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Cruise: Day 2 - Premonition
Nov. 19th, 2007 10:00 pmSix of us gathered in the party cabin to watch "Premonition" on TV yesterday. I'd heard it wasn't that great because it didn't make any sense and there were plot problems. Actually it made adequate sense and we saw only one plot problem.
One lesson to learn from this movie is not to see a psychiatrist for things the psychiatrist knows nothing about. Your emotions are a little whacked? Maybe. Your reality keeps changing as if you're awakening from dreams all the time? No. In this movie, although of course the psychiatrist had no clue what was going on, he did think that it would be good to prescribe lithium. And then later to use more drastic treatments.
I once read a blog from someone who kept getting institutionalized but it wasn't really helping her. Finally she decided to do whatever was necessary to stay out of the institution so that she could get things done. Feigning sanity was required. And I think that's true sometimes. When the professionals who help or otherwise deal with people who have your problem have no clue, then if possible you might want to try as hard as you can to make it look like you don't have that problem. This is obvious in movies about aliens landing on earth--you really don't want anyone knowing you're an alien if you can help it, at least not until you've scoped out the place and have a strategy.
Well it turns out that going to the cruise medical facility when you have diarrhea is a similarly bad idea. What happens is that the nurse does test your dehydration and electrolyte level and does give you an antidiarrhetic, but then she doesn't give you an antibiotic and she confines you to your room for 36 hours. And she has your cabin steward leave you bottles of water which you get charged for if you drink them. And then you wonder if she has access to computers and can tell that you're leaving your room. And then when you try to buy something and your card has been blocked, things look a bit scary. The next day when the ask nurses if you're feeling better, if you are wise, you will say yes. Oh, yes, much better now.
[It turns out that the card was blocked because when it was lost, the purser blocked the old card and created a new card which was really just a copy of the old card (same folio number) rather than a new card. Oops. We discovered this several days later. Fortunately for us (and bad guys who steal these cards), they still let us in and out of the room and on and off the ship.]
**
This was the first formal night and everyone looked smashing. Is it rude to stare at your friends when they are extra gorgeous?
It was also fun to watch medium and little girls running around in little black dresses.
Food lesson - we discovered the chilled fruit soup which was probably made of cream, sugar, and just enough fruit to give it a pastel color. Today we had strawberry.
Also, yams, which is different from sweet potatoes, taste a lot like regular potatoes. What we call yams in the US are really sweet potatoes. Yams from the Caribbean are different, which I'd heard many times, but I never really had a sense of what they were like. Today I had yam soup and it was like potato soup. Yum.
Quote of the day - "Forward is behind you."
One lesson to learn from this movie is not to see a psychiatrist for things the psychiatrist knows nothing about. Your emotions are a little whacked? Maybe. Your reality keeps changing as if you're awakening from dreams all the time? No. In this movie, although of course the psychiatrist had no clue what was going on, he did think that it would be good to prescribe lithium. And then later to use more drastic treatments.
I once read a blog from someone who kept getting institutionalized but it wasn't really helping her. Finally she decided to do whatever was necessary to stay out of the institution so that she could get things done. Feigning sanity was required. And I think that's true sometimes. When the professionals who help or otherwise deal with people who have your problem have no clue, then if possible you might want to try as hard as you can to make it look like you don't have that problem. This is obvious in movies about aliens landing on earth--you really don't want anyone knowing you're an alien if you can help it, at least not until you've scoped out the place and have a strategy.
Well it turns out that going to the cruise medical facility when you have diarrhea is a similarly bad idea. What happens is that the nurse does test your dehydration and electrolyte level and does give you an antidiarrhetic, but then she doesn't give you an antibiotic and she confines you to your room for 36 hours. And she has your cabin steward leave you bottles of water which you get charged for if you drink them. And then you wonder if she has access to computers and can tell that you're leaving your room. And then when you try to buy something and your card has been blocked, things look a bit scary. The next day when the ask nurses if you're feeling better, if you are wise, you will say yes. Oh, yes, much better now.
[It turns out that the card was blocked because when it was lost, the purser blocked the old card and created a new card which was really just a copy of the old card (same folio number) rather than a new card. Oops. We discovered this several days later. Fortunately for us (and bad guys who steal these cards), they still let us in and out of the room and on and off the ship.]
**
This was the first formal night and everyone looked smashing. Is it rude to stare at your friends when they are extra gorgeous?
It was also fun to watch medium and little girls running around in little black dresses.
Food lesson - we discovered the chilled fruit soup which was probably made of cream, sugar, and just enough fruit to give it a pastel color. Today we had strawberry.
Also, yams, which is different from sweet potatoes, taste a lot like regular potatoes. What we call yams in the US are really sweet potatoes. Yams from the Caribbean are different, which I'd heard many times, but I never really had a sense of what they were like. Today I had yam soup and it was like potato soup. Yum.
Quote of the day - "Forward is behind you."