web cam

We will be doing deck shows on Saturday and the 24th around 10pm to
11:30pm California time. If you'd like to watch, (with no audio) you
can watch from

http://www.infocruise.it/infoCarnival/ShipInfo.asp?
name=Splendor&channel=2

Enjoy!

Dave

peru, polywogs and the best hemisphere on the whole planet

Well, I'm back, more or less. North of the equator that is. Since my
last entry I've been to Peru, Ecuador, Acapulco and Puerto Viallarta.
I couldn't get off the ship in Ecuador, (in-port manning again), but
I can tell you it's hot. I took the lounge chair picture at noon. See
the shadows go straight down and the light has a very clear quality
to it. Every part of the deck was so hot I actually burned my feet
going from the chair to the pool.

There is a traditional ceremony that takes place aboard ships when
passing the equator. In a nutshell, King Neptune comes aboard and has
to grant you permission to enter his realm. He punishes some
pollywogs, (people who have never passed the equator before), then
declares everyone to be shellbacks. Don't really know what any of it
means but it was good fun. We were doing a deck show at the time and
they did the ceremony between sets. There was a brief delay before
the second set as they cleaned the beer, ketchup, confetti, dead fish
and octopus from the deck. Still, what with the smell, there really
wasn't much dancing after that.

Anyway, I'm back in the best hemisphere in the whole world.

main lounge

Wow, am I tired. It's about 4:30am. Tonight we did 2 shows in the
main theater. The opportunity came up a couple of days ago and we
pounced. We've been rehearsing every spare minute, but it came out
great. I don't know another back lounge band who's gotten an
opportunity to perform as a headliner in the theater, so we were very
excited to do it. We took video and some stills, and recorded audio.
Now the job will be editing all that stuff together into some kind of
killer 3 minute audition piece. I'm too tired to be coherent, but I
wanted to share the news. That's what a blog is for right?

go ahead, ask me. . .

Go ahead. . . ask me what Punta Arenas, Chile is like. The answer is:
I don't know. We were supposed to go here, but strong winds in the
Strait of Magellan put the kaibosh on that, (I always wanted to use
the word Kaibosh in a sentence. I'm still hoping someday to use the
word Gestalt in a sentence). We got held up at Ushuaia Argentina. I
was tempted to say, "Ah, it's not the end of the world", but in fact
it is. I don't so much mind because we got to see it later in the day
when we stopped here to drop some people off and it looked like a
little mining town, but mainly I don't mind because we couldn't go
due to the winds in the Strait of Magellan. How cool is that? I'm a
huge Magellan fan, and even winds here are cool to me. Sad I know,
but it's the end of the world. We look forward to strange things here.

Tonight was a huge "end of the world" crew party. It seems there are
a lot of crew parties lately. It seems like the powers that be have
decided we're not going to make any money anyway, let's just get this
ship to where it has to go and get back to work then. The band of
course works regardless, but so many people on the ship work on tips,
and people who are cruising for 50 days don't really dip into their
wallets unless they have to. This party was held in the ship disco,
the Red Carpet.

There are so many really funny dynamics to ship life, it's hard to
know where to start explaining it. Each department tends to
congregate together, and each nationality has it's own little
"mafia", so there's a Polish Mafia, a British Mafia, etc. Casino
people don't mingle to much. Deck and Engine people might mingle,
(they are all very nice), but what are you going to talk about?
Entertainment has little sub-groups. The theater people work closely
with each other and are a fairly large group, so they tend to hang
out together. The musicians on the ship hang out together, but most
are Romanian and so they hang out with the Romanian mafia. Spa girls
are largely British, but since the other two single guys in the band
are British, I know a lot of Spa girls. (They work in the salon or
give masages generally). I hang out a lot with Pete and Nina from my
band. They are extremely nice and we get along great. I think some
people think it's strange that I hang out so much with a married
couple, but we all prefer quite get togethers and small groups to big
crew parties, although, this was a pretty good crew party, as they go.

One last note: The end of the world looks pretty much like Switzerland.

penquins and such - adendum

For some reason the text didn't seem to make it into that post, so
here it is:

I see I haven't updated my blog in awhile, so let me fill you in on
what's been happening.

Rio is great. I could definitely spend a bunch of time there. Wish I
could have stayed longer, or at least long enough to experience the
night life. It was rainy, but still, the views, the city, all are
really impressive. Corcovado, the mountain with the Christ statue on
it has the most amazing views. Ipanima beach is nice, as was the
lunch. We were two hours late getting back to the ship, but we
weren't worried because the captain was in our tour group. The ship
probably wouldn't leave without him. Though you never know. Those
second in command types. . .

Next was Buenos Aires. Here we stayed overnight. As a city, it
reminded me of New York, but cheaper. Very large and cosmopolitan. We
went out after our set, (about midnight) and went to a couple of
clubs. Mostly we ran into other crew members, and there was no live
music around, but still what a city. We got back around 6am! I was
out all day and all night, had lunch, took taxis, and enjoyed a good
deal of night life, and I only spent around $50.

Yesterday we were in Montevideo, Uruguay. I don't know why I thought
this was not going to be too interesting. Sometimes after having
visited so many Caribbean ports that are about 6 blocks long you
start to think that anywhere you haven't heard of must be a loose
collection of mud huts. Montevideo is a large thriving metropolis.
Also, pretty cheap as you can get lunch for about $3. Gotta love
South America.

Today I took a tour of the Porto Tambo Penguin Rookery which is in
Patagonia, Argentina. I don't know what "rookery" means, but there
seemed to be a lot of it going on. For one thing, the bus ride over
there took over 2 hours past some of the most nothing I have ever
seen. Penguins I guess like scrub brush. When we got there, there was
about a go-zillion penguins digging holes and seeming to argue with
each other over who's hole was better, though I'm not sure because
they speak spanish here. I have many spectacular penguin pictures,
but I'm only posting the one with the most penguins in it.

I'm also posting a sunset picture because as we continue to head
south and get closer to the arctic circle the nights are getting
shorter and the sunsets longer and more spectacular. Monday we go
through the Cape Horn Scenic area, (don't know what that is yet). On
Tuesday we will be in Ushuaia, Argentina which is the southern most
city in the world. That's right - in the world. Last stop before
Antarctica, and as far south as we will be heading.

Zamphere

Don't know if I've mentioned this before but they play music in all
the hallways and dinning rooms here. For some reason, they have a
very limited supply of music. I don't know if most people have
noticed this, but the two most popular albums seem be:

1) Zamphere: King of the Pan Flute
The only two tracks from this that repeat over and over seem to be
Memories, from Cats and Knights in White Satin.

2) The Three Tenors scream songs about loneliness at you.
Most popular track: All By Myself

I can't tell you how many times I've heard these few songs. I'll
gladly donate any songs to their collection. Why don't they expand
their library? Am I the only one who cares?

Not yet eaten by sea monsters

Magellan was a bold and daring dude. We just crossed from the
Atlantic to the Pacific at Cape Horn, and even in a huge ocean liner
like this it was thrilling. Sir Francis Drake probably wouldn't have
used the word thrilling. Terrifying perhaps. 50 knot winds and 15
foot swells, and this is a good day. Darwin's expedition had to pull
into an inlet and wait for decent weather so they could pass. It was
only rough for a little while and the rest of the day was pretty
calm. This is about as far south as you can go without actually being
an explorer or scientist.

penquins and such

Ricife, Brazil

I call this one "Recife at Dawn", principally because that's what it
is. That's actually the moon there, not the sun. Recife three hours
later, which is when I got off the ship, looks different, probably
because I only had 3 hours sleep. I walked about 3 hours today and
bought a guitar stand - woo hoo! Also sampled the local cuisine. By
"cuisine" I actually mean bottled water. Our next stop will be
Salvador, home of the Samba, however I won't be getting off because I
have in-port manning, so it's on to my next stop, Rio.

blog mentions

It would appear that I, or rather the band has been mentioned in John
Healds blog. John is the Carnival Cruise Line Brand Ambassador. I
have no idea what that means, but it must be important. He was the
cruise director during the inaugural for this ship, and he's very
good and very funny. His blog has many loyal followers. One thing he
does is take questions from cruisers, and one Carnival employee who
is on our ship and a good friend. If you go to Carnival.com, then
click on John Heald's Blog, then search through the Dear John letters
from Jamie you might find some references to the Elite Showband.
Here's a picture of Jamie, (center) with the band and Steve the solo
guitarist on a beach outing in Barbados.

of murder, sausages, and the eye of the beholder. . .

We were in Dominica the other day which is a small Caribbean Island.
I took a taxi with some other people from the ship to see a local
waterfall. Even the tourist brochures here say dont bother going to
the beach. It's a pretty small place with very beautiful mountains
and little else. The city is very depressed though. As we were
driving through, the following conversation ensued between two of the
staff from the ship:

Serbian man: This place is beautiful - like Honduras.
Czech woman: Is like Serbia?
Serbian man: No. You should move to Serbia.
Czech woman: What I do there?
Serbian man: You could stuff sausages.
Czech woman: Sound good.
Serbian man: Also, you could kill people, but money not as good.

acoustics

Once a week we do a deck show. You can actually see us on the web cam
link on the right. I'll try to remember to post the time. The deck is
like a large basketball stadium. Three stories deep with a
retractable roof. If the roof is closed, like it was this past
wednesday it's not only hot and humid as a green house, the acoustics
are roughly on par with the Holy Family gymnasium. (if you didn't
grow up in my family, imagine a tile bathroom shaped like a 'T').
Worst acoustics ever.

We were all pretty much playing by muscle memory rather than being
able to hear anything. The audience however seemed to be enjoying it.
They were dancing and applauding and giving all the outward signs of
being able to hear something. As Pete was talking to them though, he
noticed he wasn't getting much of a response. "Are you folks enjoying
yourselves?" - stares. "Is every one having a good time?" - silence.
Then he asked "If you can understand anything I'm saying just raise
your hand". - One person in the back tentatively raised his hand. The
moral of the story is apparently you can say or do anything on stage.
All this time I've been worried about making inappropriate comments
but I guess it doesn't matter as long as they can't really hear you.
You just need to look like you're trying. I'm trying to think of
something really offensive for next week to test my theory.

stock piling

Today we leave the caribbean and head south for the equator and
beyond. Somehow the rumor got started on the ship that you should buy
all the disposable items you might need before we leave so people
have been stockpiling. Here's a list of some of the things I've seen
people coming back to the ship with:

Large bags of snacks. Chips, cookies, etc. Of course the ship stocks
these things and they are available in abundance for free, but rumors
are not to be taken lightly and you wouldn't want to have to
withstand 40 days without enough potato chips to float a small raft.

Deodorant, Shampoo, Toothpaste. Why anyone thinks you need more than
3 or 4 is beyond me. They must have these things in south america.
Did I mention we'll be back in the US in 40 days?

Pillows, cotton sheets, extra towels. Again, the ship provides these,
but perhaps we'll be ship wrecked on the island of bare mattresses
for an unspecified amount of time.

My personal favorite: usb drives. These are being snatched up like
they can be traded for food in prison.

Too many people

For the first time in my career my band was asked not to play because
there were too many people in the club. To be fair, they were there to
see the comedian but management said there were so many people that if
we played they won't be able to clear the room for the second show, so
we got half a night off. Tonight is our actual night off.

Old San Juan is beautiful. Didn't do much there but walk around.
Tomorrow is st. Thomas. Don't imagine I'll do much there either.

Wednesday we do a deck show by the pool which can be fun. We learned
some new songs for that including some old Jackson 5 and a billy idol
song the cruise director is going to sing.

Yesterday was also Petes birthday, so I didn't get to sleep until 5am
again. Ship life us brutal. 3 weeks and im still waiting for it to
settle down. At least I'm having a more social time than other
contracts. Vitamins are keeping me alive.

More later.

here I am

I am at
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=18.465469,+-66.112778

After 8 days I'm finaly off the ship. Import manning has it's dark
side but now it's done.

I think a bunch of us are heading for a Japanese steak house in San
juan because how can you visit puerto RICO and not have the Japanese
food.

I really do have to get my blogging figured out. I keep trying to send
stuff but only part way comes thru. Lots happening. Lots of gossip.
Everyone is very happy to have us back which is nice. Since I haven't
been able to get off the ship I've been going out till late every
night. Fun, but it's all I can do now to wake up before 2pm which is
not so good for sightseeing. Hopefully I'll have time soon to start
writing some good blog entries. So far, I fear I've yet to find my
literary voice.

Ft. Lauderdale

Haven't been able to get off the ship but I'll update this blog one of
these days. San Juan on Monday! The weather is great. I'm too old for
cold.

Fwd: here I am

Begin forwarded message:

From: Dave Bokhour <dbok@comcast.net>
Date: January 13, 2009 2:09:44 PM EST
To: David Bokhour <dbok@comcast.net>
Subject: here I am

I am at
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=18.337280,+-64.927933

in-port manning

Fwd: here I am

I'm in puerto RICO. Actual blog content to follow. Stand by. 

Begin forwarded message:

From: Dave Bokhour <dbok@comcast.net>
Date: January 12, 2009 9:02:40 PM EST
To: David Bokhour <dbok@comcast.net>
Subject: here I am

I am at
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=18.463257,+-66.114685

Still testing my mobil blogging skills, here's the gang at dinner.
Christine just stole a dime from Ganesh. What will happen?

Happy new year!

Still experimenting with how this blogging thing will work. I can
send pictures from my phone. Above is a picture of me in Dubrovnik
last year, just to get the ball rolling. I will also be able to post
my location from my phone. Just click on the link below and see where
I am when I posted this entry.

I am at
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=40.729041,+-74.043055

Pretty cool I think. It will be more cool when it's not jersey city.