Cruise Poem C39

It takes a lot of hardship
By many people –
For a few’s pleasures

09.08.16

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Copyright by Minh Tan on listed dated of completion.

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Notes to this poem…

 

For what turned out to be the final poem composed on my first cruise, I was thinking of the ship’s crew, especially the hospitality and cleaning staff who have to put up with so much crap from some entitled passengers. Cleaning and serving regular people ain’t always pleasant, either, even if we’re trying to make their job simpler. We have gross dirty towels, plates and such they have to handle and treat, too!

While the ship passengers generally outnumber the crew 2:1, that’s a massively low ratio as far as I’m concerned. However, there are also people the crew have to support, who might have supported them to have gotten their jobs in the first place, or taking care of their roles back at home like partly raising their kids while they are gone. I could seriously have had this on my mind the whole cruise and not be able to enjoy it, feeling sad for these people. However, they did such a fantastic job I was able to forget about it some of the time and enjoy myself. There are a lot more people I didn’t see or know about who had to work hard for the pleasures of these passengers, and they’d probably outnumber us.

Thank you to all the crew, especially those who served my family at dinners and cleaned our rooms. I have some of their amazing stories with me for life from our brief conversations that was probably all they were allowed to have so as not to slow them down.

Well, thanks to all but that “PhD” refuting global warming in his talk about the glaciers that was politicized and racist! That guy needs to… I’ll let you finish that sentence, to be diplomatic. 🙂

These cruise poems were written on my first ever cruise between September 2nd and 9th, from Seward, Alaska to Vancouver, British Columbia. Most were written at night on my limited down time from family, in the dark of the Helideck at the front of the ship, often alone beneath the night skies of Alaska.

 

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