Dry dock and vessel transfer

January 13^th was the D-Day for our operation at the Staff Office. We have been preparing for this day for a few weeks and it went pretty smooth overall. 200 people left the ship and 110 came on the ship. I handed out 200 passports to people and helped sign on the new team members. This was a really intimidating procedure for me before, mainly because we have to take passports from people. On that day I personally did probably over 40 sign-on’s. I am pretty pleased with the way that I handled the stressful crunch time situation. I feel that the instincts that I have developed at Rogers Communications Cable desk really helped me on that day in particular. Everyone lined up for our office, which didn’t bother me at all. I only focused on the person in front of me and hustled. Certainly the training that the current CSA gave me was essential for me to be able to do adequately. That day we had a visitor, senior Manager from the office, that came to help us on the D-Day and she was contacted by the head-office that day to see If I was willing to accept a relocation assignment. I have thought about it for a few moments and have decided that it’s better for me to just submerge into the role and take a leap of faith. So here I am on the plane to Charlotte NC from the dry dock in Bahamas (Freeport). My next ship is out of Los Angeles, which is kind of cool. Although I won’t be in the same time zone as Toronto anymore, and I would really have a big time lag with Moscow, but this was a purely business decision. The ship had an emergency and I showed flexibility to the office and was willing to step in, which should be noted by them. This also somewhat lives out my fantasy of spontaneous travelling. Willing to relocate on 2 day notice.

Yesterday the dry dock fun began, there were a couple of blackouts and air conditioning was shut off, which made our office into a sauna. I got so dehydrated that time that my nose started to bleed out of nowhere. I had to go to the cabin and lie down to stop that nose bleed. Later that evening the light was off for a long time and our cabin didn’t have water. That really sucked, because we have no windows, so it was pitch black and I had to use the washroom. Let me tell you that this is not a great experience by any means but what topped it off is that the toilet didn’t work either, so my roommate got a nice surprise when he returned.  Figuring that there’s really no reason to stay on board after the light was off and work was done, we got a good group together to go out to the Local Mexican restaurant, I invited a real Mexican girl to this place, which worked out well.  This was in Port Lucaya, after which we went to local casino and I didn’t loose any money. That’s pretty great, one of us won $130, which is awesome return for 20 minutes of time.

I must add that this feels kind of nice to have my first flight paid by the company, I can even claim expenses for baggage and meals.

On the side note I was getting tired of the all the Miami Heat Coverage by their local news channels. They are really on this celebrity Cool-Aid. I hope Bosh got what he wanted, but I rather watch Kobe and his arrogant self.