Out of Chuuk/Truk

Chuuk (choo-k)
We awoke around 7:45 and I turned on the TV because the movie “This is It” was scheduled to begin showing at 8am. After I left, Ed says he did his exercises in the room by dancing to the music.
We watched as we came through so many islands you can’t count them. I was thinking what it must be like to live so isolated from everything else and how difficult it would be to get supplies and support oneself. The weather is warm, but not hot, but the humidity is awful. It apparently has been raining in deluges for a few days though the sky is beautiful at the moment.
Library
I checked email and uploaded the last blog. It is usually quiet and peaceful there. There’s always at least one person working on the jig saw puzzle; the completed ones are often laying on the side for all to admire and many of them are quite complex. These are not 100 or 500 piece puzzles.
I also checked out some terms that are suddenly unclear to me: Gaussian (I know it in statistics where it refers to the bell shaped curve) but wasn’t clear why this term would apply to photography. I’m still not sure but in photography it refers to blurring the background in a photo. I sure wish I had put Photoshop onto this computer for this trip. I can’t wait to get to it at home. Picassa works really well for so many things but there’s more power in Photoshop.
Coming into port
This place is renowned as one of the best wreck diving places in the world. It has over 100 WWII vessels and planes in this mostly shallow lagoon which is surrounded largest enclosed lagoons in the world and is circled by 140 miles long barrier reef. I have no idea how much it would cost to come here and dive but it must be a small fortune. And I think the only reason a ship would stop here is to the passengers could go diving.
We could hear the laughter and shouts of children from the shore as we approached. The dock was on the opposite side of the ship, so we went to the Promanade deck to watch the tie up the ship and take down the usual on-dock equipment we use. The staircase, tent, carpet and two potted plants (seems like overkill doesn’t it), sign with time we have to be back onboard, podium for the security to use and so on. We heard a siren on shore and when we approached the pier there were many medical types with an ambulance there. One had scrubs on with a lab coat flapping in the breeze. All I could think of is how the scrubs were now contaminated and should be changed. One lady next to me said someone wanted to see an “American doctor.” I couldn’t help but laugh that someone would truly think Nikolas isn’t as good as they get at this job and that a small, isolated outpost would have a better option. If one needed the benefit of equipment or tests not available on the ship, it makes sense. I never saw who left but the rumor mill is already cluck clucking about it.
Some ladies in a lavender-purple mumu were waiting for us with (free) leis and head crowns. Ed looked at the staircase and said that it was packed. They quickly ran out as you may imagine but Ed managed to get me a crown which greenery and some fuzzy red flowers. All of the crowns and hats are small and many folks were asking for larger ones at the booths outside the security zone where one could buy your own.
We did walk around about 10 booths which featured lots of items made out of shells and reeds. Many of the shells are foreign to me—that or my memory is bad which is also highly possible. There were some skirts and mumus but none looked enticing by a long shot. There were many “love sticks” of various sizes for sale.
The love stick is unique to this island. In past years, a man would carve his personal notches on the lovestick and let his would-be sweethearts feel it. At night, lovestick in hand, he would kneel beside the thatch wall opposite where a girl lay sleeping, poke the stick through the wall and entangle her long hair, hopefully awakening her without arousing her family. The silent language of the lovestick began when the girl put her fingers around the shaft’s notches and identified the owner.
The town?
We did walk about a ¼ mile into the “town”. The “main intersection”, my phrase not theirs, was a lake and the cars were creeping through it. There were muddy potholes everywhere. It was hard to walk and keep oneself steady and clean. The buildings are not much more than hovels and there are mostly coconuts and bananas for sale plus a dish that is wrapped in banana leaves and can then be cooked and eaten out of the leaves.
US Post Office
We both wanted to see this building so we waded around the potholes and mud. It would be demolished in the US. The small foyer was packed with Americans and others trying to buy stamps; one fellow was squatted down on the floor, peeling off stamps and putting them on post cards. There was a long line of folks with Parcel Post boxes to go back to the ship. We didn’t stay long; we’ve seen it and memorialized the zip code with a photo. I only took the small Elph with us.
As we returned to the ship, we saw a fellow fall near the booths. We met Lysle (he uses trekker sticks to ambulate) and Ellie who were just coming out and we discouraged them from going very far and warned Lysle to be very careful. There were a few locals, including a few darling little kids, waiting in line to board the ship. We went through security, including the magnetron, and turned on CNN in the cabin. Ed stripped and put new clothes on.
When I was on the web earlier today, I was stunned at the vandalism of elected officials offices and such after the vote on health care. What has our society come to? Well, actually as I read history, I realize things aren’t really any worse now than in the past; it just seems more civilized.
Lunch
One fellow I knew, the others were “new” to me. A younger Aussie man and his wife, were there; the husband had a ‘do rag” around his head in black with white design of some sort and a T-shirt that made him look like a hell’s angel without a cycle. He joked about almost not being allowed back on the ship. We’ve been hearing a lot of in the lectures about the Whites only policies that were not official but were the underpinning of much of the history of Australia. The xenophobia knows no domestic boundaries it seems. He pulled out a cross and remarked that people in Queensland (where Cairns is) were beginning to wear crosses as a message to the Muslims. He described some skirmishes in various parts of Australia where there had been some fatalities when Muslims and Aussies got into it. I found a lot of it very unsettling as much because of the prejudice and stereotypes that he labors under, but also because of the depths that these beliefs go. Almost all non-desirable foreigners are painted with the same brush. Some of what he says may well be true, but it’s impossible to tease out what’s real from what’s fear, and more. I’d call him an Aussie redneck but that would be insulting to the rednecks in the US.
Ed took me to the movies
The ship showed “Amelia” this afternoon and there was a good group of us there to see it. I find it ironic that we are in that part of the world since her last stop before disappearing was Papua, New Guinea. I wonder how much of the story was true and how much was “editorial license.” I also wondered what the movie would have been like in the hands of a different director as it didn’t get good reviews. It was OK but not a terribly memorable one except for the subject.
The ocean right now
It is 4:45 pm and the sun is slanted toward us; Ed is taking photos of the shore as it really is very striking in this sunlight. The ocean is a wonderful sea foam green color but is topped only with small ripples usually disturbed by the motorboats zipping by.
Discount rates
I’ve been intrigued by discussions where some of the Aussies who boarded in Sydney describe incredible bargains for this segment. One fellow has a friend at P&O and he got a rate that’s far less than $100 per day. There are stories of getting minisuites for balcony rates, automatic upgrades assured, etc. You get the picture. I’m intrigued to know the details and see how one finds out about such fantastic deals.
Ed received an email from Princess for the next segment: $2200 for Singapore to Rome, lowest level, for 30 days. That’s not a bad price even for a lower level cabin, but it also means you have to get a one way ticket to Singapore and from Rome. For a balcony was something over $4000.
Dinner
Full table. There was a free shuttle up to the Jesuit high school where boys board and girls are placed in local homes to attend. Apparently the priest who gave the tour was very personable and a lot of fun. He only gets to go “home” every 5 yrs.
There was a discussion of native animals and what fruit trees folks have in their yards (a lot!). This led to a discussion about horse racing and some of the names of horses. There was a sire named Accounts Rendered, the dam was Night Lady, and the foal was named Sin Tax.
Photos
Some of those taken last evening were actually quite nice. It’s hard to know until you take a look at them so we sorted them out, ditched a big bunch of them and saved 3 of them to consider at the end of the cruise.
Special letter
We got an invitation for an “Exclusive Bridge Visit” tomorrow at 4:30 pm with an admonition not to tell others. It appears this is done only with World Cruise, Suite or Elite passengers. Only still photography is allowed. So we’ll miss trivia in the afternoon.
More about the ambulance
Ok, so someone said that a gold coffin was taken off the ship and put into the ambulance which is also used as a hearse here on the island. It seems this is a mixture of two stories. Even then, the version that we now have, isn’t verified and probably never will be. But I’ll be dying to hear what the stitch and bitch group says about it all tomorrow.
There was an ambulance waiting at the pier; we saw it and I discussed it earlier in this blog. I also saw local police come and they did have white gloves on which I didn’t make much of at the time. So it seems that a vehicle of some kind drove up with a very elegant gold coffin inside and the police complete with white gloves, formed an honor guard to escort the coffin to a boat nearby which took it to an adjacent island. The body was a local important politician (perhaps the latter are redundant). I still have no gossip about the “patient” from the ship but we do have a rather frail 93 y/o on board.
Guam immigration
We got those forms tonite. There is a just and merciful God because we don’t have to appear for immigration until everyone else except for the crew is finished. This is partly because we do not have a tour scheduled on Guam. As I fill out the form, some answers are not intuitive so if you don’t hear from me for a while, it will be because I’m answering to Customs and Border agents in Guam. What a story that would be!
Tonite’s entertainment
We heard that the singer tonite isn’t very good, so we stayed in. Ed flipped around on the channels and I tried to tune it all out so I could understand what I was reading about Einstein. I remembered after I got undressed, that there was a Rock N Roll trivia with the musician at 9:15 pm. Not that I’m so good at music, but it would have been fun.
Wind
This was howling terribly around the ship. We are headed in a NW direction and the wind supposedly is from a NE direction.