Solstice My Love ch.1

Solstice My Love - Chapter 1

"Solstice My Love" - A Telenovela onboard a cruise ship - Chapter One (out of eight)

An Israeli, Chinese Medicine and American cruise ship meet in the Caribbean, who has survived?

Sunday 0830 or as Americans like to record: 08:30.

Between times and between cycles. In between.

Last cruise ended this morning. The guests are still here waiting to disembark. Soon starts a new week of the next cruise. 5,000 suitcases down and 5,000 are getting onboard. 2,500 guests descend and the same number embark.

I love this interim time of the week. Kind of attentive silence prevailed throughout the Solstice, the decks that are usually crowded, the pools and the Spa are all empty and quiet. Just like before the storm. Soon will be a stampede of the newcomers.

I can release a little my formal wear that I wear during the week – a doctor's white coat, reading glasses that are connected with a string to my neck, a name tag with my title and the State of Origin, tailored trousers, black shoes and a black or white shirt and a tie. I change to a short sleeve golf shirt and black pants, no tag or tie but I put on my elegant Italian shoes made of lizard’s skin…

It is so nice to walk around and have some quality time with my beloved. As if it’s only me and her. I love the Solstice…

This amazing ship was built in Germany. Until the launch of The Oasis, which I saw anchored near us in San Martin, the Solstice was among the largest ships in the world. Whoever designed it in terms of internal structure, furnishings, color combinations, etc. did an outstanding job. Guests are kept under an atmosphere of stylish elegance, yet not oppressive and austere but only filled up with a very good taste that is evident in every detail.

The Acupuncture “department” has 2 members. My partner is an American woman, a practitioner in her mid-life named Dana. We operate under the European spa director, the beautiful and hot Anna, but we should be still directors of ourselves. We recruit our patients by marketing ourselves and run the business. The desk sometimes may refer people to us too.

This setup obviously creates friction modes and politics that need to get along with, as in any hierarchical organization.
But everything aboard cruise ships is intensified in relation to land operated business. The comparison to my Israeli army days, going through a boot camp in a combat unit, is very much in place…

It turns out that every crew and staff member onboard the ship has a rank. This rank is defining all one’s privileges. We as Licensed Acupuncturists considered to be managers and officers ranked by two-stripes and half. Same rank as of our Spa manager Anna.

Of all Spa members we fall in the twilight zone between classes. On the one hand we are among the officer corps of the ship. Still we get hit on the head with a dead fish, as Anna says, for each error and faulty execution. Nobody cares that I am running my own clinics for over 20 years now. On the other hand we are invited to the REVENUE PARTNERS meetings to participate with all the brass at a workshop management called OZ TRAINING.

By doing that they create in me a state of identification and pride and this is in addition to the high motivation that is already there.
It gives me a very good sense about the contribution I make. We are not considered as just workers that bring income, but people that think and make their best to increase the responsibility and scope beyond the job requirements.

A crew member is walking through I-95 the main service way

I am very impressed with the way things are run on this ship. There is an Ethernet communication between the different wings. All income position have targets and objectives that they strive to meet and a manager at a higher position to report as their superior who reports on until it reaches the main office in Miami.

The information is open to all junior executives and we know what other departments do and if they are meeting or not the goals set for them. So are we, completely exposed to other departments too.

I was amazed by the speed of which I was recruited to the cause and how I identify with the ship’s goals. I have a desire to succeed and improve, not from coercion or threats. I see the whole ship as my business, not only my little 2 rooms clinic…or 4 rooms with Dana...

This is the American way of business to the good or worse. If you are good you get the girl and the money like in the movies and if you fail then you are getting shot in the head (dismissal). You can’t rest with the success you experienced last week. All is starting over from scratch each week.

For me this way suits me well. My problem is how I fit into the team when almost always I was conducting my businesses as a soloist with a full control of any aspect of my clinics. Here I am not the boss any longer.

In total there are 34 employees at the spa but me. Most are masseurs, some do manicure - pedicure or in short Mani - Pedi, Hair Removal and hair design, machines that makes you slimmer by 8 inches in one hour and the usual Spa and Salon offers.

Also there are only two other men but me, 2 Australian boys who run the huge gym. There are gays and lesbians and women who work during the cycle and the stress level is rather high.

We are required to attend team meetings 3-4 hours per week, and executive sessions 4-5 hours per week and participate in drills of emergency situations, with or without guests, and various training sessions related to environmental protection, knowledge of the ship’s different functions and more. The first week I also had to learn "under fire" how to charge the guests card, and how to record the income in two separate systems and how to coordinate so many things…and yes…do Acupuncture treatments on top of all that…

All other employees at the spa without exception are in their second to fifth contracts and thus are very familiar with all these systems. So it is easy to imagine how without much help from the busy others I had in the first few weeks to deal with recruiting guests, record revenues in all the systems online, run to training drills constantly and try to cope with the enormous amounts of information, catch up on the Spa computer for Ethernet messages, find out where the iron room is, sign up to be a subscriber on the ship’s satellite Internet service, find out where the uniform laundry is, where to eat and on and on and on ...

No wonder I became a joke among the crew who found me staring and baffled by the various computers without knowing what to do first with the dockets in my hands...

The Solstice, with all 122,000 tons and all 350 meters of her length (40 meters wide) moves gracefully in a high seas as in calm sea thanks to its stabilizing systems. These are small wings coming out alongside the ship under the water and operate to lift up the side that sinks by creating more elevation the deeper it gets. Balancing this way the Cruise sailing feels more like a flight in a first class rather than sailing of a yacht. Some days we have lots of patients who experience despite all some seasickness. As for myself, when I went ashore in San Martin I had a moment that I felt I was swaying slightly with the ship but it was a very short sensation.

As for food - I realized very quickly I had to do something about it. The dining room for the crew is okay as for environment, noise, etc. But there is not much of a variety of things offered to us as food and also it has relatively low food quality. I keep Kosher, so I looked for a place to eat. Place that offers a greater selection of products and running at different times. The very first night I found the OCEAN VIEW CAFE on 14th floor (12th floor or deck has the Spa and my 2 treatment rooms). The restaurant serves food in buffet fashion at almost all times. What matters to me where there is no Kosher meat is the large selection of fish and even sushi, as well as vegetables, fruits and more.

Since this is a dining room for the guests, and is off limits for all crew and junior officers, I was not allowed by the spa director to eat there. My second night on the boat I could not sleep because of the excess adrenaline in my blood. I wandered around the sleepy ship at the quiet early morning hours and finally went into the deserted Ocean View.

I ate something light and sat from five to six-thirty in the respected company of an insomniac American-Italian retired brain surgeon. We had a thorough conversation on Jewish Tradition, Christianity, Medicine and Medical Ethics. It was so good that he came to see me at the spa later, without any previous notice, and told Anna enthusiastically about the conversations we had a few hours before.

Anna was furious at the description about the blatant violation of discipline and gave me a very hard time about that. I think this had started our relationship on the wrong path.

But like I told my eldest son if you want something badly, and you can’t walk through the door...look for the window.

The heads of security personnel on board are two young Israelis and they control deputies of Indian decent. By mistake I reached their office on the second deck on that first week. I was confused about the location of various classrooms and I often went in wrong directions and into various corridors. When G. heard from me that I had problems with the food he turned immediately to the computer and checked the SQM for the appropriate privileges merited by the two stripes and a half.

And there he found specifically written that in my position I can eat at the Ocean View but only BY PERMISSION. The Spa manager told me that even she was not allowed to eat there and she did not know who should I ask for the permission, and maybe I’d better stop creating for her problems and troubles as did her Jewish ex-boyfriend....

Since this was a very fundamental issue, I did not give up and told her that I eat kosher and I have to eat in a place that has a selection of fish and veggies and that I will keep trying to find the desired permission and the person that grants that. At least it softened her up a little and paved the way for the next step. I continued to visit the Ocean View with my formal attire, a tie and my doctor's white coat.

One day as I passed near the entrance to the kitchen in the Ocean View I was approached by a man wearing a formal suit with a name tag. "Doctor, is everything okay?" I told him I was looking for someone to give me a permission to eat at a restaurant. He immediately introduced himself as the deputy manager of the restaurant and that he grants me the permission...

This was Predrag (Frederick in Serbian). When he realized I was from Israel and not from the US (in my tag I appear as a U.S. citizen since I have dual citizenship) and I am not a Muslim but a Jew - he went out of his way to host and serve me.
He approached one of the waiters and asked him to bring me two significant pieces of Salmon of the day (but stressed without my request not to be topped with cream - the guy understands the laws of Judaism...) and for half an hour he stood with me and we talked very excitedly, each one for his own reasons.

I had my life saved of starvation. He could not sit with me because he was on duty and I stood with him in the middle of the restaurant, guests flowing around us, the Salmons in my hands, and I'm the little with only two stripes and a half talking to the king of the Ocean View as if we have been fighting together in one of those Balkan wars…

Predrag told me and the two chilling Salmons that the Serbs are Christian Orthodox belonging to the Pravoslave church and that during the Holocaust, they fought the Nazis and hid many Jews and that the Croats fought with the Nazis and killed Serbs and Jews alike.

He talked about his grandmother who hid Jews during the Holocaust and that he and his mother will soon go to Jerusalem to be awarded the Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem for the grace and courage his grandmother had shown.

He also told me that a Serb man who reaches age 50 and is well respected in his community can do something which will give him the title of Haji. "He needs to go to Mecca?" I asked. Predrag looked at me indignantly and said disgustedly, "Why Mecca? that place is for Muslims, not for us Serbs."

It turns out, the Serbian pilgrim has to go to Jerusalem and meet a Jewish rabbi who is waiting for him, the rabbi takes him to three sacred places in Jerusalem. Then the Rabbi signs a letter of Haji for the happy Serbian. When the new Haji is going home to Serbia he adds to his name the title Haji. From then on, he will acquire a status of immunity. He does not get traffic tickets, for example, and a few other perks that go with his honorable state.

Several days have passed since then, I see Predrag occasionally and we embrace warmly and happily. Before I came on board I got to see a relatively old movie about an American pilot in the service of NATO that was shot down by Serbs who were chasing the pilot trying to kill him. Serbs represented in the film cold-blooded killers.

Predrag claims it was a revenge war of the Serbs against the Croats for their cooperation with the Nazis. And also against the Muslims of Herzegovina, who gave up Christianity and who are trying to grow at the expense of Serbs who had been before the war about eighty percent of Yugoslavia.

Interesting for me was that Israel has equipped Serbia with a sophisticated radar system long before the outbreak of the war. This system led to victory of the Serbs in the war against the rest of the former Yugoslavian nations and the NATO forces.

For all these reasons, and out of anti-Muslim common interest - every Serb, according to Predrag, feels committed to Israel and Jews everywhere.

Back to Solstice my love -

There are two parallel systems of corridors on the ship. The first one is for the guests and staff only. This one is designed beautifully, heart-expanding, shiny and bright. At the same time, there is a complete set of "underground" modest and practical corridors for the crew. They include much smaller service elevators. The crew should be in that system and use it only in order to reduce contact with the guests to a minimum.

At first when I was escorted by a crew member to a new place I was led through the crew corridors and lost all sense of orientation.
Very quickly I found myself using the guest's system. It is “legal” for me as a staff officer. I always got lost when using the crew system. Since I formally dressed almost all the time I have no problem to contact the guests. I even recruited many patients while descending the guests elevators...

The back corridors are the home of all services and the living quarters of all service providers and staff. The rest belong to the guests’ cabins.

Of the services, the laundry is controlled by the Chinese and is called Chinatown. Cleaning is at the hands of the Jamaicans, Indians and South Americans. Many waiters come from Turkey. The Philippines are the largest ethnical group. They are everywhere including the Spa and the Bridge. Total Babel’s Tower consisting of seventy nations working together under an international peace treaty in (almost) perfect harmony and for the same purpose.

Israelis are conspicuously absent. I think we do not have a service culture, so I'm first and only Israeli recruited to work aboard the Solstice not as a security guard. In fact I am the first Israeli elected to work as a specialist of Chinese Medicine aboard any Cruise ship. This puts on me the pressure of being kind of an Ambassador representing Israel, Jews, Chinese medicine, and of course myself.

During my work aboard 3 cruise ships I met and got to know people from the crew and staff of many different countries. It's nice that I can ask them what city they come from in their country and realize I was there and I have accumulated experiences in their homelands. The Indians feel immediate empathy when they hear I had spent time in India.

This makes me realize that I had been travelling in many countries and the cruise ships will be getting me to the Caribbean’s and to the Eastern coast of North America.
These are locations I have not travelled in. Most of the crew and staff do not come off the ship in ports where we land.

So far my favorite place is the island of St. Martin. This island is half French and half Dutch by a peace treaty signed 350 years ago. I was looking for a remote control presenter for my computer to be used at the seminars that we present in PowerPoint. Asking around I was recommended a shop further away from harbor.

I rode a taxi there and walked back and this allowed me to find places that are not used by tourists at all. That's how I happened to buy a sewing thread from the Creole store, bananas from a Chinese grocery store (China Foods), office equipment (a folder, a hole puncher, a stapler and a ruler) at the Native Caribbean Office Market, a replacement watch band at "Little Denmark" of the Danes, and the presenter at Blue Point the Indian owned electronic store where the cashier is wearing a traditional sari and adorned with Bindhi symmetrically centered on her forehead above the nose at 'Yin Tang' the Acupuncture point used much for relaxation.

The seminars that we present to the guests are published on the daily bulletin handed out for the guests on the evening of the next day. This is a very effective mean of marketing. There are 4 of those seminars during the week.

Only last Saturday I went to give my first seminar. The seminar itself is a presentation and lecture we had received from Miami and has a very structured form.

I of course cannot accept such a framework as it is and I did talk more freely involving more personal stories and testimonies of two of my patients I took care of this week. It went pretty well and all 27 were pinned down for about an hour and made comments and questions. To my surprise I felt quite free and not embarrassed to talk to strangers in a foreign language and even managed to joke around.

We have a staff discount rate for Internet services onboard. The guests pay 65 cents per minute. There are many users and we come last on the food chain, so often we have to wait half an hour to be able to connect. So I prefer to connect via Wi-Fi at the beaches we land in. In some cases the Internet is free and sometimes it is customary to buy a drink in the amount of a few dollars. Then we receive the code for the Wi-Fi. It's very exciting to see the kids on Skype and chat with them despite the vast distance.

Most of the staff and crew are young and single. The dining room servers get free at about 11 pm. They and others use to meet late at night in the CREW BAR drinking and smoking furiously. I cannot stand the smoke and not so much about alcohol so I do not have much of a social life. Reminds me of the joke saying that Garlic is very good for enhancing one’s memory, but people that use much garlic do not have many memories…

We work from 0730 until 2030 and the rest of the time is devoted to laundry (my shirts by hand) to rest and also to participate in various team meetings, paper work, a summary of the day and preparing for the next day.

I try to be in the gym at least twice a week. According to Anna the spa manager, if you have a responsible job aboard a Cruise ship that is making one week cruises then there is no social life. She only forgot to mention that she met her ex aboard a ship…I miss a state of interpersonal communication and I use the patients to talk and learn from about their lives. Sometimes it's even exciting. Jews of course have an immediate affinity and their stories reflect the wanderings and walking in the desert that are part of our nation’s story forever.

Next chapters I will tell more about this issue. I have to run now to my post on embarkation day at the Spa tour, before I’ll be hit by a dead fish on the head…

Effi Kfir L.Ac

Two stripes and a half

Fort Lauderdale - Port Everglade

Florida

To continue reading click the title of the next chapter:

Chapter 2 – One typical week in the life of the Chinese physician aboard the Solstice,

shifting from the shadow of the gallows to one hour of eternal glory.

"Solstice My Love" is a series of eight episodes.

The following is the order of the chapters (to open a new chapter just click

on the title of the chapter):

Chapter 1 - An Israeli, Chinese Medicine and American cruise ship meet in

the Caribbean, who has survived?