We'll be in Chuuk in a few hours

Chuuk tomorrow
The sun was only slightly less bright this morning when it intruded into the room. Well I suppose I shouldn’t say “intruded” because I truly love seeing the sunrises, especially at sea. We lolled around for a little while and then at 7, got up and invited the sun inside properly. Ed turned on the TV to find out what’s happening with the vote on health care reform. I did some research on exposure on photos because some of our photos are really underexposed for what we want to do. Ed said it’s on auto and short of individually setting our aperture and shutter speed manually, it was set. So as I researched, I found several options to deal with this problem and I gave him the manual to check them out. I heard a lot of excited “Oh!”s. It’s still impractical to change the settings for each photo when we’re out but there some quicker ways to achieve things. In the meantime, I’m still working on learning various editing methods but I can’t wait to get home and play with photoshop now that I’m somewhat initiated beyond the obvious.
Captain’s announcement
This Captain is so much more personable than our last one. He came on just now to explain that we were currently on the second day of the autumn season but in a minute, we would cross the equator and we’d now be on the second day of spring! So he did a countdown and then welcomed us to spring. Ed said tonite at dinner he’s going to welcome our tablemates to the Northern Hemisphere.
Library
I went to the library for several reasons one of which is that it is quiet and there’s a space there where I can use the computer relatively easily. The signal is very strong there for uploading and I can pick up the daily puzzles for Ed and I. So I check email, uploaded the blog and photos and then dropped off computer in the room. NOTE TO NANCY: Ed returned from the gym—one more Brownie point-- and I went off to the lecture.
Chuuk tomorrow
Instead of arriving at one pm, we’ve been told we’ll be there at 11 am and we’ll be required to be back on the ship at 4:15 pm. Not a lot of time but as an indication of all the exciting things there are to do there, there are no tours offered by the ship. So we’ll just walk around and see what’s what. It is an American protectorate (?) so it has a USPO of some kind.
Port talk: Guam
An unincorporated territory of the US. There are several tours but nothing that spoke to either of us; we did a basic tour last time we were here. There is a shuttle bus into town from the ship. The port talk included information about a Melanesian Mall and that sounded interesting to me because it has local wares and foods. I have no idea how far it is, but someone said a cab is indicated so we may do that. We have been warned that immigration for Guam will take a while as everyone has to personally appear for clearance with US border folks. We are listed as being there for 9 hours but it never works out that way. We’ll be lucky to have 7 full hours but if we leave quickly when the ship is cleared, we should be able to do a lot.
I’ve abandoned the idea of sending a box of stuff back to the states from Guam. It’s a pain to plan for that, probably pretty expensive and we’ve purchased almost nothing. Most of what we’ve purchased are consumables.
When this talk was completed, I was off to reserve the space for our trivia group and continue reading the book on Einstein which I am amazed to find I’m thoroughly enjoying and actually understanding many of the concepts. The author has done a superb job of simplifying and explaining what are very nebulous concepts—to me anyway. I never knew of anything called the ether from which we derive the word “ethereal” for example.
Trivia
We had what is now a pretty predictable morning group of us. We didn’t win but we did OK. However, in the afternoon our Tasmanian couple joined us die hards (did I tell you that our team name is now the Wizzards?) and we won! It was a well (internally) fought team process for decisions about the answers. Some questions could be misleading if you overanalyzed them. So we have 2 more “shitty pieces of green paper.” Speaking of which: there’s a Rock and Roll Trivia tomorrow night with the lounge entertainer; this was the same guy who coined the “shitty” phrase and did the Broadway shows trivia before.
Lunch
They had Senor Pancho’s buffet upstairs and I felt like Mexican food though I woke up with the firm intention of being very careful about what I ate today. I found a table in the shade on the fan tail (I think that’s what it’s sometimes called) and we sat for a while with the Bridge instructors (they were also on the 2008 cruise and we enjoy them both very much. They are Aussies and really earn their keep with those bridge classes; those bridge players are fanatics!). Shortly we were joined by the Irish singer we missed because of the movie the other night. He is our age or older, loves his job but has a very sad personal story of much family sickness and other sorrows. We spoke a lot about the British health care system (he is a British citizen) and the Aussie system; he is not very crazy about the latter but is wild about the National Health Service in Britain. And I ate much too much heavy Mexican food. I asked for the beans and either the young man behind the counter didn’t understand or they didn’t have any because they never were found anywhere.
I didn’t go to choir practice today; just didn’t want to do it.
What it Takes to Eliminate Transportation Accidents
This is the guy who is so full of himself. He does have interesting content but his braggadocio is very off putting, and not only to me. If he would show a little more modesty, we’d still all understand what an important man he has been and how well connected with the Republican Administration. He enjoyed several political appointments in the Bush Administration after being a very active supporter in the campaign. Don’t think I’m picking on the Reps: every administration does this.
So back to the real topic: this guy was on the board, and apparently was Chair at least for some period, of the National Transportation Safety Board. It was interesting and unexpected to hear what they do and how they do it. Then he discussed in some details several plane crashes, the Chatsworth train crash, and others you’d recognized. He had some very interesting stats about the safety of travel by various means: air flights are the safest followed by ships. Hee Hee. He did deal with cell phones and drivers. Also discussed teen drivers and the impact of alcohol consumption on our traffic fatality rate. So overall the content was very fascinating. Many of the men in the audience were stoking this guy’s already enormous ego and I could barf listening to it all. He’s leaving at Guam as are many of the entertainers and other speakers.
Spa services
They have set up a small area at the entrance to the Cabaret Lounge to demonstrate all the wonderful things they can do to erase wrinkles, give you back your youthful glow, and enjoy a teaser for a neck and back massage. Since there’s not a lot of room in those areas anyway, it’s hard to ignore them and I’m sure they drummed up some business.
Australia’s Post WWII relationship with the US
Well I learned a lot in this talk. Like a lot of things “down under” we really don’t have them on our radar screen. I won’t even attempt to recount it here but the politics of US and Britain greatly put Australia at risk of Japanese invasion in WWII. Indeed, Darwin on the north coast near to Indonesia, which the Japanese occupied, was severely bombed. Basically, Churchill told them Britain would look out for Britain first and get back to Australia later. This in the face of the fact that thousands of Aussie soldiers were fighting for Britain and Australia itself was at risk with it’s men far away.
Formal night
Ed had ordered chocolate covered strawberries (part of the Elite package) but some kind of cream puff came. He didn’t want to waste calories on them nor did I, so two were left (you didn’t really think we were going to leave them all did you?). Ed thinks they ran out of strawberries and that’s highly likely given how far away from sources we are. Each day the Captain says we are in the “middle of nowhere”.
We got into our glad rags, went down to have photos taken at two separate places. We visited with other folks while waiting. Sometimes the positions they put you into are so artificial. I’m waiting for the informal night photos for some cute ones. But in the meantime, we keep hoping a photo will reveal us in our previous glory. Ha.
Dinner
Apparently there was a lot of misinformation about formal nights given to folks prior to coming on the ship. I know we had a lot of confusion as well and simply brought enough clothes to make it through 2 formal nights a week. That’s what we had on the last world cruise. Well, I’m happy that we only have formal nights about every 10 days to 2 weeks but some folks didn’t bring any formal wear, poor dears.
We had a full table and had fun sharing stories. Warrick, Faye and I talked a lot about the various taxations systems related to pensions and retirement savings. There are some similarities but each country is unique. The photographer with a lot of smiles and energy came around to the table to take individual photos of each of us. We were laughing because it was done so quickly that some folks had food in their mouth and just smiled as if their mouths were empty. Ed allowed as how he should have put a piece of salmon between his teeth.
AC in our room
It hasn’t been working very well, and some other parts of the ship haven’t been as cool as we’d like. Folks complain about the Cabaret Lounge being too cold, but as soon as it fills up for a lecture, that’s no longer true. The Pacific Lounge, however, is always too warm. It is all glass sides and is at the top of the ship; maybe that’s it. But Ed thinks they were working on the a/c related to our room and by evening it was working much better.
The Piano Man
This was one of the tremendous production shows they do on these ships and it was very well done. My Lord the sweating and exertion these folks go through. And the costumes: they take your breath away. The theme refers to the songs they played by folks such as Billy Joel, Neal Sedaka, Elton John,(Ed was just reading over my shoulder and mentioned Barry Manilow: I didn’t hear the rest of his editorial commentary) and so on. Very well done as always.
Equator Party
Instead of a King Neptune party, they are having a dance celebration in the Pacific Lounge with a 10:15 pm dessert spread. My word how much can people eat! We passed and when we got back to our room, two days of dirty laundry we had sent was all returned in record time. And now I’m preparing a bag for tomorrow. ;-)