Computer Stolen

So I bought a computer a few weeks ago. Lot’s of people have them here, and with the wireless ports all over the ship, it’s cheaper to write e-mails or posts and dump them all at the same time. See, here on the ship we have to pay $.10 a minute to use the internet, which is a bummer if your trying to write a long e-mail to catch up with somebody. It adds up when your a ‘net freak like myself, believe me.

The computer is shipped from Dell to my loving parents who lovingly pack it up and lovingly shipped it, via FedEx, to the shakey hands of the Greeks here in Piraeus.

But! Everyone does a fantastic job! FedEx doesn’t drop the box into the ocean, and the Greeks don’t sell it for parts in the local bazaar. The package gets to the ship just fine.

At which point someone should have brought the box up to my boss’s boss’s office, the cruise director’s office, where I was waiting to pick it up. As a musician, I certainly don’t know anything about where shipments are recieved on a ship, or by who, etc. So I wait patiently at the cruise directors office. For two days.

Finally I get a bit suspicious and I start to go down the chain of command to ask about where this thing is. I think quite understandably, it takes me two days to find out who does what, in what order and where I can find them. So there I am, a lowly musician without any power at all, questioning these big Dutch officers about where exactly is my box and if you don’t know, then who does?

Finally, I get to the controller. I don’t know what he does. It seems to me that his only job is to oversee packages getting onto the ship, and then to distribute them correctly. He remembers my package! He signed for it! He left it downstairs with all of the hundreds of other cardboard boxes in the middle of the hallway on A-deck. That was four days ago.

We go down and – what do you know! There’s no box there. The controller starts getting a bit nervous and turning the blame around onto me. Funny too, because from that point on, everybody who could potential be responsible for the loss also starting to turn the blame around…

Anyway, it’s been 10 days now and the package is gone. Along with my brand new Dell M600 laptop computer that I got a great deal on and paid an arm and a leg for. With shipping we’re looking at $1,700 down the drain.

Bummer. I’m working on getting something back for it, but if I do it’ll only be because of the pity of somebody at the home office in Seattle. The ship seems to be refusing to take responsibility for the loss, since…well, basically, because I’m not really all that important. I’m making a whole lot of noise about it, hoping that somebody who can do something with make a difference, but mostly I’m just aggravating officers.

But whatever, everything happens for a reason, and this is no different. I’m still on a cruise ship, I’m still in Greece for the Olympics, and I’m still getting paid to travel. How’s that for a silver lining?