Hap Working The World

The title to this post, “what day is it today?” is the question I asked my co-workers whilst inhaling our food at the crew mess before rushing to work. Out of the five of us, not one of us knew. Why? Because every day is the same, it’s Groundhog Day. My body calendar is controlled by laundry day which falls on every second day. Watch the above video for a day in the life of an assistant waiter onboard a 6 star Antarctic cruise ship.

My body clock is all over the show as I wake up and go to sleep three times a day. Sometimes when that droning beep beep beep brings me from my dream land where I’m frolicking naked in a field of daisy’s back into my dark coffin like top bunk it’s not until I look at the time I realise if it’s breakfast, lunch or dinner.

On one occasion I turned up to the crew mess before work, my immaculately groomed and dressed head waiter approaches me and says “Mark what’s wrong with your shirt?”. I thought he was talking about the fact my shirt was missing a button so I start on a big rant about how my shirt came back from the laundry missing a button and how I hadn’t been able to find the tailor to fix it etc. He just smiles and says “Mark it’s dinner time, you’re wearing your lunch uniform!” – classic, I totally thought it was lunch time, awesome I just gained half a day!

Our days are totally dependent on the expedition landings ie if we are at sea or if we are in Antarctica and the guests are doing outings on the zodiacs which can start as early 5.30am. We start breakfast between 4am and 7am, and this goes for 3-4 hours. For lunch we start work at midday and work another 3 -4 hours. For dinner we start at 6.45pm and work 5-6 hours until around midnight. This schedule is very taxing as it takes up the whole day. I have worked the oil rigs and Australian mines where I worked 12 hour days, but it is a shift, 6am to 6pm and you can have coffee breaks etc during the day, and then at the end of the day I had 12 hours off, I had time to relax, go to the gym, watch a movie etc. But with the cruise ship lifestyle my work is spread over the whole day and at most I will have 6 hours continuous sleep.

When I’m at work, I work! There is no relax time, there is no standing around the water cooler or making a coffee. You start 30 minutes before opening preparing everything for the guest’s arrival, everybody is rushing to be ready for when the doors open, then the 132 guests are there and everybody is stressed trying to meet the orders. Then the guests leave and everybody is going flat out trying to clean and finish up so we can have more time to sleep.

In this job you take whatever chance you get to sleep. The lifestyle is a work/sleep lifestyle, and any landings you do, or crew parties you attend come at a great sacrifice to sleep. In this job there are no days off. You get a breakfast duty off roughly once a week, so you will finish dinner service at midnight, you have breakfast off, but you still have to start back at midday, so a “day off” is only 12 hours off which isn’t much if you want to tidy your cabin, do your laundry, sleep, have breakfast and get ready for work.

The lifestyle to me is a very unhealthy, you’re constantly running on empty due to lack of sleep and pushing yourself to the limit and at times it feels as though your body is shutting down. It was common for me to have a couple of ibuprofen before going to dinner service to dull the headaches and back pain (I only have myself to blame for this a I didn’t disclose my back accident in my medical- there was no way I was going to have my dream taken away from me when I was that close by failing a medical!).

For me it as though the skinny get skinnier and the fat get fattier! I have 6 meals a day because I also eat the left over’s from the dining room, and Annemarie the pastry chef is trying to fatten me up with 4 desert portions after dinner, but still I look like the Save the Children Fund pin up boy. Just check out the photo below from my polar plunge, there are two 12 year old bodies, the only difference is that one of them actually belongs to a 28 years old – haha.

Obviously the crew food is not 6 star, we get served various kinds of slop that usually takes on a different shade of brown and the salad bar usually consists of lettuce, and some tomato and cucumber if we are lucky. But I cannot complain as I said the dining room teams gets to help themselves to the left over buffets.

Many times I hear “Mark you look tired”, more accurate would be “Mark it looks like you have been on a 5 day sleepless herion bender”. But for me, bags under the blood shot eyes and looking tired is part of the uniform; it would be more out of the ordinary to be told “Mark you don’t look tired”.

To conclude this post, the cruise ship lifestyle is far from glamorous, you are made to earn every cent, you appreciate every minute of sleep in a Groundhog Day routine. The other reality is that you don’t get to see the world; you get to see the inside of a cruise ship.

When I disembarked from the cruise ship at 5pm on Friday in Ushuaia (Argentina) I had 72 hours to exit the country. For these 72 hours I was the responsibility of the company’s local port agent. The port agent had organised me a bus ticket leaving at 5am on Monday morning (most crew members fly out on the first flight back to their homes, but I had wanted the cheapest option to exit Argentina). When he came to my hostel and handed me my passport, bus ticket and all the immigration papers he had got notarised showing that I was leaving the country his last words to me as he left were “DON’T MISS THE BUS”.

You probably know where this is going………………I missed the bus. What makes this even more comical is that at 1.30am that morning as I was saying good bye to friend Vikky I remember answering her concern that I had to catch the bus in less than 4 hours with a “I’ve travelled for 7 years and I’ve never missed a bus (not totally truthful, once in Mexico I thought I could wait all night in the bar and then catch the 6am boat – I found out I couldn’t).

For whatever reason my alarm clock didn’t go off, maybe that reason was the red wine, maybe it was the 1.80 metre male that goes by the name of Hap, or maybe it was little alarm clock turning off lepricorns. Anyway, I ended up waking at 5.28am with a sinking feeling in my stomach that sunk even further when I turned my cell phone on and saw the time.

I grabbed my pack and took off out the dorm room door hoping that the bus driver was a true Argentinean and would be running late. I got to the street corner where it was leaving from, and my stomach sunk even further so that the turtle was poking his head out. No bus. In most places in the world this would be no problem, just go to the bus station and buy a ticket for the next bus. But you have to remember that I’m in Ushuaia, not just any place in the world, but the proclaimed “end of the world”. There is no bus station and the bus to Chile only leaves 3 times a week at 5am on a Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

I weight up my options to exit the Argentina by 5pm when my 72 hours would be up, or should I say “option”. As the sun rose over Ushuaia where I had arrived 3 months previously, I stuck my thumb out and started the walk to the main (the only) highway out of town.

After an hour of walking, feeling cold, cramps in my hitch hiker thumb and battling to fight the weight of my eye lids who were striking due to the lack of sleep the previous night I decided to ring my port agent. You can imagine my poor port agents joy as he is woken at 7am on a Monday morning by an incoming call from the client he told “don’t miss the bus”. “I missed the bus, I’m really sorry, I’m trying to hitchhike but there isn’t much traffic”, “Urrgghhhh, OoooooooK, come back to town, go to the hostel and wait, I’ll talk to my boss and then call you”.

As Murphy ’s Law has it, I turn around and start to hitch back into town and was picked up by the first car. I arrive back at the hostel and bee-line it to the hostel reception couch where I give into my eye lids protest, drifting off while grasping my cell phone like a rescue rope to a drowning victim.

The tug of the rescue rope wakes me from my shallow daze, “Hello Mark, I have talked to my boss, the next bus doesn’t leave until Wednesday, but he thinks you can probably use the same immigration paper but will have to pay an overstaying fee or they may hold you at the boarder”. Ok, there are two phrases in that sentence that didn’t really fill me with reassurance, the first being “overstaying fee” which usually translate to “let’s screw this foreigner for all he is worth” and “hold you” which from previous experience in America has led to a windowless concrete room with a room mate by the name of Philip who is staying in the room due to drug trafficking allegations.

I go to the hostel reception, which by the way if you go to Ushuaia make sure you stay at Hostel Antarctica, this was my home for a month before I found my job on the cruise ship, Gabriel and staff are awesome. Maia the receptionist rings around and confirms that there are no more buses leaving for Chile until Wednesday, but there is a bus leaving at 11am to Rio Grande that is 3 hours out of town.

So that was my only option if I wanted a chance at reaching the Chilean boarder by 5pm that night. My plan was that I could get 3 hours sleep on the bus and then try my luck hitch hiking from Rio Grande to the Chilean boarder.

After 3 hours of bumpy of/off bus sleep I arrive in Rio Grande where the bus driver drops me at a truck stop and farewells me with good news that the Chilean boarder is only an hour and half away (My original bus ticket had been for Punto Arenas in Chile, which turns out is 6 hours into Chile from the boarder). Awesome, I can make it before 5pm.

After an hour and a half of sitting on my pack with my thumb out in the chilling Tierra Fuego wind I required a coffee. I went across the road to the car wash that had a little kiosko attached to it. I sit at one of the three rickety tables set in a black painted concrete wall car wash that is decorated with photos of the owner with various rally driving stars. Despite the sign advertising coffee in the window there is no coffee so I settle for a cold beer to warm my soul. The rally driving owner gives me advice to walk a kilometre down the road to a round-a-bout, as there all the traffic will be leaving for “la frontera de Chile”.

As I exit the rally photo clad black walled car wash with an Argentinean Quilmes cerveza brewing in my stomach I stick out my thumb as I start the 1 km walk to the round-a-bout where I should have more luck. Within a minute a 2 door silver VW sports car pulls over on the busy road and honks it horn signalling me to hurry up. Under the weight of my pack, I rush to the waiting car like a person rushing to the movie theatre toilet after watching Lord of the rings and consuming a jumbo sized coke.

Middle aged Claudio and Ricardo who are on their way to Rio Gallegos on the Argentinean mainland pick me up (You have to go through Chile to get to the Argentinean mainland from Tierra del Fuego). They aren’t that talkative but from Claudio’s driving I know that he has driven the gravel road many times before and I conclude in my restless mind that they are mafia men going to the mainland to smuggle illegal foreigners back into Tierra del Fuego. As we arrive at the boarder set amongst sheep paddocks with fluffy white clouds floating in the blue sky I look at my cell phone clock, 5pm, perfect.

A bus had just pulled up before us so there was a big queue of tourists waiting to be processed. Claudio kindly ushers me into the Argentinean nationals queue with him and fast tracks me to the front of the queue saying hello to all the immigration staff with their first names, confirming my people smuggling thoughts – or more likely he’s just a friendly guy that drives that road a lot and feels sorry for a freezing cold foreigner on the side of the road. With Claudio at my side I show them all my immigration crew visa papers that my port agent had given me 72 and ¼ hours beforehand, and after a minute of perusing them they stamp my passport and signal me to leave with Claudio.

Later on we arrive at a narrow fast flowing body of water that Claudio tells me is the channel between continental South America and the island of Tierra del Fuego at the end of the world. We board a car ferry and Claudio get outs to pay, talking to a couple of Chilean military guys along the way.

20 minutes later we arrive on continental South America and drive a further hour through the flat farm lands until we arrive at an intersection. Claudio pulls over, waves down the passing truck which is driven by the Chilean army guys, throws my back pack in there, gives me a kiss that I think was held for a bit too long for the amount of time we had known each other and wishes me good travels and then he speeds off in the direction of mainland Argentina.

I squeeze into the back seat of the 4 door pickup truck beside white polystyrene boxes with “fresco” stamped on them – Fresca means fresh, but I never did ask what fresh contents the boxes housed. Military uniform clad Giraldo and Nicolas occupied the front seats and were very friendly and enjoyed the unusual company of the guy from Nueva Zelanda.

A couple of hours later around 9.30pm as the sun was thinking about exiting the sky we reached the cross roads of Punta Arenas (the destination of my missed bus ticket) and Puerto Natales. I decided to get out at this cross roads in the middle of nowhere and try my luck at getting a ride the further 193km to Puerto Natales, the home of the famous “Torres del Paine” hike, which is rated by national geographic as one of the top 50 things you have to experience before you die.

As I jump out of the truck into the unobstructed wind that rips across the flat barren Chilean farm land I see there isn’t much traffic. As the sun goes to sleep I realise I’m better off at setting up camp than trying my luck with the next to nothing traffic.

I doze off to sleep with the intermittent roar of a semi truck passing a 5 metres away and the constant thread that the roaring wind is going take my wind sock designed cheap Paraguayan tent fly into the night sky.

All goes well through the night; my fly stays intact and the dark rain clouds that loomed in the distance as I went to sleep stayed in the distance. I wake to the noise of passing morning traffic, and the cold even though I’m wearing my thermals, woollen hat and 3 sweat shirts. I have my breakfast which consists of some “CHILLean” water and eat the remainder of my night before dinner that was a packet of crushed water crackers. I break down my camp and set up my new camp beside the isolated narrow highway, doing some back exercises to try and keep me warm against the unrelenting wind that this area is famous for.

After not long Franciso, a Punta Arenas born and bred local picks me up on his way to Puerto Natales. For a couple of hours we chat away and he tells me all about the surrounding area. As we glide through the Chilean plans mythical condors fly above us and the funny wild lama like animals that look like the result of a night spent between a sexually frustrated horse and shaggy sheep roam the road side.

Finally I reach small welcoming Puerto Natales, 19 hours after I was meant to, but also a lot more memories than I was meant to as well! The end, or is it the start

OK folks, as you read this I am probably just starting my 9 day Torres del Paine hike (providing my back can handle carrying the 9 days of supplies and my cheap tent handles the 100km+ wind and rain). But don’t worry hapworkingtheworld.com will continue, I have queued up my 2 final Antarctica posts to fill the 9 day gap. So enjoy and I will catch you in 10 days or so.

Nuthin but love Hap

My ship is not merely a luxury cruise ship but classifies itself as a ultra luxury ship. The video below is a photo tour of my ultra luxury crew cabin.

 From the video you can see that it makes my time working in the mines of Western Australia look like a holiday resort. In the mining camp (and my mining camp was one of the more derelict camps compared to some) I had my own room and ensuite that was cleaned twice weekly, a complete gym, a swimming pool, a bar that was opened every day and a window!

Maybe because I was use to the good life of Oil rig and Mining camps I was a bit of a snob. Don’t get me wrong, the crew quarters were fine for me, I’m more than content as long as I can sleep horizontally (photo below is me writing a blog post in my top bunk). Remember I lived with Barnz for two months in a sedan car eating at soup kitchens and bathing in a river while we were looking for work in Canada.

Living on the cruise ship made me realise how good the living conditions were in the mines and rigs. Obviously there isn’t as much room on a cruise ship as there is in the vast Australian desert. Maybe I’m just a spoiled ex mining brat but It was the little attentions to detail that were missing on the cruise ship. For example not having your cabin cleaned (officers have their cabins cleaned). This sounds a little niggly and picky, but when you don’t have days off and only have limited time to sleep, cleaning your cabin, changing your linen etc becomes very annoying – haha and to think some guys in the mines used to complain about having to place their porn mags in a draw so it didn’t offend the cleaners.

Little things like this just add to the feeling of being unappreciated. On top of this they have cabin inspections to make sure you do it and then post the results of the inspection. The most annoying part was that there is no real system in place to make it easy for you. For example there’s one vacuum cleaner for 60 people and when I asked for a simple thing like toilet paper people could not give me a definite answer of where to get it from, so I had to revert to steeling it from the guest toilets late at night.

OK, once again my post is coming across as rather negative. I appreciated my little bunk, it was more than sufficient, it was my little haven; at times it felt like heaven. What it comes down to is that I was only in my cabin to sleep, and if I wanted to chill out I would go to the crew mess or join the other crew members in the corridor for a beer. I just wanted to show the contrast between the mining camps and the cruise ship lifestyle. And you can imagine the contrast between my crew cabin and the $20,000+ suites 5 floors above me!

This morning I woke at 9am in the hostel room that had been my home for a month all those weeks ago. I walked out onto the veranda and looked at the cruise ships majestically resting in the port like well fed posh show cats being carried around in hand bags. The same glamorous cruise ships a couple of months ago I looked at and yearned to be on, the ships that I would of done anything to be working on – the cruise ships I did everything to be on!

So how did I feel looking at them? People have asked me if I was disappointed leaving my contract early. The answer is simple, no. Life is too short to be doing something you don’t like, even though I wanted it for sooooo long, this is not reason enough to stay doing something that doesn’t fulfil you. This is one thing I took away from my Paraguay chapter, you have to do things that make you happy, and if you’re not happy, make change.

There were times yesterday when I was working with all the smiling faces that I had spent all my waking moments with over the past couple of months and thought to myself “I could stay on and work” – why is it when you are leaving you think you could do more and forget all those times where you wanted nothing more but to leave?

But that was short lived, as soon as I exited the port gates like a prisoner walking into the free world after serving a sentence I felt a sense of freedom! I watched the floating cage head out into the Beagle channel for another 11 day sentence, and I was glad I was not onboard. I knew exactly what my work mates would be doing, masking their tiredness with the same smiles they had used that morning to farewell the guests only to welcome the new guests.

But the one thing I felt more than anything, was privileged. In a previous post I used material from my editor (that sounds flash – by the way he hasn’t edited this post as he’s away at the kiwiburn music festival so you have to put up with my spelling mistakes) about being privileged.

I felt privileged leaving the ship as I was in the position where I had a choice to leave, I have other options to earn money and have a quality lifestyle and be with my girlfriend and friends and visit family or go and travel. Whereas my fellow Filipino work-mates, they do not. Everyone has a choice, but not everyone has the options available.

OK, so what I’m I trying to say here. The ship’s dining room and galley team is made up of about 90% Filipino, 5% Ukrainian and 5% mix of Indian and other nationalities with myself and the Head chef the only English as first language employees.

I have nothing but respect for my smiling hardworking co-workers. In my previous posts I complained about pay, I complained about long hours, less sleep/more work lifestyle etc. But the reality is that all my Filipino co-workers are paid less than me and are contracted for at least 8 months. For example I was on $1,500 a month (70 hour weeks with an over-time of $2.64/hr) as an assistant waiter, but my Filipino assistant waiters were on $1100, obviously this is a lot of money back in the Philippines, 3-4 times more than they can earn there, but we do the same job.

I lasted not even 2 months on the ship, 52 days without a day off (we have “mornings” off every now and then) but my colleagues they have 8 month contracts. But their contract is never over until they receive the company issued plane ticket and a lot of the time the employees have their arms tied and have to work additional months as there are no replacements. What can they do, they need to stay in the companies good books so they can gain another contract. I suppose they could quit and use 2 months wages to buy a ticket back to the Philippines (sarcasm).

Is this exploitation? I was going to call this post “expedition cruise ship or exploitation cruise ship”? I have times where I have my university economics/business tailor made hat fighting for the crown position with my yellow red and green Rastafarian dreadlocked peace and love beanie for the answer to this question. But I didn’t call it this because what it comes down to is that everyone has a choice, no one is forced into this position. Although I still believe their position is taken advantage of.

Why are there no foreigners like me on board? Simple, we wouldn’t and don’t put up with the conditions and treatment? There are foreigners onboard, but they are on the expedition team or in higher positions, they are on shorter contracts more lifestyle friendly contracts ie 3 months on 3months off. I’m sure they wouldn’t except being told that they have to say on for another month because they can’t find a replacement. I’m not the first foreigner who has came and worked in the dining room tream, got frustrated at the conditions and treatment and left, in fact it seems to be the norm.

Another reason I have a tremendous amount of respect for my colleagues and feel privileged is because they are all away from families, and when I mean families I also mean sons and daughters. There are many couples working on the ship with children back in the Philippines who are being looked after by family members. For example one of my work mates has been on the ship 9 months and has a 10 month old daughter at home, and he only talks to his wife and 2 daughters twice a month as it costs $20 for 32 minutes on the phone, and for the lower paid positions such as a dining room utility (vacuums and cleans etc) that only earn $670 a month, $20 is a substantial amount of money!

This is not a lone example, this is the norm, every Filipino worker is working for their family back home whether it is for their children or parents or other relatives. Another example is one of my co-workers and his wife have worked majority of their lives on the cruise ship, they have 4 children at home and even a grandchild, and they are away for 8 months at a time and been doing this all their life.

Many of my co-workers talked about the dream of coming to New Zealand or Australia and working, and some even have applications underway. This is why I feel privileged, it’s too easy to take what we have for granted! They carry photos of their families in their cell phones and wallets, they put up with the work environment and at times the verbal abuse as they have no other option, and this I have nothing but respect for them, and to turn up each day with a smile on the face is a credit to them

So my plan now that I’m in the free world? I have been able to change my departure date from Argentina for March. I will be heading into Chile on Monday as with my crew visa I have to exit Argentina in 72 hours. I will do some hiking, although I’m not sure how this will go as one thing I learnt from my time working as an assistant waiter carrying heavy trays etc was that my back is still and will never be the same after my accident a couple of years ago where I fractured my vertebrae. Maybe some hitch hiking, but I will be back in Paraguay by Feb 23rd when Mandy gets back from the States.

Ok folks, I have just typed 1,347 grammatically jumbled words to say “I feel privileged”. Best I shut up now, more posts on the cruise ship lifestyle and living quarters coming up.

OK, so I might say my job is the worst job I have ever had, blah blah, but it’s not all doom and gloom. Every now and then there’s a sunbeam that shines through the routine, and yesterday was one of them. Yesterday was a day that will go down as one of my more memorable days of work. Let me share it with you to give you a little ray of light amongst my dark posts.

Within the dining room crew my nickname is Tourist Boy. This is because I always go on the landings when the opportunity arises and I’m always taking photos as www.hapworkingtheworld.com is a full time operation, haha. Since I started my blog I have evolved with my camera in my pocket. I’ve mentioned previously my work mates are on the ship to work, and I’m here to experience the great wonder that is Antarctica.

So when my boss asked the dining room team who wanted to work the afternoon serving champagne to the guests, everyone said “Tourist Boy will!” And I was like, “hell yeah, Tourist Boy will!”

Why was I so excited to serve champagne? Because I was to be serving champagne outside, in the picturesque Le’ Maire channel, while in a Zodiac dinghy.

The afternoon was spent zipping through this spectacular channel between sculpture-like icebergs, watching leopard seals and taking in the sublime beauty. Oh yeah, and of course serving the odd glass of champagne now and then.

As often as I paint a gloomy picture, this particular day was definitely one of those “I’m so lucky” moments. In fact, this entire last cruise has been like that, while I’m doing all my “lasts.” It seems it’s always the way, that when you know you’re leaving you start to appreciate everything so much more.

OK, enough of this lovey-dovey blog post! Back to “living the nightmare” – I really have to stop watching Fox news!

On my first day of work one of the crew members said to me, “welcome to hell.” Another said, “welcome to Prison Andrew.” (The cruise ship I’ve been working is the Prince Andrew) Yet another told me, “If you can work on this ship you can work on any cruise ship.”

Let me take that last comment and explain it a bit more:

• Antarctic Expedition ships are smaller. We have 132 guests and around 120 crew. The ship is roughly 110m (360ft) in length. Other cruise ships range between 500-5000 guests and are more like floating cities. The upshot is that a small ship means a smaller crew, and therefore fewer crew facilities like the crew gym pictured below, which is basically a wardrobe with a bench press in it (although we may use the passenger gym after 10pm).

   

  

  Then there’s the bar. In most cruise ships you will find a 24-hour bar. Our crew bar (pictured below) is open about three times per cruise, and also doubles as a storage area.

  

   

  Having said that, once per cruise we have an open bar and it always gets quite lively (I’m not even going to try and explain the photo below).

   

  

   

• No regular port landings. In most cruise ships passengers will regularly be in ports every couple of days. However, on an Antarctic Expedition ship for the five-month Antarctic season we have the same schedule: eleven days on board the ship; one day in Port Ushuaia where we unload passengers in the morning and embark the new passengers in the afternoon; and then leave again for another eleven day cruise.

   

   

• A floating prison. Given the above conditions you could imagine that, at times, the ship really can feel like a prison… but I’m an anomaly. I’m the crew member that gets off the boat most often, and this is because I’m here primarily to experience Antarctica, whereas my colleagues are here primarily to work and earn money— although, this comes at great sacrifice, as I have to give up valuable sleeping time. Most of the dining room team would not go outside for the entire eleven days until we get back to Ushuaia. I must add here that the expedition team is very accommodating about getting crew (like me) ashore when we have Antarctic landings. If our breaks coincide with landings, we can usually set foot onto the great white Continent.

   

  

   

• The dangerous Drake Passage. The 800km wide passage between Cape Horn, Chile, and the Shetland Islands near the Antarctic Peninsula in latitudes where there are no significant landmasses. This means that the Antarctic circumpolar currents which carry a huge volume of water (600 times greater than what’s in the Amazon River), squeezes through the narrow passage creating turbulent currents and giving it a notorious reputation as one of the roughest seas in the world.

   

• Seasickness. We spend four out of our eleven days of the cruise in the Drake Passage, where swells can get as large as fifteen to twenty metres, but so far I’ve only experienced ten-metre swells. A large majority of passengers get seasick and surprisingly a lot of the crew as well. It’s a regular occurrence on the Drake Passage to see waiters go out back, throw up, clean themselves up, slap a smile back on their face and then to go back out to continue serving. Fortunately I do not suffer from sea sickness, and quite enjoy the challenge of trying to carry plates and trays in the slow, swaying rock of the ship, as it is a novelty in the otherwise tedious routine. This is not to mention that usually half the passengers are seasick so it makes things a little less busy and stressful!

 Once you’ve lived the dream of working in Antarctica, what’s left?

The answer is: “Just another job.”

I’ve always liked the quote: “We have too many people who live without working, and we have altogether too many who work without living.” Dean Charles R. Brown said that, about a hundred years ago.
I remember sitting in a café in Paraguay drinking terere and watching the young boys outside with their horse and cart sifting through the curb side rubbish and writing that I was craving work and routine after nearly 10 months of no real work. I should say, though, that I hadn’t just been sitting around playing my dreadlocks and being a hippy—I gained my Dive Master qualification and studied Spanish; travelled around Thailand with friends in our rented 4×4 navigating mountain paths, hired scooters in the north east of Malaysia, snowboarded in Argentina, and caught a ride on a cargo boat in Paraguay and camped out with the carnival folk in Concepcion to name a few; and “worked” full-time looking for employment in the Antarctic.

Now my life is a polar opposite (no pun intended). I’ve worked the past fifty days on the cruise ship without a day off, and every day I’ve worked over ten hours. Only a couple of times I’ve worked the more customary eight-hour day.

I don’t mind working long hours, but I’d prefer to be enjoying the long hours I work, which is not easy to manage in my current setting. This is no surprise when with fifteen people (as we have in the dining room team) working together for every waking moment, 10–12 hours a day without days off, working in tense & high-paced environment while suffering from lack of sleep… The job is not always going to be an enjoyable one. Because we’re together every waking hour, as well as getting everyone’s good moods we also get to experience and share the bad moods. I know I’ve had my days, and that’s only natural.

Don’t get me wrong— I enjoy the work itself, being an assistant waiter, and interacting with and serving the passengers. But it is the disrespect, the bad work environment, the more work/ less sleep lifestyle, the lack of any down- time, poor pay, being a foreigner on the ship, and the generally unhealthy lifestyle that I don’t like— that is, it’s the system, not so much the people. So for these reasons, I have handed in my letter of resignation; this is my final cruise. I have lived the dream, I can tick the box. I don’t want my dream to turn into a nightmare, and end up remembering it for the wrong reasons.