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.