Ship Stuff!

Ship stuff!

Roscoe boarded In Singapore, so it was good to see him again!

Thursday was the day we skipped Kuala Lumpur and we got a reservation at the Asian "alternative dining" venue and asked Tom and Sandy ( from Virginia) to go with us. It is an Asian tasting menu. I forgot to take pictures of the first 3 courses, but here are the last two.

On Thursday night I was in the casino late at night and when I went back to the cabin, my key had been demagnetized. When I went to the Pursers Desk to get a new key, I caught the Easter Bunny decorating and he was dressed like a chef (or lots of them)! J It was fun to watch them bring in all of the great creations they had made.
We had a very interesting lecturer yesterday, Dr. Rami Seth. He said that India is a land of contrasts; the very poor live around the corner from the very rich. It is a country where you can be killed by a tiger or by lettuce. It is a land of vibrant color and a land of terrible poverty. One day you want to move there and the next day you swear you will never return. Our first India port is on Easter Sunday.

The title of his lecture was “No one Speaks English like the Indian”. He gave us a lot of insight on India and why the people there speak like they do. One of the reasons the Indian have different pronunciations is that the English teachers in India have never been to the US or England and don't know the proper pronunciation, so they teach the wrong pronunciation and it perpetuates. He also explained how they think and why they pronounce as they do. It made a lot of sense.

There are 23 languages and 1600 dialects spoken in India, so many people speak English to communicate. About 1/3 of Indians speak English, so they are the largest English-speaking country, because 1/3 of India has a larger population that the US, UK, Australia and New Zealand combined.

Many of our words are words that were originally Sanskrit. He gave a list of 100 very common words we use that are Indian words. There is a good argument that Latin came from Sanskrit. Someone in the audience said that he was speaking to a tech line in India (as we all do) and the person kept using please/thank you at the same time. Dr Seth said those are really not words they use, and they know we do, so they try to get them into the conversation somewhere.

Last night we had formal night and a cocktail party. We went with Cheeseheads Bonnie and Rick. Here is Bonnie, the two fisted drinker!

At the second party (not really our party, but we crashed it looking for Roscoe) I introduced him to Kazzie. We are all friends on Cruise Critic, but the two of them had never met. "Jeff Boy" offered to take the pictures. Here is Roscoe cutting the rug late last night at Hemispheres Disco. Kazzie and I had been at the Commodore Club, Official Singapore Sling Recipe in hand. She got it from Raffles and gave it to the bartender to make ours just like it. Somehow I took a video of the Singapore Slings and not of Roscoe dancing in his Kilt. He was dancing like mad, while behind him was a corpse moving an inch every hour while he was dancing. It was a hilarious contrast.

Today I missed Dr. Seth's lecture because I was invited to a galley tour. We have two deck main galleys, with the main work done on deck 2 and finish work for the deck 3 dining room done in a satellite kitchen on deck 3. There is also the prep area on A deck with the butcher, fish shop, vegetable prep etc. When the food enters the main galley it is ready to cook. There are 30 chefs on the serving line alone during the dinner serving time.

The last two pictures are of the heart of the kitchen, the sauce and soup department. Excellent tour!