Nawindiwindi

Off the Coast of Kaua'i

March 4, 2015

Due to Force 7 winds we were not able to dock in Nawiliwili today. It is gray, overcast and cool, so it would not have been much of a beach day anyway. However, there was a quilt shop in Lihue I had hoped to visit. :(

Instead of docking, we sailed all the way around Kaua'i. Since it was socked in, we couldn't see that much. I was hoping we would get a spectacular view of the Na Pali coast, but we just saw some dark cliffs off in the distance. The good news: our cabin was on the side of the ship facing toward the island. The other good news: the whales put on a great show for us. Watching for whales is hypnotic. You never know when or where you will see one, so you can't take your eyes away from the water.

It was cool and windy on our balcony, but we managed to spend a little time out there enjoying the changing scenery. One side of the island has dramatic cliffs. The other side is drier and has gentle slopes. Kaua'i is one of the wettest places on earth, so I'm not sure "drier" really conveys the idea accurately.

On the "drier" side of the island there are lots of large white spherical things that look like giant puffball mushrooms. Some kind of radar? Perhaps they are helping my blog get to the internet. The photos of them didn't turn out.

Here is my favorite factoid about Kaua'i (though I'm not 100% sure it is true): No construction on the island can be taller than a mature coconut tree.

Since we didn't want to miss anything, we ordered lunch from room service. It was very peaceful and relaxing watching the island as the ship glided by silently (more or less).

Room service chocolate cake

The cruise staff hustled up a new schedule for our unanticipated day at sea. A lot of it was not interesting to me, so I opted for bridge, which is always interesting. (I found out that my partner and I finished first East-West yesterday.)

The mood on the ship today is: relaxed. People don't seem too disappointed, perhaps because the weather is so uninviting. Our steward, Santosh, was very disappointed because he missed his chance at shore leave. This is his first time in Hawaii despite 8 years with Princess.

We had hoped to visit the famous malasada food truck in front of Walmart (it has moved to Kmart), pick up a few supplies, visit the Kilauea Point National Wildlife Refuge, and Poipu Beach. Perhaps we will come back another time. This island is very beautiful.

Someone else's malasadas

After bridge we took another self-guided art tour - of the midship art this time. Here are some of my favorites:

Green Valley by Keith Finch from the US

Sofa Roja by Didier Lourenco from Spain

Venice I & II by Renzo Andreon from Italy

Untitled, by Don-Li Leger from Canada

And finally, my favorite: 

Federal Orchid, by John Ng from the US

I don't know what's federal about this orchid - maybe it is a species?

Not much going on after dinner. There will be a King Kamehameha Festival in the atrium and they have hung several colorful quilt-like banners:

Notice that I didn't call them "quilts." And now I will call it "quits" for today, unless something really interesting happens this evening.

SNL at Sea

OK, I do have one more thing that came up this evening.
You know the Saturday Night Live skit where Kristin Wiig plays a woman, Penelope, who always has to one-up everyone else? Well we had dinner with the woman who inspired that character. And her mother. And I can only say, "Like mother, like daughter."

And then there is the skit where Will Ferrell and Anna Gasteyer are dorky middle school music teachers.

Those music teachers are here too. They are actually decent performers, but there are several things about them that just scream "SNL."

 

No, I don't want to see pictures of your dog
 
Penelope's mother sat down to dinner with a group of strangers three minutes ago and already the iPhone is out with all the photos of Poochie.  Sorry, ma'am. I just met you and I'll probably never see you again. My interest in your dog is less than zero.

The Curious Incident of the Ukrainian in the Night Time

At Sea
March 3, 2015

"It is sunny and getting warmer," she said hopefully. 

Today is another day and maybe we will have tropical weather and I won't eat too much. I am taking the stairs in lieu of the elevators, and I am walking much more than I do at home. If my Fitbit hadn't broken right before we left I could tell you exactly how many stairs and how many steps.

This was a typical day at sea, so I'll just fast forward to dinner. We are sitting in the dining room and suddenly there is an announcement from the bridge. They are asking a particular crew member with a Slavic name to call ext. 1400 immediately. I have never heard this particular type of announcement before. It is very unusual for any announcement to be broadcast in the dining room.

Five or ten minutes later there is another announcement. They were still looking for the guy with the Slavic name. That certainly gets the attention of everybody in the dining room.

After another five or ten minutes the Captain himself makes an announcement. He says they are looking for the 2nd Engineer, they are concerned about him, he is Ukrainian, he is wearing a blue shirt and has a slight build, etc., and if anyone has seen him, please call. This is extremely unusual and everyone in the dining room begins speculating. The best theory at our table is that his shift was supposed to start at 8 pm, he didn't show up, and he had last been seen drinking.

After another five or ten minutes the Captain announces that the Ukrainian has been found, he thanks us for our attention, and (ominously) he will see the erstwhile engineer in the morning.

Musical interlude

I later found out from another officer that the man had indeed been inebriated and as a result he had been put off the ship in Hawaii. There is zero tolerance for that sort of conduct. The ship has "designated drivers," so to speak. Officers have to get permission to have more than one drink, and if they get permission they are taken off the "safety list," which means they will not be on call in the event of an emergency.

Being on a ship is kind of like Upstairs, Downstairs or Downton Abbey. There is a lot of drama going on behind the scenes. Most of the time the passengers are never aware of it.

Not All About the Bass - Live-Looping with Cesar

At Sea
March 2, 2015

I haven't been writing much these past few days. You'd think that with all these sea days I'd have plenty of time to write. But I've been so busy playing bridge and being sick that there's only enough time left to eat.

My sinuses were so bad last night I could barely breathe without opening my mouth and sounding like Darth Vader. I went to the doctor and got a Z-Pac and some other stuff, and it's a good thing, because we were about to run out of tissues. The doctor was a nice woman from South Africa. The nurse was a nice man from Romania (who smoked).
 

The weather is not nice. The sky is gray, the water is dark, and Captain Nash says a front is moving in and it will get rougher tonight. Please pass the Dramamine.

There was a flood two doors down from us. Ken walked by and noticed a wet spot by their door and thought someone had spilled something. Then he thought it might be something else, so he went back and looked at it and the water had already gone across the hallway in just a minute, so he called Passenger Services and someone came up right away. They knocked on the door and found the passengers inside! Mr. was sitting on the balcony and Mrs. was sitting on the sofa. And not noticing the flood in their room. They moved Mr. and Mrs. to another room and put industrial fans in the room and in the hallway. During the night, apparently, the wet carpet was removed and replaced with new carpeting. And the leaking pipe was fixed, of course. They can be really efficient on the ship when they need to be. There are crew members on board with all kinds of skills - carpet-laying, plumbing, fixing elevators, etc. It really is like a little floating village.

Before dinner we went to listen to the guitarist, Cesar Paucar. He is quite talented. He plays a number of different styles, including the hard stuff like Flamenco. He has some kind of a live-looping setup that allows him to record himself while he plays and then he plays it back and plays a different melody over it. Then he plays his bass line again and then plays an improvised melody over it. I'm not actually sure whether he was saying "baseline" or "bass line," but it really isn't all about the bass. The result of the looping was amazing. Cesar plays every night, so we will keep going to hear him. He usually plays in a lounge venue, and it is too bad because there are always people talking during his show. Since they are drinking, they tend to talk in rather loud voices.

Ok, so it's a little blurry. He just wouldn't hold still for a photo.

Our dinner was really good. They are featuring a few Hawaiian-themed items on each menu. Tonight we had an appetizer called "Poke." it is raw ahi tuna, avocado, and some other things. Good. Our dessert was part of the Chocolate Journeys. It had toasted coconut in it. Yumm.

After dinner we went to see a show by Ric Steel. He is primarily a country music singer/guitar player, but he has a very wide range and he is such a good entertainer that we really enjoyed his show. Some people know how to relate to an audience, and some don't.

I ate too much today. :(

Bridge to Nowhere

At Sea
March 1, 2015

It was still rough today, and not very warm, so I did not want to do anything outdoors. After breakfast I went to play bridge with Ed from Reno and another couple. It was a lot of fun. Then Ken and I went to part of a lecture on Oahu. It was okay, but it conflicted with lunch, so we had to leave early. :)

At 1:30 I had to choose between Princess Pop Choir Rehearsal, Informal Bridge & Mah Jongg Play, and 5 Steps to Younger Looking Skin. It was a tough choice (she said ironically), but I went with bridge. I could play bridge all day long and then get up the next morning and do it again.

It's formal night tonight. People are dressed up, for the most part, and everyone looks nice. The dinner is always better on formal nights.  This year Princess is celebrating its 50th Anniversary and they have created a program called Chocolate Journeys, with special desserts to mark the occasion. I can't remember what this one was called, but it was awfully good:

The show tonight was one we had already seen and didn't particularly like, so we decided to go see the "World-Champion Pianist," Ryan Ahern. We lasted about 5 minutes. He played the first number with the band. The band was so loud you couldn't hear Ahern playing. Not that this was a bad thing. For his second number he played a boogie woogie piece. Even though I don't really care for that style of music, I would have stayed to see what he was going to play next, but they had bright flashing lights going right behind the band. The lights were pointed at the audience and especially at me (it seemed). I really don't like it when you have to hold your hand up in front of your face to keep from being blinded during a show. I was really expecting something a little more classical. So we left and watched part of Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit in the room. Meh.

Rock and Roll - The Ship, Not the Music

At Sea
February 28, 2015

Our first day out from San Francisco is VERY rough. Not extremely rough, but very rough. If the swells were 8 to 12 feet on the way back from Mexico, they must be 12 to 16 feet today. When I was in the dining room on Deck 5 playing bridge, we would periodically see a big wave cover the window completely. The mood on the ship is: subdued. I must be getting to be a better sailor because I was okay.

There is a naturalist on board giving two lectures a day (on sea days). I went to the first one, about Kaua'i, and it was pretty good. I learned some things I hadn't known. For example, several hundred years before the Polynesians arrived in Hawaii, the Marquesans settled there (circa 800 AD). They built fish ponds which can still be seen. Kaua'i is the rainiest place on earth, with 460 inches per year. 

Hurricane Iniki pretty much flattened the island in 1992. There was no power for three months. According to the lecturer, a nuclear submarine hooked up to the power grid and supplied power for several more months. I tried to verify this unlikely story. A quick Google search turned up some references to this, but nothing reliable. The nuclear-sub-to-the-rescue idea was mentioned in connection with Hurricane Iwa, 10 years before Iniki. It was mentioned as something that had been discussed but not implemented. It was mentioned as providing power only to the airport, and only for 4 days. It was mentioned by bloggers with particular agendas regarding energy.  There is a discussion on Snopes that is fairly skeptical. I really couldn't find anything to convince me that it happened.Guess I did more fact-checking than the lecturer.

One unexpected result of Iniki was that all the domestic chickens got loose and became feral. They can now be seen all over the island - in parking lots, on the roads, even in stores.

We went to another lecture titled The RMS Queen Mary and Film and Music of the Big Band Era. If you know me you would know that that is not really my thing, but we went as a favor to the lecturer. He was a good lecturer, but it's still not my thing. The quality of the video was very poor - PowerPoint doesn't always translate well to a big screen in a not very dark room.

I didn't have time for lunch because they had scheduled bridge during lunchtime so we went to afternoon tea. Very nice. I love the scones.

The yin: At tea we sat at a table for 4 with another woman who seemed pleasant enough and introduced herself to us. She was waiting for her friend. Her friend arrived and completely ignored us - did not introduce herself, did not say hello, did not even look at us. I tried to make eye contact and acknowledge her presence but she was so busy talking to friend #1 that it was clear that she didn't understand the basics of polite behavior. We decided to leave rather than endure an entire tea service with people who wanted to pretend we weren't there. You can't introduce yourself to and make polite conversation with someone who won't look at you.

The yang: We enjoyed a pleasant and interesting dinner with a couple from the Isle of Mann and an Iranian couple now living in California. The Iranians were a little bit older. They left after (during?) the revolution. He is a retired economics professor. She was an opera singer and had studied in Vienna and other places. The Brits were very well-informed as to current events. They travel a lot and they did not come across as provincial. They noticed every detail.

We also watched the bartenders demonstrate their martini-making skills. It was fun and lively and I wish alcohol didn't give me a migraine.

Rice-A-Roni

San Francisco, CA

February 27, 2015

I can't help it. Being in San Francisco makes that old Rice-A-Roni jingle loop through my brain. I can even hear the cable car go clang-clang at the end of each verse.

Watch Vintage Rice-A-Roni Commercial 

It's a turnaround day for the ship and a shore day for us. We started out with a walk along the windy Embarcadero.

Coit Tower

Along the Embarcadero

Alcatraz under the rainbow

Scale model of Alcatraz

Cable Cars

Ghir-ar-tourist-i

After switching direction we walked along a street parallel to the Embarcadero. We decided to stop at the famous, "must see" Ghirardelli Square to get a cup of coffee. Honestly, I have to say "Don't bother going to Ghirardelli Square." There is nothing there worth seeing, the directory of shops is useless, and if there was a coffee shop there, we couldn't find it.

 As we headed down the street in the direction of the financial district we continued our quest for coffee. We did find a Starbucks, but it only had 3 tables, all taken by people using the free wi-fi and drinking coffee not so much. The counter for ordering coffee was right behind a pillar and people came around the other side of the pillar and cut in front of me. There were two or three other people behind the counter not doing much and not taking orders. It was my worst Starbucks experience ever and we left without coffee. We never came to another coffee shop. 

A crowd of crabs at Fisherman's Wharf

We came to a building marked "Safeway" and we thought we could find a coffee shop there. We were on a corner, but we didn't see an entrance in either direction. Looking through spaces between the bricks we saw that there was a parking garage inside. At the other end of the block we finally came to an entrance and found ourselves in an uninteresting mall reminiscent of the Northway Mall or the Sears Mall in Anchorage.  At the very end of the mall concourse was the Safeway - sans coffee shop.You would think that in such a touristy part of town there would be a coffee shop on every block. You would think that I could go without coffee for a few hours without becoming grumpy.

After two hours of walking we still weren't too close to Chinatown, so we caught a cab to a dim sum restaurant called City View. It's not the name you would expect for a Chinese restaurant, but the food exceeded expectations. There was a medium-sized line, but it moved very quickly. We checked in with the hostess/expediter and within 15 minutes we had a table.

The place was starkly decorated, with white walls and white tablecloths on every table. It looked vaguely Scandinavian. There were patrons from the financial district, tourists, and Chinese families. It was noisy in a cheerful sort of way, and servers were rushing around everywhere with carts of dim sum. Each cart had a selection of small plates with two or three "bites" on each. We exceeded our ability to eat before we had tried everything. All of it was fantastic. If I go back to San Francisco I WILL return to City View.

Some dim sum. Yum!

The pyramidical Transamerica Tower

When we returned to the ship we encountered a new set of passengers in the process of boarding. We ate dinner with four of them. They were boring but refreshing. None of them were from California. They were not jaded. They loved Fisherman's Wharf and did not experience it as a kitschy tourist trap. 

Although Shabbat services were not listed in the Patter, a small group of us managed to make our way there. I met a man who came from the same city in the Ukraine as my grandfather.

After dinner I watched most of The Fault in Our Stars. While I thought the movie was actually better than the book, I didn't feel the need to watch it all the way to the end.

Not Packing Today - Forward Art Tour

Ninety-five percent of our fellow passengers have to pack today because they are getting off the ship tomorrow. We are fortunate that we get to stay on!

Cruise cards # 5 and 6:

My cruise card didn't work in the machine that prints out a copy of your bill. Passenger services fixed it. (Ken's card worked.) At night my card did not work in the door to our room. Passenger services gave me a new card.

To take advantage of a quiet sea day, we took a self- guided art tour of the forward part of the ship.The ship supposeddly has over $1 million worth of art. I m talking about the ship's permanent art collection, not the art auction schlock.  The art auctions are (apparently, and to my continuing surprise) a profit center for the ship. That is another ball of wax entirely.

The art that we saw today is mostly located in the stairwells. This means it is fairly hard to photograph, due to lighting issues and bad camera angles. But we did our best and snapped photos of a few of our favorites. Today we viewed the art in the forward stairwells, plus some in the Piazza.

Artist Unknown

Terraza by Didier Lourenco of Spain. We have seen his work on other ships - we always like what he does.

California #99 & 126, by Morris, USA. This was one of a set of three - not sure if it is 99 or 126, or if that is the name of the set.

Adrift, by Gugielmo Di Mauro of Italy

My favorite, in the Piazza - Untitled, by Don Li-Leger of Canada

The book club met to discuss The Fault in Our Stars. It was a small group but we had a nice discussion. I suggested that they not choose books from the Young Adult genre.

The water got rougher as the day went by. Eight to ten foot swells:

In the evening we saw a second show by Steve Moris. He is very polished as both a comedian and a musician. His timing and delivery of jokes is perfect. It is easy to see why he has been selected as a Princess Cruises Entertainer of the Year.

The final show (on every cruise) is the International Crew Show. It starts out with the distribution of balloons (lots and lots) to the audience. People start blowing them up and batting them around. This is when you see 70-year-olds acting like 5-year-olds and having a lot of fun. What a brilliant way to get the audience warmed up. Then four guys from the cruise director's staff come out and lead the audience in YMCA. If the show had stopped here, it would have been a good time, but the best was coming up. One by one some very talented crew members came out and performed. Mostly it was singing, but some of them accompanied themselves on an instrument. The best was a man from the Philippines who sang a song that he composed and played along on the guitar. With a little professional voice coaching I think he would have a commercial hit.

There is an unwritten rule about eating in the main dining room: Don't talk about politics or religion. Most people figure this out intuitively. We shared a table with three couples from Northern California. They spent the first 10 minutes talking about getting their propane tanks filled up. Then they switched to the topic of water and the "known fact" that people in LA wasted water and took 15-minute showers, while people where they lived only took 2 or 3-minute showers and how much they resented people in LA and didn't want to have to share "their" water. (Although they did ask us to build a pipeline down to California so they could have some of Alaska's water.) 

After they had exhausted these topics (actually, long after) they spontaneously launched into a tirade which made it clear that we did not share their political affiliation. (Have you ever had an experience where you are talking to someone who assumes that because you are white you share their prejudices and so they start saying bigoted things as though you are part of the old boys' club? I have - more than once - and this was that kind of experience.) After they declared that they didn't know who voted for "him" it was time for us to leave, and we did - before the main course had been served. It was either leave or get into a very uncomfortable confrontation. Since it was the last night of the cruise we didn't have to worry about running into them again. The maite d' was very helpful and found us a new table far away.

Thank you for putting up with my venting. I find it really helps to write it down. It's much easier to let go of it after putting it out there into the blogosphere. Living in a "community" is quite a different experience from living at home.

Time to lighten up . . .

Seen on a t-shirt: "I don't need Google - my wife knows everything."

Seen on another t-shirt: [It was unprintable and offensive.] The wearer had a physical age of 60+ but a mental age of 15. What is with people? Oh, that's not lightening up, is it?