Happy Halloween at Sea

Shows supplement

After dinner Dave read and napped, and I read, napped, and practiced Dah-Din Beats. I woke Dave up around quarter of 10 and we headed to the late show. Tonight was Dale Kristien, who was the female lead in Phantom of the Opera on Broadway for 5 years. The people next to us really enjoyed her. I did not. She had a good voice, I guess, but I found it grating, especially when she went up high with all the vibrato. We sat through it and did polite clapping. Normally I would have been out of there, but we had very good seats in the balcony for the Indonesian crew show.

The Indonesians outnumber all the other nationalities in the crew, so their show always has more people. Also this time I found their show to be way more fun, with less emphasis on precision and more on smiling. A couple of highlights were one female dancer dancing a welcome dance from Bali, which was interesting because it had nothing that a Westerner would recognize as beat or melody. I loved the salmon dancers doing the thousand hand dance, a rhythmic movement and clapping thing done kneeling that is always done with great enthusiasm. This group seemed to have less trouble staying with the beat, and also used their bodies to make a wave effect that was very cool.  Then there was a play about the evil giant, the monkey king, and the good prince and princess that was legend mixed with topical humor, completely confusing and delightful, and finally the bamboo orchestra (anklong? I hate having limited internet). It turned out we should have sat down on the main floor, because they pulled about 30 or 40 passengers up on stage with an anklong (or whatever), which you shake to make music. All of them had numbers, and Yuhda pointed at the numbers who were supposed to shake and they played a song. Then all the passengers sat down and the crew sang one more song. Yuhda had a solo. He’s the man!

31 October

Since we were up late and didn’t get any extra hours, my alarm went off this morning for the first (or maybe second) time in the whole cruise this morning. I wanted to run through Dah-din beats a couple of times before class, but also for the first time they had actual loud music going in the gym. I stuck my earbuds in and ran through it twice, then went over to my mat. Nothing terribly new or interesting to report, although I am very sore about the arms and shoulders from yesterday’s boot camp class with Adriaan. The weather has turned bad; it is supposed to remain overcast with occasional squalls for pretty much the rest of the trip. The seas have smoothed out as well, which is too bad.

I had breakfast with two older couples who didn’t know each other but somehow reminded me of each other in their speech patterns. Like this morning’s classes, they were pleasant enough but not terribly memorable. By the time I got back to the cabin Dave had left for the talk on extreme weather systems, which was a little boring. How do you make a talk like that boring?

Kieron had done his whole speech by the time I got to the night club. When I got there and plugged in my phone the sound quality was just terrible – almost nothing but bass, and very distorted at even low levels. There was a mom with two young kids playing in there, since it’s usually deserted and a good place to make noise without bothering people. The older one, Ben, was about 5 or 6 and did not like the distorted bass at all. He was somewhat mollified when I let him talk through the mike. I wasn’t sure what to do, so I went to see if anyone was in the Queen’s lounge. I was lucky to find culinary host Ashley and a sound guy there, and he was able to fix me up.

Class went well – it was slightly smaller than yesterday. I had several people new people come from the stretch and abs classes. One was an older woman who I thought sure would enjoy it, but she and her friend didn’t make it through the whole class. In the middle of Touched by God (what is it about that song?) Kieron interrupted not just once (to announce an upcoming crew-only drill) but then to actually start the drill. When they are doing these drills they have to say everything twice, so it takes forever. And as I mentioned yesterday it takes over the sound system, so even though we had nothing to do with this crew-only drill, we had to listen to all the announcements. Eventually he stopped talking and we got back to dancing. I felt a little like I was phoning it in, but it was fine. I always ask both before and after if anyone has any questions, and one of the Connies (there are 3 or 4) yelled out “Yes! When is your next cruise?” which made me feel pretty good.

I’ve pretty much given up on floor play, so I went up to the gym afterwards to stretch out, then down to the cabin to put on dry clothes – it gets pretty hot and sweaty in the disco. Dave came in a little before noon while I was writing, and we left for lunch at noon:10, only to discover that the dining room – both floors -  is closed today for the first of two mariner lunches for the 1,600 repeat cruisers on board. Ours is tomorrow. Then we thought we’d go to the Pinnacle for lunch, but they were also closed to set up for their special Le Cirque dinner tonight. So we ended up on the Lido, where we can never find a table or anything that we really want to eat. We finished up lunch and then went back to the cabin for naps – Dave got up early this morning to do his workout as well, and we were both up late because of the crew show.

When I woke up at 2 it had become partly sunny and our cabin was filled with sunshine. What a nice way to wake up! I read for a while and decided to leave the playlist as is for the next class. Dave headed off for his navigation talk, and I went up to the gym to see what Adriaan could do with day 3. It turned out what he could do was, if you’ll pardon the expression, kick my butt. I made it through the body of the set by taking slightly longer breaks, but when we got to the abs he did both the side planks with leg raises and superman rolls. At one point I looked at him and said “we’re done, right?” and he just laughed and said “that was only two. Ready?” But I did make it through almost all of it and as he’s 30 I can still say no man under 30 has defeated me. I think one thing about him is that he does the moves faster than I am used to, and that is what gets me and makes me sore. So that’s something to take home.

I was completely beat at the end, which is pretty unusual for me. I think the lack of sleep because of staying up late for the crew show has something to do with it. I went down to the cabin and got into my bathing suit, which was a bit of a trick because it’s a little tight and I was sweaty. But I did get it on and spent a very nice half hour or so relaxing and stretching in the pool. There’s just a little sloshing, but it’s still nice.  Eventually it was time to get out and register to march in the Halloween costume parade, which I have no idea what it is and should have registered Dave as well, because his Chef costume has gotten a lot of positive feedback. I dressed as a cheetah, complete with ears, tail, gloves, and my blue leopard niawear. Then it turned out that nobody else dressed up for dinner, so we felt a little out of place, but Yudha and Anthony were delighted with how we looked. Dinner was great fun, and there were so many yummy things on the menu several of us doubled up. In case you’re wondering what Jim had for dessert, it was the crisp.

After dinner there was a gap because they’d moved the show times around to accommodate the Halloween ball, so we napped and read. The show was a reprise of the concert pianist and the magician, and I’d hoped they would interact, but they just split the show in half. The pianist was enjoyable again, and the magician was more interesting and fun than the first time, so it was good.

By the time we got to the Queen’s lounge it was packed, so we hung out in the back until it was time for the costume parade. I paraded; Dave didn’t. There were many clever costumes – my favorites were a man dressed as Picasso, with his wife whose face was painted to look like a Picasso painting, and two men each holding a red letter ‘C’ who stood next to each other and then walked away from each other. I guess it would have been better if they’d shared a C and each walked off with part of it, but it was well done anyway. Kieron sang with the HALcats for a while, and then Paige sang. It was good music and I wanted to want to dance but the body is exhausted. We get another hour tonight so it’s bedtime for me.

Tonight’s towel animal: we think it’s a ghost.