The Giant Looms

After our middling placing in the Sea Olympics, my evening ended with some lovely news. I came back to my door to find a lovely note that my art midterm for the next day had been postponed to the next class. That means that immediately, studying must stop, only to recommence in 48 hours.

The next morning just didn’t seem to want to go my way. The internet was unbelievably slow and I was in no mood to be back out at sea again. I guess the satellite we use for internet isn’t exactly positioned over remote sea areas of the Indian Ocean. There’s not many people trying to access the internet on a daily basis in that corner of the sea. And with the long transits that we’ve had already, this week-long trek to India is going to be a long one that I’m already not liking, and this is only our second of seven days between ports. I think looking at an ocean and daily shipboard life is finally starting to grate on me. You get one of those happy/sad paradoxical inverse simultaneous attitudes that just makes you feel unable to figure out which emotion you’re actually feeling, and then you expend so much energy just trying to figure it out, that you get more tired on top of it all.

I led an Ambassadors Ball meeting in the evening, which I would say went well, considering an overall lack of experience in organizing and leading events with large groups of people (I’m a fast learner though.) After that, they had the student talent competition, where a winner would be declared at its conclusion. They already had the lifelong learner/staff/faculty/children talent show so this was especially for the students, and here’s how I know it was fixed: the winner was a lifelong learner and a dependent child came in second.

Allow me to explain. The person hosting the talent show (whose name I’m sure you’ll be able to find on other blogs; I like anonymity when I’m going to talk about stuff like this) was completely biased and not representative of the average student, not that there’s anything wrong with that, we need outliers in life for variety. But this person was biased to the lifelong learner who did a bit that was alright, but shouldn’t have been in the talent competition in the first place, just because they already had theirs. This is our turn. Anyway, the lifelong learner (who’s the atypical one that’s not near being a senior citizen) did her bit, and then the host had everyone give her a round of applause, and then give her another because she thought she was so inspirational. That was a load of bullcrap in my opinion. And she ended up winning in the end, with the dependent child coming in second, and I guess a student finished in the Mr. Irrelevant position of third.

I was very disappointed with the student talent competition, not because there was something wrong with the talent, but because all the talent that did well had nothing to do with the students. That just doesn’t seem right to me. But that’s the way it was.

The next day, now that we were heading further away from the cyclone over Madagascar, the waters, in comparison, were very calm. Even in a non-relative sense, they were very calm.

In the afternoon, it was my day for helping the dependent children with their work, which changes daily, so I never know what I’m getting myself into when I walk into the room, but I seem to enjoy myself every time. The big event tonight is the spelling bee, so I was helping one of the girls with her spelling words. She had yet to start studying, so I taught her how to spell the words, rather than her practicing them back to me, but you have to start somewhere. And by the end of the period, I almost had her down pat with ‘Mauritius.’

As if that wasn’t enough, we got to throw an inflatable globe around and name places under our hands when we caught it. And we got to do that for over 20 minutes. After a while, you run out of fun things to say when you have one hand on the Pacific Ocean and the other on the Atlantic. There’s not much there. I know from experience in the Atlantic, so trust me on that.

Later in the evening, I was there to help out with the actual spelling bee itself. My job was to put a sticker on each of the kids after they got a word spelled correctly. I turned that job into the comic relief as well as I tried to keep the mood light, especially when one of the kids spells a word wrong, and there’s a really awkward silence where nobody knows what to say or do, until one of the parents chimes in with, “Good try! Good try!” Yes, that is what parents are for.

You would think that the process of sticker application would be an easy task, but for some reason I had the most difficult time removing the stickers from the paper they were stuck to. It’s a task that I should be capable of doing without issue, but sometimes, when we’re tired, simple tasks become difficult.

After that, I had a meeting that I was dreading for a while because now we had to figure out logistics for how we’d do seating at the Ambassadors Ball. The trick is to find a way to do it where the least amount of confusion will persist, and decrease the workload as much as possible on our end, so that we’re not up all night pulling this together.

Here’s what we came up with: for the two seatings, each group of people would fill out a form with the names of the people they want to sit with at dinner, and when they turn that form in, with all group members present, they can sign for the ticket and pick their entrée choice; after that part is completed, we’d do the best that we could to sit everyone with who they want to sit with. It’s an idealized version that puts a lot of work on our shoulders, but it’s the easiest way to do it for everyone involved. And even a simple way like that (and trust me when I say that’s a simple method) will have people that will question the laws of physics with incompetence.

After we figured that out, I treated myself to an ice cream cone, which was more liquid than solid when I got it, so I had some lovely frozen yogurt chocolate drips in a lovely radius both on and around me. I think that was because a bunch of people in front of me on line also got ice cream, and by the time it got to me, it didn’t have enough time to freeze yet, because when it’s handed to you, it shouldn’t be active in the process of dripping.

After I slurped up the remainder of my ice cream, I should have gone off to study for my art exam, but I found a few people putting a puzzle together, so I decided to sit down and help out with that instead. I enjoyed myself much more doing that than I would have had I been studying. I can’t say what that will do for my grade, but I have time to study tomorrow, I think.

I was actually planning to start studying when I got back to the room, but it was laundry day again tomorrow, and because those are few and far between, I had to take care of that first. And because I get all my laundry into one bag, because I fold and roll all my dirty clothes (it’s the way to go!) it takes a lot longer than jamming clothes into a bag normally would take. It’s all about careful placement and orientation for maximal use of space.

Needless to say, I didn’t have time for art studying that night. But, I got up at 6 the next morning, but that was originally planned to be for downloading Email when not everyone is on the internet and it’s nice and quick; and that’s what I ended up doing, too. I spent a half hour putting up a blog posting and downloading Email, and that’s all I did. A half hour! We might as well not have any internet at all if I’m going to be tortured for having to wait that long for a page to load.

After breakfast, I didn’t study, I went back to bed to take a nap before global. That was also in the original plan, and I like to stick to my plans, unless I should otherwise be studying. In that case, the plans are flexible.

We have not only an interport lecturer with us on the way to India, but we have an interport family. When Dean Mike did his graduate work in India, he did it with an Indian gentleman, and this was his family that he brought with him. Today in global, for reasons beyond those my mind can comprehend, we spent an overly long amount of time talking about collecting firewood. It wasn’t about the pollution for burning the wood, it wasn’t about deforestation, it was about methods of collecting wood, and how long it can take walking around picking up wood. Hours, it takes, apparently. It was painful. Firewood should be a topic talked about between sentences, almost in passing, not as the main topic for half of the class. We’re not going to be collecting firewood when we’re in India, and the chances of being culturally enriched enough to watch someone collect firewood is just something that I don’t think will be happening while we’re in India. But I could be wrong; after all, we’re not in India yet.

So, after our thrilling lecture on the collection of firewood, I had to get my rear in gear for my art exam. I knew as the exam was coming closer that I wasn’t leaving a perfect amount of time to study, but it was a sufficient amount to know what I was doing when I went into the exam. And the exam went okay, it wasn’t anything spectacular, but it was something that I was fine with. It was the first exam I’ve ever had in any kind of art class, so the adjustment from my usual scientific stuff was somewhat bumpy, yet smooth. The ability to think for myself and put my own opinion into stuff is something that I’m not used to, and to be honest, something that feels wrong to do on an exam, but I had to, and we’ll see how that experiment turns out.

After the exam, I went out on the back deck, where it was incredibly hot and humid. We’re closing back in on the equator, and with the seasons about to change, it’s just about due overhead, so it was justifiably hot. And also justifiably, I didn’t stay outside too long. Also, now that we’ve left that cyclone behind us, I’ve never seen the seas this calm. If we didn’t have the rumbling of the engines throughout the ship, I wouldn’t be able to tell that we were moving. The seas are placid and there’s absolutely no movement on the ship. It’s a bit of a welcome relief after the stuff that we’ve been through recently.

In the evening, I was able to get out of a lecture on Islam one of my professors was giving, because I had it already, so I was able to spend the vast majority of my evening on two things. First, my laundry came back super quick, so I had to fold most of my clothes and then get them put back away, because I can’t have unfolded clothes laying around the room. That would be messy and a nuisance. Secondly, I finally figured out what I’m doing with all my spare time in Japan. I have a two day trip to Nara and Kyoto previously, which left three days open for anything. On the first day, I’m heading up to Hiroshima, and then the last two days, I’m going to be up in Tokyo, which I’m very excited about. I hear that’s where the world’s largest intersection is, and if I can get to see that at night, I’ll be a very happy person. So I booked the hostel I’ll be staying in with my traveling partner, and we’re set to go.

As one of the fruity things about India, and trust me, there’s been a lot of fruity stuff about India we’ve learned thus far, we only lost a half hour of sleep last night, because India’s wacky like that. You wouldn’t think that you’d feel that half hour, but at this point in the voyage, you feel every minute that we don’t have. We get all these back, but it all comes back to haunt us in another day of classes. That day was supposed to be, and was previously advertised as April 30, but they changed it to May 2. I’m not sure how you can move the day that’s supposed to happen twice, but apparently on this ship, the people in charge can do whatever they want. Unlike the rest of us…

Now on our fifth day at sea to India, I’m ready for land, even if it is India at this point. They slowed us down quite a bit a day or two ago so that we could have extra days for classes (how nice of them) and moving at this snail’s speed is so annoying just because we all know that we could be going faster, and we all want to be going faster, but the previously mentioned powers that be have decided otherwise.

In the afternoon, we had a lovely Ambassadors Ball meeting with the Hotel Director, Stefan, about the menu for the Ball. And I have to say that the meeting went well and the menu looks pretty good. I’m not sure how, but we arranged for a trial run taste testing after India, so we get to try all that if we make it out of India alive. So that will be something to look forward to and strive for.

In the evening, one of the highlights of life at sea, we had the Q & A (Question and Answer session) with the Captain and a few of his crew, one of which was Stefan. The evening was shaping up to be rather uneventful, until three questions produced themselves in the second half of the hour.

The first addressed a long standing rumor on the ship that I always laughed at. Supposedly, the pasta on the ship is cooked in chicken broth instead of water, which irks the vegetarians and supposedly they haven’t been having the pasta for this reason. So, a young girl, assumedly a vegetarian, because who else would bother asking this, walks up to the microphone and asks, “Why is the pasta cooked in chicken broth?” There is a short and small conference at the Captain’s table, and Stefan grabs the microphone and responds, in his German accent, “We like to think that there is a certain degree of,” pausing for a moment, “common sense on board the ship.” This sends the whole place into laughter as he continues with, “The pasta is cooked is water. Who told you it was cooked in chicken broth?” The girl, apparently a glutton for punishment, answers, “Well, that’s what my friend told me.” And Stefan responds with, “Well, your friend doesn’t know what they’re talking about. I would look for new friends.” So that was the first question. But wait, it gets better.

One of the next people asked the following, simple seeming question, addressed to the Captain: “What are your favorite and least favorite ports that we’re visiting?” He first said that Chennai, the port we were on our way to pulling into was probably his least favorite port, which did wonders for my trepidation over India. That left me feeling great. But Captain Jeremy was a little more descriptive with the rest of the answer. He said, “As for my favorite port, I’d have to say Hong Kong, because that’s where I met my wife.” After the crowd ‘awwed’ for a short while, the Captain continued when, in my personal opinion, he shouldn’t have. Keeping in mind that he’s on wife number three, he said, “But ask me again in a few years and we’ll see if that’s changed to my least favorite port.” He had to continue, didn’t he? He couldn’t leave well enough alone. He had to make a joke about going through wives like hankies. The crowd didn’t have the same reception to the second half of his answer than the first. We were all taken aback somewhat. But wait, it gets better.

The third question was what really turned the night into something that was that of legend. A girl with arms crossed, wearing a tank top and short shorts came up to the microphone and asked, “Why is it so cold on the ship?” The question was quickly answered by one of the panel with, “Well, considering what you’re wearing,” pausing for laughter, “I’d suggest a sweater.” You can’t make this stuff up. I’ll admit that it is cold on the ship. I always have a jacket and pants on because, depending on where on the ship you are, it can range from cold to frigid. And then once you get outside, it moves to unpleasantly hot and gross. But it the last question was a wonderful cap to a fun Q & A session, and will leave the crew thinking that we’re a bunch of idiots.

To close the night, they had a bit of programming that I believe to be a bad idea. Most nights at sea, they have after hours drinks back up on the top deck of the ship. And tonight had a theme, and let me preface that it’s not what it sounds, and no, I didn’t participate. It was a ‘no clothes’ theme. This means that you can’t wear clothes, but are instead otherwise encouraged to wrap your body with such things as flags, maps, or in some cases, duct tape. When you tell a bunch of college students that the theme for the night is ‘no clothes’ its best to run away. I ran to bed.

Because I had a class moved to a special lecture later in the afternoon, I had most of the day off and to myself, which was quite nice. Lack of interruption is an enjoyable way to go through the day. At that later lecture, it was on Hinduism and was given by the interport lecturing family. To be honest, it was almost interesting. A large portion of it was overlap from other classes where we’ve talked about Hinduism ad nauseum. It was supposed to be an hour, but because the question and answer portion was on the dry side, we got let out early.

We had our pre-India Ambassadors Ball meeting in the evening, and we’ve got some stuff to get going with in this port. We’ve been kind of lax in the decoration acquiration department so picking up that kind of stuff would be tremendously helpful. Also, we’re supposed to have all 850 some odd invitations printed while we’re in Chennai, and that’s not going to be one of my jobs, so I’ll just wish that crew well when they shove off to find a printing place somewhere.

Cultural preport wasn’t really what I was looking for before we arrived in India. I was looking for reassurance and getting the information that I was looking for. Instead, I got a bunch of skits about how to use a hole in the floor for a toilet. They had people dressed in bed sheets showing us this, and it did nothing for my self-esteem or confidence before heading into India. I actually believe that I felt more frightened after preport than I did before preport. And with less than 48 hours to go before making landfall, I found that to be a bit of an issue, so I took matters into my own hands.

I found Dean Mike, who had spent lots of time in India, and basically told him that I was frightened of India, and that I needed his help to calm me down so that I actually feel like getting off the ship when we get there. We had a nice fifteen minute talk where he told me that India, while full of culture shock, is not necessarily a dangerous country. And I realized what I was most concerned about, and it was my health. Supposedly, India could be bad for my health. The food may cause me to become sick, more so than in any other port, malaria prophylaxis is recommended for all voyagers, as that’s just one of a plethora of diseases that bugs carry in India, and the air quality is quite poor, so breathing in some spots will be more fun than others. I guess those are the things that I’m most concerned about because I only can worry about things I have control over, and I feel some kind of control over these things, but I don’t know if I’ll be able to fight them off. That’s the big question, and I’ve only got to keep up the fight for a five day stretch. It could be worse, we could be there for longer than five days.

To take my mind off of India for the time being, I watched the beginning of Wedding Crashers in the Union until I didn’t feel like watching anymore. I planned to get up to hop back on the internet in the morning. I never made it up for that in the morning. I figured resting up the day before we arrive in India was the better option.
And I don’t know how it happened again, but I’m really tired before a port again, even with the extra sleep that I just got. This isn’t exactly the time of the voyage when being tired is a good thing, in fact, being tired in this entire voyage can never be a good thing. But there’s no avoiding it. And I don’t know how it manifests itself like it does. I don’t know…

I made the executive decision that I needed a haircut before India. It’s supposed to be really hot, and the last thing I want is a mop of hair on my head making me hotter than I already am. That, and it was getting long anyway, so it was kind of a two birds, one stone deal.

Somewhat against my own will, I’m back on my malarone pills again. Some people experience weird side effects from the pills, but I think that’s because they take them without food. I have yet to have an issue, but just like taking ginkgo biloba for your memory, the toughest part about taking a pill is remembering to take it. That’s my concern. That’s what I worry about. Because if I miss a day, I’m going to think that I’m going to die of malaria because of my bizarre hypochondriac mind. Some people worry about side effects, I worry about remembering to take it – to each his own.

I “started” studying for my cinema exam in the morning. I only “started” in the morning because I know the material somewhat, and the subject matter isn’t incredibly difficult, so I figured with the advertised multiple choice information, it shouldn’t be bad at all. That is, until I got to the exam and found that all the questions were missing options to choose from, and we had to provide the correct responses all by ourselves. It was a bit of a surprise to me because I apparently have a bad source somewhere along the way, but I knew the material well enough to provide the one word or one sentence answers that the questions needed. It wasn’t too bad, so I figure I’ll be able to see how I did on that shortly after India. Out of sight, out of mind at this point.

Because it was an odd B day again, it was my afternoon to help out the dependent children, hopefully not with the ‘new math’ that they’ve introduced since I’ve been through the system, because I can’t figure that stuff out. Instead, I was given another task, seemingly simple enough, hook one of the girl’s computers to the online database and assist her when needed in her research of pirates. The problem with all of this is that she needs to hook up to the proxy server to do the research, and that’s a foreign language to me, so we had to go visit Matt the IT guy.

We left the computer with him and he told us to come back in 15 minutes. 20 minutes later, it still wasn’t working, so we explored a plan B to do our research, and Wikipedia worked out quite well for us. I can’t vouch that the research is true, but according to Wikipedia, it is. How this ship gets away with having Wikipedia be an accredited source is beyond me, but I know how to use it, so I’m not going to complain.

In the meantime, while she was researching, I was folding paper cranes. What’s attempting to happen is that the kids are trying to fold 1000 paper cranes by the time we reach Japan. At the Peace Park in Hiroshima, there’s a memorial to a girl who was dying of the effects of the bomb, and was in the process of folding 1000 paper cranes when she passed away. As a sign of world peace, schools from across the globe bring strings of 1000 paper cranes to her memorial, and we’re trying to do the same. So I learned how to fold a crane, and it’s about as difficult to say as it is to do. And that’s relatively difficult. But I think I made two or three passable cranes. That’s two or three less that we have to make now.

Later in the evening, I had the meeting for my India trip. If there’s one thing that I’m absolutely thrilled about, it’s that Brenda, one of the two nurses on the trip, is one of the two trip leaders for my big India trip. It’s a trip to Delhi, Agra, and Jaipur, and it’s a doozy with a lot of late nights and early morning wake-ups. They gave us a brief rundown of what to expect and that we should limit ourselves to traveling with the same restrictions on liquids as in the US, which is a little trickier on a four day trip where we’re not allowed to check any baggage. Needless to say, I’ve still got my concerns about Indian travel, but at this point, I’m going in, and here’s not much I can really do about it.

Before logistical preport tonight, they showed us an early cut of the Voyage DVD. I wasn’t in it. Well, I shouldn’t say that, if you squint, for about a second and a half, you can see me among the throngs of people at one point in the Union. It only included footage from Puerto Rico and Brazil, so when I roomed with Joe the videographer in South Africa and that bit I did with him and Gandhi shouldn’t have surfaced yet. I hope it does. I bought the DVD and I expect to be in it at some point. But other than the fact that I wasn’t in it yet, it looked pretty good. It’s a lot of footage to break down into two hours. A hundred and one days worth of footage at that.

Logistical preport turned me into a wreck and a mess. There’s nothing safe about this country. I’m not a guy that’s big on risks, so this step out of my comfort zone is about as big a step as you can take. When Dr. Matt did his schpiel about all the diseases and dangers that we have to watch out for, I went right back to the state of panic that I had temporarily been able to leave behind me after talking with Dean Mike the previous day. Gone like a flash.

After preport, they played a documentary called Invisible Children. If you’re someone looking for a cause, look no further than this. This is the synopsis as best as I can remember it: three guys went to Uganda to make a documentary film about something, they didn’t know what, but figured they’d find something. What they found was something that few outside of Uganda had ever heard about. Children are abducted out of their homes at a very young age and raised by paramilitary groups to be killing machines. It’s unbelievable to watch and if you’re easily squemish or easily taken aback, it may be a bit heavy for you, but it’s definitely something worth checking out.

After that, which put me in a depressed mood as well as an incredibly anxious one, I tried to go to sleep. When some people are anxious they can’t go to sleep. I don’t have that problem, and never have. I was out like a light, and ready to wake up to something completely different in the morning.