Ghungroo - The Siren Call of Lovers (#2)

Chapter 2- Drowning

Chapter 2

Christmas and New Year was a lonely affair even though it was celebrated surrounded by hundreds of guests and staff aboard the ship. It was more of a blur. A drunken blur to be precise.

Tina and I are partying hard. Well, hard in my books, anyway. I've never been this social before, or had this many hangovers in such a short space of time. Ever!

We discovered very quickly that workers aboard the ship party hard. When most guests have stumbled to their rooms stuffed full of liquor and food around midnight each day, that's when the real party amongst the crew below deck begins.

Crew members have their own quarters here. Decks 2 and 3 are restricted for the use of employees only. We have our own crew mess too (a fancy word for our dining area) and our own bathing decks and bar area which conveniently converts into a nightclub spot at night.

I find it so amazing that in the middle of the ocean where no boundaries prevail, that there is an hierarchy here that exists onboard.

Majority of the lowly workers, or Crew, as they're refered to, are the underdogs that are hired to do the dirty, manual labor required to run a ship this size.

They are the cleaners, the maintence men and women who work behind the scenes, their labouring important but rarely do these workers get to venture up onto deck 4 and higher, unless it's to make up rooms or fix something that has broken.

And by no means are they allowed to mingle with guests. Well, that rule applies to all workers on board.

Ranking is taken seriously and you are not at liberty to chat freely with just anyone. Those that steer the ship, the Officers, are at the very top of the social chain.

I find myself being grateful to be a part of the middle class here, the Staff employees. The treatment of the Crew on the lower decks can be demanding. Plus, they never seem to disembark when we dock at different habours. Their jobs don't allow for much, except work it would seem.

So, the midnight parties are the only source of entertainment for most.

When guests go ashore for the day, the Crew is on cue cleaning, cooking, doing laundry, mopping and making up rooms in wait for happily ignorant vacationers who undo all of the cleaning and tidying-up in a matter of hours.

But who am I to judge? This is the way our world has been created and I find it depressing that these systems of injustice exist even here on the high seas in the middle of no-where.

After dark though the rules relax and everyone parties. The playing fields are leveled and the mingling begins. I have already made plenty of friends from all nationalities and places I never knew much about before now. It is only now that I realize how very small my world was before this experience.

From my twenty-three years of existence on this earth I have found that there are two kinds of friends in life that you will meet.

Good friends who you will connect with throughout your lifetime. And then, Goodtime friends who are just that! They are there in your life during the good times only, ever-so-briefly and for a fleeting moment in time only.

Many of the friends I've made now are of the Goodtime friend type. It's too early to have made lasting bonds with anyone here just yet. Time will tell if any of the people I've met now will become life-long friends.

There are lots of intense chats, laughs and dancing and drinking sessions with people from all over the world.

...And flirting. Yeah, let's not forget the flirting.