You Can't Make Me Paint

The day is March 8, 2014.  It is possible for cruisers not to know what day it is, even the the Daily Schedule announces the day, the temperature and lists possible things to do.  To read the list was overwhelming.  I began to cross of choices I would not take.  One was Painting with Watercolours. 

“You can’t make me paint,” I said to Wyona.  “I tried that on two cruises.  I was so happy the choice wasn’t here on this trip.  And now they have it in the bulletin.  A big no from me.”

I was right about making a choice that was in my best interess and this morning I knew that choice was to get out and walk the deck, to catch up on that good feeling that only a brisk walk can bring.  I tried to sneak out the door, putting my exercise clothing on in the bathroom so as not to wake Wyona and Greg.

I was successful getting my first leg in the pants I was wearing.  The second I tried while leaning against the vanity.  The four foot waves outside gave the boat a lurch and I slid toward the shower.  No problem, I would just slide down the wall of the shower door.  No door there, unfortunately.  Only a shower curtain that gave way.  I made the fall as quietly as possible, no sound passing my lips but thinking, wow, that was a lot of weight to hit the ground just now.

The noise must have bolted sleeping Wyona right out of bed. Greg was also upright when I came out of the bathroom to tell them, no, I was still conscious, just embarrassed to have wakened them. I slipped right out the door. 

This is a different cruise.  Different people in the dining room, ones I have not noticed before in the lectures and now on deck at 8 am.   It is not the professional joggers on deck.  Only people like me.  Walking for good health. Someone doing tai chi stretches in one of the corners. All of us walking gingerly over the wet parts of the deck where the ship maintenance workers are keeping the windows and walks clean with their hoses and squeegies.  I try not to look at my watch, but to keep walking, stretching tall and tightening muscles in the back and front of my body – holding them, then giving them a soft relax as I walked.  The soft relax feels better than the real exercise.

An hours walk was up and I headed for the cabin, but saw some people already going to the Constellation Lounge.  Even though dressed in my exercise wear and with wind-blown hair, still I wanted to know what would be going on so early in the morning.  Which is the reason why I walked into the Painting with Watercolours class.  The teacher was starting in a class really for beginners.  I stopped to watch her pedagogue which was so artful.  The second time she said, “Now does anyone else need a kit?”, I raised my hand. 

Now I have a picture of a glacier.  Done by me.  Not a glacier that Greg could recognize, but Wyona got it on her first try.  I am prouder than punch.  Third time with water colours, the charm.

Bedtime Stories Part 2

Wyona and I were too tired to read our emails a couple of days ago. But we agreed we could listen if they were read to us as a bedtime story for us.  Greg agreed to read.  We listened. That worked.  Last night, just as we were going to sleep we begged for more stories.  With no book in hand, he free-lanced and asked if we knew what three ingredients make China so successful today.  

Was it the opium balls, I guessed, since I had gone to the lecture on how the opium wars had nearly destroyed China.  Greg, who had also been at that lecture, said he wasn’t thinking along that line, but he had three other things to share.  

The Chinese dictator in the 1980’s who opened up the way for there to be a Chinese business class – that was one important event.  Having a single party system in China, that helps to get a lot done.  There is no opposition getting in the way of progress.  

The third item making China successful is an inexhaustible supply of labour.  Without hardly a pause between Greg’s last word in that sentence, and the beginning of the next sentence, Wyona seemed to be interrupting him.  She was not for she said, would you believe Greg is already asleep. 

No kidding, I said, waiting for Greg to pipe up.  A long silence.  You have got to be kidding!

“Yes,” said Wyona. “ I could tell he was dosing off when his words became slower and more carefully articulated. He is way under right now. Our laughing is not going to wake him up.  I hope you can remember what he said for it is over now.”

I didn’t care if Greg goes to sleep in the middle of the bedtime stories.  I learned three important things about China from him– more than I can remember from the volumes I was reading before I left on this trip.

Greg is a fantastic travelling companion.  He can gives deeper, more academic lectures than the ones we hear on the boat. All he has to hear is a question asked and see an interested listener.

Greg?  Why am I seeing so many shipping containers and no factories.  This is going on for miles and miles.  Maybe 20 minutes now.

Greg?  Why are there so many road fly overs and round abouts and no vehicles using them  -- no private vehicles on them, and no semi’s? 

Greg?  How did you know the exact spot on the street where the incident with the tank took place just before Tiananmen Square?

Greg?  How do you know which line on the subway we should be taking?  And how did you spot the entrance to the underground.

Greg?  Why are the police stopping all of those kids at the bottom of the escalator and demanding to look at their passports? 

Greg has an answer for everything.  For the last question, he reminded me that Chinese people are not free to travel in their own country, as we are. They have documents that tell them where they can go and where they cannot go. 

- Arta

A Sea Day

People laugh when I say that sea days are so busy that I don’t have time to eat.  Wyona and Greg don’t have time for it, either.  There is a destination lecture, a bridge lecture, a dance class, a lecture on historical events around the port we will be entering.  Then if I take a mile walk around the deck before all of this happens, and try to get to the evening entertaining – well, those days are exhausting. 

The Bridge Lectures are attended by the same group of people – the others meet again in the afternoon to practise their skills with duplicate bridge on each other. But Wyona and Greg go off to dance lessons instead. If Wyona does go to play, and Greg goes to dance alone, she ends up getting the high board points, but she claims the stress of having to do so well wears her out for the rest of the day. She comes back to the room, throws herself on the bed, and gives me strict instructions.  Vehemently she says, “Don’t ever let me go up there and play bridge again”.  Not believing I have that power, I have no idea what tools I am going to use to stop her.

Still, I am enjoying learning about the rule of 20, the rule of 15, the rule of 11 and the instructions on the four rules of what to lead should you get to play the first card.  “The gods of bridge will punish you if you don’t memorize these four leads,” the instructor said, looking up to the heavens. “And I mean it.  You will be punished.”

This threat scares me more than it scares Wyona.

- Arta

Istanbul

Istanbul --  “To the city”

“These are historic waters we are sailing through,” said Greg as he gazed from the balcony, onto the Aegean Sea.  He was waiting for Wyona to get her shoes on so that they could go to their dancing lessons – today is the rumba.  Wyona had bubble bathed all morning. “Whenever am I going to have a bubble bath in a balcony suite on a boat, again,” she said to us as Greg and I hurried off to the destination lecture entitled Istanbul, not Constantinople.  I met the lecturer while standing in the specialty omelette line-up for breakfast.  “I enjoyed your lecture two days ago.  My brother-in-law and I were saying how we had wished your lecture had been longer when you talked about Corfu.” 

“It is difficult”, he said, “since I am only allowed 35 minutes of presentation time.  I submitted two lectures and the people on board choose the second one, so I have plenty of material.  But the problem on board is just that there are not enough rooms to run all of the programs people want.” 

The people who gathered around the lecturer post-presentation had questions to ask and answers to share.  Most agreed that the best source of information for a traveller is Rick Steven’s Guide to Istanbul, one man there having read 100 pages of it in another Rick Stevens book.  Greg and he went on to chat about good books to read about the history of the Golden Horn.  The lecture had covered the etymology of the name Istanbul, the best reading on it being that in Turkish it sounds a bit like “to the big city”, which would make sense given the rural roots of the people who  finally ended up living in the city.

That was the historic destination lecture.  Later in the morning and better attended was the shopping lecture, highlighting the way to purchase Turkish leather coats (lightweight for their cold winters of 70 degrees Fahrenheit), rugs, coffee (better at waking people up than Red Bull), apple tea, Turkish delight candy (created for a Sultan with a sweet tooth but no way to eat hard candy) and tourist paraphernalia, all decorated with the sign of the evil eye.  I am going to a market with 4009 shops and 16 entrances and exits, hoping I can buy at least one pashmina, a wool scarf that is so fine it will pass through the circle of a wedding ring.

I took my early morning walk.  The sun rose from behind the distant horizon and lifted its face over the right over the water in the time it took me to only walk one length of the boat. I will be that sun rose in less than to minutes.

We had been promised a stormy sea with high winds today.  I wanted to beat the turbulence and the water on the deck by getting up early.  The wind had already beat me to the deck. I had to lean forward to stand upright.  A few chairs slipped across the deck in front of me.  Some of the backs on the deck chairs banged forward. I casually wondered if I shouldn’t have brought a whistle with me, in case I was blown overboard.  Soon I was thinking of wearing a life jacket in case no one noticed I was gone for a few days. 

Wyona and I came back from the Turkish Grand Market without buying anything ... a sad comment on the shopping energy Wyona and I had. Oh, that is not to say that we didn’t find a beautiful red silk scarf, wider than the usual scarves, but when we went back to get it, we couldn’t find that shop again.  That is what is wrong with shopping in a place where there are 4009 shops.  Not that there are that many kinds of shops – there was leather (coats, purses, shoes), gold, diamonds, silver, ceramics and the usual tourist paraphernalia (the evil eye on key chains, ash trays).

We sat down to eat.  What are the chances that someone you had eaten breakfast with would be at the table with  you – but there they were, Frank and Joan on the side of me, and on the side of Greg, a couple that he calls his chicks.  They were fabulous – older women on their first crew and full of lots of interesting chatter. The dinner companions are always interesting because they have had as many adventures in the market as we have had.

Arta