LA to Lahaina

Entrance into the harbor this morning was slow because of fog, and Immigration this morning was very slow.  We did not leave this ship until late morning.

Long Beach, California, was the last chance to pick up items at mainland US prices and also the chance to catch up on email and make a blog post.  Thus, it has been a utilitarian day for us. Cunard provided shuttle bus service to the aquarium area, and the city provided a shuttle to the Pine Street shopping area.  It was all very convenient.      It is probably our last cool weather for a long time as by the time we get to possible cold spots, a couple of months will have passed.  Australia will be having summer when we are there and is pretty close to the equator anyway. 

We start four sea days to Hawaii this evening sailing out around dinner time.  Four days of lectures, classes and general pampering.  We shall see what there is to report.

The sailaway from Los Angeles is beautiful.   It is dusk at 5:30, and the lights are lit, but there is still good daylight.   Two other ships leave first, each with all their decks lined with passengers and much hollering and waving.  The first backs out, and John yells, “You’re going backwards!”    There is a band of Scots pipers on quayside and a fireboat to salute our maiden voyage.  The thrusters will move us laterally away from the dock.  Will someone yell, “You’re going sideways!”?

Time to dress in “elegant casual” for dinner.  The distinctions between elegant casual, semi-formal and formal for women seem a little murky to me and to other women.  The men have it easy—elegant casual means no neck tie, semi-formal means a necktie and formal means a tux.

We are promised waves of three to four meters, but the ship movement in the night seems pretty close to normal.

Sunday, January 30, 2011

We are on red alert for infection control again since we took on passengers in LA, but we are promised that it will only be two days.  I seem to have a touch of whatever has been bothering our table mates.  Whatever it is, it does not interest infection control which seems focused on digestive complaints.  My plan is to lie low and hope it passes.  But what really bothers me is that this complaint is only affecting the women at the table.  Aren’t we supposed to be the stronger sex?  I have told John to avoid me as much as he can for today.

Monday, January 31, 2011

I have a mild cold.  Today I read and attend one lecture on Cold Porter, have lunch with Australians because we could not find a table for two.  The Ozzies tell of the floods, and we talk of things Australian.  They question American politics which I mostly find too depressing to think about.

BOOKS: I have finished Marina Lewycka’s We Are All Made of Glue, and the discussion has been held.  Apparently these are “corporate” choices and based to some degree on countries we will visit (or from which Cunard has customers from which would explain the next choice which is by a South African where we are not going).  About Glue—it is a book with problems of focus and a highly controversial point of view.  It starts with a marital quarrel which leads to a separation, a teen-ager in thrall of religious mania, an impossible old woman who imposes on our heroine, the questionable practices of real estate agents and finally gets to what seem to be the main point which is the Arab-Israeli conflict its possible resolution.  All sides are given some good lines.  There are a large number of characters of more or less importance.  It is hard to imagine a good discussion, but when the group discussion is held, nearly thirty people—all but one are women—show up.  Discussion is lively if not terribly insightful, and a pleasant time is had by all.  The book was readable, but some women felt her earlier title, A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian, was better.  In my opinion it was what I think of as a popular read—get the characters on, give each a problem and a personality, solve the problems and get them off.

MORE BOOKS: Summertime by John Coetzee is the next book club selection.  No group discussion has been held yet.  I found it a much better written book than Glue and quite enjoyed it.  The story of a writer named John Coetzee, his notebooks, and the interviews of those who knew him, serve as a draft for a biography which is not written.  It raises a number of issues of a discussable nature besides being an absorbing read.  We come to know Coetzee as he thinks he is seen by others.  His self-hatred is quite evident.  Why choose this means of telling the story?  His final choice—to sacrifice his needs to care for his father or to desert his father is not told.  The man must have been writing for book clubs!  It will be interesting to see if the discussion if livelier or not.

Thursday, February 03, 2011

I have done nothing physical for a week, so in preparation for a two mile hike, on Wednesday I walk the deck three times and climb the stairs from A deck to nine.

We enter La Haina’s harbor area early in the morning; the Island is a mass of black with twinkling lights here and there.  We are scheduled for a rain forest hike, but I awake with diarrhea, of all things, and despite medication decide, at the door of the bus, that this trip is not for me.  It was the right decision, I know, and John continues on the tour.  I take the tender back to the ship hoping to take a ride into the internet café later.  Meanwhile I do a fast load of laundry. 

One of the things I got for the trip was a “World Clock” which switches time zones as you switch a dial.  Amazingly the alarm works in the time zone we are in.  But the clock does not cover all time zones.  Yesterday we were in a blank so I used Moscow which is just twelve hours off.  Fortunately I did not need the alarm. Today I am comfortably in the Honolulu or Hawaiian time zone.