Most of my first Mexican Rivera Cruise!

It’s been almost an entire cruise since I’ve updated. I need to break this long extended habit and get down to at least once every other day! But I’ll write for each day!

Saturday, October 10th was an interesting day. I got up around 11:30 and ate lunch, and then got cleaned up with the intentions to play 2 to 4 on the Lido deck. I went and sat on the 2nd deck and checked my internet on my phone since it was in service. But what I noticed was we were quite a ways from the port. I didn’t think it’d be possible to have people on the ship by 2 at the rate we were going. When I got upstairs and got to setting up, a huge table was in the middle of the stage, but I didn’t want to mess with it incase it was something important. I set up around it and then Peter, my boss, came up and said we wouldn’t be in port until 2:30 and people won’t be on ‘til around 3.
He helped set up the sound and all that and said I could just wait ‘til 3. So I called up Felicia. Our conversation was cut short by loss of service? Not on my end, I had full bars! Then I called Nick and talked with him for a bit about the radio push. I filled him in on the pictures I ordered, and the cds and all that. I definitely had to give a lot of credit to Amanda for really getting this going. She’s quite a determined girl.
After I got off the phone with him, it was about 3, so I got on stage to play. No one was there except workers. And the ship had JUST parked. So, I played for the workers. They requested songs and I played. Svetlana, a girl I met at the last jam, was there and she requested “You’re Beautiful” by James Blunt. I think that made her day. Agnes asked for “Last Kiss”, and then I just warmed up my voice. My voice was seemingly back to normal after five days of crap.
My connection to my voice and being outside is, that every time I go outside to play, my voice clears up after a couple of hours and feels fine. So I’m going to need to make a note to go outside at least for a half hour a day and just breathe.
At about 3:40 the first passengers walked by, and seemed into the music. I noticed a lot more kids walking around than I’ve seen on all my cruises combined. Good sign for me and the crew, because we were going to have real shows and make some good money!
At 4, I finished up and ran downstairs to get my ID, and headed for the gangway. As I was about to get off, our new cruise director, Stu, was getting on. I asked how he was doing since a couple weeks ago, he got the mumps. He said he felt a bit better, but he did have a loss of color from the last time I saw him. When getting outside a woman was there and she asked if I wanted to go to crew services, or out into town. I asked what the first was, and she said it’s a little center with free internet, phone and all that for the crew. I truly just wanted to get the hell out of the area, so I went into town. I called my dad and filled him in on everything. I walked around San Diego for awhile looking for some type of mall with food and all that. After walking a long circle and ending the conversation, I finally saw it. But I gotta say, from the walk around town, I was very surprised to see how many homeless people live on sidewalks, in tents and all that.
When I got to the mall, it was a complete outside mall. It was 3-4 stories high, with all the ships lined up going back and forth. All exposed to the weather. Very neat looking. I looked around for a bit, browsing through shops. Eventually I got real hungry so I started looking through the food court, which was all in a line on the top floor. I walked by the mexican food place, and I saw Val, Cleo and Glenn there. So I went in and sat with them. I ordered nachos. Haven’t had those in a while!
After dinner, we walked into a Sam Goody, and everyone got movies and stuff. I walked back with Glenn and we talked about more music and stuff like that. When I got back to the ship, I went to my room and wasted time playing video games until 9:30. There was a little group just hanging out at the bar. The ship hadn’t left yet.. and it was supposed to over an hour before that. The casino can’t open until it’s 3 miles from port. So people waited patiently. But I got them all riled up and they bought drinks and hung around, tipping well, and just loving all the song selections.
Aft 12:10, the ship was finally out of port and the Casino opened. My crowd dissipated to gamble, and I got off at 12:30. I met, or rather, got the names of a couple people that will be working with me for a couple weeks. One is Sasima. She’s a waitress, and from Thailand. The other was Dewa Ayu. She’s from the Philippines.

Sunday, October 11th, was our first sea day. We lost an hour. So in a weeks time, we lost 4 hours of sleep. BLOWS. I just kind of hung to myself for the day, Playing games and the such. Anticipating playing at 8 pm. I had my meals and it really was an uneventful day. Sea days are just those kind of days. You don’t feel bad for wasting them because there really is nothing to do. Amanda emailed me and told me a promoter was very interested in me, and she’ll talk with Mike about it. It’s kinda nice to not have to worry about the business part of everything. I really would like to focus more on performance and writing. Alan said he sent my CDs, so I should have them for the next cruise and I plan on promoting the crap out of it.
At 8 PM, The bar was very busy. The busiest I had ever seen it. I went and I played, and the place was crazy. During breaks people stopped me to tell me how good I was. Some said I was the best on the ship. I knew a lot of the songs requested. It was nice, because it seemed most of the people watching me have listen to the radio for the last 30 years, versus turning it off 30 years ago, and never listening to another thing. So all my new music has definitely paid off this cruise. A couple people asked for “Unwell” by Matchbox 20, and “Mad World” by tears for fears but made famous by Gary Juals*( check spelling..) I made promises to learn both.
Mark, the passenger I promised to learn “Mad World” for came up on my little bar stage and checked out my setlist on my computer.
Sasima and I had little conversations in between, and I noticed all the guys flirting with Katerina the bar tender. In fact, this week, two people have facebooked me ONLY to get info from her so they can stay in touch. She is a gorgeous girl and sweet as pie, but she has a boyfriend and a son. It’s quite amazing how everyone goes after her.
By the end of the night, I saw Dewa Ayu and asked what song she liked, and he favorite was “One Last Breath” by Creed. Though very challenging I said I’d try to learn it for her.
After my set, these two gentleman that were sitting and watching me called me over. They were the Auditors that were inspecting the ship that week. The main chief told me he wasn’t a big fan of lots of music but he liked the way I performed. He also told me not to let anyone on the stage, because if they fall, it’s Carnival’s fault. So that would be my excuse to tell people who want to sing, that they can’t (because believe me, a lot of people ask if they can come up and sing. There’s a karaoke around the corner. They can go there.)
I got to bed that night pretty late, and was having trouble sleeping. The hours have been throwing me off. My new sleep time is between 3 and 4. 11 Is the earliest I get up anymore.

Monday, October 12th, was a rough day at sea. Apparently we were going through a tropical storm. I felt the movement early on, so I took seasickness pills and I didn’t feel sick for the whole day. Most of the ship, I think it was opposite. There wasn’t a lot of people running around. Even my gig was a lot less energetic than the night before, but the people that were there were the people there from the night before. So it seems I had another group to follow me. I played “Unwell” and “Mad World” and they were receipted well. I asked Sasima if there were any songs she really liked that she wanted me to learn, and she said “One” by U2. Ironically a safety officer a month ago asked for the same song and I had bought it and had the tabs in my computer already, so I made a note to learn it by the next time I played.
On one of my breaks I checked the capper for the next day and it turned out I had the day off! So that was very exciting for me!
At about 12, my medicine started to wear off and I started to get tired. Really tired. It looked dead enough where I could leave by 12:30. But not 2 minutes later, did a huge group of people come just to see me. So I stayed ‘til 1. I knew we had a boat drill, so I got to bed early.

Tuesday, October 13th, we arrived at Manzinillo*, and I was woken up by the boat drill. The last time we had one it took over a half hour for the alpha team to get set up, so I took my time getting ready. It wasn’t more than 5 minutes before they called for us to be up there, so I rushed to get my stuff together.
When I got outside, a humid heat hit me, and it was like unbreathable hot. I haven’t felt it this way since I lived in florida in the hottest part of the year. As I lined up in my spot I was over looking the port. It didn’t look like much was going on in this particular place. The mountains were a lot smaller and had a a lot of different vegetation from what I’m used too. Claire, the piano player lined up next to me, and it was her day off as well. I asked if she wanted to go into town with me and get some food and if her boyfriend Thomas wanted to come along. Thomas had port manning, so I called Eric, and asked if he wanted to join Claire and I.
At 11:30, we met outside of the infirmary, and we made our way off the ship. Immediately as we were leaving we were bombarded by taxi drivers and tour guides. One taxi guy said he would drive, the three of us to the other side of town where the good food was and back for 60 bucks. Seemed pretty steep to us, so we thought we’d play our chances in the immediate town.
Unfortunately after minutes of walking, we found that finding good food was going to be hard to come by in the area. So we flagged down a taxi. He only spoke spanish, and lucky for me I remember a lot of vocabulary from class, and ways of making sentences to ask him to take us to the other side of town where the good food was. He knew exactly what we wanted and he took us there. He dropped us off at this nice indoor/outdoor bar like restaurant. It was only 20 bucks (which was a lot better from the 30 we would of spent just to cut the trip in half from the other guy.) So we sat and ordered drinks. I got Coke. It tasted... a tad different from regular coke. It wasn’t as sweet. Still good. Unfortunately for Claire they didn’t have any vegetarian food.. except a bean taco. She order two of those, I got steak, and Eric got Shrimp. It was pretty good for the price. Eric and I started doing the “that’s what she said” jokes, and Claire didn’t understand some of them, so we decided to corrupt her mind, and by the end of the trip she was doing it as much as we were.
When we left the restaurant, we just walked and talked. We passed a lot of rundown looking places for about an hour. Claire and Eric talked about his upcoming job with Holland America, starting in January. He leaves in November. Blows. 3 cruises actually.
We came across a bank, with an ATM, and Claire wanted to withdraw some money, so we went and did that, and then shot across the street and went into a 7/11 kind of store. First thing I noticed inside, was that they had single beer cans available in the drink freezer in the front near the cash register. Like any regular beverage. I was thirsty as hell so I went looking for something, and i found my favorite drink. In spanish, no less. Arizona Green tea.. with HONEY. I got two cans and a pack of gum. Normally in America those three things would run me 3 dollars and some cents. But here, 1.99! It’s 1.98 for two Arizona cans without tax in America, but I got a pack a gum with that! Crazy stuff.
So we walked a ways more, until we realized we may be going the wrong way. We flagged down another taxi, and he picked us up and took us to the ship. Strangely enough, he only charged 10 dollars. I think that taxi guys just charge what they want. But we still saved 30 dollars from the guy we met at first. So we made the right choice.
We got on the ship, and I had dinner and stuff, and just watched movies all night, and took it easy for my voice. I gave it a real break. Though I did manage to write a song for a customer.

Wednesday, October 14th, we had a tender port, but I didn’t really feel like getting off. In fact I slept until 11:30. Had lunch, recorded the song for the customer, and just played around, dinner, until 9. It was a very awesome crowd, and it went over really well all through out the night. I played up to 2 am. Hit the sack, and that was really the end of that day.

Thursday, October 15th, which was yesterday for me, was filled of interesting dreams, in the morning. I had a bizarre dream of seeing my mom and step dad, and my little brother but at the age of 8, and Courtney, but she was old enough to drive. At some point I realized I had missed the time due back on the ship, and started freaking out, because no one really cared if I made it back. Then time fast forwarded to me in my room on the ship except it was huge and looked like it was made of wood, and I had a roommate. On the computer, there was a recording of the conversation I had with Mila Kunis. It was me breaking up with her and her getting angry. Then I woke up to the phone ringing. It was Colleen. She was surprised I was still sleeping and asked if I was going out. I told her no, since we had to be on the ship by 3 pm. She apologized for waking me up and hung up. I went back to sleep for another half hour and then I received another phone call. I answered and it was a girl with an accent asking for Derilich. I thought she meant me so I said this is Derek. She asked for Derilich again, and I told her wrong number. I got up at that point and went and ate lunch.
Afterwards, I tried tracking a new song I’m writing. I was doing laundry also between takes. I was 100 percent out of clothes.
I played a couple games, and worked on a new song for my set. After a bit, I went to dinner. I ended up being there for an hour, talking with Eric about various topics. Then came to my room, got showered and ready, and went to go restring my guitar upstairs. When I got up there it was SLAMMED full with everyone. Really really loud. Katerina told me they were all there for me. So I restrung my guitar. An engineer on the ship named Gyssepie* asked me if he could buy my 12 string. He said it was gorgeous and loved it. I let him play it for a bit, and he was sold. I told him that’d be fine, because I would just put that money back into another guitar. The ES-335 I’ve had my eye on for over a year.
At about 5 to 9, a drunk man asked when I was starting because everyone was waiting for me. So, I got up and started off immediately with upbeat stuff, and got everyone going. Lots of energy. On breaks, I talked with Sasima, a couple of the dealers and all that. Over the last days, I’ve played “Viva la Vida” for Ruxandra, one of the dealers. She was thankful. Sasima asked me to play her song, and I did and she liked it.
On one break, a waiter brought down some dips and desserts from the mexican buffet upstairs (I can have some, but because I was working I didn’t have the time to go up and eat). I tried the dips, and it was all very delicious.
So I played through out the night, until 2. I was going to shut down, but everybody screamed and begged me to stay, and they all said they would tip me. So I waited until I was tipped something to wean me over. 25 went in right then. So, I played for 20 minutes. Then they begged for more, so I said tip, and I’ll go. I got another 16 bucks, so I played another ten minutes. At that point I needed to stop, my voice needed the break, so I stopped and broke down. As I was leaving, Sasima asked me if I could sync her iphone with my itunes, and take some of my music. I said that’d be fine. She then asked if I wanted to go for some Thai food in San Diego. I told her that’d be cool. I love thai food, so I’ll to find out where they serve it.
I came to room and got online and saw Felicia was on, so I talked with her for over an hour, and then I got real tired and went to sleep, to wake up at 2:30. I checked some internet stuff, and started writing this! Got work at 9 tonight! Should be fun!