Sydney/Sea Days

Jan 27-30
Sydney/Sea days

Well, already I’ve managed to procrastinate with writing these posts and am a week delinquent. Not like the first few days on a ship are important or anything….
Anyways, The bus took me to the ship with the 100+ other sign-ons, way more than the crew office was equipped to handle. This meant standing outside for an hour, going through really long lines, and watching the sign on process being executed in the least efficient means possible. Anyways, I made it on the ship, saw many of my old friends in the process, and started to get settled.
I’m rooming with a guy from Sydney, he’s 18 years old and the trombone player. At this point in time, I hadn’t met him and wouldn’t meet him for another day – seeing as we were in Sydney for an overnight, he got off the ship to spend time with his family. This gave me a little more room to get the cabin set up and made things a little easier.
I had the rest of the night off, and seeing as all my friends were off the ship exploring Sydney and I was stuck on due to being a new hire, I was able to just cool down.
I still didn’t receive my seapass card on the 28th, meaning I still couldn’t get off the ship or get online. I really felt as if I was grounded, not allowed to do anything. But hey, it’s more mandatory cool down time, so I did some reading and some other work and kept myself occupied. I had a quick training before we sailed and then two welcome aboard shows at night.
The band is good and I think I’ll do fine here. The horn players are all solid, and I think I’ll be OK with the music director. The MD is a polish guy who plays the alto sax chair. The band seems to dislike him for the most part, it seems to be mostly because he’s hard on them during rehearsal, but after the horrors of my MD on the Queen Victoria, I think this guy will be just fine. I’d rather have a demanding MD anyways, it really does a lot to make the band sound good. But now the job has started back up again, and as always, it almost feels as if I’ve never left. It is nice though coming back to a ship I’ve already had experience on – it means I save myself a week of getting utterly lost in every possible corridor.
The 29th and 30th were both sea days, so nothing big to write about there. I finally got my sea pass card on the 29th and was able to go online and see all the emails I’ve been unable to respond to. But now that I have my card and account all set up I’m about as settled in as I can hope to be.
Otherwise, the 29th was a guest entertainer’s show and the 30th was a big band set. The MD seems really happy with how I’m playing, which considering I’m playing tenor sax for the first time on a ship gig, makes me feel better about playing that horn. I am working hard though to listen and blend, trying to fit into the section as seamlessly as possible and I think he’s noticing that. And if anything, it means I’m winning over points with him, which considering the band doesn’t seem to get along with him all the time, a few brownie points could come in handy sometime.
So that’s all for the first few days, tomorrow will be my first stop in New Zealand, can’t wait to tell you about it!