On Living Yesterday Again

We had two May 6ths.

May 6th – Day 1 and May 6th – Day 2.

... evening in Petropavlovsk ...

The purpose is to get us back in sync with the rest of the world, since we have been gaining all of these hours and now have to give them back some way. Greg sleeps in. Wyona sleeps in. I try to dress in the dark and slip out to walk the halls of the 7th floor – 3 minutes to the other end, and 3 minutes back again. Getting out the door is has its difficulties. My watch is on upside down. I have a sweater which I have now put on inside out, and the second day, inside out and upside down. With just one speck of daylight in the room, I think I could do better.

... the sailout ...

I had a fantastic day yesterday. A fellow Canadian at our table is a decade older than me. His wife sits by him, since he can’t always hear the conversation and she gets very close to his ear and then speaks in a loud voice for him – and that is with his hearing aids in. I can look at him, tell a story as loudly as I can, think he is lip-reading, but he gets hardly anything. Last night John, from Australia sat by him and kept the conversation going. But John’s wife kept poking him in the ribs, telling me that he had to talk softer, since she couldn’t keep the conversation going on the other side of the table. The old man still needed John to speak louder. The louder John spoke, the more his wife kept giving him pokes in the ribs, whispering in an aside to us that the loud voice was due to the 3 afternoon martinis and that no one needs to talk that loud.

Oh, this is fun!

... night seas ...

Yesterday the waiter forgot to give Greg his main course at lunch.

The woman next to Greg called over the maitre d’, told her that the guest had not received his meal yet, and that this was unacceptable. The poor waiter came back cowering with his supervisor. The food was just late from the kitchen. Greg would have gone without 10 meals before he would have said anything, let alone in that form of complaint.

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Before that, the woman had bawled Greg out for using her bread plate – which was really his bread plate, but I she had decided it was his, even though she said she doesn’t ever set tables with bread plates. In the mean time her husband had alerted the waiter twice that he needed ketchup on his hamburger, even though the hamburger was many minutes away from being served to him. Subsequently her pasta was sent back to the kitchen because it tasted too much like spicy ketchup. All of the while the man was telling us he is an investment counsellor, in insurance and he can tell us how to invest our money for the next two years where it will get maximum returns. Wyona had told him that our ship is not running sailing at maximum capacity, and he dismissed her information, saying that the stats on the empty rooms is inconsequential and that what he doesn’t like is being nickled and dimed to death as is done on this boat. I don’t know why all of this was so fun. The only time the man was thunder-struck was when he asked Wyona how many children she had. Long silence from her. She said eight. Finally he was spechless.  

... sunset ..

Long silence from him. Then “Are you Catholic?” 

No, she said. 

He said, “I am the 7th of 7 kids. My mother was 45 when she had me.” When he asked Wyona how many grandchildren she had, long silence again. That is because Wyona hasn’t got enough fingers to count them all, and she doesn’t have Charise at her side giving her the right answer. When Wyona finally came up with the number13, there was another long silence.

A lunch hour always to be remembered by us.

Arta

A Near Miss

I thought Greg, Wyona and I were leaving for Vancouver on a 7 a.m. flight and then on to Hong Kong. She was sure the departure time was 12:05 pm. I said again to her, "I am pretty sure it is 7 a.m. I have been looking at that timing for the past couple of days." She said, no, -- noon. We traipsed downstairs at her house to look at the tickets. One set of tickets said noon, the other said 7 a.m.

“Greg? What does a person do when they have five hours to kill between flights,” Wyona asked.

“I usually walk,” he said. Then his eyes grew wide, for he thought he was coming along with us and would have missed his early morning flight. That is the way Aeroplan points work. He will get to the row of three seats we have booked together to fly across the Pacific, but not in the most convenient way. Wyona’s and my flight is different for we are using up the return ticket from when we flew back from Shanghai last year.

Wyona made me laugh tonight with her follow-up phone call. “I just want to warn you, we are not in a hotel for our three days there, but in something more like a hostel. Well, really it is a one-star hotel. No toiletries. No towels.” 

I don’t care.

For the curious, we will see Taipei (Taiwan), Nagasaki (Japan), Busan (South Korea), Jeju Island (South Korea), Tianjin (China), Shanghai (China), Kobe (Japan), Tokyo (Japan), Petropavlovsk (Russia), Seward (Alaska) and then continue on down the coast to Vancouver and home.

Arta

Matroushkas in St. Petersburg

Wyona bought a set of matroushkas (10 dolls, one inside of the next) in the market in the same time that it took our guide to gather 20 people around her and get them walking toward the bus.  I was nervous that she was going to miss the bus, so I was keeping my eye on her as she darted from booth to booth.

At the same time, I was keeping my eye on the guide so that I would know which corner she turned if she got ahead of us.

As well, Wyona bought a couple of Cokes from someone who only spoke Russian, and Wyona waited as the clerk to get the right change for her at another booth. 

No one speaks the international language of commerce that goes with buying and selling as Wyona does.  

Buy your dolls at Red October

I have seen her do it in China and now in Russia.  There was no time to shop on the tours.  

And the ship tour guide had lingered on the picture of the market that runs beside the Church of the Spilled Blood.

He told everyone to memorize the look of that market.  

Then he said, "Buy something here at your own risk."  

The chances of you being pick-pocketed will never be higher.
We shopped instead at a new market called Red October.  In fact, we lost each other -- or I lost her.  I didn't even see this isle of goods until we were leaving the shop.

Fables are painted on the body of the doll.

What we didn't buy in the market, we bought when the ship ran their own Russian Bazaar.  The Jewel of the Sea shops close down when we are in a port.

But at sea -- buying and selling is sweet.

Arta