Cruising

Post 4 of . . .

Happy Diwali! I continue to wake up at the wee hours of the morning and this has helped me blog regularly in the last few days. Ain't this wonderful?:)

Today, I’ll switch gears and talk about people I met on the cruise and beyond instead of going on with the places. Let’s assume today is a sea day and that after crossing the Ionian Sea we are merging into the Aegean Sea as we move toward the narrow Dardennels and the Sea of Marmara where Istanbul is located.

On our previous cruises, mealtime was free style, meaning one had no set time to dine. On this cruise our travel agent asked us if we wanted to eat at 6 or 9. Six was too early and nine was a bit late but I picked six anyway. I was also asked if I ‘d like to sit by ourselves or sit with more folks. I said that four more people would be fine. This resulted in sitting with Gil and Lily and Ann and Colin, folks from England. When I first met them, I wondered how much I might have to strain my ears--though BBC-TV and -Radio trained--to understand their British accent. Luckily, it didn’t take too long and by the third day, I felt that my own accent was drifting back toward British, which at one time, coming from India, it used to border on. At least, my American friends told me that it did.

Our conversations flowed easily and touched upon any number of subjects. Me a liberated career woman (though not on the "fast track" anymore), and Gil a retired nuclear engineer, tended to lay many of the world’s problems to the breakdown of the traditional family, which we mostly attributed to the career aspirations of a woman. Gil was afraid he might labeled a sexist and I assured him that we were all just throwing a few opinions around and nothing more. Gil, a father of two successful career women, suggested that women these days wanted "everything" and this was the problem, while his charming and sweet wife Lily, a homemaker, smiled sheepishly. I couldn’t tell if she agreed with him or quietly mocked him: so what’s so wrong about that? She had this quiet personality and a disarming smile that could probably help her get away with murder so to speak. I think she thought with her hands because often when she had something profound to say, her hands would come together and her fingertips would tap each other softly. This action reminded me of Mr. Burns on the popular TV Show: The Simpsons. But he is a mean guy. I could tell Lily was a deep thinker and I was pleasantly surprised that we both shared the same zodiac sign.

Ann, an English teacher in a non-traditional college where it seemed the students were all foreigners (she herself at one time was married to an Iranian; her job gave access to some interesting cultural stories--some hilarious and some sad), sounded a bit defensive on the subject. She said that not all women had a choice. Overall, it was a civil exchange and it was concluded that it was a complex subject.

In light of the discovery of billions of dollars of worth of treasures in a temple in southern India run by the local royal family, I ribbed the British that thank God that they were all hidden from their eyes when they ruled India. Gil "pleaded" with me to show him up as the rightful owner and promised me a 10% commission:)

We spent a solid twelve evenings with these two couples and I think we have becomes friends for life. I even think that Gil "sized up my personality" to the nth degree. I think that we actually shared some common traits. Some have called me a black mustard seed and others a peppercorn, apparently for the punch these spices pack. Even B feels I pack a lot of punch which I’m not sure is necessarily good or bad.

Talking of personalities, our waiter was quite a character. A big guy with a big smile and high energy who I think took offense that I thought that he was south American. I think he said that his mother was German and his father Romanian (?). He took great pleasure in recommending, particularly to me a vegetarian, what to order from the menu. The food in the restuarant was mediocre at best. But for the company at the table and the conversation, I’d have preferred eating free style at Windjammer the main cafeteria where the variety and the quality of the fare was much better.

It was a delight to watch Ann and Colin dance on the dance floor. She wore the most excquisite dance dresses, a different color each day. Colin seemed like a perfectionist. I think he was. He even dressed impeccably and every slicked back hair on his head was in place.

Others we met were usually during breakfast in the Windjammer (on the final day a couple from Sweden that had moved to southern France near Toulouse 12 years ago to avoid the cold and damp Swedish climate; at one time, he was a ship captain himself ,and his wife’s uncle was an ambassador to many countries, one of them, India) or at lunch or at the hot tub or the Trivia games played three times a day or at the one-time late night buffet.

The Trivia game players split ourselves up into teams and usually we did not switch teams. On our team Stella and Liz were from Cork (so our team took the name: Corkonians), Ireland, perennial-cruisers Joyce and her sister were from near Dallas,Texas. Heavy-set Joyce with her fluffed out silver white short curly hair, probably in her late 60’s, possibly as a Trivia aficionado, was a walking encyclopedia and fiercely competitive and a bit domineering and even a bit conceited at times and thus a little intimidating. I don't think she believed in spelling corrrectly, though, unless waiste for waist was just an oversight. Of the dozen teams that competed, our team ended up being number 2 overall. The winning team was ahead of us just by three points and they got all the prizes.

On the ship, I even met an Irish priest. I opened my conversation with my watching a few years back the very funny movie, Waking Ned Devine (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waking_Ned), set in Ireland. He had not heard of it, but when I told him the story, he cracked up. Particularly the character of Lizzy the misanthrope made him throw his head back and laugh out loud with a show of recognition.

Later, he tried to comfort me when I told him about my missing my recently deceased dad (When a loved one is alive and well, we're afraid of losing him/her, and, eventually, when, we do lose him/her, how much we wish we could have stopped death through some miracle or at least had a chance to know what was the last thing on their mind!; apparently, Steve Jobs's last words: Oh, wow uttered three times). He explained that because we live an imperfect world pain is inevitable. I brought up how Steve Jobs (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/30/opinion/mona-simpsons-eulogy-for-steve-jobs.html?pagewanted=all) had called "death life’s best invention," and the priest releasing a laugh agreed wholeheartedly. We talked about after life and he insisted that my dad as a human will come back only as a human and not as a tree or an insect and so on like some might believe, but not back to this world as he’d have moved on to that perfect world, which is where all who died went. I said to him that my dad might return to his family as a member of the next generation. The Father sitting before me disagreed.

I brought up the atheist and British writer, Christopher Hitchens’s (whom I do admire am truly sorry to see him dying of cancer) name and commented, how for an atheist he obsessed over God’s existence so much, and the priest laughed in agreement. My English dinner companions, who were not particularly religious, had no knowldge of Hitchens and I was surprised.

B met more people because he regularly played table tennis (TT) with a bunch of TT fanatics. One evening, B and I played chess and guess who won? You guessed right:) And yes, I'm known for my modesty! At the Trivia games I learned that a group of owls are called a parliament of owls! Go figure.

Since not everbody on the ship spoke English, we could not make more friends. Others we met included Madeline from Puerto Rico who communicated in English quite well, a Scottish couple who revealed to us that the Welsh couple they met spoke only in Welsh and possibly they gossiped about the Scottish couple, Jenny and Tony pushing 70 from New Mexico who have gone on so many cruises they have lost count, another Tony and his wife Julie both from England and the German couple Andrea (?sp) and her husband Madfred. He apparently, biked to work. Their daughter was away in France as part of the German educational system where a student spent half a year every year in another country of his/her choice. It was hard to udnerstadn their Englsih quite clearly.

In Istanbul, at the Turkish Dinner in Taksim Square we met Nick (a Hungarian who grew up in Austria and now lives in Los Angeles) and his Mexican-born wife Celia, both probably in their early 70's, and two other couples from Canada (Steve and Pam, and Marie and ?). At lunch on our tour in Istanbul we also met Vivek and his pregnant wife Karen from Switzerland and Caitlin and Mark possibly in their late 20's married for just a week and on their honeymoon from North Carolina. The two of them who had known each other for nearly a decade, but Mark apparently proposed to Caitlin just a week before the marriage! During lunch, Mark's thumb kept rubbing his wedding ring and Mark joked that he was still getting used to the ring.

I had trouble distinguishing between the various accents of the non-American English speaking groups onboard. Apparently, the British were the most in number (close to 500) followed by Americans, Spanish and the rest. I even met a few from a town close to where I live. And another interesting couple Consuela and Alexander from Colombia who now live in Beijing. He works for the oil industry.

Tomorrow Istanbul.

Ciao!