Saving the Best to Last

Late Night Pizza

Two evening shows featuring songs from Broadway and two standing ovations later we were having four cheese pizza, salad or cookies in the Ocean View Cafe. Now that is cruising.

... packing is exhausting work ...

I was up again ... early, walking the halls, getting another couple of decks of cards for bridge, coming back to the room to alert Wyona that there was another watercolour class.

I have pretty well given up – another talent that I am going to pass on ... develop those art skills when I get to heaven, I thought to myself. I am working on being polite. 

... three point landing ...
a cruising talent

That is all. Like, instead of turning the lights on in the room when I come back from my walk, I go into a pitch black room and try to find the bathroom door by Braille. This is not easy. I could find an open door but I was blocked by wood from entering the room. I went back to the wall, ran my hand over it, trying to find a knob. No door handle anywhere. By now I was using large circling motions with both of my arms. I have been doing Zumba. They are flexible. Still no way to get into the bathroom so I am patting down every wall. I have forgotten that this room has a closet where Wyona and Greg keep their folded stuff. This is what I have been trying to enter in the dark. Cruising is hard work.

We are doing the inside passage today -- seeing for ourselves that the beauty we already know is British Columbia extends along this whole coast. We are out of the Alaska Panhandle and in the waters that separate Vancouver Island from the mainland. So beautiful.

But back to the morning – since Wyona wouldn’t get up and go to the art lesson, I went to check it out and one of those wonderful things happen where the student and the master connect. I might like painting after all. The pedagogy was just right for me: this is about having fun; take 30 minutes, do what you can and be out of there; use the same palette over and over (just let the paints dry and wet them down when you begin again). Now I have a new kit of paper, brushes and colours and tons of tips. ie there is a watermark on the paper, usually lower right hand side that will let you know which is the right side of the paper. During the lesson the teacher diverged a bit to answer a question and then said, “I don’t know where I was in the lesson, so I don’t know where to start again.” 

... one more peak at the water ...

“You were explaining the difference between negative a positive space.”

Whoops.

That voice was mine.

I must have been taking notes in my mind and not evening knowing it.


I would have broken out my paints and got busy, if I hadn’t been racing off to Zumba.

... a last night ... at least for a while ...

Everyone else is on the stage.

I stay at the back of the auditorium with the shy people, in the shadows, following the leader from far away.

I am not ready to be in the spotlight to do the cumbia until have it mastered in the dark.

Arta

Have I Done Any Good ...

Art 101 - Wyona
Scene from China

Some days I don’t feel as though I have done anything ... I mean really done anything. I did go for a one hour walk in the halls today – zero is too cold out on the deck when the wind is 35 mph and then boat is going 20 knots an hour as well.

I know this floor, the attendants on each quarter and what time most of the people come out of their rooms.

Art 101 - Wyona
Scene from Osaka Castle

The The Boutique Seminar was a video about how the Le Monde Travel Memory Globe is constructed and afterward some of the globes were on display. The idea of having a small (medium or large – depending on the body size of course) globe hanging from a chain around my neck, with a diamond, sapphire or emerald attached to each continent I have visited has never entered my mind. The sales person said that one person bought 7 extra jewels to put on the continents – one for each continent and then, since they have tickets for the first tourist travel voyage into space, they had another jewel placed in the ocean. I dream on such a small scale.

Art 101 - Wyona
Mt. Fuji

I slipped into a lecture called “The Wonders of Wallacea”. I didn’t make the connection between the lecture and the Wallace Collection that we used to frequent, the museum that was within walking distance of Greg’s flat. He brought that connection to my mind over lunch as six of us chatted over peanut satay – about places people at the table have travelled. I am still a “travel baby”.

The women from Kent, England talked about their lives at home. There is a programme with a name something like University for the Third Time – meant for older people. Retired professionals give the courses – anything from engineering to gardening. Their group has 1,000 members and sometimes they bus into London for the West End Shows – having just seen Top Hat and War Horse. Fun, that everyone at the table had seen War Horse. Even readers of this blog have seen it if they picked up on its transmission to a local theatre via National Theatre in HD. That seems to be a recurring theme among people who cruise this way. Many people have a story to tell that is constructed in the following form. “ I lived in rural village in northern Quebec when I was young.” I didn’t see an escalator or an elevator until I was 14. Another theme is “My parents were immigrants with a small business which went bankrupt. I had to make money for the family so I couldn’t go to high school.” People like this know how to have fun when they are old. Today I was trying to figure out what the world old means, since I am with a new cohort – the one I belong to, instead of being at the university, thinking I belong with people who carry books in knapsacks and are reading all of the time. The ones who think that turning an assignment in on time is having a good time.

Art 101 - Wyona
Free Form

This is a new group. They have their travel itineraries already set for 2015. They are out using the gym at 6 am, taking “Beyond the Podium” classes on board during the mornings and afternoons, Going to Elegant Teas in the mid afternoon, hitting the blues and jazz events in the evenings and dancing until the bands quit (at 1 am).

Art 101 by Arta
I gave it the title "Frustration"

I told Wyona that I don’t like going places where I am not the best at things, so I am quitting art. And I don’t have all of the Zumba moves down yet. I learned a new one with her a couple of days ago: left over right, light over left, slide, right under left, left under right. The move is so complicated there is not room for both of us to practise it in the same room without tripping each other. So I walk the halls in the morning, from forward to aft, where I stop at the back of the ship, catch my breath and do the move so my feet will remember it when I get onto the Zumba floor.

Wyona and I had split up for the morning.

She was at Water Colour Art 101.

I left lunch for Art Appreciation 101 (which is not doing art), and then off to a seminar on how to edit travel video photography. I am going to two shows again tonight – one show, really, two times – Dale Kristen who will be singing songs from old musicals.

Cruising along in happiness.

Arta