Monday, October 22, 2007

things take a downhill turn...

10-21-07 At Sea Puerto Vallarta to LA
8:25am

Oh, but those of you who follow my itinerary judiciously may point out “But Joel! There is no Puerto Vallarta to LA. You go to Cabo San Lucas first.” To which I respond yes, reader, I do. Normally. But for the passengers this has been one of the worst cruises ever…and it’s not even anybody’s fault. Let’s see.

The entire trip we’ve been in this surreal fog that seems to have encompassed the entirety of Mexico as we have been in it pretty much since the second sea day out of LA. At the most beautiful port we stop at, Zihuatanejo, it was so rainy that some of the excursions were cancelled and they had to scramble to make events occur on the ship for the passengers who didn’t want to get off into the rain. Acapulco and Puerto Vallarta looked downright dreary due to this fog.

If you told me that this fog had somehow encompassed the entire world and we were living in a nebula, I would believe it…it has become more constant than the sun for like 5 days.

But the worst is this: Cabo San Lucas, the best port in my opinion, was CANCELLED ENTIRELY. This is almost unheard of. The reason it was cancelled is overnight, as we were traveling there, a cargo ship with 22 crewmen on board started sinking. They sent out a distress call and we were the closest ship so we turned back and went to them. We’ve been waiting throughout the entire night with them for the American Coast Guard and Mexican Navy to come out and assist them. They just arrived like 25 minutes ago and we finally got released right at this moment as I write this at 8:30am.

GI is going around this ship as well…I spent the day hanging out with one of my friends, sharing music and playing cards, and then later I find out she’s come down with it. My roommate woke me up in the middle of the night saying he had a fever and felt really crappy so he’s going down to the doctor, probably with GI as well. I feel as though I am marked for death, however somehow I’ve avoided it. I’ve felt a little nauseous here and there the last few days but so far it’s nothing serious to write home about (I acknowledge and embrace the irony of that saying in this medium). Hopefully it’ll stay that way.

I’m gonna try to sleep some more…I’ve got a music rehearsal this afternoon and a show tonight.




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10-21-07 At Sea Puerto Vallarta to LA
7:25pm

Worst cruise EVER!!

So…things took a very unexpected turn. After my roommate came down with GI, he went to the doctors and then came back and informed me that we were both quarantined for the next 24 hours. I had no symptoms of the illness myself, but apparently because I am his roommate I’m high risk so I’m automatically quarantined as well. SO. I called the nurse and told her that I didn’t have any symptoms. I said I’d be fine being quarantined if I was high-risk or whatever but I requested to be in a different room from my roommate so that I wouldn’t pretty much automatically come down with the illness. She called me back to say that she’d put me in a different room.

I called my company manager to let her know this, but according to her this is very very unusual and she thinks I shouldn’t have asked for a new room and the only reason I probably got it was cause I may have been brusque.. I told her I may have sounded slightly annoyed on the phone but I asked properly and I didn’t say anything confrontational or anything. My roommate backed me up on this…and also they could have just said no if it seemed a crazy request. The one legit point of confusion is there is a chance she thought I was a passenger and not a crew member and that’s how I got the special treatment, however I pretty much am at this point – the new rules where Second City becomes passengers I think start to go into effect next cruise or the cruise after. But I guess this is a fairly huge concession, them giving me my own room.

The only reason I even asked for a new room was because of the two people I knew who came down with GI, one of them had a roommate who was not quarantined and the other was moved to a separate room from where he normally lived so he could recover. So knowing that in both those situations that happened I was under the impression that that was the norm. But apparently not. It’s just frustrating not knowing what is a normal request and what is an unusual request., especially when I had just seen two other people basically doing what I was requesting…because obviously I don’t want to come off demanding or rude, but I come from a world where if your roommate is sick, you don’t spend the next 24 hours breathing his air. The cruise ship apparently is not that world.

So I slept from like 12pm-7pm cause I hadn’t really slept much the night before – I got in at 4 in the morning and my roommate started going through his nightsweats around 6am. I just ordered room service (cause, again, quarantined) but it will take 90 minutes to get here. Fortunately I’m not quite hungry yet.

One good thing is a friend of mine who I thought stopped caring about me cause she hasn’t made an effort to hang out with me for a few days and when we were both in the crew bar she didn’t really hang out with me gave me a call down here to see how I was and ask about coming to see the show tonight (which I won’t be performing in).

So now I’m stuck here for another 13 hours...and I’m totally rested…Let the movie marathon begin…!


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10/22/07 At Sea Puerto Vallarta to LA
3:15AM

Well. I am at hour 18 of my 24 hours of quarantine. Oddly enough I’m really not upset that I’m quarantined despite being by all accounts completely free of GI. I keep feeling like it might just show up at any moment…I feel woozy in my stomach but the ocean is pretty rocky right now and I’m waay lower down near the water than I used to be so I think that’s a big part of it. I just can’t believe I got away without contracting this thing, knock on wood.

So far it hasn’t been a big problem. I fear the next 6 hours might be really hard tho because I am going to want to sleep but the water is bobbing up and down so much that when I close my eyes it almost feels like I’m floating in space. So that’s weird and makes it hard to sleep. After I woke up at 7pm I’ve been awake this whole time. I read a little bit of a Dave Barry book, I played through all of Zillion and Super Bomberman (which was like 3.5 hours of solid 8-bit/16-bit gaming…long overdue), watched Not Another Teen Movie and some silly romantic comedy about a woman who’s job it is to get men out of their parents houses by pretending she loves them. Mankind is really reaching for topics these days.

Libby called me a few times and chatted which made me feel like I wasn’t the only person in the world. But other than that and the split moments that some SC people dropped off some supplies for me (and the two flashes of Philipino face I’ve seen the two times I ordered room service), I haven’t had any real human contact in 18 hours.

The worst part will definitely be if I actually start to come down with this GI thing because THEN I will have to begin anew the 24 hour quarantine, PLUS I’ll feel like death. That I don’t look much forward to doing, so I’m happy to wait it out in this room until it’s completely safe for me to go back to my old room and my roommate is over being contagious.

Things I wish I had:
A Window.
Gameboy
Soup (even tho I’m not sick it just feels like it’d be comforting)
TUMS (can’t believe I didn’t grab those…)
Clean clothes for tomorrow
My keyboard
Guitar Hero
My Wii


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So all that happened and now things are okay...i slept alright, I'm not quarantined anymore and everyone on the ship thought I was sick and is asking how I am doing. Gotta go get ready for the show tonight. Peace!

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