The everyday blog of Richard Bartle.
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1:46pm on Saturday, 9th August, 2008:
Anecdote
Just a few things I've noted while aboard the MV Galaxy:
More people fall over the yellow signs warning about slippery floors than slip on the floors.
The headline in one issue of Celebrity Today! was "the Captain's toast!". I checked it out: he wasn't.
Having an A-level in Physics comes in really handy in Greece. Not only do you know what all the letters mean, but you can actually understand some of the words. KATHIDOS — that's where "cathode" comes from! It means "way out". Eat that, arts students!
If your only knowledge of the song You're so Vain were the rendition given by the pool-side band, you wouldn't be aware that it had lyrics beyond "You're so vain, you probably think this song is about you", repeated ad nauseum|.
Waiters have clear job demarcation lines. Only wine waiters put out the wine glasses on tables, and they don't put anything else out on them.
According to Celebrity Today!, people suffering from motion sickness should: stay near the middle of the ship; go to the open decks for fresh air; avoid looking at the waves; refrain from alcohol excess. Furthermore, Meclizine (whatever that is) is available from the Guest Relations Desk, and medical treatment is available from the Medical Facility or from the Acupuncture Clinic. Hmm, that's an optimistically broad use of the word "medical", there...
At breakfast, there's a little card advertising different varieties of Bloody Mary. "Who drinks vodka for breakfast?!" I wondered. Within five minutes, the two women on the adjacent table had ordered one each. Oh, and a glass of white wine, too.
The on-board market selling things on the second sea day stocked the exact same items that we'd seen for sale in 50% of the shops in the towns where we'd stopped on the previous four days.
Just as a general thing (this isn't peculiar to cruise ships), people who order non-alcoholic cocktails don't want them to come with cherries that have been steeped in alcohol.
You have to clean your hands in steriliser before going into the restaurants, which is good. It might be a good idea to extend the idea to the passengers on the galley tour, too, though. There were over a hundred of us tramping through there this morning...
There's a daily bulletin for different nationalities. The one for UK passengers is called Britain Today, a title which sounds like some kind of ersatz newspaper that might have been brought out by the Nazis if they'd invaded in 1941. Most of the time, it's easy to get a copy. However, on August 7th they had all disappeared by mid-afternoon. I guess there was a major news item that day which caused this to happen — but what?
The virtuoso (virtuosa?) violin player was described in the flyer as "as much at home playing at small, intimate parties at the White House as she is performing as Radio City Music Hall". Hmm, I could say the same thing about myself, too...
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Copyright © 2008 Richard Bartle (richard@mud.co.uk).