1st impression

First day on the ship.....

THE SHIP

It's pretty overwhelming the number of people. I think there are 3,600 people (guests and employees) total onboard. The gig was okay. We are definitely musical wallpaper. Some extremely drunk people will hang out for a while and listen. Of course, we got the people asking us for Van Halen and Led Zeppelin and one cat wanted to know if we had a guitar and amp for him so he could play some Metallica. He was pretty shocked and disappointed that we didn't and I was definitely bummed out. That would have been killin'. Some people were really complimentary which was a nice bonus. I've done the background music thing for a long time and I am fine with that. The mood of the crowd last night was extremely rowdy due to the LSU game (a ton of N'awlins locals) but it was fun seeing everybody so happy even if they were being hella loud during bass solos.

MY ROOM

My roomate is another musician named Emil. He's from the Phillipines and he play in one of the bands. We stay in a bunk bed (I got the top bunk. Can't remember if that's good or bad) and share the storage equally. The room wasn't as small as I expected. The bathroom is another story. It's smaller than a closet which is about as small as my room was on the train. Right when I opened the door I was assaulted by the stench of old mildew and bodily excrements that haunt a tiny unventilated room like them ghosts in that crappy movie "The Others." The medicine cabinet we share is coated with this brownish gunk. They do have those crazy flushing airplane toilets that are cool. The world would be a better place if all toilets worked like that. Execpt dogs, nobody wants there to be a whole lotta toilet water there and nobody wants to touch the flush handle on a public toilet. Make 'em all have the wall buttons.



ORIENTATION

The newbies had this safety class at 4. After watching a few videos, this cat who was either Italian or Middle Eastern or something started lecturing us on safety. He ended every sentence with "hmmmmm?". He also had this weird way of pronouncing certain words, particularly the ones he used over and over again. Like, when he said "emergency", he put an accent on the 1st syllable and a big accent on the 3rd syllable so it sounded like eh-mer-GEN-cy. When he said "the lifejacket", he said Duh life-uh ja-CKET-uh. He'd be all like,

"So its-uh very important you knowah to use-uh the life-uh ja-CKET-uh in case-uh dee eh-mer-GEN-cy. Hmmmmmm? Very important for the eh-mer-GEN-cy traning you-ah know dis. Hmmmmmm? I teach you to use-uh the life-uh ja-CKET-uh now. Hmmmmmmm? In-uh case-uh de e-mer-GEN-cy, you will be glad you know how to use-uh the life-uh-ja-CKET-uh. Hmmmmmm?"

It was pretty funny. I will try to keep writing as much as I can. See you next time.