A roundup

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I haven't written for a while, mainly due to the fact that I've been rather busy, but here's some of the things that have been going on in the slowest week of my life.

My roommate left a couple of days ago. This was no small bummer because he was a thoroughly good bloke and was getting me savvy with ship life. Basically, he found out that the company were paying him less because he came from India where it seems the company believes the cost of living is less. He was 2 levels above me and actually was making $100 less than me! can you believe it! Well, he was shipped off at St Maarten because had he waited till Fort Lauderdale (in the USA) he would have been arrested and detained for not finishing his contract!

None too surprisingly, this made me feel like I wanted to go home too. I know it hasn't even been a month, but its one of those places where after only a couple of weeks you feel you've been there all your life. To be honest, any excuse would have got me off the ship that day, and I was having a really hard time trying to get that feeling out of my system yesterday aswell.

Fortunately however, divine providence prevailed and yesterday at midday there was a knock at my door. Domnik one of the Polish photogs was on IPM (In Port Manning) which meant he couldn't leave the ship. He had been given a ticket to do one of those bubble head underwater scooter thingys and, as he couldn't do it, offered it to me.

So, at 1pm I was standing on the deck of a large gin palace being told by a rag tag assortment of crew how to get into one of these things. I was really lucky because my group was last to do the dive/scoot/ which meant I had an hour to go snorkelling. Its not many places you can chase barracuda around fire coral for your own amusement you know! So after doing untold damage to the seabed, I climbed in the scooters head and began the experience. humming the James bond theme for added realism.

I have to say that, cool as it was, IT WAS SOOOOO SLOW!!! I MEAN HONESTLY, THERE WERE BITS OF CORAL GROWING FASTER THAN US MOVING. Whether it was because the motor had a fish wrapped round it or whatever I don't know, but it seemed to take hours to ride round this one small route. It was very cool though to have this weird- head out- of- water- but -still- underwater feeling and to be able to see everyone else. The glass distorted the view so my fellow aquanauts looked like their heads had shrunken to the size of a small football.

All too soon it was time to get back on ship, and after begging the captain to let me jump from the princess and join his crew (he said no) I had to go back to St Thomas and join the ship all salt watery and sunbleached (guess who forgot the sunscreen). Not a bad day all in all and a much needed break.

Its a formal night tonight which means I have portraits to set up and need to get my tux ironed. Tune in next week for the continuing saga of the Princess Cruise 722!

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Comments

[anonymous]

Hello Rob glad your all okay come back soon we have plenty of work Chrisx