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.