Hong Kong Almost to Hawaii

March 21, 2006

Been a while. We had one sea day on the 13th, followed by Hong Kong, where I hung out with Michel, the  new singer. We parked the boat at a container port, which is getting to be a problem not just with the crew but as well with the passengers. The cruise port, once again, was downtown and 40 minutes away by bus, no taxies allowed in the container port.

The problem with parking at container ports is that passengers and crew have long memories about where the boat parked last year, and the year before, and so on. (Stevie, for example, had done two decades of world cruises.) There, at the cruise terminal, there were two ships parked with four slips, one of which QE2 occupied last year. 

I was on the first bus (again) and found a Starbucks instantly in the cruise terminal. The wi-fi was dodgy, though, demanding a cel phone number that a password and user name could be sent to--useless for a USA Sprint user like me.

Michel and I hooked up soon after I finished my coffee and, while I spent nothing on hard goods, we tromped through the town and had very good sushi lunch. There was a lot to see, a lot more than I could have done in a couple days, which is what former world cruises gave passengers and crew.  Had I known how many tailor shops there were, I might have looked into buying a suit, although Campbell tells me that the best tailors are in Thailand and India. Because of the horrible situation with the buses in Singapore, I got back early, making a note to return to Hong Kong someday, in a cruise ship I suppose, provided they park the ship where the cruise ships park and not in a container port for crying out loud. 

Two more sea days, during which I sort out the situation where I’m getting off in Los Angeles. The guy who I handed in the form for shortening of my contract to left without acting on the form. Now I’m two weeks away from leaving and Brian in the Princess office sends an email letting me know that he can’t act to replace me until he gets a notification from the crew office. Unfortunately, the guy in the crew office was replaced by a foolish and belligerent idiot who accuses me of threatening him because I tell him I will be taking my American passport and getting off in Los Angeles regardless. He starts in with the name calling, so I know that the paper I’ve circulated and handed in to the crew office is gone. 

This fellow is the same guy who informed the USA citizens that they were no longer being payrolled, but were henceforth (not his word) independent contractors, thus increasing our tax liability by 14.5%. He is my inspiration for leaving, because he told Dwight, the bass player in the Grand Lounge, that our only option to accepting this abrogation of our contract at its midpoint was the gangway. It was then, the third week of January, that I started looking around for work. By the end of February I’d lined up another gig.

More than any single thing, when Stevie and Trevor talk about how this ship has slid downhill in the last couple of years, it’s the management people’s inability to run the ship that comes up, over and over. The passengers never see most of these ham-handed mismanagements, but they all add up to a crew with very low morale, so they’re the victims of the result. 

Monday, the 17th—St. Patrick’s Day—we’re in Shanghai, although few of the US citizens make it off the ship because of the $200 one-day visa. (I hear, though, that Homeland Security [a damned funny name] is charging the Chinese $500 a visa nowadays.) I knocked around the ship but can’t raise the necessary audience for the rest of my Redd Foxx recordings, so I listen to them myself. 

The Chinese are cracking down on dissent in Tibet. The Dahli Lama is all over every station on our TV feed except the American one, which is Fox News. THEIR lead story is Obama’s preacher. There is little or nothing about Tibet. Oh my god, look at what my country’s become! What must the world think when we’re so close to being a fascist state that the government’s dirty work is done by a television network? 

We have petitioned for a change on the ship to CNN, but to no avail. (The guy who ran the TV feed, by the way, a staunch defender of Fox News, was busted for drug residue and paraphernalia by the dogs of the New Zealand customs inspection back in Auckland. He wasn’t arrested, but he was let go and sent home, and replaced by his brother, who is just as right wing.) Can’t the Republican echo machine come up with anything else? The are truly pathetic.

Another sea day, and we’re in Osaka, which is miserably wet and cold. We park at a real cruise port, and I get off and wander a bit with Michel and, later, Richard Williams (our bass player). Unfortunately, an IPM drill is called. IPM is In-Port Manning, which means you stay on the ship so that if there’s an emergency you can deal with it. The drill is called, and Richard Williams should have been here, but he was walking around with me. There are repercussions. The drill was little more than a muster in the Grand Lounge followed by the taking of attendance, but Richard was demonstrably not there.

The Japanese people are tremendously polite, paying homage to QE2’s last call, almost as much as the Australians. (Of course, how could the Chinese in Hong King or Shanghai care about these things when we’re in a container port?) I get back on the ship at about noon, wet and cold.

What lies before us are six sea days, with either a time change (23 hours in a day) or, in the case of crossing the International Dateline, a repeated Saturday. These days slide by best to those who can nap, so this is my strategy. I get up around eleven (yesterday’s ten), get dressed, go to lunch, come back to the cabin, and sleep for a couple hours. Lucky for us musicians, we’ve got the flexibility in our schedules to sleep most of the day to cushion the effect of these days. 

On the third sea day, the first Saturday—the day before we cross the International Dateline—we play a lavish ball in the Queens Room. The Cherry Blossom Ball is Japanese themed affair, with one of the Japanese matrons in a kimono dancing to a recording of Sakura before we get underway. There is plenty of decorating done on the QR, with large paper lanterns, cherry blossoms and parasols hanging from the ceiling, a painted backdrop of Mt Fuji behind us, and the usual balloons. Of course, when we get our cue it’s the usual quickstep and waltz—nothing Japanese, nor even different from any other night.

The fun started when the ball ended. We were packing up, and the decorators were knocking down the room. Thomas had announced that the balloons were available for anyone to bring to their cabins, but other decorations were not. Just after that, the gal who’s the lead decorator came up to the stage and laughed, telling me that all of these decorations had been bought in Chinatown in Detroit, so she didn’t care what was taken. 

As I started to pack up my saxophones, there was a ruckus on the dance floor, followed by a screaming female passenger. I looked up just in time to see a fist fly from one male passenger to another, followed by the receiver of the punch crumpling to the floor. He wasn’t getting up. 

This was, by most accounts by those who’ve been here long enough to know, the first fistfight in the Queens Room. Security was called and a two-hour long investigation ensued. 

This may be another instance of all bark and no bite from Cunard. Although they beached a passenger in Easter Island (one flight daily to Valparaiso, if you’re wondering) that guy was causing ongoing trouble in the Yacht Club bar, not just an incident of a sucker punch.

UPDATE: My line of sight was impaired, so here’s what I’ve put together. There was an announcement made that the balloons were up for grabs, but to leave the rest of the stuff alone. One of the passengers decided to have his picture taken with one of the Japanese kimono-clad lady passengers, so he took down one of the parasols which was hanging from the ceiling. A second male passenger called him on it, noting that only the balloons were fair game, accusing the other guy of thievery. The first guy calmly went about his business of picture taking on the opposite side of the dance floor, and when he was done he ran up to his accuser and grabbed him by the neck and decked him. The accuser chose not to get up, and the scream I heard was the attacker’s spouse pleading with him to stop. So it wasn’t technically a fistfight at all under the Marquis of Queensbury rules of the sport, but rather an attack. 

One of the Gentleman Hosts maintains that, despite conducting a two-hour investigation of the incident there were no names taken, thus no penalty. I find this a little far-fetched even for Cunard.

We crossed the International Date Line, so had two Saturdays. The whole ship’s abuzz with the fight in the Queens Room the other night. I suggest that we might have a boxing tournament after we close at midnight. It’s nice to be seeing the sip move toward Hawaii. 

Another fight broke out, but in the Golden Lion Pub, the night following the fight in the Queens Room. The passengers are stretched by the six sea days, and we are too, of course. Honolulu can’t come too soon for this ship. 

On the positive side of the ledger, one afternoon in this six-day stretch I was up on boat deck reading a book when an elderly couple walked past me. The man went to the area of the deck enclosed by windows and to my astonishment pulled out a chromatic harmonica. He played Peg of My Heart (a hit record for the Harmonicats), Stardust without the verse, and several more familiar tunes. The German passengers who were sitting where he ended up were delighted. I was too. 

Still we motor onward, on a course 102 degrees and about 26 knots. How did the Japanese ever pull off Pearl Harbor?