Notoriety

Wyona and David in bare feet,
splashing in the water in
front of St. Mark's Cathedral

“Why might the photographers on the boat know you”, Bonnie asked.

I told her I would tell this painful story.

To begin with, I have a nice hand held Canon SX220 HS – purchased because my arms would get too tired carrying my larger Canon on day trips off of the boat.

A lovely purple colour and I can tell it apart from Moiya’s camera, for though hers is the same camera, it is a turquoise colour.

David and Wyona with their shoes back on.

One afternoon while the boat was docked, David came rushing down to have Moiya and me come up to the veranda view from the 14th floor and look with him at another boat that had docked, people streaming off of it.

It seemed there was no organized way to pick up luggage and both he and I were busy taking shots of travellers sitting on huge piles of luggage while their friends were still off gathering more cases of goods.

That night I downloaded my pictures, and then a little later picked up my camera and erased everything on the memory card.

I was careful.

I saw the first picture that said, do you want to erase all, and it was a picture I recognized from the afternoon shoot, I said yes.

Moiya and David at the canal

When the erasing took longer than normal I had my first clue as I thought, how odd.

That took longer to erase than usual.

Then I looked at the camera and thought, hey, I thought my camera was purple and not turquoise. Whoops.

When Moiya came back to the room, I asked her to lay down on her bed while I talked to her.

David and Arta looking over the
Grand Canal in Venice

She said she wasn’t tired. I told her she might be when I was finished my story.

I began by telling her that I have seen David all over the ship, taking pictures for days now; I would see him in an easy chair, looking over the ocean in some lounge, erasing the pictures he didn’t want, then I would see him down in the Centrum doing the same thing a few hours later. I told her that he doesn’t have those pictures anymore.

I have erased them all. Moiya was pretty cool about it, but they weren’t her pictures.

Then David came into the room.

I had to start my story again. When I began to retell my story, Moiya took the bedsheet and pulled it slowly up over her head so she only had to hear and didn’t have to see.

“You erased them all?”

“All.”

“Do you know any way to get them back?”

“Not that I know of.”

“I am going to the ship’s photography department and maybe they can help me.”

All of the above pics were those recovered
from David's camera
due to the magic of the Celebrity Photo Dept.

This may have taken Dave 5 trips, over the course of three days. Each time they felt they were getting a little closer, but hadn’t had success yet.

“Your sister-in-law.”

“Are you still staying in the same room with her.”

“Is walking the plank legal?”

He would come back and torture me with what they were saying.

The department eventually accessed a program that would bring Dave’s 1000 pics all back. The department was successful because I didn’t know to format the disk every time I erased it, something I have now learned.

That is how everyone in the photography department got to know me before I won their special prize of $100 of free pictures.

Greg and Wyona just bought a new camera yesterday – exactly like Dave’s and mine, but Greg’s is fuchsia.

When I saw the new camera I asked Greg if he had anything he wanted me to erase on it.

Arta

Singapore

... sky approaching Singapore ...

The sky never ceases to amaze me. I feel this way at home.

Even when it is -40, in Alberta, you can look up and think that the sky is breath-taking. I often feel that breathlessness when I look out of a balcony on the boat at sunset.

The sun setting, and the ripples on the water look different every night.

... mist at Port Kelang ...

One thing I like about a buffet table is that I can circle it a number of times before I have to choose what I will eat.

That circling, looking at something a number of times, that is what I miss when I am on a bus tour or looking out onto a river.

Even with my camera in hand, it is still often too late to take a picture by the time the thought crosses my mind.

This was particularly true the morning we came into Port Kelang.

"I will take pictures when the mist rises," I thought.


But the mist never rose.

Kuala Lumpur War Memorial

I also found that when the five of us travel together, there are few chances to get pictures with more than a couple of people.

We scatter like seeds in the wind, so while I could get a picture of Wyona and David, Greg and Moiya were somewhere else.

This airport in Singapore only rivals the one in Barcelona.

"Look, you can eat off of the floors," says Wyona there.

"Yes, my favorite airport," replies Greg.

 ... two weary travellers at the Singapore airport ...

I hadn't seen the airport in Singapore before, so I wanted to walk around. "Gives Barcelona a run for its money, doesn't it.  They agreed.

Fast Food Duck

I have always tried to find something new in every day -- and after so many years of practise, the task gets easier and easier. I saw it here -- my first look at a duck fast food joint.

Colourful enough.

On reflection, I should have gone in and ordered some food.  Fast food duck!  Would have been fun even if I hadn't have eaten it.

How much weight can my luggage carry?

I wanted one of these folding baskets from this street merchant.

I could imagine the fun of serving bread in it to my guests and how amazed they would be when they saw it collapse.

Moiya had already figured out how many hours it would take her to make one with her jig-saw, which made buying one doubly attractive.

Wyona was half way through negotiating the best price for three of them, when she, at least, figured out that we were already tossing out precious rocks and shells we had collected because we were overweight with out luggage and there is only so much that will fit in our pockets.

Waah!

Arta

Moiya Doesn’t Want to Leave Home

Today at lunch Greg said he can’t believe that this ship is going down to Australia, then up through Hawaii and on to Seattle so that it can do the Alaska cruise. Next year. “What ship are we on?” said Moiya. 

“The Solstice,” said Greg. 

“Oh.  I have been on it so long, I think of it as home,” said Moiya.  “And I can tell you, I don’t want to leave home.”

“Write a note to your kids and tell them that – just go on from Singapore to Australia, and on and on, and when you finally die, the ship can just drop your ashes in the sea.”

There is a little bit of that feeling in all of us.

On other matters, I have been going to the dining room every morning to check the lunch time menu.  It is posted on the “My Time Dining” side of the ship.  I have been waiting for a repeat of the Balinese Style Chicken and Beef Satay with Peanut Sauce.  Today I found it on the menu, along with  Papaya with a Hint of Lime cold soup.  “I am doing the cooking and inviting everyone for lunch at the dining room,” I told Greg and Dave at the in-depth 11:00 am lecture on Malaysia. 

Ordering was hard, for we just wanted Marius to bring us sticks of vegetable, beef and chicken sticks of satay, like the ones they serve on the streets of Malaysia. “Just put them in the middle of the table,” said Wyona.  “This is an all-you-can-eat-buffet, isn’t it,” said Wyona.  To make it easy for the cooks in the kitchen the server wanted to know how many times to order these three dishes to change them from an appetizer size to a main course. 

Another server came by and laughed when he saw us. “We have been eating this in the crew section of the ship for the last three days,” he said.  “You should have been eating down there with us.  I ate 11 sticks last night,” he said.

“We have been trying to get down to that dining room,  to where you eat, but they keep a line between us.  We have always suspected you are getting better food down there.”

I have a half an hour before I go to Art 101 this afternoon.  The class is causing Moiya a lot of stress – she doesn’t like the mess, or maybe I should call it the freedom that comes with watercolour.

 “I want a face on this body.  Here, just put a dob of red here, and there the face is,” said the teacher.  That just doesn’t work for Moiya or me.  This morning we had another water colour class, and David just brought back a lovely print, a gift from an art lecture he attended. 

“I have never seen water colour classes given on a boat,” said Wyona.

 “We are so many days at sea,” said Greg.  “We are going right around the world on a boat and they have to figure out things for people to do who don’t want to go for $200 massages, or work out on the treadmill all day.  What is popular are the classes they run in the internet lounge.  So many classes there and people are standing shoulder to shoulder to listen in.”

On the point of classes, lectures and shows on the boat, we keep going to the Love and Marriage Game Show which is hard to run on this boat, given the demographics of the people who are sailing.  It is the first time this boat has gone through the Suez and around India and the trip has attracted seasoned cruisers.  This morning at 10 am in the elevator, I caught the scent of the specialty coffees offered to these cruises from 8 am to 10 am.  Their speciality lounge was closed down and they were on their way back to their rooms, carrying their coffees.  These are not the kind of people who join up for the Love and Marriage Game.  One couple said they had been on the game, many years ago, and then the husband piped up, “And since that day, I have been sworn to silence.  I don’t talk at all.”  Either the couples are too smart to go on the show, or they have rehearsed and refined the answers to the questions that could be problematic to their marital happiness once the show is over. And those are the questions that make the rest of us laugh.

We have heard a new question.  What is it that your wife likes to do out of the house?  Between the five of us, we have been making guesses about how others in our group would answer that question.  Dave says he like to fix things.  Greg says he likes to go to lectures. The answer given by most men about their wives is ... my wife likes to shop. 

This is not true in our cases.  “I don’t like to shop,” said Wyona.  “I shop because we have to have groceries, because someone else needs new clothes, because an appliance needs to be replaced.”  Here is my answer as to what I like to do out of the home she continued.  “I like to cruise.  And Greg, what do you mean by saying you like to go to lectures.  Where do you go to them all?  On cruises!  So give it up and just say it.  You like to cruise as well.

Well, way to open up my eyes, though I say to everyone, there is something about saying that phrase that makes me uncomfortable .  Wyona points out that years ago cruising was absolutely out of sight as something a person might do.  But now many people cruise.  “Not my friends,” I countered.  But that really isn’t true.  Still ... the word cruise can be softened by saying I like to travel, a phrase that means the same thing.

David says he likes to fix things.  He hasn’t been doing much of that on the boat.  He wakes early – and nothing really begins before 10 am, except breakfast. He does go to everything – participates in the ship OlympiX; today he went to a lecture on how the engine room runs, as well as the destination lecture on Port Klang.  As well he goes to the 9 am Bible Study Group – now a person really has to have read every possible thing to do in every hour of the day, to have found that group. 

Yup.  A good question for all of us to answer.  What is it we like to do outside of the home?  Not much question about what we like to do.

Arta

The Suez Canal

There is a difference of opinion between the travel guide on the bus and the one on the boat.  The Egyptian on the bus said that his company is the one with whom Celebrity deals when booking the passage through the Suez and that today’s package for the ship to move through the canal is one million dollars.  I believe him. 

The cruise travel director says that the cost of today’s trip is $300,000.  I believe him, too.  Travelling for so long, I have learned to believe everyone.  Either way, for who knows where the truth lays, Greg, Dave and I were not going to miss the Suez Canal journey of 100 kilometers yesterday.  When the convoy of our ship and 17 other ships following it began to move through the canal, we went to the fourteenth floor of the ship, forward and looked out. 

The night was warm and dark.  The moon was high.  I could make out Orion in the sky.  The air was humid.  The whirring sounds of the birds flying beside us was forefront.  Two spot light were pointed forward, one west at about 1 o’clock and one pointing east at about 11 o’clock.  Those two lights were at the front of the shi, by the obelisk on the helicopter pad.  The birds that had been flying alongside the boat (the ones that Wyona had been trying to feed) now came forward and were trapped in the cones of light.

Greg, David and I went to the top of the ship a little after midnight and stood there quietly, watching the ship move by the buoys that had red lights shining from them.  I don’t know exactly what I expected, but it was more than the narrow channel of water through which we were moving – so narrow that two boats can’t pass by each other, so half way through the trip, we stopped in Bitter Lake, to let the ships that are coming from the south to the north, through the canal, and let them pass us, before we travel along the route they have just come from.  I stood there for three hours in the dark night, trying to let my senses have their fill:  the warmth, the humidity, the sounds, the smells, the sight of the water, light and dark, cool and hot.  At 3 a.m. I told Dave and Greg I had to get at least a few hours sleep before watching more of the journey.  Together we walked back to an elevator.  Along the way a man who had just got up to jog on deck said good morning. 

Four hours is enough sleep for me. I was on Moiya and David’s balcony at 7 am.  I hang over the railing of course.  I am not going to miss one moment of this journey.  We are watching the Asia side of the canal.  My binoculars are trained on the military who are in small houses – not big enough to lay down in, and the windows are open.  The truth is, there are no windows.  There is also the space where a door could be, but isn’t.  Sometimes the military wave their rifles at us in a big hello.  Others have their binoculars trained on us as we have ours trained on them, and they give a wave when they know we can see them.  There are many shrill whistles sounded.  Finally I figure out that this is the way people in the desert talk to each other.

Wyona and I study the sand dunes in between watching the men on guard duty by the canal.  At one place there are two buildings, a mosque and a truck.   The men have their washing hanging out behind the military vehicle.  We notice that they deposit their garbage in a gully a small ways away from the two houses, the windows of which are shuttered and closed.  No one else is around on the banks.  “A waste of a perfectly good beach,” I say to Wyona.  It is hot.  All we have ever imagined from movies about the desert is in front of us.   I think about Laurence of Arabia and Nasser (1956), both of which I have seen again, recently. We try to get our perspective right for we are at least eight floors up.  At first it looks like there are a few feet of pebbles that separate the canal water from the desert.  By the time we have studied the small size of some of the guards, we have figured out those are big boulders lining the side of the canal.  Wyona is better at figuring out how the miracle of this trip could have happened to us, for she is the one who did the planning to make it occur.  I just sit and watch, amazed.  The boat is going 10 knots per hour through the canal.  The temperature is about 85 farenheight. Wyona keeps telling me to get into a pair of shorts.  I stay in the shade.  Moiya is in the sun, small beads of perspiration running down her temples. 

By this time we are on Wyona’s said of the ship. When we run over to Dave and Moiya’s side of the ship a few hours later we see gardens, palm trees, roads, houses, a bustling city.  Still just sand dunes and military installations on our side.  “That is because this side of the canal is irrigated by the water from the Nile,” is what Moiya says, for she has been up on the top of the ship, listening to the ship’s travel lecturer.  She wishes that his lecture had been piped into all of the guests’ room, via the T.V.   I wish that as well.  But Wyona and I choose a road less travelled – the one of watching the desert. I did learn how to watch in detail for the more we sat there, talking to each other about what we were seeing, the more we saw.

The adage that I read down at the cruise services desk is “It is not what you see, but how you see it.”  That adage came to mind today.

Arta

Split, Croatia

We are on our way to Alexandria Egypt and have three sea days to get there. Our Deluxe stateroom has a balcony.  Arta is in the room with us.  It is Wyona’s birthday.  This ship is so big and the service is exquisite.  The food is out of this world. 

I want to tell you about our trip to Split, Croatia.  There are so many things I want to know about your mission there Matthew.  How many months did you spend in Split?  Did you ever get to old town?  Greg said that he went up the clock tower and that you could see the whole area from the top.  David went on an excursion while I stayed back to spend all the money....the Kuna.....that Matthew brought home from his mission.  I sent $300 Canadian dollars to Matthew just before he was coming home from his mission about 8 or 9 years ago.  I told him to spend it all and to bring home something for everyone.  He didn’t have time to do that.  Unfortunately, the money was already changed into Kuna in his account, so he brought it home.  Wyona and I shopped around in some of the jewelry stores to find something I liked.  It was after lunch time and Wyona was thirsty so we stopped to get a diet coke from the kiosk.  The lady would not take the 20 KUNA and pointed to another 20 Kuna that she had in her hand.  I have to say that they did look different. They have changed the look of their currency and it now has so nice shiny stripes on it.  Ours looked old, very old.  We went to a Bank nearby and waited in line.  They could not change the old money for new money and the fellow told us that we would have to go to the financial institution [FINA] to get it changed.  It was quite a ways to go and we were on foot so we (two old sisters with aching feet) started going in the direction we were told to go.  We had not money to buy water or anything.  We had no money to take the #6 bus in that direction.  We didn’t know if we were even going in the right direction.  We just kept asking people if they spoke English and asked for “FINA”.  Some Croatians could help us and some could not.  Wyona’s foot hurt so bad!!!

Oh, I must let you know that the ship was leaving Split at 4 PM.  The last tender to the ship was at 3 PM.  If we don’t make it.............we have to find our own way to the next Port which was the last port on that ship and it was in Venice. 

Wyona and I have shopped until we could drop. We’re trying to speed walk to “FINA”.  Yikes!......Isn’t a BANK a financial institution??????  Why do we have to go to FINA?   

I’ll tell you why ... because we want to spend the Kuna that would have been good for nothing ... no one would even take that OLD money. It is worth about $230 dollars!    We either try to get new for old OR just let that money go to waste.  I COULDN’T DO THAT NOW!     Oh, Poor Wyona.....her feet were sore and she was limping. Finally Wyona said, “There’s Fina”.

We go in to Fina and I am getting shaky.  I know that my blood sugars are low so I went outside and ate the melon yogurt I smuggled out of the ship.  I always need to have something close by to take care of those lows.  

One other important thing!  I didn’t take any identification with me.  No credit cards.  No passports.  No driver’s license.  I handed the money over to Wyona because she just happened to take her driver’s license.

The only problem now is that the girls in Fina don’t know if that can change the FINA but maybe they could change it tomorrow......That darn Fina!

I was outside trying to eat and Wyona came out an told me they could not change the Fina.  I said, “OK” and was ready to go back to the ship.  She, of course was joking.  So, we headed back to Old Town wondering if we would ever be able to find the shops.  I had no time to shop around anymore and ended up buying a gold pendant for my gold chain and a silver chain for a necklace.  We had enough Fina left to each buy a Gelato and a few pastries. We got back on the Tender (a boat that takes you out to the anchored ship in the harbor) and made it back to the ship.

I declare......I have never spent that much money so quickly before in my life!

Love to all,
Moiya

Don’t Forget Your Glasses, My Dear

Connor, David and I slipped down to the British Museum for the tour called “Ancient Greece” at 11:30 am. Cancelled. We had come all of the way from Canada and it was cancelled. But we had backups: 11:45 am – Ancient Iraq and 12:45 pm, -- South Asia. I saw David Pilling coming as close as he could to buying something in a gift shop, a copy of the first ancient game, a cross between Snakes and Ladders and Parcheesi. “Why not,” he said, “I am a gamer.” Before he got his wallet out he also remembered he carries student loan debt. But that was still close.

On our way home, I saw the Salvation Army Band at Oxford Square, a 29 piece brass band, uniformed just as though they had stepped out of the musical, Guys and Dolls. But they were for real. After running back from my bus stop, the boys going ahead, I stepped back against an iron wrought fence, one protecting me from the traffic on Oxford Street and I stood beside a uniformed Salvation Army man who was also on the side watching. Tourists would stop and have their pictures taken with the band playing in the background. I listened to the tune of hymns I do not know, and to Bible stories I do know: the wise man built his house upon a rock; in times of trouble which we all have, God will be there to support us. A lovely mix of both. A huge rubbish cart rolled in front of my view and stopped there, the man pulling the cart doing some street sweeping and then leisurely taking the plastic bagged garbage out of a cast iron bin and throwing it on the back of his cart. 

The big belly laugh I heard must have come out of my mouth for the navy blue uniformed Christian soldier standing beside me said, `We have been coming here at this same time for years and years, and he stops every Sunday in the same place to collect his garbage.

Soon the call was issued to all – follow us to our chapel on Oxford Street for more free music and stories, and off the band marched. My march was in a different direction, back to New Cavendish Street.

David, Connor and I had spent the morning thinking about religion in a different way. The tour of South Asia, which I thought was going to be about China, was not that at all. At least I knew enough not to correct the woman when she said that we would be looking at South Asia as in India, Pakistan, Cambodia, Lagos, Viet Name.

What was hardest on all three of us, and best for me, at least, is that the museum volunteer leading the tour explained to us that she would be using the images to help us understand the mindset of being a Hindu or a Buddhist or one of the ancient oriental offshoots, all of which lead back, in some way, to Hinduism. And this Buddha is one we saw, though they have given him a different set of feet for the originals have long gone missing.

The South East Asia tour began with 3 of us – the Pillings, me and one other about the age of the Pillings. By time the tour ended there might have been 30 of us on the tour. This has been the way on all of the tours. At every stop, people who are there on their own, looking at statues or paintings join up with us, for it is hard not to be interest in the questions that are being asked and answered. 

My favourite line from the tour guide came half way through the tour from the volunteer who looked everyone in the eye and said, those of us who are Hindus know that we are coming back to live agan when we die.` I looked around and half of the group were nodding their heads in agreement with her.

I was reminded about how religion permeates our lives again at noon today. Someone thrust a card in my hand which read, Mr. Madrib, from birth a gifted African spiritual healer and advisor. And the promised continued, No matter how difficult your problem is, there is a solution to it. Problem (sic) concerning black magic, love, voodoo, sexual impotency, business transactions, exams, court court & immigration cases. I can help you reunite with your loved ones, split unwanted relationships & gambling. For all our problems, Mr. Madiba is the answer, no disappointments. Quick results Guaranteed.

Now it will be hard to know which route to go – come back for another chance at life, or work it all out with our African friend, Mr. Madiba and have no need for a second chance on earth.

A took the introductory tour of the Victoria and Albert Museum today, and hung out in the silver museum and the wrought iron display. I took the 74 bus home for I had a paper in my purse that promised I would see Brompton Oratory, Harrods, the Marble Arch, pass the exclusive addresses of Park Lane and drive by No 99, Gloucester Place, Elizabeth Browning`s first London Home.

I should have had a perfect day, and I was close to having that perfect day – it would have been better if I I had been one of the people who had a key to get into the apartment. I was reminded of Adam Wood`s first adventure here where he couldn`t access the flat, either. I got through the first door by slipping in when someone else came out, and I got up to the fifth floor, but when I rang the door bell, no answer. 

I knew I was tired. I had been falling asleep on the bus. I sat on the carpet steps and relaxed into a deep sleep when no one answered the door bell. Charise and Alicia woke me up when they got out of the elevator one-half hour later, and we all walked through the apartment door. That is when I discovered Wyona was home, asleep in her bed, too tired to hear the buzzer from downstairs or the chimes from the button on her flat door. 

You will have to decide who which of us needed the sleep more – she who couldn`t lift herself from her bed on the ring of a doorbell, or me who can sleep on a bus or the inner apartment flight of stairs.

Wyona had tickets for Les Mis tonight: 3 tickets, Alicia, Charise and herself. I got a call at 7:10 pm. Wyona had forgot her glasses and she was in the Royal Circle. I dropped the fork into my scrambled eggs and ran for the bus. I got there at 7:29 pm, remembering that I had no key to get back into the apartment. But I had a back-up plan. I was going to ride the double-decker buses all night until I was sure Greg would be home or the Pillings would be back from Dover.

But Wyona was ahead of me. I gave her glasses to the woman at the concession counter and the woman traded me them for a set of keys to the flat. But I have learned a person can change their mind multiple times in one hour. So, on the way home, I decided I would stop in and get me a ticket at Thriller. Four Royal Theatres are in a row on Shaftsbury Avenue: Thriller, Hair, Les Mis and a play called All My Sons. Breathless from my run to get Wyona`s glasses to her on time, I slipped into the queue at another of the theatres, bought a concession ticket and then noticed my ticket was for Hair and not Thriller. Damn, I thought, even though i am trying not to swear. I am not up to being four rows from the front for Hair – that puts me almost on stage and for sure in the area where the performers walk along the arms of the chairs.

Though the money was out of my hands and into her cash box, the tickets had not yet reached my hand. I said to the girl, `Sheesh, I thought I was at Thriller not Hair. Is there a chance I have my money back`` She refunded me my £25. I never did listen to Michael Jackson, and in retrospect, I have to ask myself why I was even thinking about going. On the other hand, there isn`t much left for me to see in London in the way of first-time musicals: Thriller and We Will Rock You. So I will probably slip in there again, given I can make my way through the right theatre door.

At any rate, I did my good deed for Wyona for the day – these musicals aren`t much fun without a good set of glasses.

Arta