The document describes the author's experience working for seven months on a cruise ship. It discusses the long hours, low pay, and difficult living and working conditions for crew members. Crew members work 84 hours per week with no days off and live in small shared cabins. Their schedules and living situations are tightly controlled by the cruise line. Despite the challenges, the author notes that crew members form close relationships and find ways to socialize, such as through frequent parties below deck.

1. My Life below Deck
If I ever had to pick up a place to describe the most intense
cultural and living experience that I ever had, I would easily
choose the placed call “Mariner of the Seas”, a ship from Royal
Caribbean Cruise Line which I work for endless seven months.
It may sounds like the dream job, travelling around the world
from port to port on a grand all-expenses-paid tour. However,
working on a ship cruise should be considered one of the
hardest roles in the world. With 84 work hours per week, seven-
month stretches with no days off and wages so low that workers
rely on tips. So perhaps it is no surprise that life below deck
consists of frequent liaisons, riotous parties and heavy drinking,
despite the cramped shared cabins.
I was one of few Brazilians working on Mariner of The Seas, a
medium size ship with more than 1900 hundred crewmembers
who were working, living, sharing feelings and different
cultural backgrounds in such a “small place” that sometimes
was easy to lost our own identity.
The worst part of the job is being 'owned' by the corporation.
They control what you eat, when you eat, when you can use the
toilet, the temperature of your cabin, your sleep hours and
absolutely everything. It is very alike to the Big Brother reality
show, with one single difference; none of us would become
millionaire by the end of the ‘show’.
It does not matter if you already have worked 12 hours on a
day, if they need you for another four hours, you will work with
no questions to be asked. The structure of the days is another
thing that really bothered me; they have never given me a full
night of sleep during the whole duration of my contract. My
sleep time was around four or five hours a night (that's after 12
hours or more of labor). Most crew takes advantage of any ‘time
off’ to take a nap. After couple months in this routine you enter
in perpetual zombie-mode. Working long hours is unfortunately

2. not made better by a healthy wage, and as a bartender my salary
relied mostly on tips. The work was constant and also very
menial. In one single day I could work in three or four different
stations: casino bar in the morning, dinning room bar during
lunch, swimming pool station in the afternoon and once again to
casino bar through the whole night.
Yes, life below deck is hard, but it also has a positive side. You
might be surprised to hear that any romance between staff and
customers is very rare and also strictly forbidden. Believe it or
not, almost nobody breaks that rule. The job is too hard to get
and being caught means instant firing and being dropped off in
whatever country the very next port is. However, the
relationships between crewmembers it is not just allowed but it
is also part of a whole different story. Onboard it is almost a
“crime” to date someone of your own ethnicity. Ship lives give
us a very rare opportunity to taste the world, so to speak. The
crew rotates in and out every single week, so there is always a
“fresh meet” arriving to be part of the crews. Actual
relationships are exceedingly hard to keep up when you’re
working more than 80 hours a week in rotating shifts. I have
only met a handful of couples that made it work. What really
impressed me is how some of the crew members create two
distinct realities by working on a ship cruise. I would say the
main motive that drives people to start working on a ship cruise
is the idea of providing a better quality of life to their families
who live ashore. What I could never imagine is that even having
a family overseas, man and woman living this intense life, also
arrange another spouse onboard. This way they can have an
affective life inside the ship even knowing that their relatives
are outside waiting for them. In 99% of the times, the spouse
onboard knows about the existence of a spouse ashore, but not
the other way around.
Being a couple is the only way that they can live together
sharing the same cabin. The crew cabins are in general very
small, and with the exception of a “married couple”, man and
woman do not share this space. My cabin was so tiny that I was

3. required to sleep with my luggage every night due to the lack of
space. They were located in decks under the passenger areas,
and some of them, under the water line, which can be very noisy
due to vibration, hum of the engine room and the waves outside.
The beds are bunk style. The sheets, blankets and pillow are
provided by the shipping company.
At the beginning of my contract I shared my cabin with a girl
from India, couple months later a girl from Colombia was living
with me. By the end of my contract I had lived with five
different women and each one of them from different parts of
the globe. Today, I can tell you, nothing teaches you more
about other cultures than sharing a tiny space with a foreigner.
For those who ever watched the movie “Titanic”, you may
remember that crazy and full of fun parties that happened
almost every night below the deck. You may be wondering how
the crew manages to find time to party when they have to work
such long hours. One thing I can tell you, the parties that
happen below deck are some of the greatest ones that I ever had.
Considering that we were been in zombie-mode for so very,
very long, you would be amazed at what the human body can
handle. Everything you have heard about sailors being wild
drunks is true. The alcohol is not free; however, they are very
cheap. As a bartender I had the privilege of getting all of them
for free.
And before you start thinking that crewmembers eat the same
food as the passengers, I would advise you. This is not true!
Crewmembers have their own mess hall and food preparation
personnel. Even though food and sodas are free, they were not
good at all. Mariner of the Seas had 45% of its crewmembers
from Philippines, and 35% from India. The rule was clear;
crewmembers’ kitchen would prepare the food accordingly with
the majority of the ethnicity onboard. I lost the count of how
many times I have tried to have a “normal” breakfast when the
crewmembers’ kitchen was early in the morning serving only
rice, beef or fish omelet.
Ship’s life is like this, people living together from all over the

4. world, trying to find common grounds by speaking some
English. Having a life, even so, for a short period of time is
really a unique and unforgettable experience, very difficult to
compare to a land job. Few jobs offer the chance to see so many
places in the world, exotic views and meet so many people from
so different countries. Obviously, after such experience, you’ll
become a well-rounded and worldly person, and get a better
understanding about global problems and people from around
the world and their culture and way of life. Certainly, the only
way to know if you like it is to try it.
EGR 3350 Process Description Tasking Sheet
Process Description Assignment
You are tasked to write a description of a process with the
following specifications:
· The subject must be:
a) the operation of a physical device with two or more parts that
function together to achieve some purpose, or
b) a conceptual process of two or more steps that lead to some
desired outcome.
· The subject must be associated with, or closely related to,
your major field of study.
· The process description document must
· Be precise, technically correct, and emphasize the steps of a
process, not material attributes;
· Follow either Outline 5.1, p. 63 of the course text, or Outline
5.2, pp. 63-64 of the course text, depending on the subject;
· Be consistent with the format rules for writing assignments as
provided in the EGR 3350 Syllabus for Spring Semester 2015;
· Be 2 ½ pages in length, including visuals;
· Include at least one visual. Your total visuals should not
occupy more than ½ of one page; each visual must include a
caption and give credit to the visual’s source (even if you

5. created it yourself).
· You are not required to use sources, but if you do use sources,
you must cite your sources and include a Works Cited page.
Your Works Cited should appear on a separate page that is not
counted toward your page limit.
· Be sure to edit and review your paper carefully using the
Process Description Checklist on pp. 75-76.
Please contact your instructor if you have any questions about
this assignment well before it is due.
process description of a for loop
By Jane Doe
Introduction
In Computer Science, a for loop is an iterative process that
repeatedly executes code based off of the condition of a counter
variable. A for loop is used when trying to do a section of code
a certain amount of times. Typically, the number of repetitions
are already known before coding the loop. A for loop process
have four iterative steps: initialize, evaluate, execute, and
increment. See Figure 1 for a flowchart of these steps.
START
Figure 1 For Loop Flowchart
Runs the Code
Changes Index Value
INCREMENT
EXECUTE
TERMINATE
Compares Index to Condition

6. EVALUATE
Sets Index Number
INITIALIZE
Discussion
Initialize
Initializing is a value setting process that assigns a variable to a
value. This step is necessary to insure that the proper amount of
iterations will occur. The value that is set is the starting point
of the loop and referred to as the index. The index is what is
evaluated in the next step.
Evaluate
Evaluation is an assessment process in which two items are
compared to see if they are equal. There is a set condition that
the index is compared to. This step decides whether or not the
loop continues. If the index meets the condition, then the loop
is terminated. Otherwise, the loop moves forward executing the
code.
Execute
In programming, execution is an implementation process in
which lines of code are performed. The loop runs the code once
for each iteration. After each iteration the index is incremented.
Increment
Incrementing is an altering process where the original value is
changed. This step changes the value of the index based off of
how many times the loop has been performed. This step is
required in the process because if the index is never changed,
then the loop would never meet its condition. The index can be
either increased or decreased depending on what the coder’s
original intent is.
Conclusion
A for loop is an iterative process that repeatedly executes code
based off the condition of an index. The index is compared to
the condition, if the condition is not met, then the code is
executed. After the code executes the index is change and then

7. loops back up to evaluate whether the condition is met. The
loop continues until the condition is met; once the condition is
met the for loop terminates. This is the process that a for loop
goes through in order to run a block of code multiple times in a
program.
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