Be My Valentine

Every cruise there is a Not-So-Newlywed show which consists of married couples getting up on stage and answering questions about each other.  For this cruise, and ironically because it was only a few days before Valentine’s Day, only two couples volunteered to play.  Therefore, by default, Jason and I played as well.  I will preface this next part by saying that we were not expecting to play.  We won of course, even though technically we were ineligible to win.  The points we won were split between the two other couples. 

First the boys were asked to leave the room and the wives answered questions about their husbands.  I did very well and got them all right, hooray me!  Then the wives were asked to leave the room while their husbands answered questions.  Jason got them all right as well, much to my chagrin, as one of the questions was “What color underwear is your wife wearing right now?”  Any guesses as to what the answer was and why I can no longer pass any guest without them making comments about my panties?  Superman.  That’s right, they were red and blue superman underwear with the slogan “This looks like a job for superman” on the back.  My knickers were the hit of the show.

I mention this story because a few days later for Valentine’s Day I decided to do something very romantic for my husband, something he has always wanted to do…skydiving.  Yes I took him skydiving and since my superman underwear were residing in the laundry, naturally I wore my batman underwear.  He loved it…the skydiving, not the underwear, although he thinks the underwear are cute. 

I will never skydive again.  Not ever!  It was so unbelievably scary.  I planned it as a surprise for Jason.  Julian and Matt, the two other male singers on our ship went with us.  I do have to thanks Julian for setting everything up, as I almost hyperventilated every time I even thought about it.  We skydived in Melbourne, Australia over the beach and it was absolutely beautiful.  I had plenty of time to enjoy the view while plummeting towards the earth.  

We jumped from 14,000 feet in a tiny bright green eight-seated plane.  We jumped in tandem with people who have done it before.  The only reason I actually jumped after having watching everyone before me as they were ripped out of the plane and tossed to the wind is that the man who I was strapped to in tandem was much stronger than I was.  When my questing hands and feet found no hold, I didn’t have a choice but to succumb to one of the craziest things I’ve ever done in life.  Now I’ve checked it off my list, even though it was never on my list to begin with, and I won’t go back.  I got the video and as soon as my computer stops thwarting my uploading efforts I will be posting it for all of you to enjoy.  Yes those are my screams that you can hear over the wind and the superimposed rock music …

After the adrenaline rush of the day, we retired to the Grand Hyatt in a King’s Suite which was Jason’s gift to me.  I seriously got the best end of the gift giving that day.  There were a dozen roses, a huge tub with jets and room service awaiting me in our gigantic suite with its beautiful view.  Now that’s a good life!

The two pictures:  The first picture is the very first moment after I was pushed out of the plane.  I wanted to include it because it shows exactly how far away the ground is and how terrified (if horrible) I look.  Yes that is the ground over my left shoulder because we started out plunging head first towards the earth.  The second picture is when my parachute finally opened.  This picture hopefully captures how relieved I am, and also that I’m now willing to take in the view.  Ha!

Love from New Zealand

Sometimes I forget that it is okay to give everything to your art.  Why do I need reminders?  I have no reason to reserve energy as if I’ll need it for some greater future project.  There is no excuse for sheltering the pieces of myself that are vulnerable.  Those are the only pieces worth showing.  If I am unwilling to share completely, what am I sharing for?

A guest entertainer pianist played on board tonight.  She was absolutely stunning and excellent at piano.  If only I had practiced more…  Although, then I would have had to have done all of that practicing…

We are still in New Zealand at the moment, which is a hiker’s paradise as there are no poisonous animals or plants here.  There are lots and lots of trees of all different sorts and too many new plants for me to remember the names of.  I ran through some tall grasses the other day like I would if I were a little girl.  It was an experience I recommend to everyone.

I had to ask someone today what month is was.  That’s how much time has blurred together for me.  The sea has expressed more than its share of rockiness lately.  Last night we did our Motown show.  It was an awkward array of bodies falling into one another to the sound of Motown.  We finally got to the number where I get to sit on a stool (Tracks of my tears), and  I was very relieved to be off of my feet as they weren’t behaving well and kept threatening to pitch me onto my face.  Unfortunately, the sea sent up a giant wave and it wasn’t my feet that betrayed me, but the stool.  I “gracefully” (as described by guests witnessing my near death experience) got back up, caught the stool and resumed singing the rest of the song.  Luckily, most everyone was seasick so only about thirty guests saw my shame.

It’s been very rainy lately, but I’ve been shopping and bought some amazing dresses.  I never do that.  It’s been different, but nice.  I have been trying to decide what exactly to do for Valentine’s Day because we have an overnight in Melbourne, but we also have a deck show that night at 9PM.  I’m not sure anyone will be there and frankly I’d much rather go out for dinner than do British Invasion to an empty deck.  Hopefully it will all work out.  When we go back to Australia we will be sailing up the west coast this time.  Have you seen all the horrible floods they’ve been having?  Yes, I have been watching world news.  I know, I’m just as surprised as you are.

Someday soon, I will start writing these when I am fully awake and they will make more sense and be less stream of consciousness…but today is not that day.  I miss everyone so much!  Especially my parents whom I have been hoping to run into on facebook…hint hint.  Perhaps one day we will skype together?

 The picture above is from Auckland.  It is Jason being a painting on the waterfront.

From New Zealand to Australia and back…

From New Zealand to Australia and back…

I spent two whole days being completely green.  The Tasman Sea is hard to handle.  Luckily the crossing only lasts three days.

I have been eating mostly pasta and salad on board as they are the only vegan options available, so when we got to Melbourne, which for some reason has an immense amount of vegan restaurants especially when compared to the rest of Australia, I went crazy!  Jason planned an entire day for us purely around the restaurants where we would be dining.  We made it to one because I ate so much, there was no room in my stomach for any more food!  I had spring rolls and samosas, the vegan nachos and a chocolate cake with soy ice-cream for desert.  Delicious!  I am still craving pizza and cookies and fake sausages (there are no meat substitutes out here…if there are, they are well hidden), but it was wonderful to assuage some of my hunger.

In Sydney, we had an overnight and Jason booked a room for us at the Intercontinental Hotel.  We had a beautiful view of the opera house, the bridge and our boat!  I took a bath and ordered room service!  It was a great night and we got to sleep in the same bed since we’ve been here.  The beds in our room on the ship are bunk-beds and they’re smaller than my dorm bed in college.  It was an awesome mini-vacation.

I still have no idea what day it is or where we are most of the time.  Maybe I’ll get used to it soon, but it seems to me that time will just blur on by (especially during the Tasman Sea crossing, which we just finished again this morning).  I am looking forward to our next trip to Melbourne over Valentine’s Day and I am planning to pace myself so that I can eat multiple vegan meals on shore.  I miss everybody so much, but the internet has been horrible.  Just know that I’m thinking of all of you wishing that you were here!

New Zealand

It’s amazing how easy it is to forget I am on a boat…until the ship starts rocking.  We are currently on our second pass through the Tasman Sea.  It starts out very fun because I love jumping when the ship is on its way down a wave and I can hang suspended in the air for much longer than I should be able to.  This entertains me for about ten minutes before I have to take a sea-sick pill and go to sleep. 

We’ve left New Zealand, but will be coming back.  New Zealand was very lush and green and beautiful and backpacking seems to be highly encouraged.  Every port seemed to have a backpacker welcome sign and every hotel and restaurant caters to them with discounts.  It’s very different from America, where if you see a backpacker you usually assume they are homeless and everyone looks askance at them in stores and restaurants.  Why does no one backpack through America?

I have been trying to collect an item from every region that we visit and I finally settled on an ugly statue of a Kiwi bird with native shells inside of it.  The actual picture of a Kiwi Bird is much more flattering to it than this particular statue, but the statue is so ugly that it’s cute and I couldn’t pass it up. 

I got off of the boat only a few times in New Zealand.  Mostly I made my way out in search of food.  I scored big in Auckland which had a Thai restaurant on every corner.  We had to search a little harder in Dunedin where all of the restaurants seemed to be closed on a Tuesday afternoon.  We found an old hotel on the waterfront that had been converted into a seafood restaurant and luckily had one vegan item on the menu.  Being that it was red curry, I was more than happy to stick around for lunch.  It was delicious.

Other than the distraction of good food, we’ve been reformatting some of our shows to better suit the guests tastes as most of them are more familiar with music from the Mesozoic Period.  I asked Jason how I should finish that sentence and that’s what he came up with.  I love him because he is both hilarious and accurate.  

The passengers on this cruise seem to be enjoying our shows immensely so we know we are heading in the right direction.  Of course, they are mostly American, so our Motown show was met with nostalgia instead of eye-rolling which was great since it’s the first one we put up for all of the cruises.  I do play piano for our old-school Broadway show which has been changed around to incorporate guest suggestions.  I admit that the show is fun and for this cruise it was finally met with the crowd response that it wasn’t long enough and they would like to hear us sing more.  Joy! 

That’s pretty much it.  I have to remind myself to walk outside occasionally and see the world especially on sea days when it’s easy to exist in the bowels of the ship.  Also, yoga on a ship is wonderful.  The waves make you stretch deeper into all stretches and they also offer respite on the way down.  Now if I could only balance…

Australia

Australia

So far I’ve done two things I’ve always wanted to do.  I’ve ridden an elephant in Bali, and here in Australia, I finally held a Koala!  As a little girl I had a Koala figurine that would dangle from the fan above my bed and have since the first day I laid eyes on it wanted to hold my very own real Koala.  I entertained thoughts of trying to sneak one onto the boat, but it’s probably for the best that I couldn’t.  Australia has been beautiful, but very very rainy.  There have been two stops so far that I haven’t been able to get off because I wasn’t part of an escorted tour, and while I got to see Sydney, which is gorgeous, as we sailed away, I wasn’t able to go there yet either.  The good news is, we come back through all of these ports and I can’t wait!  I bought a scratch off map which I am just tickled about…yes I recognize that this makes me a dork.  It’s a world map that starts off with all of the continents in a mottled brown color, but as you scratch off the places you’ve been, the colors come out from underneath the brown.  It’s awesome.  So far Australia has been nothing like Crocodile Dundee, which is both disappointing and a relief.  I have to laugh because most Australians find this movie as offensive as they fine Fosters…which is supposed to be Australian for beer.  I have gotten to pet kangaroos, be very near to crocodiles and duck-billed platapuses, and even hang out with an emu.  It’s been wonderful!  I was sad to say goodbye to our last cruisers because they were a great bunch who were very social and very nice to us.  Most of them were from Australia so kept giving us great tips on where to go when we got off.  On one of the excursions I went on, we drove through the rainforest on an old WWll Army Duck which is an amphibious vehicle.  Thank God I didn’t see any snakes, but the spiders here are huge!  At the shop they sold fruit kabobs of all the different fruits that the jungle grew.  I don’t know the names of any of them, but they were all delicious!  I know in this post I haven’t mentioned individual places or dates and that’s simply because I couldn’t even tell you what today is. Everything is bleeding together.  I get my schedule for the day the night before and I’m pretty much where I need to be when I need to be.  I haven’t had to plan ahead or look behind yet.  It’s been fantastic.  On one sour note, when we plugged in the tiny fridge that came with our room, it shorted out our X-Box, and being that all the game systems over here are different than the ones sold in America, even if we bought a new one, it wouldn’t be able to play any of the games.  I’m heart-broken over Skyrim, but I know I don’t have much time to play it anyhow.

Now I feel bad that I didn’t mention places so here is what I can remember…our first stop was at an island that we couldn’t get off (I forget which, but it looked beautiful.)  Then we stopped in Darwin, but honestly it was raining so hard and the raindrops were so fat that it felt like hail, we stepped off the ship and got right back on.  Darwin is a half-hour time difference by the way, which is very strange.  Then we went to Cairns which is where I went on the expedition to the rainforest.  After that we stopped in the Whitsundays where again we could not disembark, and then yesterday we were in Sydney.  The opera house is gorgeous from a distance.  I can’t wait to take a tour of it when we come back through.   The ocean seems to get a little rockier each day and I’m still nervous about the Tasman Sea.  I’m pretty sure we’re on our way to New Zealand.  We’re putting together a Christmas show, and there is an array of giant gingerbread houses and chocolate castles in the lobby that I want to dive into every time I pass.  Again, I am so thankful and happy that I got to do this with Jason.  I will miss everybody else for Christmas and the New Year!  I love you guys!

Bali, Komodo and the Queen of the Flute

Our second cruise started in Singapore, which unfortunately was a port-manning day for me, so I was unable to get off the ship and explore.  The ship requires some personnel to stay aboard at all times for safety reasons and Singapore happened to land on my day.  Since it was an embarkation day, I had to work most of the day by giving people their passports as they left, and then checking the new guests in and welcoming them aboard.  Every embarkation day has a captain’s welcome in the evening where we stand and greet and help guests to their seats.

This week I’ve hosted bingo, golf putting, water volleyball, tea-chat and a musical quiz.  Some activities are more fun than others.  I really enjoyed water volleyball, but I forgot sunscreen!  I didn’t burn, but with subsequent trips to Bali and Komodo, my face is much darker than it used to be.

I got to ride an elephant in Bali which was awesome!  My “driver” even made the elephant run, which was exciting!  The rest of the cast got a personal tour through the monkey jungle, temples and shops of Bali from Jane Rutter.  Jane is recognized as Queen of the Flute and is very famous as well as incredibly talented and personable.  I got to accompany her for two of her shows on piano!  She was extremely nice and I am sad that she is leaving the ship today, but she will be back in March.  Google and Youtube her if you aren’t familiar.

The next island we stopped at was Komodo.  The Komodo Dragons are gigantic and very scary looking.  I went with the guests on this excursion as well, so had to walk at the back of the group.  This was fine by me because it meant I had a guide with a stick next to me at all times.  When I asked him what he would do if a Komodo attacked our group, he said that he would climb a tree.  I’m not sure if he was joking.  Jason bought me pearls and a carving of a wooden Komodo.  There were twenty vendors on each side as we left the island, all calling my name thanks to my nametag.  Overwhelming!  Then, just before we got on the boat to take us back to our ship, all of the guides wanted to take a picture with the American girl.  It was ridiculously hot on the island and everyone was drenched with sweat.  Everybody took a shower when we got back.

We spent yesterday at sea and last night I played the second show with Jane which was an Irish Tribute.  This morning we are docking in Darwin, Australia which means we have to set our clocks forward by half an hour.  Very bizarre.  I’m so excited to see Australia and my goal is to hold a Koala.  I know Jason is excited as Australia is first on his list of places to see.  I hope they have good food!