station. That's right. I have been given a muster station with a good couple of hundred people in and a microphone to keep them informed (and entertained). It's made me have a bit of a name for myself amoung passengers and a topic of conversation for the rest of the cruise. Here are a few of the comments I've received and overheard....
"It was a tough crowd, wasn't it?"
"I appreciated the snowman joke at least"
"Muster Station A was so boring." " You should've bee in Muster Station C, it was well fun!"
"OMG that's the lady with the life jacket"
"Will this girl shut the fuck up already?"

Drills are taken very seriously on board. They brought out the MES (Marine Evacutation System) for some training and needed volunteers to test it out. The Edge were willing to take one for the team and be the dummies. As you can see, we also took it very seriously. All I can say is I hope she ship never sinks because I kept turning upside down in the massive tube. Although, it was really fun so there is a silver lining.

Me and Oli working hard by taking selfies

Obviously you've all gathered I spend 40% of my time working, 20% of my time sleeping 10% of my time eating and the rest is down the Bar. Well, there's obviously not much to do so I've taken up a hobby of playing Foosball. With my Portuguese Fitter friends teaching me the basics the Edge Team have got quite fierce at it now, even resulting in a massive dent in the ceiling (sorry, not sorry). Well in this weeks tournament me and Kayleigh teamed up and even made it into the final where we lost (the game and out on the $100 prize) by just one goal. We should've brought in our cheeky Edge 3D tactic (picking up the table and making the ball go in that way). Second place aint too shabby though, and we put the boys out in the first round which added the cherry to the top of the cake.

Actual Edge 3D

As I said 40% of my time is working, and

Trying to be good at foosball

when anyone spends this much of their time doing something you should enjoy it. Lucky for me I love i, I get to go to some cool laces, hang with some cool people (quite literally), be out in the sun all day and have a generally, all round good time. Of course, I always behave myself in work. Kayleigh says "Don't ride the segway around the bridge..." of course I didn't...but that doesn't mean I didn't try.Or if a radio goes off "Becca to Kayleigh."
"Kayleigh copy"
"Can I go down the zipline?"
"No"
ZOOOOOOOOOOOOOM and WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEe off I go. Big love K dawg!

It's not all fun and games though (I lied, it is) sometimes you do get those arsehole customers. It always happens to be some middle aged man trying to throw around his high testosterone levels and argue about a bloody zip line. So this fella comes over and flat out refuses to fill in his indemnity form so I'm like mate, you gotta do it or I can't book you on and he starts throwing around the old I'M A LAWYER. I AM NOT FILLING THAT IN. And I'm like well mate, I'm an outdoor instructor and it's my job to get this filled in. So eventually he fills it in, demands I counter sign it but I'm like naa mate you haven't filled in your address, therefore it's incomplete and so I can't sign it. After a few heated words I'm like mate, fill it in or get out of the line cause there's a whole bunch of kids behind you waiting to book on. "YOU are going to find out MY address FILL IT IN YOURSELF then FIND M AND TELL ME I'VE BOOKED IN". Well sir, excuse me whilst I wipe your spit off of my face, and no that definitely isn't going to happen. I have better things to do than to chase you round the ship. So he rips up the paper in front of me. Gutted mate.

We do get some dumb people man. Like yesterday some lady is like "They've just called ticket Blue 3 and 4, is that me? I'm blue 13?" LADY WHAT DO YOU THINK.
"My son is here for the zipline, can you put him down now?" Whilst standing at the bottom of the tower without a harness or any equipment. Hun, do you want me to shit out a helmet right here right now? Can  you SEE any equipment? Go get your harness from the shop LIKE WE ALREADY TOLD YOU.

Living on the ship can be limiting in a lot of ways. Dodgy internet, not your usual food, access to daily things you take for granted like if you run out of shampoo on Sunday you have to wait until Saturday to hopefully find a supermarket. Some people do make a living out of it though. Like the noodle mafia. As I've said previously you can only eat in certain places at certain times and if you miss these times then too bad so sad, wait until next meal time. That's where the noodle mafia come in. The secret society who have contraband kettles in their cabins and cook up a batch of noodles on demand. Especially good if you miss the 2-3am mess. We also had Dial-a-Toastie. The Security Coordinator noticed a group of lads kept bringing on an unusual amount of bread onto the ship, like why would people wan that much? Upon further investigation they found toastie machines in their room (which is a fire and environmental risk blablabla) so dial-a-toastie is n longer a thing, unfortunate. But now they've been disbanded and rumor has it the captain is now the proud owner of a toastie machine.

Like I said you do start to miss the free world being on board the ship. Simple things; riding a bike, having natural light in your bedroom,petting random cats in the street (and adopting them), filling your random-time-toast-craving. But I have opted to extend my contract by a short time over Christmas and new year. It'll be strange working on Xmas day but I thought unselfishly that I didn't want to let the team down by leaving right before the busiest cruise of the year and having a new person have to learn the job, make friends and get over jetlag on hat time of year. Plus, we go Fiji. So rather than finishing in just 3 three weeks I'm now here until January at some point. Which means more opportunity for falling asleep in crew bar, having chair and floor naps for when it's too short to climb into bed, sneaking out to the crew pool after hour to look at the stars, or heading up to our trampoline on deck 15 to watch a film on the big screen, eating a burrito a day and committing complete carbocide.

"I think the alcohol in my mouthwash has pushed me over the Edge"
- Kayleigh 8.22am 19/11/17