JANUARY 31, 2008 TOMORROW PAPEETE, TAHITI

Ed was up and out by 8 am to do some exercise. This recent burst of healthful awareness has meant that he is taking less diabetes medications. He also says he has lost weight but I will require objective verification to believe this as I see absolutely no evidence to support this. He’s still enhancing his shirt supply with sizes on the large end of the spectrum.
NEEDLEPOINT: I misplaced the yarn from the needle point kit I got yesterday and spent a lot of time trying to track it down. Later in the day a lady walked up to me with it. She had seen it fall near my seat in the Lounge yesterday. So I’m pacing myself to see if I can do this bit of crafting without problems with my arm.
SUNBURN is all resolved it seems. I credit slathering Gold Bond Lotion with Aloe on it several times a day with this good news. You can bet I won’t forget long sleeves and sun tan lotion on trips ashore.
MORE ON PITCAIRN: There was a discussion this morning about Pitcairn and the trials for rape of a good portion of the male population took up much of the time. One of the ship’s officers brought along the January issue of Vanity Fair which has an article about all this. That is one of the issues I brought with us to read so I was able to get up to speed on the details. If you get a chance, it is interesting to read for many reasons: psychology, isolation, sociology, ethics, and more.
We have a family on board who are moving from one country to another and they have home schooled their children. One of the kids was interviewed as she had befriended the children who came aboard the ship from Pitcairn. I found this a delightful addition to the discussions by the adults. It was a unique perspective.
Father Cribbin enjoys these kids. He is an active participant in the trivia quizzes, where his group states that he’s valuable for many reasons not the least of which is the Latin and Greek skills he brings to the experience. Their group apparently wins the qizzes and are given token gifts such as bags, luggage tags and such. When he collects two, he gives them to the kids.
SPEAKING OF Father Austin. He did the nondenominational service when we started this trip but apparently some participants said it was “too Catholic” so now the cruise director is doing it.
LUNCH: Again an interesting group of folks at the table. One couple went to Machu Picchu so there was much discussion of that and other land tours. We are now curious to know if we can access our passports to get passport stamps at these World Heritage sites we will see on the land tours. I left the question with the Purser’s desk for an answer.
WATERCOLORS: We met Hank and Erna with their water colors in the corner assigned to the port speaker, who seems delighted to see the use they make of this space when he isn’t using it. They both make these water colors look so easy. It would take a lot for me to believe I could ever master that. Perhaps one day, providing I never get to the cartooning class I’ve long wanted, I’ll try some other form of art.
PORT TALK: RAROTONGA: This is the capital of the cook Archipelago and David was his usual excited, upbeat self. The origin of this group of islands, as most in this part of the world, is volcanic. We are there Feb. 3rd.
THE WORLD’S SECOND OLDEST PROFESSION: This is about spies and spying and the speaker recounted many names you would recognize. He also lays out the complexity of the communications—or more commonly, lack of same—between various bureaucracies and the need to address this. Later, he will be doing a presentation on “spies in high heels” where he will deal with Mata Hari. There is a separate area in the International Spy Museum in DC devoted to female spies. This will be interesting. Our British aviation speaker mentioned Tokyo Rose in yesterday’s talk.
TOMORROW PAPEETE: Let’s get the pronunciation out of the way: peh pee et ee. At least that’s what the consensus sounds like. I’m excited to see this place. We have a 6 ½ hr tour and the ship is only in port 9 hrs so we may not have much, if any, time to hit the open market that is an interesting local site to see. Much of the food and other items sent to Pitcairn come from here.
DINNER: Just Hank and Erna, Ed and I. It was food from India tonite. Erna’s husband was from India and she has written a cookbook of Indian food, so we tried to laugh at some of the representations. For example, the Nan bread was more tortilla like. Rod almost had us believing that there is curry ice cream. (Well, there’s garlic ice cream so why not?) We had a lot of laughs tonite over food and other miscellaneous topics.
THE SHOW TONITE: The second seating folks had the show while we were at dinner. The line to get into our show was long before we ever made it to our room so I suspect we’ll be in the nose bleed section for the show. Tonite is the Russian violinist and the Piano Entertainer who worked with Liberace. Should be a good show.