Sea Change

A change brought about by the sea---I haven’t known what day of the week it is for 6 months. Before that, the daze of the week become countries .Let me slip into something more comfortable, like a comma, No I am on a ship. Here are some other strange  innuendos of meaning that are contained within "cruise club" culture:

Arriving at a new country usually consists of finding the free wifi and taking a bath is considered a luxury You talk about how to spend your "hours off" not "days off". You have to turn on the tv to see the weather outside. When you’re in the real world you stop yourself from saying hello to random people walking past you.

Living on a ship however, might be summed up as monotony tinged with hysteria, but you can get drunk for $5. 
Working less than 10 hours is considered to be "an easy day"You’ve just spent a 13-hour day with the same people, so you go to dinner and happily spend the rest of the night with them.

A Pain in The English

and the guests( Passengers)....

On December 25th, several guests complained to me about the music--" Why is there nothing but Christmas music throughout the ship?"

The Quest IS In The Questions

The most ridiculous questions I have ever heard out of the mouths of passengers.

Here are my top 3 stupid cruise questions?
 "What time is the Midnight Buffet?
"Will this elevator take me to the front of the ship?"
"Do these stairs go up or down?"
 "Is there music in the Disco?"

And Then some:

 "Is the water in the toilet fresh water or sea water?" (Taste it!)
"How far are we above sea level?"
"Does the crew sleep on board?"
"Do the ship generate it's own electricity?"

To Photographers:

 "If the photos aren't marked, how do we know which ones are ours?"

To the Cooks:

"What do you do with the ice carvings after they've melted?"

The bigger the summer vacation the harder the fall

The march of stupidity and the routines of tourism are even more monotonous than those of daily life.

In an excursion, when you are always sure of reaching your destination, where everything is so well arranged, souvenir shops sell made-in-China-junk,(adding drywall to the tainted pet food and lead-painted toys), taking a tour is a kind of self induced torture, like going on a wild stuffed animal safari, with stupid rules like Do not feed the animals and No flash photography applying. When you have taken enough of these tours, however,each additional one you may ever take again, is both unbearable and trifling.

My impressions of The Caribbean

 An Embarrassment of Coconuts

When you're born into this world, you're given a ticket to the freak show. If you're born in America you get a front row seat. Island life in Dominica is Project Manana.

I do this real moron thing, and it's called thinking. And apparently I'm not a very good Tourist because I like to form my own opinions
Is it Manana yet.
Mañana: 1. Tomorrow 2. An unspecified future time

Banana Republic Is Hiring!

Christopher Columbus never actually discovered Dominica, it had merely been detected. After he spotted the island on a Sunday (dominica in Latin, domingo in Spanish...you get the idea). It's more like manana-nothing much gets done on time when it happens, it just happens, life goes on, and you can just pee in the ocean. Carpe Diem verses Carpe Mañana.

If St Maarten is the Mitt Romney of vacation destinations---self restraint in an age of rage, then Barbados is the Keith Richards of the Caribbean--it's over the hill, showing signs of age but can still belt out the kareoke hits of Paradise it once sang. A sort of life is going on, beating with a reasonable version of a pulse, but that life consists for the most part of travelers like myself. The very unspoiledness you are there to experience still shows up in unexpected ways, like the coconuts and the flowers.
Caribbean Roadkill- What Am I doing Here?
The newly refurbished Fairmont Royal Pavillion is beautiful. Yet I always end up in that part of the Carribean which has been made almost exactly the same as everywhere else in the world for the sake of Cruise Ships who have come all this way to "inhabit" a port for 6 hours.
To be a cruise ship tourist in the Caribbean to escape accountability. Quirks and flaws don't stick to you the way they do back home.

Sushi

Cruising the open-sea is a Virtue, Shopping the ports of call, a deadly sin.

Coo Coo for Coconuts

You're able to drift across continents and languages, suspending the operation of sound thought. Tourism is the march of stupidity. You're expected to be stupid. The entire mechanism of the host port of call is geared to cruisers acting stupidly. YOU are economically significant but existentially loathsome. You walk around dazed, squinting into fold-out port and shopping guide maps. You don't know how to talk tothe locals, how to get anywhere, what the money means, what time it is, what to eat or how to eat it. Being stupid is the cookie cutter mold, the level and the norm. You can exist on this level for weeks and months without reprimand or dire consequence. Together with a thousand other passangers, you are granted immunities and broad freedoms. You are an army of fools, wearing bright polyesters, riding scooters and 4by4's and Jet Skis, taking pictures of each other, bloated, drunk stiill thirsty. There is nothing to think about or lust after but the next shapeless event. Alien, ignorant, greedy for something you cannot ever have---sunshine, sand and indifference to the treadmill of consumption and "stuff.