Take-aways from a performer/frequent traveler

My post from yesterday, Friday, August 24th:

Well, it's the beginning of our 5th cruise! Today marks my 50th day at sea on Holland America's Nieuw Amsterdam. Today is also the first day after embarkation day which means it's Cantare day. This will be my 9th and 10th time to do this show for a "paying" audience and it is our new cast member, Casey's 1st and 2nd - so happy opening to Casey! We have been in install mode with him for the past 10 or 12 days and this is his 5th of the 6 shows that we do - all we have left is to do NYC with him!!

As I said 2 posts ago, I wanted to write a blog about what traveling and performing has taught me. Just a few life lessons:

I think one of the 1st ones would be that as important as it is to plan, set goals, and have an idea of what you want to do and where you want to go, it is equally if not more important to realize that you are never completely in control and that you should keep an open mind and be able to go with the flow. This can be applied to many things - travel/vacation, your day to day life's itinerary, and your life/career path over time. It is important to strive for things and have a goal to focus on, but the path that leads you there is never as straight and clean cut as you might imagine or hope for. To say it one other way - with an actor's slant - from your own individual perspective and personal interactions, life is an improv game and not a script.

This leads me to my next point: Detours are okay. You never know what you might find, who you might meet, where it will lead. If you keep your loose goal or plan in sight, you will always find your way back, but you will be richer for having taken the detour…even if it is to learn that there is nothing down that road but houses and a small park or a dead end alley-way. Who knows though - maybe you'll find an awesome shortcut!

I've learned, personally, that you really don't need a lot of things in life. Moving to Japan and living on a cruise ship (twice now) has taught me how to whittle my life down to 2 suitcases under 50 pounds, a carry-on, and a personal item. We truly don't need more! Sure, it's wonderful to have comforts and to build a home and have a personal space that you feel comfortable in and I'm not saying comfort and small luxuries are bad…but you don't NEED more to live. It's taught me to be a bit more on the frugal side and to focus more on life's experiences than the material things of this world.

As important as it is to have a (loose) itinerary in travel and goals to accomplish in life, accomplishing them or following that itinerary and seeing the things you want to see should never afford you the notion that you have "arrived" or that you have seen/know everything there is to know about a place. I suppose what I mean in a career/life-goal-oriented sense is that you will never know everything there is to know about a subject or be perfection at whatever it is you are trying to accomplish…there is ALWAYS room for growth and lest you become stagnant, you should always try to better yourself and strive for a more perfect form of that goal. I guess when it comes to travel, don't assume that you've seen it all or the best things or know everything there is to know about a culture or place or people. Not until you've lived there for years can you truly understand and claim "expertise" on a destination.

Finally, as I've said in another post, so much of this stuff is about perspective. If you choose to have a positive and healthy perspective, humble confidence and striving for more should follow.

…In hindsight after writing this blog, a lot of these life-lessons are fairly performer oriented. I think a lot of performers can get a big-head and think they've "arrived" if they get a big job and then become divas (or divos) and also become stagnant. Much of these learnings, of course, come from my perspective as a performer who travels a lot. The travel tips and musings can apply to anybody though, for sure! See some of the popular things when you travel, but give yourself time to detour and get lost and discover something new and you! And NEVER overpack. Baggage fees stink, plus you leave more room in your suitcase in case a souvenir strikes your fancy. Most places have laundry and in most places, the people you are around won't see you enough to know that you rotated the same 3-4 outfits for 7 days :)


Next post, look for pictures and captions and perhaps a brief update of some comings and goings! As always, feel free to subscribe, leave a comment, and share with friends! :)

Roma!!

Okay, so I know that I told you my next blog would be about life learnings from performing, but I have to catch you up on what's been happening since I last wrote. When I wrote last we were almost halfway through a cruise that took us back to Barcelona. These 12 day cruises are great as far as work goes, but you kind of get lost in them sometimes. The way they are scheduled is a 12 day cruise from Barcelona to Venice and then a 12 day cruise from Venice to Venice, and then another 12 day cruise from Venice to Barcelona…so 36 days later, we finally made it back to Barcelona for the first time since boarding the ship. When you think about it that way, it seems like a lot has happened!

I think one of the most eventful days I've had on the ship so far was right before we got to Barcelona. Three days before we arrived, we were in Civitavecchia which is the port for Rome. Now, 4 years ago on my cruise contract, if I remember correctly, we had a total of 3 days in Civitavecchia. The 1st was during install. The 2nd and 3rd were show days and so we weren't able to go to Rome. Lucky for us on this contract, they are wise to the fact that Rome days are long and so our shows would be wasted as all-aboard is merely 30 minutes before our 1st show.

That being said, Jaclyn and I decided we needed to see Rome! And see it we did. My friend, Joey, had a drill in the morning so we told him to meet us at 2 in the square in front of St. Peter's Basilica. In the meantime, Jaclyn and I took a train, had some espresso and a bathroom break, walked to the Roman Forum and the Colosseum, actually got on a tour to go into and through the Colosseum, took the metro to St. Peter's and met our pal, Joey (musical theatre reference!!)

We then continued on with him to see the Pantheon and the Trevi Fountain (where we tossed a coin in) and at 4pm headed back to St. Peter's (San Piedro) station to hop on the train to take us back to Civitavecchia. Now mind you the walk from where we were took about 45 minutes…but even then, according to the schedule, we could still catch a train that would get us back to the port by 6:30 which then gave us an hour to get back on the ship - plenty of time!! Right?!

One would think……

We made it to the station a little before 5, but with a bathroom break for me and buying a ticket for Joey, we missed the 5:02 train. According to our train schedule there were to be 3 more that would give us ample time to get back. Around 5:30 with no train we were wondering if one was coming at all. Around that time someone told us that some man was laying too close to the train tracks and that that was causing the delay. Great…some crazy, drunk, and/or suicidal man is holding up the trains. I couldn't believe this was happening to us. So by 5:45 we concurred that we needed to take a taxi. 120 Euros and 50 minutes later I can see the ship!! But what I didn't count on was traffic in town. With that to deal with plus the most direct road to the port blocked off, our taxi driver took us the most round-about way to the port. I was sweating bullets and having a mild stroke at this point.

We finally made it to the port with 15 minutes before "all aboard" but the cab driver could only go so far and we followed the last shuttle to the gate…so there was no other way but to run. We were due to depart at 8pm, but all-aboard was 7:30. If you've never been to Civitavecchia, let me tell you that 45 minutes MIGHT be ample time to briskly walk to your ship, but if your ship is over halfway down a pier that can easily accommodate 4-5 BIG cruise ships, 15 minutes is pushing it if you are full out running. As we sprinted past the Pullmantur Sovereign, they were casting off and their decks, full of people, cheered us on as we ran. Next was Royal Caribbean's Liberty of the Seas. About this time, we were running out of juice from having walked around all day in the heat, having only sporadically eaten and wasting all of our adrenaline through taxi ride anxiety.

Thankfully, right at that moment, the shuttle bus that had just left our ship spotted us and picked us up…and kept going in the opposite direction. We shouted, "NO NO NO!!!" "We have to be on by 7:30." "We have to go that way - just let us out, please!" He merely kept repeating "It's ok." What we didn't realize is that the family that we sprinted past when we got in the gate was also on our ship and needed assistance as well. So very shortly they got on and we made it onto the ship by 7:27…the closest I have ever been to all-aboard (and the closest I hope to ever get!) So that's my Roman adventure. Pretty crazy, huh?

I suppose the moral of the story is to never rely on Italian public transportation. One of our cast's dancers, Jenna, lived in Rome for 7 months for school and said she had the same problems with Rome's public transportation system. Lesson learned!!

Here's some pics, btw!

top to bottom - Day in Santorini, Day in Dubrovnik, the sea in Dubrovnik, and me cliff jumping in Dubrovnik

Life After Install

Venice!!

Hello friends and family!

Well, we've had almost 9 days of life after install. I know they didn't leave that long ago, but our install team consisting of Thomas, Gavin, and Erika, plus our lovely costume ladies is gone and it seems like ages since I've seen them already! It's crazy how skewed your perception of time can be when so much of your time with people is so condensed (living, working, eating, and playing with your co-workers all the time!) I think another reason that it seems like a while is because we have been filling the days as much as we can with happenings.

Since being on the ship, I have gone to the night club, had a pool party with passengers, traveled and seen just about every part of the ship that I'm allowed to go, had a massage at the spa (YES!), eaten at one of the specialty restaurants called the Tamarind - DELICIOUS Asian-fusion food that filled me and my comrades to near bursting - and a myriad of other day to day type things.

As I said in my last post, I'm doing some ports that I did during my last cruise and I can't tell you how thrilling it is to step off of my ship in cities that helped change my outlook on life and the world (and finally give me a feel of how Europe truly is for the first time) and have all of those memories come flooding back. In some places, I'm even remembering paths that I took and restaurants/cafes/shops that I visited. I think one of the ports that I'm the most excited about having come back to is Istanbul. That is such a cool city with such a vibrant way of life that is so different from ours back home.

So in brief, since I last wrote, we've been to Istanbul and overnighted. During that overnight, we went out to the hipper part of town at night and walked around and sang karaoke at a bar until about 1 am and made our way back to the ship by 2. We went to Mykonos and had fun at our production manager's hotel and the beach, put up our last show in Kusadasi, Turkey (where Ephesus is), took ATVs out and covered the whole northern half of the island of Santorini, went to a new port for me in Croatia (called Split) and did some complimentary internet over lunch, back to Venice and had a great day and night romping around, went to Dubrovnik and cliff dove for the afternoon and went to a water park in Kerkira, Corfu (a part of Greece). Some of these things are things that I waited to do until the end or didn't ever do on my last contract, so to get to do them now at the beginning leaves room for other things. That makes me REALLY excited for my time here in Europe!



                                       

Pic above: Thomas's hotel in Mykonos

We also met a few really cool people in Dubrovnik - both were from Australia. One was Ben (or Dan?…pretty sure it was Ben) who seemed to be about my age and one was Taso who seemed a little older. Ben/(Dan) couldn't stick around long because he had to meet a friend of his, but Taso stayed the whole time we were there. By the end of it all, we had all swapped life stories, jumped off cliffs together, taken pictures, and generally began to feel like he was part of our group. It was truly bittersweet a couple of hours later when we had to part ways and walk back to our ship. For whatever reason we all felt like we were abandoning one of our own. Needless to say, that was one of those cool meetings that it seems is fairly unique to world traveling when people are placed completely outside of their own social/cultural norms and have nothing but each other to gravitate towards to try and make sense of and share their current life experience.

Breakfast in Venice (same place I found with my friend MK 4 years ago!)

Tonight we perform our show, Garage Band. We finished the first show already and considering all of the technical things that weren't quite supposed to happen, I'd say we did a fine job of staying on our toes, listening to each other to figure out what to do, and improvising when the occasion arose. One more to go! I think that's all I have for now. Tomorrow we are in beautiful Santorini and I think I'm going to spend my day exploring the main town of Thira, perhaps buy a piece of art, and sit at a cafe on the cliffs and generally enjoy my time in the sunny Cyclades of Greece!

My friend, Joey, doing the splits in Split, Croatia!

Coming soon - More pictures of my travels and a blog on things that being a performer/gypsy/life-observer have taught me or made me realize!! Check back soon :) Thanks for reading guys and gals!