June 2, 2007: Over it
So I'm sitting in my hotel room in Panama City (my weekend to check passengers in; I spent last weekend in Colon) waiting for Thaddeus to show up. Doesn't look like he's gonna make it cause he had to go straight from the airport to the ship to get cleared in through immigration at the port or else the ship can't sail. Anyway, now he's too tired/lazy/caught up with work to come back to the city, even though the only reason I've agreed to share the weekend check-ins here is for this one single weekend, and even though this is the only time until I leave that we'll have an entire hotel room to ourselves, without cabin-mates, passengers or work to worry about. He says he's got to organize his work but he wouldn't have had to do it if he'd come straight here from the airport, so what's the difference? Why did I have to end up with a workaholic? I hate resorting to such childish tactics but I'm trying to guilt him into coming... Not easy to do since he doesn't have a Panamanian phone chip yet and all the people who's numbers I have are off the ship, so basically I have to wait until he calls me. This is soooo frustrating.
Anyway, in the meantime, I'm surfing the Windjammer passenger fan club site, so here are some passenger's photos I've found strewn across the interthingy.
For a passenger's perspective on Windjammer, here's a trip report from Said and Sharon, who were with us the Blue Water week. These are the passengers from the cruise: Said's the guy with the braids and the $800 bar bill.
You'll note that there were more crew than passengers:
Here's our chef Boston with his vegi-gami, pretty cool what he can do with some potatoes, beet-root and a sharp knife.
And here's one of our racing crabs. This is an official betting event. Rusty's afraid I'll spoil all her jokes if I say anything so I just stand there mutely holding up the odds-board while she takes all the glory. Whatever.
And I finally found the slip of paper I'd written the URL of the sailboat guys I met and sailed with before joining the Legacy back in February, so I've added a couple of photos to that post.
For the record, I'm over the cruising thing. Diving in the San Blas, first of all, is not as great as I was expecting. The corals are reasonably healthy but the reefs are completely overgrown with algae (there are very few sea urchins, which eat algae) and there are just hardly any fish. Everyone keeps commenting on it, divers and snorkellers alike - the reefs are beautiful, they say, but where are the fish? I just don't know. Is it the algae that's driven them away? Is the water temperature increasing too quickly? Are the lobsters being fished way beyond what's sustainable? What's causing the imbalance in the ecosystem that has caused the fish numbers to drop so drastically? I'm trying to find some stuff on the Web about it but there's not a lot of research out there on this part of the world.
Plus, I just don't have the tools to do my job properly. I can sell the diving even though it's not that great, but I don't have enough tanks. I keep running out of tanks before the end of the cruise. I'm supposed to be getting 30 more next weekend, but they've known they sending the ship down to San Blas for ages and wouldn't have a place to get tank fills through the week; why wait until the last minute to send extra tanks down? It's not the tanks exactly that's the problem, since I'm going to get them next week. But the whole issue is symptomatic of all the problems with head office. They just can't get their shit together. I hate working for that kind of dis-organization.
Plus, I'm just tired of living in a goldfish bowl. Everyone's always watching what you're doing. I'm just sick of it. I'm also sick of having to share what little personal space I do have with someone who's just such a... so hard to get along with. You forget to change the toilet paper roll and she leaves the empty one on your bed. She talks to you with an insulting tone of voice, challenges everyone on everything, then comes rubbing up to you full of sweetness when she needs something. And she's miserable. She's tired of the job, resigns every other week or so whenever she's having a bad day, but she never leaves. For real, she's quit at least three times since I've been on board, but she's still there. She put me out of the cabin last week without even asking me. Just told the chief stewardess that I'd be taking a certain cabin for the week. If she wanted some privacy, how come I was the one who had to be inconvenienced? But I'm tired of fighting. Everything is a confrontation with her and I've had enough. So I'm looking to leave the ship after the first week of July, when my contract is up, and I don't plan to come back as long as she's still on it.
Anyway, in the meantime, I'm surfing the Windjammer passenger fan club site, so here are some passenger's photos I've found strewn across the interthingy.
For a passenger's perspective on Windjammer, here's a trip report from Said and Sharon, who were with us the Blue Water week. These are the passengers from the cruise: Said's the guy with the braids and the $800 bar bill.
You'll note that there were more crew than passengers:
Here's our chef Boston with his vegi-gami, pretty cool what he can do with some potatoes, beet-root and a sharp knife.
And here's one of our racing crabs. This is an official betting event. Rusty's afraid I'll spoil all her jokes if I say anything so I just stand there mutely holding up the odds-board while she takes all the glory. Whatever.
And I finally found the slip of paper I'd written the URL of the sailboat guys I met and sailed with before joining the Legacy back in February, so I've added a couple of photos to that post.
For the record, I'm over the cruising thing. Diving in the San Blas, first of all, is not as great as I was expecting. The corals are reasonably healthy but the reefs are completely overgrown with algae (there are very few sea urchins, which eat algae) and there are just hardly any fish. Everyone keeps commenting on it, divers and snorkellers alike - the reefs are beautiful, they say, but where are the fish? I just don't know. Is it the algae that's driven them away? Is the water temperature increasing too quickly? Are the lobsters being fished way beyond what's sustainable? What's causing the imbalance in the ecosystem that has caused the fish numbers to drop so drastically? I'm trying to find some stuff on the Web about it but there's not a lot of research out there on this part of the world.
Plus, I just don't have the tools to do my job properly. I can sell the diving even though it's not that great, but I don't have enough tanks. I keep running out of tanks before the end of the cruise. I'm supposed to be getting 30 more next weekend, but they've known they sending the ship down to San Blas for ages and wouldn't have a place to get tank fills through the week; why wait until the last minute to send extra tanks down? It's not the tanks exactly that's the problem, since I'm going to get them next week. But the whole issue is symptomatic of all the problems with head office. They just can't get their shit together. I hate working for that kind of dis-organization.
Plus, I'm just tired of living in a goldfish bowl. Everyone's always watching what you're doing. I'm just sick of it. I'm also sick of having to share what little personal space I do have with someone who's just such a... so hard to get along with. You forget to change the toilet paper roll and she leaves the empty one on your bed. She talks to you with an insulting tone of voice, challenges everyone on everything, then comes rubbing up to you full of sweetness when she needs something. And she's miserable. She's tired of the job, resigns every other week or so whenever she's having a bad day, but she never leaves. For real, she's quit at least three times since I've been on board, but she's still there. She put me out of the cabin last week without even asking me. Just told the chief stewardess that I'd be taking a certain cabin for the week. If she wanted some privacy, how come I was the one who had to be inconvenienced? But I'm tired of fighting. Everything is a confrontation with her and I've had enough. So I'm looking to leave the ship after the first week of July, when my contract is up, and I don't plan to come back as long as she's still on it.
posted by Unknown at
1:21 p.m.
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