There and back again: An Expat's tale

As I alluded to in a previous post, talking about the Cruise Ship Life has become less interesting to me. It's been a few years now that I've been working on ships, and it's starting to become everyday.  Yes, still exotic and adventurous to most, but to me, mundane.  As a result, I write about it less.  There's the occasional day of visiting mosques and palaces in the Sultanate of Brunei, or of scuba diving with hammerhead sharks in Fiji, but the rest has started to become ordinary.  And this is an adventure blog.

So I have to keep finding adventures to go on, and ways to report on them.  And keep finding the inspiration to write about things.

My lack of posts is an indication to myself that I'm losing that sense of adventure in my job.  I work on cruise ships based out of Australia, visiting mainly New Zealand (renowned for playing the part of exotic and dramatic Middle Earth), but also paying calls to Fiji, New Caledonia, Vanuatu (where is Vanuatu anyway?!), Papeete, Bora Bora, Brunei, Malaysia, Hong Kong, etc.

But I've done all that before.  And when Brunei and the Great Barrier Reef and Hong Kong become commonplace, something's wrong.

So I'm off to remedy that boredom.  Time to change it up again.

Up next: coordinating logistics for hospitals in war zones.

Yep, you read that right folks.  Hospitals, logistics, war zones.  Check out Doctors Without Borders (MSF).

Who's got two thumbs and will be a field logistician for MSF this year?  This girl.

Stay tuned for the next chapter.  But in the meantime, a road trip up and down the East Coast of the USA, a scuba dive vacation in Belize and a jaunt through Sicily.  And I need to buy a futon.

Christchurch: A city in suspension

I visited Christchurch on this past call in Akaroa.  The city is open for business, as it proudly proclaims and as evidenced by its world-famous reStart mall comprised of shipping containers.  But it is still a city crippled by the devastating earthquakes.  There are whole sections of the city that are inaccessible.  Of course, tours have cropped up to get tourists 'behind the barriers' to glimpse the wreckage.

Or you can walk right up to the chain link fence stretching across the road and see for yourself.  The damage is too widespread to hide.

I went to observe, to take in the impact of a large-scale earthquake in a bustling city.  But I ended up pulling out my camera, like every other tourist.  I felt like a voyeur.  But the grass growing through the bricks was what hit home for me.

Grass doesn't grow through bricks in a living city.  It looked like the apocalypse had happened.  The simple act of walking over sidewalks keeps them plant-free.  One year along, and these streets are being reclaimed.

But right down the block is the thriving reStart container mall, with trendy stores, restaurants and architecture assembled from shipping containers.

After a tour through the town I ended up at the botanical gardens.

They seemed healthy and sound.

Except for the buildings, which couldn't be entered due to structural instability.

How cruising is different from land: Morning Off

Today I worked 8 hours.  That's a small amount for cruise ships management.  Usually, I work 11 hours on a sea day.  On port days, I can work as little as 4 hours a day.  That's extremely rare.  I rarely work less than 6 hours, even on a port day.  The cool thing is what I do with the other 8 hours that I'm not sleeping.

I get to go on adventures before work each port day.  Either I go scuba diving, or climbing a mountain, or I take a trip on a scenic railway, or tour through the capital city of a small country.  These are some of my options on my morning off.  Who needs weekends when you've got this at your fingertips?

The Taieri Gorge Scenic Railway Train

Diving in Savu Savu, Fiji, with the beloved Koru Sun Divers 

A view from near the top of Mount Manganui on a perfect day in Tauranga, New Zealand

A look back at home: the Sea Princess tied up alongside at Tauranga, New Zealand 

The largest water village in the world, housing over 30,000 people: Kampong Ayer in Brunei

The largest mosque in Brunei, the Jame'asr Hassanil Bolkiah Mosque

As a disclaimer, I usually work 70+ hour work weeks.  For six months (or more) without a single day off.

So you choose between your youtube videos, Skype and unlimited access to Wikipedia, with your weekends off and public holidays and consistent access to ATMs dispensing a single currency, or this life.  Choice is yours.

I've made mine, and it's the pirate's life for me.  Next, I want to join the circus.

How cruising is different from land: Christmas on ships

There's no such things as holidays in the service industry.  Especially on cruise ships, where there are no days off.  Christmas and New Years are times to groan, roll your eyes and buckle down and get through.  They're long, grueling days of extra work, special events, demanding schedules and the added pressure of presenting holiday cheer.  With the depressing aspect of not being able to celebrate with family and friends as your culture dictates.

Happy Holidays, all around.

We put together a Christmas show, and I think it ended up looking quite good.  The guys did an excellent job decorating the stage, and we put many interesting acts together to make quite a show.

Let it snow.

How cruising is different from land: House on fire

Every week, we pretend that our house is on fire.  All 850 residents then react accordingly.

Today's drill started with an engine fire, and the crew's response quickly elevated from checking it out to full-on fire fighting and passenger muster to full-on abandon ship drills.

We do this every 13 days.  No one batted an eye.

We packed crew members into a muster station, simulating passengers, and took them out to their life boats.  We went to our muster stations and then out to our life rafts.  We sent the containment party to their life rafts.  Everyone was accounted for, no one went down with the ship.

Then we all went for lunch.  Just another Wellington morning, nothing to see here.

An Adventure Blog About Real Life

This blog is about my life as an adventure.  And it’s been that way for years.  But what happens when you wake up one day in Bora Bora or Papeete or New Zealand or Lombok, and it just feels like another day?  My lifestyle hasn’t changed since my “life aboard” series of posts, but my past has.  It’s no longer new, it’s no longer different.  It’s everyday life, and I’m getting used to it.  And that makes it less of an adventure.

But only to me.

I’m still wicked proud of what I’m doing, and very happy to report in from wild and far-flung places across the globe.

We got through dry dock and headed across the largest ocean on the planet.  Our 27-day long itinerary took us from San Francisco through Hawaii, French Polynesia, American Samoa and New Zealand before landing us in Sydney, Australia.  Along the way, I went scuba diving with dozens of sharks, saw humpback whales almost within reaching distance, brushed up on my technical French (enough to do a dive briefing in French), meandered a Samoan market, ate at ridiculously overpriced restaurants, wandered by mega-yachts with helicopters attached and went on wine tastings in Australian and New Zealand wine country.

All while working full-time, doing shows every night, repainting scenery, calibrating lighting units, sewing scenic drops, training new crew members, practicing safety duties and filing reports.

Only on cruise ships…

Images from Dry Dock