Amway Charters Blog

Well one charter is over, and we are onto the second of six charter cruises. These charters are now on what one could call autopilot.

There was a lot of extra work on the first charter for the tech team that is onboard from Hong Kong that does most of the technical work. On the first charter they had to deal with a large number of plasma screens on the pool deck to show the ceremonies that were happing on the pier, putting up search lights on top of the ship, and hanging banners and LED lights all over the outside of the ship. Most of that was only for the first day or first cruise. The searchlights are used only on day 1 of the cruises but they stay setup, and just have to be turned on.
The setups in the theatre for the large business meetings on Day 2 seem to be running themselves. None of the long setup hours that we had the first time. This time the team just came in setup the screens and projectors, checked the sound and lights, and we called it a night. It was still a long day for the meetings, but none of the headaches.

It has been interesting seeing what the Chinese people have been like. The first thing that you notice right away is they love to take photos of themselves, and each other. I did very good avoiding having my photo taken all cruise, it almost happened once, but I avoided it.
They really don’t come to the shows in large numbers, except for our Acrobat/Adagio act; they really love them. Our shows never start on time, because very few people are here when we want to start, most shows start 10-15 minutes late, they don’t care. This cruise we are trying out doing only one show per night, well see if this increases attendance.
I haven’t experience this personally but I have been told by others, that they tend to be very rude at times. I think this is more a cultural thing. They don’t think they are rude; they just act differently from “Westerners”. Did I mention they take photos all the time?
If you are wondering how I am able to make such long blog posts lately compared to my normal short and too the point blogs, it is because I am very board during their business meetings. I write them on my computer then just copying the text to the Internet.

During the business meetings all I have to do is shadow the lighting tech they have, so I have lots of time to do nothing. I have been spending a lot of this time learning the new Photoshop I got from a friend, and a lot of time learning Final Cut Pro, and DVD Studio Pro. I know most of the people that read this are not Mac users, so you might not be familiar with Final Cut and DVD Studio. Final Cut is a video-editing program, you might have heard of iMovie, this is the pro version, and the same goes for DVD Studio and iDVD. Photoshop is the same as on a PC, and is self-explanatory. I have been learning Photoshop from a DVD Tutorial I got from a friend, and the Pro programs from books I received at Christmas, thanks DAD! I really like the books, they are very hands on. I have finished the DVD Studio Pro and the Basic Final Cut, and am about a third of the way through the Final Cut beyond the basics. I will have to get the rest of the book in the series at a later time. They have books for Motion, Color, LiveType, Soundtrack Pro, and Compressor. All of these programs are part of Final Cut Studio.
I am buying a friends video camera soon, and hopefully will be coming home with some great movies not just still photos from now on. I will also be getting a new Digital SLR when the ship gets back to Hong Kong in a few weeks. If you are into cameras, it will be either a Nikon D90 or D300, I really like the D300 but it might be a bit out of my price range, and the HD movie capabilities of the D90 are also nice. If I get the D90 I can always sell it at a later date and upgrade. I used to have a cannon SLR (not digital) and really liked it. I like the cannon DSLR cameras, but they are way more then the Nikons, and I have also been told that the Nikon interface is easier to use. I will let you know what I end up with.

Back to Asia – Start of Hard work and boredom.

Well as most of you might know I arrived back on the Legend a couple of weeks ago, February 28th to be exact. My journey started on the 25th in Oakland, CA. Being that Royal doesn’t seem to know the difference between Oakland and the San Francisco Airport when it comes to international flights, I fly out of Oakland. Oakland is normally my base airport, and when flying to most places it isn’t that bad, but when you are going international it isn’t the best place to start. Anyway I had to get to LAX before I would start my international flights, and could they send me in the wrong direction, don’t answer that, it’s yes. I had to fly to Salt Lake City, then to LA. From LA I flew 15.5 hours to Hong Kong, then on to Singapore. The flights weren’t too bad, at least I didn’t have any layover more then 3 hours.

After arriving in Singapore, and being meet by some airport official to take crew through immigration we meet our transportation to the hotel. I never really found out what the lady did, but she made things easy. The hotel was alright, nice place for a night. We then meet the bus to take all of the signing on crew at way too early in the morning, 7 am if I remember correctly.

Well after arriving to the ship, going through customs, we waited what seemed like forever before we could get onto the ship. Because of only one gangway, we have to wait till all the passengers are off, before we are allowed on. All that wait time just makes us annoyed with why we have to leave the hotel so early, when they know darn well that we will have to stand around.

After getting on ship, I found my vacation fill, and was brought back up to speed, what changes he has made, what gear arrived from order, what was broken, etc. He was a good vacation fill, good designer, but not the best tech in the world. He was a large fellow, and didn’t like ladders, so most work that had to be done in the air he had the Stage Staff do for him. Well at the time none of the SS were lighting oriented, so a few things weren’t exactly the way they should be, not really wrong, just not right.

So now we have finished a 14 day cruise from Singapore to Shanghi, China. I really didn’t get off the ship much, way too much work to do. I did get off a little bit in Hong Kong, but maily stayed onboard. I was going to meet my friend Rod that used to work on the Jewel with me, but we had to stay onboard most of the first day to help get gear on board for the upcoming Charters. Then I was on Duty the second day, and being that duty starts at midnight, I had to turn off the movie at 1am. So alas I did not get to see him. Maybe next time.

So yesterday the first of 6 Amway China Charter cruises started. We really didn’t have to do much at all. Just a lot of babysitting of our stuff, and helping out where we could. Today they had their big meeting in the theatre, and all we have to do is make sure they don’t break anything. They have their own people to run everything for this big event. From what we are hearing the rest of the events are all ours. Not looking forward to the 3 hour talent show on the last day. Should be a fancy 3 hour Karaoke.
Well that’s about it for now. I have a feeling that these next 6 weeks of Charters are going to be rather boring, The only highlight is going to be when the news comes of my nieces birth.