livingdeb | Entries tagged with cruise

Although I was cruising on a ship called the Conquest (a horrible name for a ship visiting former and current colonies), the theme of the decor was not conqustadors or femmes fatale, but impressionism. I'm not the biggest fan of impressionism, but fortunately, the ship did not strike me as at all hideous.

One day, while eating at Sur Mer, the awesome seafood place, I found myself drawn to this reproduction:

Is she sad? Or just tired? She looks inconsolably sad. You want to ask her if there is anything you can do for her, but you know there isn't. The problem is just extraordinarily big. Someone has just died, or her child has joined the military.

Robin confirmed that she is sad. This is a copy of "Blue Lady." By Henri Matisse.

Matisse? That shocked me. I don't like Matisse. There is all kinds of Matisse all over my house, none of which I like. For example, the picture on this cover of Jazz to me looks like a guy with so many gunshot wounds thats he's probably already dead. "Sword Swallower" to me looks like a guy crying because he has so many gigantic French fries jammed down his throat that he can't even breathe.

I don't suppose "Blue Lady" is any more pleasant. Less so, in some ways, because it seems more realistic.

Robin likes her hands. The painter just threw down some strokes, and yet the hands are so expressive.

To me the hands are just proper. Like her dress and her hat and her posture. She has to be where she is, but her mind is elsewhere. She's going through the motions of some sort of social duty, and fortunately already had this fancy dress and hat ready in her closet, because she obviously was in no mood to have gone shopping.

Is anyone noticing her? Are they staying away out of politeness? Or is this just a brief moment between forced smiles for her? There were several copies of this on the walls of the ship, but I didn't notice them until very late in the cruise. So perhaps she is also going unnoticed by others.

When I first got off the ship, walking on dry land did not feel unusual at all.

However, this morning when I woke up and walked down the hall I definitely had the sensation that the floor was not where I was expecting it to be. I'm not sure how I could have such bizarre expectations about where the floor would be. On a ship, you should learn not to have expectations.

I experienced this several times while getting ready this morning.

On the way to work, I found myself weaving back and forth, in a subtle version of the way the little girl at the beginning and end of "True Stories" is walking. I was doing this the last day on the ship, and I assumed it was because the ship was rocking from side to side that day. But as far as I know, the earth was not rocking from side to side today.

Before leaving on the cruise, I came up with several strategies for dealing with infinite food. This entry is about how that went.

* "Try things that have fruits and vegetables in them, in case they turn out to be yummy" - I did this, and almost everything was either kind of yummy or sort of edible but at least small. I really didn't mind eating this stuff because it was different every day, but I realized that if I were cooking the way I normally cook, I would end up with a week's worth of whatever dish, and I wouldn't really look forward to that at all.

Also, normally I just cook and eat one thing at meals, so I have to eat enough to fill me up. But if the produce is in small side dishes, maybe that's better. Most days at sea I had meals with a small bowl of soup, a few pieces of fruit or a small salad, a normal main dish with maybe a bit of vegetable as a garnish, and then a small dessert, usually with a small scoop of ice cream next to it. Many weeks I don't find time to cook a main dish, let alone side dishes, but maybe I should look more closely into this strategy.

* "During those meals with several courses, do not feel like I have to order something at every course" - Ha! I mostly did order something for every course and mostly I ate it all too. I tried very hard not to order more than I could eat, and mostly I succeeded. I never still felt hungry and like I had to supplement my meal elsewhere afterwards, though. Once I ordered just a side (baked potato) instead of a main dish, and it was very confusing to people. It was definitely enough food, though.

* "Eat something with protein and something with fiber before allowing myself dessert" - That mostly happened automatically. We did more sit-down meals than buffets. On the other hand, we also did a dessert buffet for lunch once and I had nothing but tea and dessert at afternoon tea three days.

* "When two things look equally good, pick the healthier-seeming one" - I did this a couple of times; both times I like what I chose just fine (such as vegetarian enchiladas instead of a burger and fries).

I discovered that I enjoy eating just a bran/carrot muffin with milk (and with fruit) for breakfast. Not that I did it many times. That's kind of healthy, though, and something I should think about copying for real life, using a good recipe, of course.

And now for the test of how well this turned out: This morning I weighed myself and came in a half a pound lighter than the morning I left. At first I was inclined to do a victory dance, but then when I tried to explain to myself how this happened, the reasons I come up with were all pathetic. Um, I refrained from eating until I was completely stuffed at every single meal? My pedometer measured just as many steps as usual? Cream is a diet food? My best explanation is that I should have drunk more water before weighing myself. Still, any weight change was small enough to be disguised by general weight fluctuations, so that's good.

I used almost every single thing I packed and wished I had packed more: fancier shoes and more necklaces. I looked around to see how everyone else had fit all their stuff into things they could carry themselves. I think the secret was a bigger suitcase. I had a carry-on suitcase and a large knapsack (plus Robin took three items for me in his carry-on). A normal suitcase with a smaller knapsack would have worked better. People say you should pack lightly, and I like the concept, but I'm not sure yet how to carry it out. I'm afraid it involves doing laundry, which I tend to really not want to do on vacation.

Today we got up, finished packing, had one more free breakfast, disembarked, went to Robin's favorite fish place, Goode Company Texas Seafood in Houston, drove home, unpacked, and went through the mail. Then I read all my favorite LiveJournal blogs. I love blogs. Love, love, love. I even found out more things about one of the other people who came on the cruise. With eight people, it's hard to talk to everyone as much as you want to.

Then I discovered that LiveJournal is being weird about posting journal entries out of order, so I posted all the back-dated ones so I could post this one. To find them all, click on the "cruise" tag.

It was nice to have an extra week of summer (though well air-conditioned); it was 45 degrees (7C) when we returned (55 in the house). So I had hot chocolate for supper. Mmm.

Some of us went to an aerobics/strength building class on ship days at eight in the morning. Two of these days it was taught by this guy who felt that you need only six exercises to work all your muscles. I don't believe this, but still, it sounded like a good start. We only did four of these:

* squats
* push-ups
* abs - lie on back with feet straight out in front of you, slightly off the floor, and criss-cross your feet
* back - lie on your stomach like Superman flying and lift either your right arm and left leg, your left arm and right leg or both arms and legs

He also mentioned:

* pull-ups

I can't remember the last one. The point is that you don't need to be in a gym and that if you switch between these without resting in between (actually, we "rested" in a plank position after before starting over with lunges each time), then it's aerobic. You do each of these, one at a time, a different way each time. You might do them quickly during one circuit, slowly once, pulsing once, and statically staying in the hardest position of the movement once.

Today was the second class with this guy, and there were fewer of us, so he got to teach the class the way he preferred: with stations.

Squats - Station 1 had a huge ball which you would put between your back and a wall to help you do squats. For a while there was also a somewhat redundant station 4.5 for doing lunges while we had an extra person.

Shoulder presses - Station 2 had a couple of 2.5-kg (6-lb) with which you would do shoulder presses. Imagine doing a handstand, then doing push-ups in that position, only it's more like air push-ups because you're standing up and just lifting these tiny weights (comparied to your own body weight) into the air.

Tricep dips - Station 3 had a step like they have in step aerobics which you could use to do tricep dips. You can also do these using the edge of a chair or bed by acting like you're trying to sit on the chair, but you're missing the chair and instead sitting in front of the chair, but catching yourself before you hit the floor because you've got your hands on the edge of the chair seat.

Back exercise - Station 4 had a mat and you were to do the same "swimming" exercise we did earlier.

Push-ups - Station 5 had a mat for push-ups. You could do regular, girls--ahem--modified (knees on floor) to make it easier, or with one leg in the air to make it harder.

We did a circuit at normal pace, doing about a count of fifteen at each station. Then a circuit where you find the toughest position and hold that for about fifteen seconds. Then two circuits with pulses. Then another one holding the roughest position. Then do ten as fast as you can, only you'd probably do fewer because once the first person finished, everyone moved.

He explained that moving from station to station was one of the more important parts of this routine and helps keep you from becoming one of those people who can never get on the floor because you won't be able to get up; and if you fall over you're just stuck there until someone can help you.

So you should do this however long it takes to get twenty minutes in. A nice quick work-out (except it doesn't seem so nice the next day). I think this is a good idea that I should copy at home.

Today we visited Cozumel Mexico. I had planned to bicycle to a really cool park and walk around learning about plants and architecture, but I wasn't prepared enough and didn't find the bicycle rental place until later than I wanted to be starting that adventure. I just shopped along the main road with Robin.

I know the US is just as bad with treating everyone as a consumer first and foremost, but it was more in your face here. They invited us to check out their wares in very friendly ways: "You want Cuban cigars?" "Everything is almost free!" and, on the way back down a dead-end alley, "My turn!" I never got used to it.

There was a lot of gorgeous silver-and-stone jewelry, which I didn't buy, but I did buy a really nice folding fan.

We also went to a local museum where we learned about Gonzalo Guerrero, a fascinating-sounding character who was shipwrecked in the time of Cortez, became a Mayan, and would not return to Spain when rescued. In fact, he tried to organize the Mayans to defend their land against the Spanish. He died eighteen years later. He is a bit like a character in the overly ambitious sci-fi book I sometimes fantasize about writing.

We also saw this fountain in San Miguel de Cozumel, Mexico:

Fountain in San Miguel de Cozumel, Mexico

Back on the ship, we got to see a six-minute short Fantasia-like film, Destino, based on a collaboration between Walt Disney and Salvador Dali. (I also learned that apparently "Dali" is accented on the last syllable.)

We learned just a tiny bit about the Cayman Islands on our way to the boat that would take us snorkeling.

First stop: Stingray City. There were lots of people here, but plenty of friendly stingrays to go around. Here is what I discovered:

* how sharp the skin is - not very. It's a bit rough on top, but nothing like a shark's. The bottom is very, very smooth. It's actually covered with a protective mucus, and for this reason we were not allowed to wear shoes of any kind or gloves.

* what the eyelids look like - I could see the top eyelid, but not the bottom one. I never saw a stingray blink. I'm guessing they only do it in reaction to something getting too close to their eye. No, I did not test this hypothesis.

* how many fins and gills I can see - There's a hole the size of a cherry tomato in each side that just stays open when the stingray is being held above water but which has a flap that moves over it under water. I just noticed one other set of fins besides the big ones; I couldn't see any resemblance to sharks at all, even when I was looking for it.

* how they swim - yep, it's beautiful and elegant

* what it feels like if they eat out of your hand - we were told to hold a squid loosely in our hand, shaping our hand like an ice cream cone with part of the squid sticking out the top. Then a stingray would smell this and come by and suck it out of your hand. We were assured that they did not have any teeth. I decided that they were lying and that these rays do have teeth, like shark do, but they are very small and blunt. The suction is very powerful and I definitely felt some roughness. Raaga123 got bitten pretty hard, but although this resulted in an interesting pattern on her skin, the skin was not broken and there was no blood.

I also learned that the sting is halfway down the tail.

Stingray City is a popular excursion at this stop. We found this in our cabin upon our return:

Our next two stops were at coral reefs which had some cool parts and some very pretty fish, but they were mostly dead. And we realized it's because of millions of people visiting and peeing and touching. Yes, it's exciting to interact with sealife, but when it's likely to hurt them, I'd just as soon watch an IMAX movie about them. The people making those movies are experts and do not hurt things, and they collect images for a long time on very high-quality film, and it's totally awesome, and from now on, that's going to be good enough for me and Robin.

**

This was the night we ate at The Point Supper Club, which cost extra and was very fancy. Here are the differences I noticed between eating here and eating at our regular place:

* free starter - here is where I learned that if you make tiny balls of honeydew melon and sprinkle poppy seeds on top, it looks like you're eating an alien life form, or perhaps large roe, but it tastes just fine.

* portion sizes were considerably larger, making it impossible to even pretend to comfortably eat everything.

* service was slower, perhaps to give us more time to digest between courses, but this strategy didn't work. Also, they had trouble keeping Robin's water glass full.

* all main courses consisted of large hunks of meat. Of course most normal people who are not vegetarians find large hunks of meat to be special.

* one-third of the most popular dessert was the best thing I ate there: a flourless chocolate cake a la mode (below, far right). There was also a fudge a la mode and a very alcoholic tiramisu. And that was all just one dessert.

* the food was even more artfully arranged, with even more artful flourishes.

Afterwards, since it was the birthday of one of us, extra plates came out. This normally exciting prospect was met with groaning. We began the happy-birthday song with groans of varying pitch. This comes out a bit like a dirge.

No Thanksgiving dinner was available here, so part of me feels like I missed Thanksgiving. On the other hand, I ate like a pig for a full week solid, and that's what Thankgsiving's all about, right?

Today's tour was a lovely tubing adventure, followed by playing around in some falls with a rope swing and then lunching on jerked chicken. All of that was very pleasant and all, but not the best part of this trip. (Although Robin also added in a zipline tour, which was one of the best parts of this trip for him.)

On the way there, we rode in a van with Carolyn Barrett (of Barrett Adventures) for over an hour through the Jamaican countryside while she explained things and told us stories and we passed very interesting scenery. (On the way back, we were combined with another group in a larger, more comfortable van, with a very quite driver who did, however, provide today's quote of the day.)

Jamaicans speak English, or at least it's taught in schools and used in street signs, but their everyday language, Patois, is a combination of many elements including Cockney English, Ibo (an African language), and another African language I didn't recognize the name of. They add things to verbs to indicate tense, such as a-go (present), o-go (past), wen-go, and nen-go (didn't go). (Those examples are probably wrong, but she was talking quickly, and they give you an idea of how it works.)

Jamaicans drive on the left side of the road, like most everyone. In the olden days, everyone drove/rode on the left side of the road to keep their right hand free for their lance. Then at the time of the American Revolution, the US switched sides just to be contrary. Canadians and Mexicans followed. Sweden also switched because they have two car makers with a big market in the US, and they didn't want to have to make two kinds of models. (Are these stories true? I don't know. They are interesting, though.)

The roads we were on, mostly main highways, were two-lane roads and had no shoulders or sidewalks. The edges of the road were made of rain forest. We'd see people picking up trash in the road, waiting on the side of the road for a taxi, etc., even though it really seemed like there was no room at all and visibility around the curves of the mountains was too poor. Cars went fast, though, passing often (we witnessed a near head-on collision once). This was especially exciting for those of us used to driving on the other side of the road.

The main form of transportation is taxis, packed quite full. We decided a good video game would be called "Jamaican Taxi Driver," and you have to get the most people possible to the other side of the island while avoiding other cars, pedestrians, chickens, dogs (all the dogs look the same there, by the way), etc. Our driver said that driving there is like Mr. Toad's wild ride. She said you don't just need good nerves, you need no nerves at all.

We saw an amazingly wide variety of architecture ranging from 11,000+ square-foot mansions down to shacks made from readily identifiable elements. There were some solid and beautiful buildings made of adobe or perhaps concrete brick. There were solid buildings of concrete brick. Many buildings were in the middle of construction. There were ugly and flimsy-looking buildings, which really were the most fascinating to me. For example, one way to hold sheet metal on your roof is to put cinder blocks on top. I enjoyed seeing a mansion with a clothesline run between one of its pillars and a tree. I also saw awnings that were sometimes out and sometimes just hanging down vertically. Were the vertical ones broken, or is this just a good idea, especially in hurricane country?

(Sorry, no pictures; we were in a moving vehicle the whole time.)

Our guide said that most of the mansions were actually owned by returning Jamaicans. You go off to a first-world country, and about the second year, you send money home to cousin Nigel who builds a room and moves in. Each year, you send more money and Nigel adds another room. After forty years, you've got a mansion ready to retire in, but it's full of relatives with sweat equity.

The main (legal) exports are sugar cane and oranges. Yams can grow to be very large. For example, last year's winning yam weighed 70 pounds and had about 25 "fingers" coming off it.

In the middle of the island is "cockpit country," karst (cave) mountains which make excellent hiding places. Runaway slaves who came here became known as maroons, from the original word that meant "wild ones." Basically, this allowed the slaves to revolt more effectively here than in other countries. The British found that it was cheaper to get more slaves from Africa than to find their runaways and bring them back. After a while, the maroons were given independence and the British switched to indentured servants.

The literacy rate peaked in the 80% range under British rule but is now only 26%. The explanation is that the politicians sold them out, promising cheap labor.

Jamaica has the most churches per capita. They also have the most rum bars per capita. The churches tend to be visited by women; the men wait for them in the bars. Jamaicans are proud to call themselves Christian, but they also practice opia, aka voodoo, for their everyday needs.

The capital and largest city is Kingston. Montego Bay (where we landed) is the second largest city with a population of 100,000. Most Jamaicans live in villages and know their neighbors. "It's nice, so long as you know what you can live without."

Quote of the day - "Thank you for your cooperation for letting me drive you back without a scratch."

Today we went on a rather mediocre galley tour, but there were still some good parts to it.

First, the waiters use a revolving door to get between the kitchen and dining room. This is great because they don't need any hands to get through. However, we totally can't see into the kitchen at all, because there is always a part of the door blocking our view. On the tour, we got to see the other side of that door. Just beyond the door is this:

It just seems like this control panel makes it a little too easy for evil to be exercised.

My other favorite part of the tour was seeing a guy making fondant roses. I assume it's fondant anyway, because it's not quite frosting. It's a thing you can roll out like clay into a snake, then cut matching pieces off. Take each piece and flatten it into a circle. Then roll one circle into a spiral and add two more around the edges. Fold some of the tops outward. Set on cake.

(Click to see bigger size; you may have to click on "all sizes" and then select "large" if not already selected.)

I later heard that some of the people in the tour were snatching these treasures and popping them into their mouths. And the poor chef must not have felt he could have said anything.

**

We also went to an afternoon tea each day at sea. Here's a place setting:

I learned how to fold the napkins to make those cool leaning-tower-of-Pisa shapes. First, bring two corners together that were kitty-corner to fold a square napkin in half on the diagonal. Make a fold parallel to the long edge of the triangle, folding it back. Then take the remaining corner and fold it to the bottom.

Then take one of the new corners and bring it toward the other side to make a vertical fold. Don't quite bring it far enough over to fold the napkin in half.

then take a pointy part and fold it across.

Now take that same point and fold it so that it sticks straight up along the right edge of your napkin.

Then roll it so that the width of this sticking-up part is the diameter of the roll, and tuck in the end. It's hard to explain this stuff.

Quote of the day - "I'll turn this ship around." - cruise director, in a threatening way

Six 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."

Today I learned that taking 71 to Houston is really no quicker than taking 290 like we thought it would be. It was still a fine route for us.

We got a room just down the hall from chikuru and raaga123, which was nice. The other two couples were on a much higher deck. Speaking of which, here is some ship vocabulary.

Stuff I knew:
* fore - front of ship
* aft - back of ship
* port - left side of ship. You can remember this because both port and left have four letters. Also, wine has four letters, and port is a type of wine. Port is the good side (four letters) and the side most of us were on.
* starboard - right side of ship. Anything without four letters goes here.

Stuff I didn't know or only sort of knew:
* exit - stairwell. Seriously, if you want to find a stairwell or elevator, you need to look for an exit sign. If you are looking for an exit, you will have to use some other strategy. And there really is no good exit from a ship at sea.
* deck - floor. We were on deck 2. Our other friends were on deck 9. The other couple was on deck 7. Our restaurant was on deck 3; most other things were on deck 9.
* guest - passenger/customer/sucker.
* watch your step - wrong way. Well, at least on our deck, if you came out of the aftmost stairwell and were wondering which way to go, the answer was always to never cross the part of the hall that said "watch your step."
* cabin - like a hotel room, only a bit smaller and better designed.
* cruise ship - floating mansion/hotel

Our TBA dinner assignments turned out to be at all different tables, different times, and different dining rooms. Raaga123 (and Indigo Rose?) got it so that all eight of us could eat together every single day. Yes, we had indicated that we were all to be together when we signed up.

We also arranged for dinner one night in the fancy dining room.

The food was good and the stairs were multiple. Calorie-wise, I think the food won.

I didn't get the kind of motion-sickness where I felt nauseated, but I did feel a little dizzy a few times. Mostly it was just fun being on a moving surface, sort of like a very mild funhouse. If you've ever jumped up and down on an elevator, it sort of felt like that when running up stairs, too, a few times.

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Note of the Living Deb

Entries tagged with cruise

Art Appreciation

Return from the Caribbean: Sea Legs

Return from the Caribbean: About Food

Cruise: Day 8 - About Packing

Cruise: Day 7 - Exercise routine

Cruise: Day 6 - Hero

Cruise: Day 5 - Stingrays

Cruise: Day 4 - Jamaica

Cruise: Day 3 - Galley Tour

Cruise: Day 2 - Premonition

Cruise: Day 1 - Orientation