My 23rd Birthday!

I guess I will start with the highlight of the week, my birthday. I started the week knowing that we were going to be busier than usual because of a corporate audit of the ship and special dinners and parties we had to do. I kind of thought I wouldn't do any more than have a drink in the PO bar with the chef. Well, I was wrong. All week everyone was talking about a big party. I was very excited. The exec chef asked me to cook some American food, so I did. Some of the guys cooked Filipino food and the sous chef gave us a bunch of beer and liquor and said have a good time. Wow did we ever have a good time. It was a great birthday. One of the guys brought his guitar and was playing all night. The guys in the galley gave me an apron after everyone had signed it as a present from all of them. It was pretty cool. The only thing was, I forgot to take pictures until the end when most people had left. Oh well, I certainly enjoyed myself.

We had a big meeting at the beginning of this week about how our ship's rating has been for the Alaska season. It turns out we are number one in the fleet for the season. We are doing very well, and it was good to hear that our hard work has been acknowledged. Now more than half way through the season we won't be having any more discussions about ratings. Which is good because we can all see them and it takes an hour out of the day to have these sit downs.

I finally went on a hike in Skagway. It was great to get out into the woods and breath some really fresh air. It was great to get a different view of things and to do something different. I mean for the last 11 weeks I have done almost the same thing consistently. I didn't see any wildlife, but the lake and the falls were amazing. I hope to go on the hike again this week and maybe take one of the other trails and share some more pictures.

In Ketchikan I was able to catch up with Martin again. He took me to his restaurant and cooked up a couple of burgers. We sat out on the patio had a beer and just chilled. It was nice to relax a little and enjoy eating a meal. Usually I have 10 or 15 minutes to eat, so it is almost difficult to remember exactly what I even ate. It is good to know someone at one of the ports.

I am headed back on the ship for another week of fun in the sun, ha ha just kidding. What sun, I almost never get out to see the sun, and most ports it is overcast and cloudy. But seriously, it's back to work and life on the ship.

My birthday

An apron, with the whole galley's signatures as a present for me

A pic from my hike

The eagle I saw in Skagway

The bear in Glacier Bay

Macaroni and Cheese - Literally

Well as another week went by a few interesting things have happened. Actually almost nothing did until last night. We have a Lobster Macaroni and Cheese on the menu and someone ordered it with no lobster. Our chef is Dutch and wasn't sure what this meant. The guests wanted just regular macaroni and cheese. The ordered was fired and he began to make it. He plate up some pasta and put some shredded cheese on top and into the salamander. Macaroni and cheese! I laughed so hard. So I quickly came to my good senses and made a plate of delicious macaroni and cheese for the guest. I mean, melted cheese on top of plain macaroni, I guess it is more of an American dish.

So I have been cooking plenty of steaks, in fact that is most of my job during service, but I still have an issue. Well done steak, I don't understand why people like it. It's like killing something that is already dead. It pains me to cook a piece of meat like this, but it is what some people like, I guess.

Well as my birthday is coming up everyone is starting to find out. They posted a sign with the July birthdays and and for this whole month so far everyone is saying, "happy birthday" all the time. I keep saying not yet, not yet. They are all excited for a party. But, honestly the best thing for me to do is maybe get some extra sleep. It sounds lame, but whatever man I just want some rest. I actually dream about resting when my contract is up. Weird.

As we sailed through Glacier Bay a couple of days ago, I walked outside to see the glacier. I have to say it wasn't as amazing as it was 2 months ago. It looked a lot dirtier, I mean the whole side was dark and muddy and it looked smaller. I am glad I was fortunate enough to see it when I did. Not that it still isn't an amazing sight.

I have to say I have definitely become comfortable in the kitchen. I play music every day, and we are all singing and dancing through the night. Not too bad considering there are times when we get so slammed I want to slap someone. Well anyways, it's fun and helps us all to have a good time.

So 10 weeks in, hurray double digits. 15 more to go. Well here's a quick list of interesting things. Having to jump on top of an elevator full of linen in order to get back to the kitchen. What a comfy ride. Joking about the word "banana" as it applies to anything. That thing on the table, banana. The order you keep asking for that is sitting in front of you, banana. I tell you it is driving me "bananas!" Having to make hollandaise everyday is making me really like the mother sauce much less than I used to. In Skagway I saw an American Bald Eagle perched on a tree. I will post pictures as soon as I can. At Glacier Bay I saw a bear. So that's pretty good for wild life scenery.

That's all for this edition of Cooking on the Deep Blue. Stay tuned for more updates.

What the Heck Just Happened

Well I guess I have to start with what just happened to me. So let me take you back about 20 minutes to me walking the streets of Vancouver. It's a hot sunny day here in the city and I was walking back from lunch to this coffee shop to get on the internet, and some guy comes up to me. Now first off he locked eyes with me and made a bee line straight for me, he was super skinny, and his teeth were rotted away. He started to talk to me, and I listened being the kind person I am, and went on and on. He said that he just got here from Australia and he was at the hotel with his wife and kid and they left without him. He had a job in Whistler that he needed to get to. But his passport was with his family, and he had cerebral palsy. It was an elaborate concoction that may or may not have been true, but he said he needed 14 bucks to get on the bus. I said I didn't have 14 bucks, but I had a couple dollars in change that I gave him. He continued to follow me for 2 blocks and press me to give him a 20 or go to the ATM, which I would not do. Finally, I said, "Look man I don't have that much money on me and I am not going to the ATM, I gave you a couple bucks and that's all I can do." He started flipping out and cursing at me that I was the reason he would lose his daughter and I just walked away. Whether or not it was the truth I don't know, but right from the beginning I had a feeling it was just a story. Well that is over with, thank goodness and on to this last week's adventures aboard the ship.

Like I said last week we passed our Canadian Public Health inspection with flying colors, and the only points we lost were from the engine room, which is obviously out of our control. So the chef invited all of the sous chefs to the bar and asked me to tag along. He was in such a good mood. He bought everyone beers several times over. It seems like I am on the good side of the chef and that is good news for me and makes my life easier. This way I am not getting checked on constantly and nobody gives me a hard time.

One thing I forgot to mention last week was I caught up with my friend Martin from the CIA in Ketchikan. He took me around the island and showed me his restaurant. It was a lot of fun, not to mention really cool to get the local view of things.

It was a nice week in the restaurant. We didn't have too many busy nights and nobody started yelling. A pleasant retreat from the previous week that seemed like hell. Not to mention our rating went up, I mean way up over the last week. This is good for us and that means we are less likely to here any bad news from the upper management. It's funny how if your ratings are good they don't bother you, but they don't say congratulations either, but if they go down even a little they are all over you.

I have finally realized that my job in the restaurant, well all of our jobs in this restaurant, give us the "good life." Compared to all of the other galley cooks we have it made. More break time and it's not as crazy and hectic. I mean we do work really hard, but we can manage to make it civil and almost enjoyable at times. A lot of the guys get on our case about living the good life. My chef says that this contract for him is a vacation compared to his last one where his time off was maybe an hour if he was lucky on his 17 hour days. I guess my 12 or more hour days don't seem so bad.

A couple things I have noticed over the last few weeks. One is that time is moving way faster than my first couple of weeks. 9 weeks down already. Another is there is a monitor in the kitchen that shows all of the meal information for the dinners, number ordered, remaining, served, etc. It also shows the number of passengers on board and off board, and the same with crew. It's funny to see how sometimes there is like 400 crew on board and maybe 100 passengers. And then at certain times at port you can just watch the crew numbers drop so far in a matter of minutes. One of the key desserts served is of course the Baked Alaska. I have seen it every day for 2 months, and would you believe that I have never had one before. So I asked our pastry guy Willy to get me one. It was pretty darn tasty I have to say. The last item of note is rough sea. Sometimes the ship is really moving left and right, this means everything slides and can fall to the floor. The other day a stack of plates just slid off the counter and shattered. Also in this sense you really can walk uphill both ways or vice versa.

The really good news is that Willy was able to extend his contract and instead of leaving today he is here until the end of September. He is a key part of this awesome team in the restaurant. They didn't tell him he could stay until last night. What timing huh.

Every week the hold a big Dessert Extravaganza up on the Pool Deck. They surround the pool with a bunch of tables and decorations, and then fill it up with sweets of plenty. There are ice carvings and chocolate sculptures. It was awesome. I posted some pics here.

Overall everything is going much smoother now that things have settled down with the changes is staff. I am starting to like it here more and more.

Dessert Extravaganza

Hanging out at the Dessert Extravaganza (what a fun word)

The Dessert Extravaganza - There were a lot of desserts!

The Lumberjack Show

A Lobster Party!

A Great Day

Well today was a great and interesting day. Yes I am here in Vancouver yet again. First of all I will say that the weather is the best I have seen so far. It is quite enjoyable. A sunny, clear blue sky, and not to hot and a nice breeze. Ahhh.... What a way to relax after a crazy busy week.

First of all since day 1 of this last cruise we've been busy. We constantly were overbooked because the manager wanted to make his target, and I think exceed it since we did. We could have closed the last 2 days and still made the target. I think he is pushing it since we have 2 extra servers that will leave in 3 weeks and then we will drop down to the usual reservation numbers.

I got my first haircut on this ship one night. I was curious as to how everyone of the crew got the hair cut. I asked around only to find that on some nights down on the B deck, the bottom of the ship, I could find someone cutting hair in one of the hallways. I searched but could find no one. I talk to my roommate who called the guy and told me to run down because he was almost done. So down in the bowels of the ship there sat a chair in front of a mirror hanging on a door with hair scattered all over the floor. I sat down and realized the guy cutting my hair was one of the vegetable cooks from the main galley kitchen. He used to work in a restaurant near a barber shop and went in on his time off and learned to cut hair. He did a better job than I have gotten at any chain place in the states, and it was only 5 bucks. The craziest thing was he used a double edged safety razor to trim the sides. I have never seen that before. And with my sweet new haircut I went back to my cabin.

The new chef has been really great so far. He likes to joke around and have fun in the kitchen, which I like to do as well. But he knows what he's doing and is very good at. There is a saying that is kind of a joke here and it is when one person says, "Why you like that?" the answer is "because eh". I think its funnier with the accents and the expression on peoples' faces, but I always find it quite amusing.

We have these random meetings sometimes called 5 minute trainers where the whole kitchen rallies in the main galley and listens to the sous chef talk about a different safety item. Well this week I came like two minutes early and one of the guys had his laptop on one of the stations and he usually listens to music, but not this time. This time everyone was crowded around watching something. The speaker accidentally went on, and I knew what it was. I started cracking up. I let you guess what they were watching. But when the sous chef came out of his office to start he saw it and yelled at all of them to, "Stop that, Stop that right now!" over and over again. It was funny.

We had the 4th of July here on the ship. It certainly wasn't the party that the Filipino Independence Day was. A crowd of people gathered in the Officer's Bar. Some decoration were hung and an American flag cake was on the table. It was nice just to grab a beer and hang out, but I was a little let down. No BBQ or Fireworks this year.

Today I was prepping in the kitchen when the Culinary Operations Manager or COM, came running through the kitchen yelling, "Zero, Zero....Zero, Zero!" This meant the Canadian Public Health Department was on board for the inspection. We rushed to clean everything up, and put things away. I had to hold off on my prep for an hour because of this. And as we patiently awaited our judgement, they walked to all of the kitchens. Guess what, they didn't come to our kitchen. All of that and they totally bypassed our kitchen. Well I am sure we did well. But that was just crazy.

Now I am just enjoying the free time I have before I must return to work. 8 weeks down and 17 to go. I'm impressed that I have made it this far already. A lot of the guys respect me a little more because I haven't left yet. Usually any "Westerner" that comes for a contract here leaves after the 1st or 2nd week. So they have welcomed me into their group. It definitely makes things easier.