chef's table day

Illegal Passengers

We’ve seen no sight of them so far today but the poor guy who has to keep the front of the ship clean had some gifts to clean up again this morning.

Weather is warm; sea is calm, wind is mild, sun is really bright, sea a wonderful medium blue, sky a light blue with fluffy clouds.

Battle of Coral Sea

We had the last presentation on this topic this am. The speaker focuses on telling us the history of the ships with marvelous anecdotes that make it all come alive. Today he also told the story of some Medal of Honor winners and their courage and sacrifice are astonishing and make you wonder what you would do under similar circumstances

90 year old WWII veteran

In the audience who was 15 when he enlisted, did 42 flight missions in the Coral Sea and this included many over Rabaul where we dock tomorrow. Brought tears to our eyes.

Trivia

This one female is such a control freak. She insists on being the scribe and pushes her answers mercilessly. If she thinks the group’s answers aren’t right, she puts down what she thinks the answers ought to be. It became somewhat heated today and she reminded us once again that if we had taken her answers the other day we would have made a higher score. We all have to continually double check what she puts down as the answer. I told Ed I’d rather just he and I play alone than to endure her one more time. He asked me to give it one more try. He is being more direct with her but she is very defensive. I could give so many more examples where she is WRONG and the group puts down the right answer, but of course she doesn’t recall those instances. We all have experiences where we contribute the correct answer and the group decides differently. It’s on a game! And they don’t even announce what prizes they are giving to the winners any more.

Zika warning

The Captain came on unexpectedly to give us a warning about being in many ports, including Rabaul, where there are Zika warnings. The usual sun screen and insect repellant.

But then he remarked on the meeting the reef pilot had with passengers this afternoon where he answered questions. It seems that his navigational charts that he uses for teaching purposes “disappeared”. The Captain handled that very tactfully, impressively actually, but I am appalled that people do things like that.

Casual pictures

We were good sports, watching others doing silly things and then taking our turn. Might be some good blackmail pics in these.

Chef’s table

We had to don white lab coat looking coverings to go into the galley. We had previously received a letter telling us to wear freshly laundered clothing, closed toed shoes, and were led to wash our hands. After this, we proceeded to a tour of the galley eventually ending up with several appetizers and wines.

As we left, we surrendered our white jackets and were escorted to the beautifully decorated table for 16 of us which is quite a large group for such an event. The chef was the host for all of this assisted by the matre de. I lost track of the courses but I will say it wasn’t so overwhelming that you felt stuffed at the end. Wines were paired with each course and clearly some folks had my share of the wine as well. At the end the women were given a long stemmed red rose and a cookbook signed by the chef and matre de. It was a wonderful experience.

We are reading about the storms in LA and are unable to reach Lisa who I’m sure is OK but what a time to visit. Hopefully it will be done by the time Tate and Tallie come out.