The Name Game.
Meeting and working with a lot of international guests makes for some
very humorous pronunciations of my name. Marissa is the most popular mistake and I find
myself unoffended and get closer and closer to just saying: “Good enough!”
The worst mispronunciation of my name was on an embarkation day when I
introduced myself to a very nice Austrian man in his late 70s. As a side note, he had a wife with CruElla
Devil Hair (one big white strip down the middle of a dark gray flare out) and
they always seems to be ‘lost’ from each other and asking if you’d seen their
spouse. Another side note is the Austrian
man got a little tipsy at the Pool deck Disco later in the cruise and said I
was “sexy.” Anyway, on embarkation day
it took him 4 times to realize my true name after he honestly thought I had a
terrible name: Molester, yes that is totally not my name. I should ask
for a name tag with larger print, I guess.
Bored in Ukraine.
On November 12, 2012 we embarked on our vessel after 20 hours of straight travel from Las Vegas, NV to Athens, Greece. I wrote a letter to my mom, which included a funny story that never made it to my blog. Here’s some of the story:
When we started
sailing last night, I took some Dramamine but it made me really tired.
Our entire cast was
SOOO tired from travel but we had to start safety training. We had a meeting with the Safety Officer at
7pm after dinner. He is from Ukraine and
has a thick accent. There were us 6 and
1 new girl who worked at the spa at the 1st training meeting.
Imagine a small office with 7 kids in their 20s (us) “listening” to an old Ukrainian
man telling us about ship safety, and we have all been up for about 20 hours
and jetlagged. Ha-ha! We all took turns falling asleep. He got so mad at us, but mainly laughed it
off. It was one of the hardest times I
have had trying to stay awake. Then he
had us come for the 2nd training at 9am in the morning, which wasn’t
much easier!
A few weeks ago we got a NEW Safety Officer about 30 years younger but
with the same name and same country of origin.
I think his accent (which sounds very similar to Russian) has the same
side affect as Vicadin. This new guy is stricter and schedules more
meetings so are more prepared and better behaved. I know I will thank him eternally if we ever
have a serious emergency but for now, I make blog entries about them.
Here is a comparison of this is how the meeting would go down in America:
A: Ok guys, you need to be more disciplined at the drills I need all 6
of you to be in two rows demonstrating the life vests and please no talking,
it’s only a 20 minute drill.
U: Ok, so, I tell you, there is
no one here, you need to be here and imagine you are saying this to dumb
people, you have to demonstrate as if you it was to a dog, some people don’t
get and you have to help. No chatting,
no “what you do last night” or joking, laughing, no hands in pockets. None of these.
Circus Here? No!
I’m telling you we had a 25-minute drill and then a 15-minute meeting
about what we did wrong at the drill. I
never thought you could make so many mistakes in 25 minutes…
Conclusion.
My name is Melissa and I LOVE everyone from all over the world. We all have different ways of communicating
and I struggle everyday to understand those differences. Yesterday, (remember, besides us 6, NO ONE
else onboard is from the US) I was invited to sit a table of officers during
dinner because Ivan wasn’t hungry and I was alone at another table. They were all laughing and I could not, for
the life of me, understand what was so funny AND they were speaking English. Oh well.
Let’s just hope I didn’t have food on my face.
xo-me
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