BELATED UPDATE.

Week 4

Day 1

LAST WEEK of the FIRST MONTH spugs! (I will invent words as I please thank you)

I completed a major quest today. I managed to acquire both a laundry bag and a pack of toothpicks at the store at port. SCORE. I win.

Bad news. Second rate pianist is back as guest entertainer. Oh poo.

Day 2

New bass player. This changes the dynamic of the rhythm section quite a bit. Hopefully for the better.

Day 3

Another one of those boring sea days. Played in the afternoon already. I think I'll go get movies. And also, it's time to get money. Yay. Hoowah.

Went to see the comedy show tonight. Louis Johnson, anyone know him? He was pretty darn funny. Never actually been to a live standup show before. It's not that much different from watching it on DVD to be honest.

Finally managed myself to the Bible study tonight. It's good to know that even on a ship in the middle of the ocean, God is still here and alive and working. Amazing stuff. LIstening to people pray in different languages is always a pleasure to me.

Day 4

Jazz sets with the new bass player was awesome! I think I'm going to enjoy the rest of my contract that much more.

Day 5

Second rate pianist's show again ladies and gentlemen. Thankfully it's the exact same show as the last time he was on. This means I knew exactly how the show was supposed to go and it went on without any hitches. No need to miss lunch for it. Yay!

Day 6

So apparently there's crew bingo on this night and also a crew raffle. You basically pay 10 bucks for a bingo card with chance to win some crew credit, or get some raffle tickets for a chance to win some nifty stuff like an ipad2 or a samsung tab or an itouch. And they don't let us in the casino. Seems interestingly hypocritical to me. But then again, gambling is only gambling if you choose to call it that. For instance - stock market.

Anyway, you will always feel a sense of injustice whenever someone wins something for free. Or at least close to it. Someone won an ipad2 for 5 dollars. But then again 200 other people lost 5 dollars. So is the dangerous temptation of gambling because you always think 'what if that person was me'. In which case it almost never is. I'd rather spend the money on some delicious calamari in Bermuda. Cheers folks.

The bigger peeve I have though is that crew bingo happens in the theatre which means no practice tonight. I was really looking forward to getting some shedding done since it's 'hour back' night - the night that we get an extra hour on the clock because it rolls back. Which means more time to practice. Sadly, crew bingo has taken away that chance.

Went up on the highest deck possible tonight. Still exploring new places on the ship. Extremely breezy. I had to remove my signature hat in fear of it blowing off.

Day 7

This time around the jam session was relatively fun. The party band couldn't show so we just ended up playing a bunch of funk tunes.

NOTE - this update comes to you from The Island. I was in New York all day and didn't have time to upload. Hear more about it in Next week's post.

Thoughts from the week?

Well it turns out that the late night supper buffet isn't really a buffet at all. The pasta station is open only till 11pm and the only station open until 2am is the pizza station. So to all my friends back in Malaysia that knew me for not choosing to eat pizza when I was back home, if any of you were offended by the fact that I refused to go out with any of you for pizza, if any of you were annoyed at the fact that I would never agree to pizza as a communal meal, now you know that my actions were not unfounded. My only choice for supper is pizza. And I've been having quite a bit of it. 

To be fair it is good pizza. But still it's pizza and I might just get sick of it soon. I guess the no pizza for 6 months really did pay off.