11th Day Onboard- Half Moon Cave May 1, 2011

For some strange reason I always feel like I’m having a heart attack when my alarm goes off.  It just seems to startle me out of sleep.  I met Diana downstairs around 8 and everyone had told me to wear sunscreen but I didn’t seem to pack any (oops).  Diana told me that there was a gigantic bottle of sunscreen that the company provided near the gangway so I borrowed some of that.  I made sure to slather on the stuff so it would protect me all day.  When Diana said that we were bring some equipment to the island I thought that it would be some speakers, maybe a mixer or something but it reality it was just a simple two disc CD player/mixer for a DJ to use.  That’s it?  That is our “equipment”?  The first tender showed up about ten minutes before ten and we hopped on right on schedule.  The tenders look like something out of World War 2.  They seat about three hundred people and have a really flat form.  They remind me of the amphibious landing units that everyone sees in every World War 2 movie.  It even came complete with a large dropping front door.  The door was large enough for a truck to drive on and we were standing near the door.  I felt like I was being transported from the main troop transport to the battlefield except we were the sad folks that were one of the first rows standing near the door (we all know what happens to these folks).  I would have taken a picture of it if I could have because they’re all pretty funny.  I couldn’t really see where we were going but sure enough the door dropped suddenly and I was fighting an intense urge just to take the little black box we brought and run straight to the nearest form of cover.  However, the island was quite the opposite.  There were white sandy beaches, a couple of sailboats and even some Bahamas music playing in the background.  I let Diana take the lead on showing me where to go.  We first headed to a little bandstand to set up for the “band.”  I use band in quotation marks because there was some drama that happened in the past few days.  So, every time we get off ship in Miami we have to go through customs.  Apparently the other band member got off in Miami and declared one of his bags (I don’t really remember the reason why but I know that he had to declare it) so customs searched his bag and viola! They found over $11,000 worth of jewelry from the gift shop.  Oops.  Apparently, either he or his girlfriend stole 11,000 worth of jewelry in the past couple of months.  So he was arrested on the spot.  To make things worse he’s not a US citizen.  His excuse was that his girlfriend (she was also onboard) had packed the bag and he didn’t know what was in it.  So they arrested his girlfriend as well.  To make a long story short, he was fired on the spot and deported and she is now in jail and they’re trying to figure out what to charge her with.  I found this out later, but apparently he had missed his flight out of the country today so they put a CPB out for his arrest.  They found him in the hotel room sleeping and he said that he just overslept and they put two officers outside of his hotel room guarding him until they could escort him to the airport later today.  As far as I know the girl is still in jail.  So, the band became a solo act and we had to set up for that.  Most of the equipment was stored right next to the bandstand so it was pretty easy to set up.  We moved on to the “Captain on the rocks” bar which was designed to look like a giant ship.  Apparently it was pretty new and it looked pretty good.  We set up our little DJ CD player, a couple of speakers, and set up the CDs to play until the DJ got there.  We went back to check up on the “band.”  It was already 9 o’clock and he still hadn’t shown up yet so we just sat there and waited for a bit for him to show up.  About an hour and a half later he finally showed up with all his gear.  Apparently they didn’t let him board the tender because he was a member of the crew and crew isn’t allowed to leave (unless you’re working on the island) until noon.  Once we got him situated I talked to Diana about what we needed to do next.  Apparently we just had to check in about every hour and a half or so just to make sure things were operating correctly.  In the meantime we could pull up a beach chair and just chill or go swimming.  I chose to go swimming.  The water was absolutely beautiful.  You could see the bottom even after a good 30 feet.  The water wasn’t very deep either.  I swam out to see how far I could go until I couldn’t touch the bottom, which was about a good 50-60 feet out.  They had roped off swimming areas but you didn’t really have to follow them.  I chose not to because I really wanted to stay away from the guests.  Diana had a good term for them; she calls them “cones.”  It’s mostly referring to like a safety hazard but I took it as most of the guests are cone shaped, which is pretty accurate.  Either way the analogy works pretty well.  After a good hour or so swim I decided to just camp out on the beach.  I brought my SLR so I could take some pictures and I’ll post them on FB as soon as I am able.  The “bad” part about being the tech on duty in this situation is that you have to stay on the island until the band member pack up… oh darn I’m so disappointed.  After the hour or so lounging in the chairs we decided to go and get some barbeque.  Sadly, the crew food on cruises isn’t as good as the guest’s food.  We just had hamburgers and hot dogs.  Most of them were burned beyond recognition so I figured that the crew got what was left over from the guest barbeque.  I made my traditional double stacked hamburger and quickly chomped it down.  After all, I hadn’t had anything to eat all day and it was already almost one o’clock.  We checked in on the bands and they seemed fine.  I was going to buy a drink but I realized that the island accepted only the sail and sign cards and I didn’t have one of those.  Oh well.  I swam some more and noticed that even the fish were friendly.  A couple of small clear fish just swam around me for a second then swam away.  It kind of freaked me out for a bit to see a fish that just decided to be friendly but I guess it deemed me as a non interest and swam away.  I chatted with some of Dianna’s friends for a bit then decided to return to my lounge chair to dry off.  Towards the end of our little shore excursion, around 2:30 or so, I felt the need to be in the shade which was already hard to come by.  I really just didn’t want to get sunburned.  I already had to borrow some of the ship’s sun screen and I didn’t know how reliable it was going to be.  I kind of felt like I was on some military compound on the island, about every half hour there would be a large cargo truck that was retrofitted to carry passengers in the back drive around full of people.  Of course when they drove by every passenger would just stare at me like I was the weird one (c’mon you’re in the back of a truck driving around on an island!) which made the feeling even stronger and the truck drove back about ten minutes later empty.  I saw at least four of these cycles.  I kind of felt like the people in the back was being taken to the gas chambers or something.   It was just an odd feeling.  Around three we began to pack up and head back to the ship.  We returned the equipment back where we found it and started walking back.  I’m really surprised that equipment doesn’t get damaged by weather, storms or whatever.  It’s just stashed basically underneath the bar under a blue tarp.  Some of those speakers and little Mackie mixers can be pretty expensive.  Oh well, I guess when you’re running a cruise line a little Mackie mixer is nothing.   Luckily we were on the pier at the right time as a tender was just unloading the last of its passengers.  We boarded the tender and waited patiently for the tender to load the rest of the “cones.”  Honestly, after Diana made that statement all I see are hugely obese people and it’s kind of sickening.  Once we were back onboard the ship I headed straight to my cabin to take a nice long COLD shower (I know! It’s a first!) As soon as 4 o’clock hit I ran straight down to the MSA office in search of the mail call.  Every week they pick up the mail in Miami but they really hate you if you go down there and pick it up while we’re still in Miami.  They did have a package for me! Sure enough my Kindle came in the mail today!  I bought a Kindle last week because I wanted to get back into some reading and this trip has been the perfect excuse to buy one.  I bought the Wifi+3G model.  Hey, for an extra 50 bucks it has global 3G which was pretty good.  Maybe I’ll figure out a way where I can hotspot the 3G on the Kindle to use as internet for my computer.  I’ll have to do some research on it later.  I tried using it in my cabin but there is WAY too much steel around me to get any kind of reception.  I went up to the 4^th deck bow to get signal.  Apparently the Kindle prioritizes wifi over 3G connection which is unfortunate because it technically can connect to the wifi but it’s a paid service so I really don’t want to use the wifi function.  I’ll have to buy some books the next time I get paid anyway (which hopefully is soon…).  The way they pay people here is kind of a racket.  They either pay you in cash, which you’re most likely going to spend either onboard or on shore, or you can open what they call a “crew card.”  If you have the crew card every payday they just deposit that amount of money on the card and you can withdrawal it at the ATM onboard if you need to.  You can transfer it to another account, but they charge a one dollar fee per transaction.  So if you leave the money on the card you KNOW Carnival is using your paycheck and investing it and making interest on it.  So what sucks is that you have to pay THEM to get your money.  There is a third option, and that is open an account with Bank of America (one of Carnival’s sponsors) but I’ll be DAMNED before I open an account with BoA.  So it’s a lose-lose situation for us.  I’ll just have to pay the one dollar fee and put it into my savings account and make interest that way.  Anyways, I was on the fourth deck admiring my Kindle when we left Half Moon Cay.  It really is a beautiful island and there is so much that the passengers don’t get to see.  I hung around for the remainder of the day until it was my call time for a fly on act.  The act was a juggling act (I am now seriously thinking I’m in a circus (Carnival-- circus?? It’s all starting to make sense now)).  The act was ok, it didn’t involve anything heavy lighting wise which was nice (just the Expression).  So I didn’t have to remember any complicated start up sequences or anything.  In between shows I met up with Ryan (one of the band members) because we wanted to swap hard drives.  He had the 5^th season of Dexter which I desperately needed.  I think I managed to grab over 70GB of various TV shows and movies.  We ran the second show, and it was exactly the same as the first one (not that I’m surprised or anything).  Afterwards I was going to head up to Ryan’s “late show” (He’s the player at the piano bar) and he had promised that it was going to be interesting.  I was about to take the elevator when someone mentioned that they had found and killed Osama bin Laden.  I looked at him quizzically for a second.  Nahh, that can’t be true.  I asked him how he knew and he said it was all over CNN (apparently the TV in our cabin doesn’t work) so I went into Dave’s cabin and we watched the news for about 10 minutes.  I really couldn’t believe it.  All I have to say is.. they killed him in a mansion outside of Islamabad???! A mansion?? Really??? I expected him to be in some cave somewhere not in some mansion.  Score one for American Intelligence (for once).  After about 10 minutes of watching CNN (they were just repeating themselves over and over again) I decided it was time to head up to the piano bar.  The act was pretty good, I felt out of place without some form of a drink so I ordered a rum and coke (you can’t say there isn’t a pattern).  He came out with a little tiny glass and it tasted pretty bad, the rum was cheap and the coke was watered down.  He gave me the receipt and it was $7.50!! Good God!! I could have gotten this downstairs at the crew bar for a buck twenty five and it would have tasted better and be better rum!  That just shows you the amount of mark up Carnival has on its alcohol.  The show was pretty good, it was the late show so it had a bunch of crude songs and innuendo but still good nonetheless.  The show wrapped up around 1:15 am.  Ryan wanted to go down to the crew bar but there was only 15 minutes before they stopped serving and I knew you couldn’t get a drink in time.  So I decided to head off to bed.