Day 5, and I found the internet room!!!

I am drunk....well sort of. This is the end of day 4 totally at sea and before I go to bed I will try to recap the past few days. I will write in point form because the internet sucks when you are in the middle of the ocean lol...

Saturday Day 1:
- Arrived at the dock in Melbourne to embark the Pacific Sky @ 7am. I seemed to have a TINY bit more luggage than most people....jeez.
- Met my employees: my boss Joel (crazy aussie surfer type) great guy, Will (my roomate) from England...thick accent but awesome bloke, Anna (representing the Hungarians lol) I work with her the most she is awesome, Alison (south african I think) I dont know her much but she is pretty neat too, Szymon (shammon...lol ya...like how Michael Jackson says it) represents Poland..he is cool but hard to understand sometimes, and finally Ben (there always has to be a Ben...life just wouldn't seem right without one!)
- Joel shows me my room....bunk beds, a shoebox that passes for a closet (trust me its small), and a bathroom (3'x5' tops)...yippie...
- 2pm we set sail. 2:15pm I am nausius. 3pm I vomit. 4pm I work in the gallery selling prints. 5pm I vomit. 5:15pm I go to the medical centre and get a shot of "phenegran" in the ass. I pass out and sleep til morning.

Sunday (day 2):
- I wake up groggy but ok. I go to work and skip breakfast.
- "Formal Night"...Mike wears a Tux and takes "Sears" type portraits of everyone. It was fun, had softboxes and backdrops...and hot Aussie women....
- Got to bed @ 11pm

Monday (day 3):
- Feeling fantastic!
- work the gallery (basically in a store selling the prints that are displayed....prints are of passengers)
- I have heard 6 times on this cruise so far that I have an Irish accent....that makes me laugh. hard. (by the way I am typing this now on wednesday, and the talley is now up to 8. serious.)
- As everyone heads to the bars at night, I head to the passengers library and read "Tuesdays with Morris"....not a party pooper, I just didnt feel like partying....and you are right, Jenny, this book is amazing!

Tuesday (day 4):
- hit snooze button on alarm like 40 times and still made it to work on time (thats the wonderful part of living at work lol)
- worked at gallery, then decided to go up to the 11th floor and head to the gym....its iron pumping time! Then I went out to the deck and sunbathed for an hour or so with the passengers. Its amazing how you can look on any side of the ship and see nothing but ocean. I love how blue it is....(for crayon references, look up Ultramarine Blue...thats the color)
- bought an internet card and a phone card....scratched the back of the phone card to get my PIN number....and the number came off with it....!##%^@!!! not happy....they are fixing it now though so i will call people soon.
- it was Pajama night on the ship....(a note to the guys: 1500 passengers...approx. 700 are Aussie women ages 20-35.....now....picture them drunk in lingerie......and i get to photograph them!! envy me... envy me i say!!)
- I head to the Starlight Bar on 9th floor and its basically a giant rave....loud rave/house/trance/top40-remix hits....and everyone is a fool....it was so fun...and I drank...(by the way.....drinks are $1.00AUS for crew....I drank my fill for under 10 bucks)
- OLD PEOPLE were raving....I mean 70 year old guys were dressed in womens undergarments and dancing around with 20 year old women....I was so happy for them lol
- went to bed @ 2am, wrote all this stuff in my journal so i could type it later today.

We are heading into Ouvea tomorrow (Thursday, Australian time. I am a day ahead.) I will be spending 5 hours walking around sandy beaches and taking pics.... I dont know how I will be able to show you guys photos, but I will try... Talk to you all soon! please email me @ ike1@hotmail.com because I dont know how to check my other account yet ok? ciao!

Update to previous post...

This will be quick, my laptop is almost dead (no way of charging it until i get to the ship tomorrow). I wandered around taking pictures today, and had a total blast. Then I came back to the room, slept til 8:45pm, got a phone call saying I will be picked up at 6am tomorrow. I laughed. They were serious. i stopped laughing. Then I went to the restaurant and had supper (tortelini with red pepper sauce...damn that was good). Then I walked around the city for a while again. Tons of people out, its Friday night, so everyone is partying it up. Streets are
like Stephen Ave in Calgary, but add about 300 more people to it lol. Now I am back writing this, and then I will have a bath maybe and then hit the hay. I will keep everyone posted as to what is happening later on ok!? Goodnight people!

Melbourne, Australia!!

Hello world, I'm in Australia! Right now I am sitting in the hotel restaurant on the 2nd floor, drinking lemon water and looking at the busy street below. I am sitting here wearing shorts, flipflops (yes its january 27th and I am wearing flipflops) and I am waiting for my "Chicken Skewers in Peanut sauce over steamed ice with a mixed leaf salad". The street looks very busy with people running about, and everyone looks like a tourist haha. Oh, my food is here now. WOW, that IS peanutty, AND those leaves really ARE mixed! Damn that tastes good! Ok, so to fill you in on "how the trip was"-Left vancouver @ 5pm Wed (jan 25th)- Arrived in LA @ 7:40pm, proceeded direrctly to the new gate.- Saw a woman running around looking lost and frantic, and this other woman came up to her and said "excuse me, was that Ludacris that you were with earlier?". she replied with a "yes". Now I can see why she was frantic. If you were
'rolling' with one of the most famous rappers around and you LOST him? ya, panic. - Got through customs and had 3 hours to kill so I thought I would sit down and have a pint of the good stuff :)- the guy that I sat next to was Nathan. Nathan from Halifax, and going to
Melbourne on the same plane as I am to meet friends. Nathan has been sitting here
6 or 7 hours. Nathan is drunk. Nathan insisted on buying his new friend Michael
drinks.
Michael is drunk.
- Finally it was time to go to the gate, and after a few short....rather LONG minutes we were on the plane. - I sat between 2 guys, one of which looked like a criminal, and the other I found out later LOVES to cuddle strangers while he sleeps..- Many movie choices up in the plane, but I ended up switching between "wallace and grommit" and "the exorcism of emily rose" endlessly playing for about 6 of the 14 hours aboard the plane. The rest of the time consisted of eating,
sleeping, and "wow this guy likes to cuddle".
- Finally arrived in Melbourne @ 935am Friday, went through MORE customs (in 35C
heat by the way). No sign of Nathan. Nathan is probably still sleeping on the
plane. Poor Nathan.
(I have to pause the story for a second...a cop HERSE just drove by...is that what police cars look like here?..anyways, on with the story) Finally got my Luggage and this next part made me smile: There actually was a man waiting there for me, Holding up a sign with my name on it...well kinda. The sign seriously said "Mitchell Wachenann". We stared in silence at each other for a while, then I showed him my passport.
his reply: "Close enough...ok we're off then"and away we went.
This guy (already forget his name) was like a walking encyclopedia!!! Every block we drove past had a story! About 15 minutes later we arrived at the "Mecure Welcome Hotel". I said goodbye
to him and went to my room (816...great view...of a back alley). Took a few pictures of the amazing view and hopped online to email the family telling them I am alive and well. - Had a shower, shaved, called front desk to see what is included in my room (the cruise line paid for the room, had to see what else they paid for!). Turns out I have a $20 credit for lunch and a $30 credit for supper, which is why I am here...its lunch time (actually its almost bedtime now....I wrote this all during the day but only now am I typing it into my computer heehee). Now its back to the room, drop off the journal, grab the camera, and wander around aimlessly through the streets of Melbourne taking pictures. After that,back to the room to nap.

Aussie-bound!

Hey all, just filling everyone in quickly, and then I will write something meaningful later tonight. Tomorrow (Wednesday Jan 25th) I will be leaving Vancouver airport @ 5pm PST and arriving in Los Angeles @ 8pm PST. There, I will wander around until I find the appropriate gate for my next flight (and longest I have ever taken to date). At 11:15pm PST I will hop onto a big birdie and fly on its back for 15h10m and safely (knock on wood) arrive in Melbourne, Australia. With the time zone changes and what not, I will arrive @ 9:25am local time. I will then meet strangers (with a "Mr. Wachniak" sign no doubt lol) that will take me to my hotel. I am sure I will NEED to sleep the entire day away, but by a show of hands, who thinks I will barely make it to my room before I am running around the city taking pictures? :)

The next day (Saturday) I will be picked up early in the am and taken to my cruise ship "The Pacific Sky" and I will start my training and blah blah blah (ha ha)....

more later!

Fat baby face!!!

Ok so I looked through the family photos today...and I came across this....
The photo was very faded and discolored so I decided to snap a photo of it and do my best to restore it in photoshop for my mom (before shot on the left, after shot on the right). I think I did a pretty good job, it only took me a few minutes. Man oh man, would I make a sexy fat guy, eh?! Look at me! I think while I am gone for the next 6 months I am going to adhere to a strict diet of donuts and twinkies, and maybe when I get back and women see what I have transformed into....hee hee.

The story parallels that of a caterpillar. Nothing wrong with him at all, but just knows he can be better so he shells himself up inside a cocoon and the transformation begins. Time passes (in this case 4-6 months) and alas, as he is ready to return to civilization, the cocoon breaks apart and out emerges the most breathtaking, most beautiful butterfly anyone has ever seen!

Actually, this story more resembles that fat blob of a caterpillar on bug's life, but hey! Everyone loved him too lol.

The afterbath :)

So I'm out of the bath now....and no, nothing cool was thought. In fact, all I remember thinking was:

"Why the hell am I playing with toys in the tub?"

The good guys won by the way....they always do. I was never really a troubled child. Good always overcame the bad when it came to toys. Sometimes it was a tie, but the bad never won. Not that I remember. Maybe its surpressed, who knows? Oh well, I guess thats something I can discuss with my therapist when I am 50.

I giggled til the cops came...

Hey all, I haven't posted in a while so I thought I would post a link for all comedy-fans out there. I have been meaning to try out a few new podcasts for a while now, but as usual I forget or get distracted and go onto something else. I can usually blame the distraction on something shiny or springy. Anyways, I found a podcast called "Keith and the Girl", and I must say I have never laughed so hard by myself since.....well since I found that third nipple on my shoulderblade. These guys basically talk about whats in the news, and who's hot vs. who's not...a typical newscast. Having said that.....a word of advice: Kids should not be in the listening vicinity. When you download each 1-hour episode, you get this nice little "explicit" logo that pops up to warn you of what lurks ahead. What it should say is: "if dirty language was medicine, we could heal the world in a single episode".

The link to get the episodes and find out more is: http://www.keithandthegirl.com

There, now that I have shared with you guys, I feel better. I am going to have a bath, and maybe think of something else to write. Maybe something cool, but probably not.

Thanks for everything, Calgary

I just wanted to say Goodbye for now to all friends and foes in Calgary. 6 months may not seem like a long time to be gone, but it is the longest I have ever been away from home at one time plus I get very nostalgic, so I am really overdoing this.

I would really like to keep in contact with you all, so please drop a line to me now and then @ ike1@hotmail.com and I will try to do the same ok?

Be safe, be strong, and be free.

cheers,

Michael

'Deciphering Me' at a later date

As I wheel around the bend into the final stretch of my last days in Calgary (at least for a while), my mind seems to have lost grip of all day-to-day "mind-banter"....and all that is left for the moment are remnants of random song quotes... over and over as I walk through my day, songs pop into my head for no reason apparent to me...I thought I would write some down, to share, but more importantly to decipher myself at a later date. The world is nothing without at least an attempt at inner-analysis:

"I need a photo-opportunity I want a shot at redemption Don't want to end up a cartoon In a cartoon graveyard" - Paul Simon

"Janie sings on the corner, what keeps her from dying? Let 'em say what they want, but she won't stop tryin', oh you know. She might stumble, if they push her around. She might fall, but she'll never lie down ... it's not so bad.." - Great Big Sea

"Driftwood floats, after years of erosion. Incoming tide touches roots to expose them, Quicksand steals my shoe, Clouds bring the f-stop blues" - Jack Johnson

"There are nine million bicycles in Beijing. That's a fact. It's a thing we can't deny, Like the fact that I will love you till I die" - Katie Melua

"Smiled and said 'yes I think we've met before'. In that instant it started to pour, Captured a taxi despite all the rain We drove in silence across pont champlain And all of the time you thought I was sad I was trying to remember your name..." - Stars

"I'm a coward I'm neurotic I'm just tired of living in here I'm depressive I'm obsessive I'm just tired of living in fear " - Holly McNarland

"If you don’t need it every day But sometimes don’t you just crave To disappear within your mind You never know what you might find So come and spend some time with me And we will spend it all at sea" - Jamie Cullum

Another year over, and a new one just begun...

A bunch of random thoughts in lieu of another year gone by. It doesn't have to make sense. At least not now...

Its funny how much one changes, when nothing seems to have changed at all. The second bottle of champagne that I kept unopened in my fridge for 5 months before finally letting go of the past. The "Employment", the "I hate my job", the "Unemployment" stages, never seemed to be getting me anywhere. The friends I thought I would lose, the friends I thought I would never lose, and the friends that were right under my nose the entire time, not going anywhere. Never.

The hard parts are there to just make sure you're ready. Its all one big test. Preparation.

"Are you finally ready? Its hard out there, man. Here, take this. If you ever need anything, don't worry. We'll know. We always do. The signs are always out there, some just need the right light to see them. Are you sure you can paddle on your own? We'll be here if you need us. We're not going anywhere. Be strong. Try not to let the fire burn out. If it does though, don't worry. Its not your eyes that should be guiding you anyways. It your heart. When they are ready to show up, they will. And they will know. They will know everything you did. They will know everything about everything. And they will know that you are still here. Like I said about the hard parts, all they do is make sure you're ready."