Emergency Card upgrade

So recently they have given me a new emergency card assignment and now I am supervising crew muster station, which means that I have to count the people that are arriving to the station before they are led to the life raft. Then I have to call the Navigational Bridge and report the number of people missing. The cool part is that our Captain likes to do debriefing in the bridge after these drills, so I got to be in the navigational Bridge of a cruise ship. It's very spacious and has a good view point. Has plenty of similarities with the star trek bridge.

Today I am in Aruba, A couple of more day and my Sensai (Trainer) leaves to go on vacation leaving me alone on the ship, which would give me more room to breath. Right now it feels like I am driving with an instructor in the passenger seat. And that feeling is very familiar to me as I took the test twice :D.

Day in Long Beach

Day like today is unusual for my job, we usually don’t have days off, especially not in homeport, but it really made me appreciate my job. First of all, I got to go out in the beautiful Long Beach, which is small and you can feel that it’s small. Their downtown is significantly less lively on a Monday than downtown that I am used to in Toronto. It just seemed so laid back walking around the city. It has a similar vibe as the Los Angeles. I like it; I could see myself living here if I had not lived in Toronto. The weather was certainly great I was able to walk around in a shirt and jeans, all of this in January. I went to the local Wal-Mart and was surprised by the prices, it really seems like their items cost half the price than they do back home. Bought some toiletries for a colleague and myself and went on around the city.

I love my phone, it does everything and now that I value Wi-Fi more than anything when getting out, having it being able to take pictures and browse the web is essential to me.  

I am really thankful that I am able to visit all of these places in the world that I would likely not end up in otherwise, just makes me appreciate my job. Also walking around downtown I saw plenty of homeless people, which again just made me thankful that I had a job, place to live and food.

Then I went into a themed restaurant. The theme was Forrest Gump, it was pretty great had some of the best fish and chips I ever had. Following that I went to the aquarium, which is the first time I went to an aquarium and it was awesome, I got to touch Sting Rays, Sharks and Jellyfish. Today was just a good day overall followed by a trip to the sauna.

After I came back from my trip I found out that I am being transferred to Carnival Sensation, which is out of Miami, but I will be going to help with dry dock in Freeport, Bahamas. This is incredible to travel to Bahamas for work. I am really starting to get used to flying for work and getting my expenses covered. Although my work is not executive class level, I do feel important.

Things I appreciate more now that I am on the ship.

Space. Being a big/tall guy I really appreciate open environments. Being on the ship the ceilings are pretty low and I always want to get outside to momentarily escape the closed space. And it feels great when I get to go to a foreign port, enjoy the beautiful surroundings and decent weather. I wish that our ship would just permanently dock somewhere in St. Maarten or Aruba. Those are 2 amazing ports. I would love to go to St. Maarten on vacation.

Internet. I am addicted to the internet and this is kind of like therapy for me because the access on board is pre-paid by minute and slower. Maybe this is what I needed.

Family and Friends. I miss hanging out with my amazing friends, but thankfully to Facebook and Linkedin I am still able to stalk them J. I am happy hearing that they are working.

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.

Ain’t no rest for the wicked

I am few days away from 1 month mark on the ship. And I am starting to grasp some things about it. In particular the working schedule. Something I perhaps overlooked before was the 70 hr workweeks. This is an average of 10 hours a day. When I first signed on things were slow so we would usually pull anywhere between 7 and 9 hours on days. But now that the ship is preparing to go for dry dock we need to prepare for the unusually large movement of crew members, luckily the supervisor is knowledgeable and we know what we have to do. It’s normal for us to work anywhere between 8 to 12 hours everyday. No days off.

This is job is becoming a nice little challenge in my career path. Being voluntarily exiled from my comfort zone mixed in with people of different cultures in the middle of nowhere.

The company follows an international labor code policy, which has harsher standards compared to the Canadian Employment Standards Act, then again the environment is different as well.

The structured environment was something that I have strived for while in school, I thought that hey I can follow a curriculum in class; I should be awesome in a structured environment. This was again a quick and inaccurate conclusion. The thing about this kind of work environment is that people that are familiar with the way things are done are efficient enough in doing the routine things, and almost everything is routinized. Once you learn whatever you have to do you can virtually check your brain at the door and just plug away at the tasks.

This is also the reason why the company is so willing to hire inexperienced people and train them. They can also pay people less because everyone on the ship is replaceable. I came here to get experience first and foremost, As long as I am working and learning I am happy, everything else here is supplementary, I am not worried about it. The plan is to be realistic about the situation I am in and be hopeful for the future. I still see myself becoming a compensation specialist in the 5 years.

I miss my team, I still haven’t seen Raptors play this season. 

Christmas eve/day and all the build up

Back on shore I have appreciated the Christmas spirit and the holiday but we haven’t really fully committed to celebrating it. I am not certain as to why that was, perhaps it was because I always open my presents early and hence was sleeping in on Christmas day. Being on the ship, people really are into this holiday all the offices are decorated, they have organized themed parties for both crew and guests and performances for the guests. It’s really quite nice. Of course there is no suitable weather for this holiday, but never the less it’s festive.

Christmas day is basketball day for me and I am hoping to catch a few games that are on today, which is much appreciated after this lockout. I have TNT ABC and ESPN on board here, but I have a burning suspicion that these channels won’t show all of the games specifically because the TNT that we have here is some kind of a Spanish version of the channel. Also I am going to miss Raptors games, but will see plenty of Heat games because of the region, I guess I will temporarily be Miami Heat fan.

I got my father into blogging too, which is somewhat of an accomplishment. He considered it to be a waste of time before, but as it turns out this is a pretty effective form of communication if one party is in the middle of nowhere J.

I exchanged a few emails with my mentor yesterday, which is great; I am still going through the book that she suggested for me “from Good to Great”. I am trying to be as productive in my downtime and do some reading as well as exercising to maintain the whatever muscle tone I have, otherwise having access to buffet and not having to move a lot is a dangerous mix of activities. I have also engaged in some LinkedIn forums, just to stay updated with some of the things happening in the real world. I think I would review the local HR policies when I have the time, as many of them should be at least curious to a Canadian HR professional.

All for now,

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year Everyone

Impressions after the first cruise

Now that I am en route of my second voyage I am starting to see some things repeat themselves and a potential of routine is rearing its head. This is really welcome in my mind as everything about this experience was new and made me feel like a real fish out of water the first few days. The first week was also a bit spoiled by this cold that I have developed, probably has something to do with the weather change or just me not taking care of myself properly. I am feeling a bit better now, but still got this cough and running nose that are getting on my nerves. I will try to go swimming in the next port of call in hopes that salt water will clear up my throat and nose from all this mucus.

One thing that I am still getting used to is working everyday, no days off. My schedule is a couple of hours of work in the morning, then a break in the afternoon and more work in the evening. Overall I am working around 70 hours per week, or 10 hours per day. From experience this kind of workload usually grinds you down and I wasn’t able to do that on shore for very long, we will see how I am able to handle it here.

Thankfully my schedule sometimes leaves me room to go outside in ports, and in the evenings I have time to go to guest areas, I seldom do it now however to try to not spread my cold to any more people. I have however seen a few comedy club type shows here, and it’s pretty awesome. We always get rotating entertainers coming on the ship and for me everything is still pretty new. I feel like I have been to most of the areas of the ship, I do get lost in the guest areas though.