Quiet Friday

Slow awakening

It is a little like those alarm clocks that gradually turn the lights up to wake you. There is enough light coming in around the drapes to create the same effect here.

Destination Lecture

Kaoshung Taiwan

This is a totally new port for us and is located on the southern coast of the Taiwan Island. It is the 3^rd largest cargo port in the world. Not sure what we’ll be doing here but there are lots of temples and Chinese historic sights. Very little English spoken here and many do not read Chinese either so venture forth alone at your own risk. The ship will give us info in Chinese to use to get us back to the ship if we find someone who reads Chinese.

Apparently this was a planned city with large boulevards and an excellent public transit system.

WWII

The speaker, who needs to fill in with more lectures that he had originally planned, decided to discuss some topics related to the Vietnam War. I stayed for about half of it and couldn’t hold my interest.

Trivia

I played with our two other table mates and enjoyed it. One of the questions asked which country has the longest coast line. Craig said Canada but eventually we put down another answer. When we found out the correct answer was actually Canada we thanked him and he said well it was among other answers he proposed. I told him he obviously hadn’t been playing trivia with others on the ship long enough because the correct response was: “If you had listened to me and given my first answer, we would have gotten it right.” We all had a good laugh at that.

I did manage to catch the young Aussie couple and give them the flash drive with the photos of Grant during the crossing the equator extravaganza. They don’t have a computer with them so after some discussion they are going up to the internet café and view them and email those he wants to keep as a memento. They are such a cute couple.

The seas

Some folks are having some problems with the rocking of the boat though it isn’t as bad as we’ve experienced. Still they take their medication and then they are very sleepy. It is beautiful outside with bright sun, fluffy clouds, 82 degrees and a steady wind. We are travelling north.

Ice carving

Take a block of ice about 3-4 ft high, and about 1 foot on two sides and 1 ½ ft on the other two sides. Using only two chisels’, carve out a marvelous horse in 15 minutes! Well these guys are simply amazing. And they are on display for a few times before they melt so much they need a new one.

Did our usual trivia. Not as brain wracking as usual but still we fell short. It is fun to see what answers are and which ones we nailed without really knowing the issue. They are throwing in Aussie questions regularly and we Americans are clueless so those teams with Aussies are at an advantage.

Entertainment

Was the comedian musician we saw before. He’s Ok. Some complain that he’s recycling some old jokes.  Don’t they all? He’s not the greatest but he’s clever and fun.