The watery part of the world

 “Some years ago, never mind how long precisely, having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world.” -Herman Melville

Had my first driving lesson this week… pretty sketchy, had to drive a Zamboni to cut the old ice away before shows, never thought I'd be learning to drive on ice but life's full of surprises.

Ship theatres are a fairly different ball game, you can't wheel a piece of scenery to its preset and go for lunch, every thing needs to be strapped down in case the ship moves. The ship rocking so far hasn't been too intense, it's akin to the feeling you get when you get out of an elevator and feel like you're still moving. Weirdly I only get close to sea sick when hoovering. Every time we come in to dock my cabin vibrates, I'm told it's because we are using both sets of propellers and our stabilizers to pull up adjacent to the dock. It's really strange whenever I get off the ship and look back at it to see the scale, we are so much bigger than any other ship I've seen so far.

Life in general moves at a different pace here, we are all using the same passageways and eating times, you walk past someone several times a day and suddenly you're best friends, people start to feel familiar really quickly and there's a definite sense of community here, anyone spots you glance at a map and suddenly they're on hand to direct you where you're going and offer a story about when they first joined.

There's some annoying stuff you have to deal with that I wasn't expecting, we have venue and cabin inspections and emergency drills a few times a month, honestly I know it's no bad thing, especially as they've shown us footage of what happens on ships that didn't follow or even have emergency procedures, but I don't look forward to them. Although interestingly I've realized a lot of the guys from overseas are particularly drawn to this company because of their record for safety, the conditions they've been put through in the past have been awful, which does switch my perspective on the whole thing somewhat.