On the yellow sea

April 3 2010


We woke up and pulled the drapes open to a rather calm sea and a bright sun Throughout the day, a mist began to form so that the horizon was often not distinguishable from the sea. I took a short cut across the jogging track in the afternoon and it was downright cold with a wind so strong I had to lean into it to stay upright. The joggers were bundled up with knit caps on their heads.
Port talk: Hong Kong
Thanks to Sue Ninberg I have some information about Hong Kong and Ed and I had pretty much decided to go on our own and see some museums based on the brochures she gave me. I had the maps with me while Marty was given us the information and I feel fairly comfortable about what’s possible. Our only concern is the time since we have to be back at the ship by 4:30 pm so that doesn’t leave us much time on land. There weren’t any tours that appealed to us. One thing’s for sure: there’s no shortage of things to see or do here. We will be there on the 6th.
Trivia
Chuck is on the overland and so Susan and her husband joined the rest of our am team. We didn’t win but it is a very comfortable team dynamic and it is fun to workout what our answers will be. The afternoon experience was not so pleasant. We had a new fellow who really wasn’t able to keep up but he was pleasant enough and I enjoyed having him. The wife of the other couple is a delight but her spouse is contentious and we’ve all come to dislike having him among us. He often has answers we don’t but he also is adamant about his answer being right when it isn’t. And he will keep intensely trying to get us to put his answer down. Our team doesn’t work that way and it’s clear none of us old timers like that behavior. It makes it not fun.
And then one fellow got angry about one of the answers and started hollering at the young woman who was calling the questions. He also started approaching her so many of us were up in arms. He later came over and tried to make his point (whatever the hell it was: who cares? The answer in her book is the correct answer even if it’s wrong! She doesn’t know some of this stuff and candidly, neither do many of the players who are so sure they are right. We have concerns that the ship will stop providing trivia for those of us who do enjoy the experience. When we told the belligerent man this fact, he said he didn’t care. So do us all a favor and don’t show up was what I thought (but didn’t say for obvious reasons).
Lunch
We visited with some folks who were on the Beijing tour and some who were not. It was a pretty general discussion. I ordered angel food cake with raspberry sauce for dessert instead of my usual fruits because I figured it was less calories. Well, as is often the case here, the label in the menu doesn’t often comport with what you are served. Oh it was delicious all right, but had I dropped it, I would have cracked the tiles. So, not one to waste food, I ate every morsel and ravished it.
Whales, Dolphins and Porposes
The cultural anthropologist who, it turns out also teaches natural history, gave this talk. I’ve heard some of it before but I don’t retain too well so it was almost as good as having Alzheimer’s and hearing it all for the first time….again. He did say that dolphins, like humans, are very horny and will have sex with many others. So there is an animal called a Whaphin (spelling is questionable) which is a cross between a whale and a dolphin (Ok so the pictures of blue whales don’t quite make this believable but there are larger dolphins and smaller sized whales). These folks are not sterile such as the cross between a horse and a donkey, that is a mule. They can reproduce and they do so perhaps indiscriminately with other whalphins, or dolphins, or whales. So now you can be prepared for a catchy cocktail party discussion starter.
Computer practice
Ed took a photo with me where it looks like the volcano is erupting from my head. So I took it up and practiced removing some heads that were just over my shoulder. And I had started on removing the folks who were standing next to me in the background. But the time was up before I was done so the photo, as it now stands, looks like a I have a headless person next to me. The photo I took of Ed does not have the volcano exactly on top of his head but you just know I’m going to fix that pretty quick.
Dinner
All present and we had such fun. It is interesting that I used to dread going down for dinner because some of us at the table looked pretty gruff at first. Nothing could be further from the truth in actual fact. We had lemoncello for supper tonite and so there was a lot of discussion about how to make it. This led to stories of folks drinking too much and the funny fall out from some of those events. All stories about other people you understand. None that included anyone at the table. Ha. Also learned about the game of “bowls” (a form of lawn bowling perhaps?) and all the ritual and etiquette that goes along with that. Stories of fishing and coming up with sharks. Well you get the picture.
Tonite’s entertainment
Oh this was painful to watch. I had stayed where I could slip out if it wasn’t any good as I had heard. And truly while this is a nice young man advertised as a comedian juggler, he needs a lot of more work. I love comedians but I sure hope he’s a better juggler (I didn’t stay that long; juggling holds little interest usually for me) as his ‘jokes” were really bombing. So I snuck out and left Ed presumably enraptured by it all. As I was sneaking away, Norma grabbed me and whispered: “I told you so.”
Yellow Sea
We have been sailing through this sea and it truly is Yellow or at least a good ochre color. This is due to the sediment which comes down the Yellow River, the 5th longest in the world, and other rivers in China where the soil is ochre colored.
Since this catches me up on my blogs, and as there’s not much going on tomorrow, I’ll spend a lot of time fixing the photos to upload later. I can’t wait to see those from the wall especially. The cameras are all downloaded, batteries are recharged and the memory cards have been reformatted so we’re ready for Hong Kong in 3 more days.