Daily Stuff

Two weeks ago my last roommate was changed to other cabin, because he is a waiter and my cabin is intended to be only for management position, but I tell you, he was one of the best rommies I’d ever have. No problem of any kind, he is not a smoker, wouldn’t drink inside the cabin, wouldn’t bring girls or friends while I was in sleeping or just hanging in there. He was clean, two times a day shower, change of bed linen on a weekly basis and very respectful. If I was sleeping he wouldn’t make unnecessary noise like singing or talking over the phone. He was the perfect roomie to have. But as I said, he was changed and in turn I got a new sign on, who is a Sous Chef. Now, this guy is a complete mess; as he works in the kitchen he gets smelly and dirty, the least I could expect from him is to take shower when he finish his duty, however, he comes to the cabin, takes off his smelly cook jacket and hang it on the hanger like if it were a freshener, giving the whole cabin a peculiar nasty odor. He brings his friends over and start drinking inside, no respect at all. If I am sleeping he comes in, turn lights on, make phone calls and speaks in a high tone of voice like if I weren’t there. Then, next day in the morning he takes he well necessary shower and comes out, but leave inside the bathroom his nasty used underwear and socks hanging on the hanger giving a very ugly smell to the bathroom. Now, you would think that I have the courage to ask him to change his bad habits that are freaking me out, but I just can’t figure out how to do it without offending him.

On the positive note, yesterday I found out that there is a Christian meeting going on here on board twice a week. It’s just recent. I mean, I’ve been here for almost 8 months and just now there is a Christian meeting going on. It is definitely a good thing to be around the family of Christ, sharing and holding on together as member of the same family of God. It’s just a shame that we hadn’t that earlier, but at least is a start. I am really looking forward to it. Today I will attend as my first time.

What is Love?

If you go out and make a survey right now to find out what people think about love and in your paper as the first question you have "Whad does love means to you?" probably you will have to use a computer to organize a bunch of results in a coherent stadistic conclusion; the reason of this is that nowadays in the kind of world that it has turned into, people just see love as something superficial, meaningless and even as a fairy tale just as peter pan, superman or the lvely little mairmaid. If you could have the opportunity to use the famous science fiction time machine seen in the movie "back to the future" and go back through time you could be able to make a stop not very far away from today and find out that for people love was simpler, deep beautiful and natural. It was meaninful, almost sacred. So it is true, love meant much more to people in the past than today, but why would that be? When does that changed?, does that really means that love, I mean true love died? Ohh.. I can almost hear you complaining, but lets just start giving some popular meanings of love.

• Many people would say that love is whenever you see that special guy/girl and your heart starts bumping with that unmistakeable butterflies feeling rushing in your stomach.
• Others, however, think that love is just sex, to have fun with the person you are with.
• Others, would say that love is to receive personal and emotional affect from someone special.
• Others, see love in a more simple way, then say that it is to share good moments and when things doesnt work out, leave.

And I could go over mentioning different points of views and would never end, but le me tell you that love is much more than physical attraction "love at first sight", the so called chemical attraction", as soon as that bumping heart and stomach rushing butterflies feeling reach an end, you can bet that there is no more love at all, why? because in most of the cases people were just looking the outside, their love was based on a very beautiful face or not, a gorgeous body, fashion clothes among other things, but they were never really interested in the inside of the person itself.

Now, those who think that love is just sex are kind of confused...tell you why. There is no real love that can be based on sex, because sex is only one part of love, a very important one in fact, but if there is no real interest, respect and other ghings toward the other person, as soon as passion and fire dies, so will die "love" and everytime you have sex with someone you give part of yourself away that will not be returned never and you will find yourself facing a growing up emptiness in your heart. Love based on sex only is fated to failure.

Those who think that love is just to receive from others should think a little bit more about it. In order to recieve love, you should give love. You want to receive a lot, give yourself a lot. Love is about sharing, it is a two way stuff. It doesnt work one way. Has to be back and forward. That`s the reason why there are so many relationships that reach an end and when you wonder why, they will tell you that because of so many fightings and arguments unsolved, but thats only a consequence of love-lacking from one way. I wouldnt like to find myself loving in such a way and not receiving and to top it off not being able to communicate these feelings. So you want to be loved, give love, unconditional love, and I´ll explain later what inconditional love means and why it is so important to keep it alive.

Those who think that love is just to share good moments with someone. I can almost hear you say "oh come on, why would you be willing to spend also bad moments when you can easily take off? Well, thats what love is all about; to stand for your partner not only during the wonderful and momorable moments, but in the valleys of deaths also. I mean, you dont have to love someone in other to share only good moments, dont you think? Love involves not only celebrating and laughing upon victories but also cry in stormy and cludy moments with him or her. When you overcome difficult times along him or her your relationship becomes stronger.

Now, I want to share one of the best ever definitions of love and I want you to do some thinking about it and conclude if love could ever die or still exist nowadays. We find this example in the Bible in the book of John chapter 3 verse 16. It says: For God loved so much the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believe in Him , should not perish, but have everlasting life"

I dont know if you but, I wouldnt ever give my son away to death for your sake, but good news for you, God did it, not only for you, but for me, and for everybody. Thats true love, and just because and just because of that, and because I believe in Him, I am able to vige away love. This is the main key of all; whoever accept His unconditional love will find possible to love, I mean, true love, otherwise the so called "love" will only be selfish, first me, second me and last me, no room for noone else.

Love is suffered, it is kind, love has no envy, love is not boastful, it doesnt puff up. Does not behave itself improperly. It doesnt seek her own, it is not easily proveked, it is not rancorous, rejoice not in injustice, but rejoice in the truth, bear all thinkgs, believe all things, hope all things, endure all things. Corinthians 13 verses 4-8

Welcome 2005

Christmas and New Year is over and considering the circumstances, I had a better time than last year for the same season.  Christmas onboard Carnival Pride passed quiet silent, wasn’t lousy like back home, and thinking about that, I came up with the fact that christmas is a christian celebration where we remember and think about Jesus Christ’s first coming to this earth born as a human baby; however, ¾ of the crew population is either muslims, budhists, or something else.  So it is sort of a not recognized or even important event for them.  Of course we get to have Christmas trees, tv movies regarding the season, and those typical songs played around for the guests who are mostly U.S. citizens.  And what’s most amazing is the fact that, even though most of them don’t celebrate Christmas back home because it means nothing to them, here it has become common to wishes merry Christmas on the 25^th because it is part of the tradition, though many of them don’t know the real meaning of it.  Now, New Year, was a different story….unlike last year, I did wait awaken to the new year countdown.  And believe it or not, we had it twice.  As we come back from mexico every Friday night, we have to move one hour back in time at midnight.  So, when we hit 12:00 am there was huge celebration and ovation and then one hour later it was 12:00 again, so there was huge celebration again.  I stayed for the first round only, then I went down to one of the lounges where most of the crew were celebrating, but stayed short and then finally back to my room where I finally thanked God for allowing me to be here at this time away from home.  So this was it, no more no less.  I learned that my family went to my uncle country house where we used to spend a lot of time together and that was kind of cool and sad at the same time.  But I guess we grow and things changes and then the past becomes only something to remember and enjoy.  Anyway, talking about time, coming Wednesday I’ll have 7 months onboard, and that is then only three months left to finish.  I am really looking into it.

Dry Dock is Over

Ahhh!!! It was such a good time, such a good and enriching experience. Only to remind and re-live about through pictures is all we can do. I think I am in love with San Francisco city. Though I am sleepless for I spent most of my sleeping time out the last three days, I will not complain. I can say I am satisfied with the whole event. As we were slowly on our way out of the dock, and we were passing in front of memorable places like alcatraz island, under S.F. bay bridge, and S.F. golden bridge all with the city in the background and a clear and bright sky and one or two seals speaking between them, memories just filled my mind and happiness just overflowed. The whole 450 members of the crew of Pride were outside on open decks, everyone with either photo camara or video camara taking those last shots of this beautiful city. As we passed under the bridges, many of them waved to the people who intentionally stoped their cars in the middle of the bridges to wave us back. Still, some people like my boss wanted all my personel to be back indoors doing what they were doing, I had to nicely ask him to relax and let them enjoy the magnificent vista and moment with the rest of the tripulation. Now, we are going full speed to Los Angeles and these two coming weeks are going to be way to busy. Christmas and New Year, the ship is booked to the maximun. So a lot of work is coming from sunday on. And a second christmas and new year season away from home.

Historic Alcatraz Jail

The good thing of being on dry dock is that we get a lot of free time and even when we are on duty there is practically nothing to do. The other day me and my friends decided to take the Alcatraz tour offered by one of the countless tourism agencies around Fishermen Wharf on Pier 39. So we went early in the morning like at 9:00; I consider that early because by then it was still dark and full of fog all around. So we took the ferry and we arrived at the island which is no more than 3 miles far from mainland. I dont know why there are so many people who dont appreciate stuff like this, I love history, and to visit places that holds so much history and important events that marked time and made history, its just cool. (now I understand why my mom daydream frequently about visiting Israel) Anyway, as we were approaching the island it became notable that it was a very old building made of rudimental materials compared to nowadays' . Fog was everywhere, it was dark and somehow cold. There was a turist guy who briefly introduced the island history through its beggining till its ending. Afterwards we were allowed inside the instalations and that was it. So much history laying on those walls, on those iron bars and overall. Of course, it doesnt smell bad, and it's even clean (its a museum). We were given sort of a mp3 player with earphones and all the major events that occured there, we could listen about while we were walking and taking pictures. We spent there couple of hours and then left. Afterwards we went walking along the bay where there are countless of non-expensive stores and some others museums and atracttions. We went to this wax museum and it was just awesome who real those wax figures looked like. Representations of all modern important people from movie artists to presidents and even Saddam. Also from the past. There was even one where Leonardo D Vinci was painting the Mona Lisa. It seemed so real. And to finish that day, we went to walk in the heart of the biggest china town of america. Huge. We even had lunch in one of the restaurants...the service was horrible though. The menu in chineese. And just before coming back to the ship we went to the shopping area, my goodness, so many stores and bargains and so little money to spend. My mom would go nuts in there.