The Crazy Thing About Cars…

It’s amazing how things can happen so randomly but then turn out like it was meant to be. Well, this may not seem like one of those situations but it kind of makes sense to me. On the day I decide to start writing more about what’s happening my sister has a freak series of events happen to her that just throws us all for a loop and gives me something to talk about. What I say to this… let’s get typing. OK, so I need a better catchphrase. I’ll work on it.

The setup: So for some background let me explain what my sister (whose name is Claudia) does. For those of you that don’t know her she works at the corporate headquarters of Publix Supermarkets that is about a forty-minute drive from home, mostly on the freeway. It’s a long drive out that’s about a third of the way across the state.

That being said, for a while now she has been having trouble with the battery in her car and the connections with the positive wire. Sometimes the car would not start and she would have to pop the hood and wiggle it to establish the connection. What I have come to find out is that it has been tougher and tougher to wiggle the wire to make it work. About two days ago I overheard my brother-in-law (whose name is Jeff) mention he was going to take off the red plastic cap that protects the connection and tighten the bolt. Let’s just say that never happened.

So it’s a new day and I’m at the local library writing the other blog entries you might or might not have read already. It’s just after 6 p.m. and I happen to be taking a break reading a magazine when Claudia calls me. I figure she is calling to let me know she’s on her way home and wondering what we’re going to watch on TV. (Yes, Claudia, Jeff and I all hang out at home and watch TV together.) Anyhoo, it turns out that she is having a seriously tough time trying to get the connection on her car battery to work. She has been twisting the cap and it doesn’t seem to want to start. Because of this she wants me to drive all the way to her job site to help her.

Let me remind you this is all happening while I’m at the local library. I don’t like the idea of being the guy on the phone in a public setting talking about how to start a car, especially in a place that requires a certain degree of silence. I’m also not going to lie. I did not want to drive forty minutes just to help her establish a clean connection for her car battery. Of course I wasn’t going to just blow her off and hang up either. What I did was tell her to wiggle it some more. Then I remembered what my Jeff had said earlier. I told her to take off the plastic covering the connection and carefully wiggle the wire. She said she would try it and call me back.

A few minutes go by and I get the call. She’s on the freeway and all is well. I can’t tell you how relieved I was. So you’re sitting here and wondering, “What the… is that the whole point of the story?” No, actually it is not. Aren’t you glad you kept reading?

Within five minutes of the second call I get a third call and I don’t even know what to think. As soon as I picked up everything changes. There is a sound of terror in my sister’s voice that only comes when something has gone wrong. I instantly freak out and ask what’s happened. It turns out that when she was playing with the battery she forgot to close the hood of the car with enough force to catch the latch that keeps it closed. When she picked up speed on the freeway the wind caught the hood and caused it to crash against the windshield with enough force to shatter it and throw the rearview mirror off the glass.

Of course at this point I’m getting all of my stuff together and heading towards the exit of the library. Claudia tells me she’s going to call my mother and that I should go pick her up. When I get home, my mom tells me that Jeff is going to pick Claudia up and that they will both drive back together. After all of this I am a bit amped up and I need to let off some steam. I decide to lift some weights. It’s not important what I did but let’s say I had a good workout. OK, enough about that.

So when Jeff and Claudia come home I see the damage and I’m a bit surprised at how much was done. The windshield is not completely shattered but it has cracks going all across the left side. The hood of the car is dented upward in a degree that would resemble someone lifting up tinfoil to see what is inside leftover tupperware. The first thing that Jeff decides to do is go after the toolbox to try and fix the hood. So naturally he picks up the hammer and starts whacking the underside of the hood. After a few well-placed hit nothing happens except some new small dents pop out the other side. I try to reason with him and after some brainstorming we decide to take off the hood and try things differently.

Imagine this if you can. You’re driving down a popular two-lane road through a neighborhood that I live in at about eight in the evening. It’s fairly dark and you see two grown men jumping up and down in the front yard of a home while a third person is shining a flashlight on something you can’t really make out but looks shiny and metallic. That was Jeff and I trying stomp out the dents from the hood. After three trials of jumping up and down, bolting the hood back to the car, realizing it didn’t fit and taking it off again we finally got it to fit back on. Sure there were some odd dents here and there but for all intents and purposes we felt like the goal was accomplished.

If you’re wondering what’s going to happen next, the insurance company is sending a glass replacement company to replace the broken windshield. I’m not sure about the hood but it was mentioned that we could go to a junkyard and find a replacement hood.

I’m looking back at this entry and I wonder if it was a story worth mentioning. I admit this is a blog that I control but at the same time I do want to entertain readers. My goal is not to bore but to bring a few smiles while letting people get to know me a bit. So I guess what I’m saying is please respond and let me know what you think. Thanks for taking the time to read this.

My Current Situation

Something that I have discovered about myself is that I am a fairly reserved individual. This may not always be obvious to some but it is true. I know that I can be outgoing at times and also very friendly and inviting to people but one thing I don’t always do is let people in beyond the outer shell of who I am. That is why I enjoy this blog and also why I feel I need to keep it current. It allows me to open up in a casual way.

This discovery became more obvious to me as things in my life started happening. I recently had issues with my health and I realized not many people knew about it. I purposefully kept things to myself but now that things have been progressing I noticed more people were surprised that anything had been wrong at all. Let me state now that I am not dieing or have any serious injuries to speak of. I am talking more about the fact that no one knew what was going on. So as time went on I felt more and more compelled to write about it.

I reread the previous entries to my blog and noticed how little I wrote about what was going on with my health. I also noticed how embarrassing some of the entries are too. Either way, I’m going to try and be more dedicated to writing in more detail what is going on. I figure this is why I have the blog. It’s not a Facebook status update where I’m trying to keep things to one or two sentences. I shouldn’t care about what my content is because if you don’t want to read it then you won’t.

What I plan to do for the next few entries is to break things up into a few different posts, all dealing with what has been happening in my life. I hope that whatever is written here keeps you interested. I'm sure not writing this to bore you.

A Long Overdue Update

So I checked in to my blog and realized it has been about a year since the last time I wrote here. Not that anyone has really fallen into a deep depression over it but I am a little disappointed in myself for not being able to keep up with things. The last post is so old, it takes place two ships ago. I left that place, went to another ship and returned home and now I am close to returning to another ship.

Well, maybe I'm not that close to returning just yet. But I'm hopeful in writing in this blog again. I have a lot to do and many things to write about before I forget them but they will be posted here. So this is just a quick update and I will return with much more information.

A peek into the life...

July 11, 2010

To start things today I’d like to mention that I haven’t planned on writing every month but it seems that the timeline of my post is about that long. It’s funny how things turn out that way.

So things have been going well on the ship. I’ve gotten into a groove here and it is almost automatic. There are things I’d like to improve in, mainly the amount of exercise I do. I was doing well keeping up with my running twice or sometimes three times a week but I have been bad about it lately. My eating habits were up and down for a while and even now they aren’t always great but I am making more of an effort to do better. I can see that I feel much better on the night I sleep more.

This may seem like something weird when I mention getting enough sleep. It is difficult to explain how easy it is to stay up late on the ship but it happens. I’ll admit that half of the time it is my own fault for going to the crew areas after work to catch up with friends from other departments. Other times it can just be from my work schedule. Many nights we finish our work around eleven at night and get something to eat. Then we have the option to go to the crew bar to mingle afterwards or even just hang out in our corridor talk to our neighbors.

The crew area is set up a lot like dorms with just a bit less space for the rooms. The hallways are thin enough for just two people to cross if go at an angle. There is no real hang out area in the living areas but there is a crew bar that has a smoking section and a large seating area with a dance floor for discos. Yes, I said discos. That’s what they call it when they have a particular night for using the lighting and DJ booth to play a theme for the night. Other nights they mix it up by having a Wii hooked up to a projector or even a karaoke machine for singing. Those nights are usually quieter.

The only other event that rivals disco night is live music night. That’s when the performers take the time to play and sing current and classic live music that the passengers would shit their pants if they heard. A lot of rock and pop depending on who performs.

That’s the update for now. More to come… maybe in less than A MONTH!

Making Friends

June 12, 2010

In my last entry I mentioned how I needed to feel comfortable with things around the ship and the layout. After another month things have been moving forward in good ways. Now that we have arrived in Alaska and made the trip back and forth a few times I can see a rough pattern emerging. The pattern not only covers my work schedule but also the people I see and spend my free time with.

I have been making friends and recently have started making plans with them on a more consistent basis. This is what I have been looking forward to since I got here. From the beginning I have had a good team and even after a few people finished their contracts and were replaced I have still had fun with the people that replaced them. I have also had a good time getting to know crew from other departments, which in my opinion is absolutely necessary.

I have to admit that I have been fortunate to make friends out of the spa department. Recently I have spent time with a few of the girls there and gotten to know them while out in the cities we visit. It has been a misconception that I did it just to get free treatments (which isn’t completely untrue) but it is mainly because they are the ones that tend to be more fun and interesting outside of my own department. The girls are usually very nice and can be a good source of gossip. And hell, I won’t lie, hanging out with a bunch of attractive women in general ain’t bad. Ha ha.

But even with all these things moving forward there is still a bit of adjusting going on with more people leaving soon and new crew coming to replace them. It won’t be huge but things can always change without anyone expecting them. Although I have started to make some good relationships I’m still waiting to see if there is that one solid friendship that will come out of this contract. I guess I have been spoiled a bit by my last two ships but it is all a matter of time before I can see if I will be as fortunate as before.

My Time On the Diamond - Month One

May 8, 2010

It has been just over a month now and things have been going well. The team is full of good people and the general mood is positive. I think the fact that this is the third time I’ve been on a ship has helped me transition into the lifestyle a bit faster.

I still haven’t gotten completely comfortable but I’m learning the ways of the ship and getting to know more people. The first challenge for me is always adjusting to the layout when I arrive. Most of the time the ships are all fairly similar among the passenger areas with just a few things “out of place”. When it comes down to it, the crew areas are the ones to adjust to.

The cabins for most of the staff are in the front of the ship with the crew cabins on the bottom decks. That is always the same. The crew mess is usually in a different spot but it tends to be near the rear or “aft” of the ship. After that it’s about finding your way among the corridors from place to place.

That's all for now. More later.

- Jose

My Trip To Hong Kong

Tampa to Chicago:

So the flight to Chicago was not too crazy. I fell asleep for most of it. When I woke up I had a half hour to go and spoke to 18 Y/O with experience in soundboards from working in a church. He was also an Apple fan and had an iPhone. We made small talk but he dominated the conversation with info of his family’s boats, camera, and other things. Finally arrived in Chicago but but got lost for a bit. Walked around a while to pass the time but finally sat in terminal for flight and plugged in. Overheard one of the few Americans in the terminal (sitting behind me) talking about child. He ended up plugging in next to me and we started talking about the iPad. Got to know him a bit.

Flight Capacity is 374 with 176 seats actually occupied.

Chicago to Hong Kong:

Flight was long.

In an effort to simplify I decided to start my stopwatch to keep track of the time of the flight and also log what was being done as the hours rolled by. These are my notes.

Before takeoff I sat down and was happy to find out I would have my own row. The flight had a lot of people on board but near the back my fellow passengers and I were able to spread out and enjoy our space. It was a good start in my opinion. I had a long night of preparing my luggage so I was tired and dozing off while the plane was getting prepared for takeoff. I was able to stay awake to begin my stopwatch but didn’t last long after that.

0 Hours 0 Minutes: Plane takes off.

4 Hours: The stewardess taps my shoulder waking me up to fill out a small immigration form for the Hong Kong airport. This form, though simple in construction, was more evil than I could have imagined. Instead of being made from the standard ingredients that most paper is made of it had an ingredient that somehow only let someone fill out three letters before making any pen obsolete. At first it fooled me to thinking my pen was out of ink. This actually made me upset because I was using my favorite pen. Then after using my backup pen I began to see the evil games the paper was playing. I only had the patience to attempt filling out half of the form before deciding to wait until later to finish.

5 Hours 28 Minutes: (At this point in the flight all of the windows have been shut since almost everyone on the plane is asleep) Another passenger open his window and I decide to follow his lead. A bright white light fills my area of the plane and I see glaciers outside. I ask the stewardess where we are. She is not sure and calls the pilot. He says we are over Alaska on our way to Russia. Photo should be attached. For a while I read to pass the time and play with my iPhone.

8 Hours 50 Minutes: I decide to get some sleep so I can be rested for my arrival. This is when I appreciated having my own row that much more.

10 Hours 30 Minutes: I wake up with a stiff neck and a sore side from having an arm rest in my ribs. I rearrange my body and pillow. I go back to sleep…

11 Hours 36 Minutes: My eyes open and this time I feel good enough to stay awake. Time to play with the iPhone some more.

12 Hours 30 Minutes: After failing to get the top score on three levels of games I decide to stop playing with my iPhone. Around this time I try to finish filling out the evil form I received earlier. I decide to borrow a pen from the stewardess near me. After another feeble attempt at writing more than three letters I decide to involve the stewardess. She looks at me with the sad face that a teacher has for a student that cannot add 2+2 correctly. Luckily, the evil paper is not above giving her problems as well and she quickly joins in my frustration. She proceeds to use two more pens. In the end my form has blue, black and red ink scribbled on it. To relax I decide to go on my computer and organize my music on iTunes.

13 Hours: I realize that my battery has a good charge but I won’t be able to recharge it at the hotel because I have an American plug and they have Asian sockets. This is something I didn’t plan for.

14 Hours 43 Minutes 2 seconds: The plane lands in Hong Kong.