Cruising The Seven Seas: All Blacks

All Blacks

23^rd October 2011

Another early start, another gangway and more laughs with Zoran. As we are finally in Athens, Zoran is, of course, the Greek God. Sanela is decked out as the Greek Goddess with Hernan shooting her. We had a ridiculously high target considering very few people would be getting off the ship due to the recent problems in Athens such as strikes, protests and demonstrations.

We were all freezing cold, bobbing up and down to keep warm. Zoran was being his usual stupid self on the gangway, doing some ridiculous poses that made everyone from security to guests laugh. I won’t lie, we were spurring him on.

We were getting seriously frustrated at people’s refusal to have their photographs taken. We didn’t see why it was such a huge problem. It’s only a quick photo! I can’t remember who’s idea it was but, due to the refusals, we decided to jump on the shuttle bus that was slowly filling up with guests. There was nowhere for them to run… they were all ours. Jumping on the bus, Zoran did a few poses and played the clown which got everyone laughing. Within no time at all we had photographed everyone on the bus. Who’d have thought they’d get their picture taken on the bus with a Greek God? More to the point, who’d have thought that a Greek God would be on public transport?

Hernan was getting a little restless and wanted to get off gangway as soon as possible. No one was coming out and the odd few that did, didn’t want their photos taken, no matter how silly the poses. Whitney had the day off and came to join us for the last 45 minutes or so. She had her photo taken with us both. A rare opportunity considering she’s always working in the Spa. When she isn’t, she’ll catch up on sleep, hardly ever getting out of bed before gangway ends.

We all know Reuben has been checking out clock-in and out times. Every time we enter or exit the ship, we have the punch in our Sea Pass Cards (Crew ID). All the times are logged into security’s computer system. We waited in the freezing cold for the extra five to ten minutes before going in just so it shows up on the system that we didn’t go in early.

Hernan didn’t give a crap and left the gangway. Sanela didn’t want to go in early but Hernan had her Crew ID (the Goddess didn't have pockets) so she was obliged to leave and get back on the ship. When they left, they only had about 300 images. 150 off the target.

Zoran and I decided to stay on longer, until the end. When the end came we only needed 20 more images to hit 400. Might as well make it a nice round figure… so we stayed on passed our time. Whitney was creasing herself up laughing at some of Zoran’s antics. Once we hit 400 we were done. Finished.

Whitney agreed to meet me at the photographer’s corridor. We popped up for something to eat. The others were nowhere to be found. They weren’t in the mess either. We found Sandra who didn’t want to come with us as she’d just got back off tour and was shattered. She was hitting the pillow. As we were leaving the ship, Prashant from security had a message for us. It was from Zoran. Zoran had gone up to the Staff Mess and wanted us to wait for him.

We waited. And waited. And waited. Nothing. We didn’t have a lot of time so we headed out without him. He’d know where we were. Making our way over to O’Connell’s, the place was packed. I didn’t expect it’d be so crowded, we could just about get in. Not only that neither Whitney nor I thought it’d be packed with New Zealanders. The Rugby World Cup was playing. Everyone in the pub was an All Black. The game was nearly over. Suddenly there was a countdown. Everyone in the pub was counting down. 10. 9. 8. 7. 6. 5. 4. 3. 2. 1. Blast off…. An enormous roar of cheering erupted. It was over. The All Blacks were the Rugby World Cup Champions. Eve will be over the moon!

My laptop had no charge. Sandra must have unplugged it. Damn! The weather was crap. Rather than having a walk around, we decided to head back to the ship. Whitney wanted to go to the Spa to get her hair washed – lazy bugger. On the other hand, I was so shattered, all I wanted to do was sleep.

Later on, I was scheduled for the gallery. It was a long, dragging, boring night. There wasn’t enough space to display the new photographs. The stack was growing. So, we spent almost the entire night condensing photographs, trying to make space for the new ones. We got a few up, but not nowhere near the full amount. For the entire evening we had guests coming in to ask for the latest gangway pictures. Needless to say they weren’t impressed that we hadn't display them yet. Tough. We were desperately trying to find space for them and it was virtually impossible, unless of course, we took some down.