Cruise Ships

Cruise ships (about five trips, three and four months at a time) gave me the opportunity to see a lot of the world I would never had seen.

We went through the Panama Canal some 20 times, visited several countries in Central America, circled South America about a dozen times (including the Falkland Islands) saw Hawaii and stopped off at numerous exotic islands in the beautiful south Pacific. However, my favourite run during that cruise ship era, turned out to be sailing up and down the coast of Alaska.

The Alaskan run was special. The climate and the sights (midnight sun) were breathtaking and was an experience boarding on the spiritual. Witnessing the glaciers on a warm sunny day was a spectacle not to be missed.

However cruise ship work is not for everyone.  You put together musicians (for these lounge  engagements) that are musically capable and you hope that they will deliver on their commitment on a personal level.

People you have worked with before on weekends can become "difficult" after several weeks when subjected to the ship's atmosphere of confinement. For some unfortunately, it can be a challenging adjustment.  However, I'm glad I experienced this kind of work in spite of its many unforeseeable challenges. 

On one such trip I had hired a pianist who actually was a landed immigrant from Romania. At that time he had already been in Canada for many years.   He was a very astute musician, knew all the tunes that I requested, in any key and in any style. He was harmonically brilliant and was a very capable player. He was a perfectionist where his playing was concerned and I guess this was a trade off to his occasional artistic moods.  As they say, "You can't have everything."

Jack was born in Romania and after all these years he still had a heavy thick accent. I would tell him jokes and he would translate their meaning through his native tongue and he would laugh in the wrong spots, that is if he laughed at all.  Even though he had been in Canada for a considerable time, he still had trouble understanding the nuances of our language.

One day I was eating in the staff cafeteria and an attractive young lady sat down beside me. She was an employee in the Casinos. The Casino people were usually from England. However, she was from Liverpool and that meant she spoke with a scouse accent, a local dialect just as strange as cockney. She was on her break, was having a coffee and wanted to chat for a bit.

Well, her manner of speech was really perplexing to me. I kept asking her to repeat certain words or phrases, as I wasn't able to understand what she was saying.   It's amazing that she was speaking English and I was speaking English but in her case she might as well have spoken Swahili. It was becoming embarrassing as I didn't think I could keep up this charade of understanding her much longer. 

Finally my Romanian piano player came in to eat and sat down between us. "Saved by the bell," as the expression goes. I was relieved.

Well, let me tell you, for someone that speaks fractured English and the girl from Liverpool, well, they were talking and laughing and having a great time. It appeared they had really hit it off. I was amused and amazed.

I'm thinking, English is my language and my buddy from Romania who only has a functional grasp of the language was doing better than I was. They were talking back and forth, giggling, laughing and what have you and having a wonderful time.

Finally the girl got up to go back to work. I said to my piano player after she left, "I 'm really impressed. You guys really hit it off. You had no problem communicating and you both seemed to really enjoy each other's company.  I'm puzzled how you managed to come together so quickly and so easily."

"Tell me. Did you understand what she was saying? " He said, "Not a word."

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