Real Estate and Forex and Life, Oh My!

Apparently I don't know what it means to be a consistent blogger. Anyways there are a few things to be updated in my life. 1. Real Estate Investing Since last November I have been interested in investing in real estate. I Read more

Time Keeps Marching

The summer has been a whirlwind of fun. My parents were here for about 6 weeks, though they did travel a lot during that time. I was able to spend about 8 days with them down at my sister's Read more

Made It Through The Winter!

Well it seems that the winter is finally over. In fact there wasn't much of a spring around here. As my friend Casey put it, in Wisconsin there is winter, and then there's a death match between winter and Read more

New Job Finally

I've been back in the States since October and have had a couple of jobs here and there, but they weren't very good and didn't last long. Well it's been just a bit over four months and I finally Read more

I've Been Everywhere Man

Well I have now come to the end of my career on cruise ships. I thought it'd be nice to provide a little list of all the places I've been in the last 3 years. Most of the names Read more

I'm Off to See the Wizard

The wonderful wizard of Alaska!! Yeah I can't wait to be back in Alaska. Sounds strange to say that because it's gonna be 5 long months of hard work but it's gonna be a nice change - at least Read more

Skydiving in Honolulu

Well, this is definitely something worth writing about. I jumped out of an airplane. The airplane was 14,750 feet in the air. The free fall was 60 seconds. It was amazing. I had never thought about sky diving before Read more

Next Contract - Panama Canal and Alaska

With also a few other places thrown in such as Tahiti, Bora Bora, Hawaii and Christmas Island!! If you're interested please see below my itinerary for this next contract on the ms Statendam. I'll be joining it during dry dock Read more

Asia 2011

Good Bye Asia

Well I spent today in the frigid city of Petropovlovsk, which lies in a northern part of Russia, in Kamchatka. This marks the end of my travels in Asia, as the next port is Kodiak, Alaska. I’ve been to 8 countries in the last month and 5 of them have been new to me. This cold Russia sure isn’t one of the ones that I’d like to live in though!

It’s really hard to believe that I’ve traveled so far. Singapore was just 4 weeks ago and I was sweating like crazy. Now I’m near the north pole and I saw tons of snow today. Sometimes I feel like the world isn’t real and that I just imagine things. Being able to travel so far so fast, just seems like it shouldn’t be possible. I know going at 25 miles an hour isn’t exactly fast, but you can cover a lot of distance when you do it continuously. I suppose it’s the traveling at a slow speed that makes it seem unreal. The world just doesn’t seem so large anymore when you travel like this. When I’m here in Russia, it’s hard to imagine that the people in Hong Kong are still in hot weather. It seems like I’ve been traveling at such a slow speed that everywhere must be like it is here. It’s just weird wonderings that I have.

Posted on in Asia 2011, Cruise Life 4 Comments

Shanghai Etc.

A lot has happened since my last post! Probably the most important thing is that I went to China!!!! And boy can I tell you, being the only person in a group of friends who speaks mandarin in downtown Shanghai, is F-U-N. In the afternoon of the first day I went around town with my friend Cheryl and we saw a lot of cool stuff. We went to one of the old town parts of Shanghai. In my photo gallery I uploaded a photo of her eating some noodles. As you can see from the next few photos after that there is a lot of exotic food in Shanghai. Then we went to the Jade Buddha Temple and saw a bunch of Buddhas. The people who worked there were very impressed with my Chinese. Then we went on a walk near the canal and had some Haagendazs Although 2 scoops of ice-cream was 60 kuai, it’s hard to pass up Haagendazs.

Later that night two other friends joined us and we went to a couple clubs. One of them was on the top of the tallest building in Shanghai, which is also the highest club in the world. It’s on the 92nd floor. I took a photo from the 87th floor, and you can see my ship the Volendam all lit up in the top right of that photo. That was one hoppin’ club! I sure wasn’t drinking too much there though as drinks were $11 each. The next club we went to was only on the 24th floor of a different building, but it was probably even more fun. We went back to the ship surprisingly early actually – only 2:30am.

The next day I went out with Tino and Nicoleta to a different old part of Shanghai and had some amazing food. I ordered Di San Qian, Tang Tsu Rou and some sort of fried fish. I think he called it Zha Jin Yu. Gold fish or something. haha. It didn’t look like gold fish though. We couldn’t spend too long out there because it was an hour drive from the ship and all aboard was 3pm.

Today we were in Nagasaki, which was kinda fun, but not really that amazing. I’ve uploaded a few photos from there. Tino and I walked around and had a pretty good meal however just my portion of the meal was about $9. The other day in Shanghai all that food I mentioned cost a total of $8 and fed four adults and one kid. Japan is a lot more expensive than China.

Tomorrow is the last day of this cruise before we have our next embarkation in Kobe, Japan. We still need to make like $18,000 tomorrow in photo sales alone in order to make target. I’ll tell you right now, it’s not gonna happen. That’s alright this season in Asia is mainly just about seeing new places and having fun, once I get to Alaska I’ll make more money. Speaking of that however, my company has asked me to go back to just photographer because they need to provide a job for someone else. The someone else who will be joining our team has been a manager for many years and I guess they just don’t have enough ships to employ everyone, so they are giving him the assistant manager position. They told me I’ll be photographer just for the Alaska season, and then it’s back to assistant manager. This means about 20% less money, but at the same time it’s at least 20% more free time, so whatever. Not the coolest thing they could have done but I’m just going with the flow at this point.

To end on a happy note however, this contract so far has been a lot better for me photographically speaking than the last. In the last 2 weeks I have taken almost as many photos as I took my entire last contract. I’m talking about just photos I took for myself, not work related. Many of the really nice ones I’ve uploaded in my photo gallery but there are tons of other great ones too that I just don’t want to overwhelm people with. I suspect once I get to Alaska it will slow down because I’ve already been there, but then once we go over to Hawaii, New Zealand and Australia I’m sure I’ll take a bunch more again.

Posted on in Asia 2011, Cruise Life 2 Comments

Hong Kong Style

Hong Kong is amazing. Up to this point in my life if there is anywhere I would really love to live it would be Hong Kong. I really enjoyed Singapore and I think it’d be cool to live there too, but it’s just a bit too hot. There are also a bunch of rules about what you can and cannot do in public, and it’s freakin’ expensive too. The only thing I have against Hong Kong is that they speak Cantonese instead of Mandarin. Now you can get by with Mandarin but the default that most people speak is Cantonese so it’s just a little annoying. In the grand scheme of things I can handle that, maybe I’d even learn Cantonese.

I went up to Victoria’s Peak, which has an amazing view. I think it should have taken me about 45 minutes in the bus, but there was a huge accident and we ended up sitting around for about an hour while the cops and ambulance and tow truck came to clear everything away. Including both the ferry and the bus it was only about $4 USD round trip. For lunch I had niu rou mian, which was also very cheap yet incredibly tasty. When I’m done with ships…expect to find me here. =D

Posted on in Asia 2011, Cruise Life 5 Comments

Asia Cruisin’

Well, I’ve been having a nice cruise around southern Asia thus far. I’m getting to see a lot of cool new places and experiencing a lot of great culture that either I have never experienced before, or I haven’t for a very long time. It was great being in Bangkok because even though I don’t speak Thai, it is very familiar to me as I spent 9 winters in Chiangmai for ELIC mid-year conferences. The dock in Bangkok that we docked at was actually about a 2 hour drive away from Bangkok, but my manager Tino and I decided to go for it and head to Bangkok. We rented a taxi for $150 round trip and the guy took us all around Bangkok seeing a lot of cool sites. I got many really neat photos but…..

The sad part to this is that my camera was stolen from my cabin after I got back that night. I set my camera down in my room and didn’t think about my camera until the next day when I needed it for a photo shoot. Well my camera was no where to be found. The ship security has been doing cabin searches and nothing has been found. I just made a claim to my insurance company and so I should be able to get the camera and lens replaced minus the $250 deductible that I have, but I won’t be getting the photos back. I’m really bummed about this but at least it was only one port worth of photos that were on the camera. I need to make sure I download photos to my computer right away from now on.

Until I get to Alaska I’m going to have to use one of the company back up cameras that are really old and falling apart. Once in Alaska I’ll order a new camera and have it sent to the ship. Ah well.

I have updated my photo gallery with photos from Cambodia which I took yesterday. Tomorrow is Vietnam and I plan to get a lot of nice ones there as well.

Posted on in Asia 2011, Cruise Life 8 Comments

Singapore Photos

I have uploaded some photos from Singapore to my photo gallery.

Posted on in Asia 2011, Cruise Life 5 Comments

Welcome To Singapore

The itinerary has changed a little because of the stuff going on in Japan, so here is the new itinerary:

Singapore, Republic of Singapore (April 14th)
At Sea
Nathon (Koh Samui), Thailand
Laem Chabang (Bangkok), Thailand
Laem Chabang (Bangkok), Thailand
Sihanoukville, Cambodia
At Sea
Nha Trang, Vietnam
At Sea
Hong Kong, China
Hong Kong, China
At Sea
At Sea
Shanghai, People’s Republic of China
Shanghai, People’s Republic of China
At Sea
Nagasaki, Japan
At Sea
KOBE, (OSAKA) JAPAN
At Sea
Busan, Korea
At Sea
Vladivostok, Russia
At Sea
At Sea
At Sea
Petropavlovsk, Russia
At Sea
At Sea
At Sea
Kodiak, Alaska
At Sea
Sitka, Alaska
Cruising the Inside Passage
VANCOUVER, CANADA (May 18th)

Now this is kinda cool I think because I will now be able to go to Korea! I’m not sure about Russia though because I need to have my Seaman’s book in order to get in, and it’s still not here, so I might just have to stay on the ship on those days. Several Japanese ports have been taken out but I’m still going to two Japanese ports, so it’s all good.

Currently I’m in Singapore however. The first night I got here and they weren’t expecting me and with all the contraction going on in the ship, they didn’t really have a place for me to sleep. So I slept in the Ocean Bar. That’s one of the bars upstairs where old people usually go to have a drink and do some dancing with somebody playing on the piano. Anyways the entire ship is a wreck right now. I did get into a room yesterday though so I was able to have a nice sleep last night. I also went downtown with some friends yesterday. We went to Sentosa Island, which is a really neat place. This afternoon I’m going to go to Chinatown and Little India. Then later I’m planning on meeting Gabe and Benita and we’ll go out together. I really like Singapore and it’d be a great place to live, except for one thing: the heat. I am sitting in my cabin right now sweating buckets and I’m not even moving. I really want to go out and explore but it’s just so hot that I almost don’t want to go. I will of course however.

Well, I think that means it’s about time I went out. Ciao, and enjoy your cold weather wherever you are!

Posted on in Asia 2011, Cruise Life 7 Comments

Great News!

One doesn’t normally think of 6:30 in the morning as a time for great news, but today was one of those days. My phone rings and it’s some odd number that clearly isn’t from the US. I was thinking that it might be the UK office from my company, but it turns out it was Tino, my previous photo manager on the Ryndam. Turns out he’s going to be the manager on the Volendam! I’m super excited to get to work with him again. I already know what to expect from him so it’s going to make easing into this contract a whole different story from last time. Also I know other crew members on the ship so all around I feel more comfortable at the start of this contract than the last. I guess it makes sense but it’s making a significant difference to how I feel about it.

Posted on in Asia 2011, Cruise Life 1 Comment

Contract Numero Dos!

I have just received my flight details for my next contract. I’ll be flying out of Milwaukee with a final destination of Singapore. I’ll be joining my next ship the Volendam there in Singapore on April 10th, after several very long airplane rides. I’m hoping to spend some time with my roommate from college and another college friend while I’m in Singapore. The ship will be in dry dock until the 14th of April so I’m gonna have a couple days to explore a little bit.

When the ship leaves however I’m going to have a very exciting itinerary!

Singapore, Republic of Singapore (April 14th)
At Sea
Nathon (Koh Samui), Thailand
Laem Chabang (Bangkok), Thailand
Laem Chabang (Bangkok), Thailand
Sihanoukville, Cambodia
At Sea
Nha Trang, Vietnam
At Sea
Hong Kong, China
Hong Kong, China
At Sea
At Sea
Shanghai, People’s Republic of China
Shanghai, People’s Republic of China
At Sea
Nagasaki, Japan
At Sea
KOBE, (OSAKA) JAPAN
At Sea
Yokohama (Tokyo)
Yokohama (Tokyo)
At Sea
Hakodate, Japan
Kushiro
At Sea (Pacific Ocean)
At Sea
At Sea
At Sea
At Sea
Kodiak, Alaska
At Sea
Sitka, Alaska
Cruising the Inside Passage
VANCOUVER, CANADA (May 18th)

For the times where a certain city is listed twice in a row that means the ship will be in that port overnight. After May 18th I’ll be doing Alaskan cruises out of Vancouver until the beginning of September. At that point, assuming I haven’t been transferred to a different ship, the Volendam will be repositioning to Australia and New Zealand via Hawaii. I’m really hoping I get to stay on the ship for that!

Posted on in Asia 2011, Cruise Life 5 Comments
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