Orange you happy?

In the time that I have been gone, #1 son bought a house, quit his job and got a new job.  #2 son gave up his house, bought an RV and made plans to spend the next year as a nomad student CRNA.  Daughter ended a long-term relationship.  #1 granddaughter learned to read and tell jokes and #2 granddaughter learned to smile and roll over.

And now comes the announcement that I will greet #3 grandchild in October.  Last I heard they were calling the baby Clementine (but all I have is a stolen orange, so it will have to do).

I have been counting the days all along, because it's the only way to keep track of them.  I work an ocean at a stretch, but there aren't many markers. One more Deans' Memo to go.

Tonight was the Alumni Ball, which I skipped.  We had a formal dinner and the waitstaff even had special shirts for the occasion.  They went all out on dinner, and people wore clothes they had bought all over the world.  I wore a length of rayon from Burma, which someday will be a real skirt, with a scarf in matching colors I bought in India, earrings from South Africa, and a bracelet from Ghana.  Men wore suits they had made in Viet Nam.  Women wore traditional dress from China, India, Vietnam.  (Along with the usual skirts so tight and so short they left nothing to the imagination.)  There was a slide show I would have liked to see, but a friend asked for some help.  Then a dessert buffet that was like walking into a patisserie.  The ball itself was crowded, noisy, and full of flashing lights.  I checked in on the CCTV just to make sure there wasn't anything I might regret missing.

At this point, my only regret may be not bringing a bigger suitcase.  My main duffel is packed almost full of souvenirs (half of it taken up by the silk comforter I bought in Japan).  Today was another hard day as people decided to send their possessions home at $7.50/pound.  My office became information central for such questions as "You said in the Deans' Memo the scale is 15 pounds off.  Is it 15 pounds lighter or heavier?"  Yes, we are now the Bureau of Standards.  And the Bureau of Redundancy, answering questions with facts we have repeated over and over in the Deans' Memo.  Tonight a student was hurt that I didn't recognize him.  He said, "I'm the one who wanted to have a pizza party and you said I couldn't."  Get in line, Buddy.  That was one of 30 pizza parties and 50 taco parties I refused.

The Field Office has three doors, but all of them go through another room to get to the central reception area.  I have told people at least a thousand times they can go through our office space, no need to knock, go right in, no, second door, not the first one, I don't know if Karen is in, go look.

This afternoon, Karen came through and I said, "Quick, shut the door.  Or I will kill the next person who comes through it."

Karen said, "Just a second, I need to make a phone call."  Her days are pretty high stress, too.

We have not had very many lovely sunsets, so I took this one of the penultimate sunset.  The last one may not be worth a photo, and if there's one thing I've learned on this voyage, it's don't wait for a second chance.

Orange, I'm happy.

Got my snark on

Three more days and there's a definite change in the atmosphere.  Today is a study day, but there's no studying going on within earshot of the Administrative Office.

There's a scale, and people are weighing themselves and their luggage.  The scale that was there this morning was replaced with a scale that folks are saying overweighs by 15 pounds. 

Which is about what you might have expected to gain on a diet of croissants, bacon, and omelets every morning.  I know I'm not weighing myself until the dead of night.

Another group of people is signing up for "Luggage Free," the world's most misleadingly named freight company.  This is for people who cannot bear the thought of consigning their possessions to the airlines and would rather spend hundreds of dollars having FedEx consign them to the airlines for them after helpfully encasing them in plastic so they don't get dirty.  The cost to ship is $7.50 a pound from Barcelona.  You can spend $100 to check a second bag, or you can pay $375 for a bag at the maximum weight of 50# for most airlines.  Luggage Free indeed.

Obviously, it's difficult to justify this expense if you are flying straight home.  For the students who are spending several weeks traveling around Europe, the convenience may be worth it.  But, really, it's almost cheaper to pay someone to come to Barcelona and carry your bags home for you.

In addition to the general angst surrounding packing, there is the usual end of school year signing of yearbooks, exchanging of addresses, and trying to fit in time with friends.  All of which is going on outside my door.  Inside, I am battling printer issues, duplicating last minute exams, and answering stupid questions.  Pretty much a regular day.

Oh, and we've been in sight of the Rock of Gibraltar since 7 AM.  Passed it around 7, anchored in the Mediterranean waiting to get cleared to get in line to wait for fuel, circled around, approached, circled back, and now we've been filling up for about 6 hours.  (BIG gas tank.  We also filled up in The Gambia, if you recall.  As well as several other ports.)

So there's kind of a party atmosphere.  And a packing atmosphere.  And trying to get something done in the office so I can go party and pack.

It amazes me that 103 days into a voyage of 106 days, I am still being asked if this is the academic office, where the executive dean's office is, and if I'll make some copies.  No, down the corridor, and I don't have a copier.

A student just whined in an email that he couldn't file the folder on the public drive where you are supposed to drop your songs to be played at the Alumni Ball.  Which is tomorrow.  It's not unrealistic to think the folder might no longer be accessible, 27 hours before the event.  But I checked, and it is.  The student was unhappy that I hadn't mentioned it in the Deans' Memo, evidently missing this notice, which has run unchanged for a few issues now. 

Alumni Ball Song Requests   Had enough of Gangnam Style and Call Me Maybe?  Last chance to drop your favorite songs in the folder on the public drive.  Sorry, but no requests can be honored the night of the ball.

The folder is called <_DROP YOUR SONG REQUESTS FOR THE ALUMNI BALL>, so I guess it's understandable that he couldn't find it.  I tricked him up with that "favorite" in the description.  There are currently 263 items in the folder, which translates to 10-15 hours of songs for a 2 hour event.  But I didn't want him to be disappointed, so I wrote, "Look again, and I bet you can find it.  Here's a hint.  You don't have to go very far."  I also told him to check with the person who put up the folder if he couldn't find it. 

I was trying to convey my unhelpfulness, but I need to be less subtle.  I got an email back telling me how hard it is to find on a mac because the files aren't necessarily alphabetized and how much of a disaster the public drive is in general and how someone has changed the settings to make it nearly impossible to find.

Huh?  His mac must be one of those newer models where files are assigned spaces wherever they fit best, like a big game of Tetris.  Mine just has the usual choice of arrangements:  name, date (modified or created), size, kind, label.  I want the "random" choice!  Or maybe "nationality."  Also, on my mac, the folder is colored purple so it stands out. 

I am a very helpful person, but I am tired of people who make no attempt to solve their own problems and then blame their failure on you.  So I confess to answering his second annoying email by suggesting that if he has problems understanding his mac, he ask our IT group for help, and if he has a complaint about how Aparna named the file, he take it to her.  He took the hint.

A tougher case is the girl who came by the office this afternoon and said,

"I'm really stressed about packing.  Do you have boxes?" 
"No."  I did not bother to expand this response.
"Why not?"
"Why don't YOU have boxes?"  (The Deans' Memo specifically said, you'll have to get your own box in Casablanca.  We will not have boxes and will not have tape.  It took two days of inquiries before I could write that.)
"You should have boxes."
"Sorry, we don't."
"Do you have anyone who can pack for me?"

Yes, that's exactly what she asked.  She thinks the SAS should have a person tasked with packing for her.  Well, for all 637 students, I suppose, but mostly for her. 

"For a fee, of course."

Whew!  I thought she was spoiled.  She's just a job creator. 

As a matter of fact, one of our faculty members is packing for a student who bid $200 for the privilege in the shipboard auction. 

"You could put up signs," I suggested.  "I bet you could find someone who would do it." 

She flounced off.  She's probably looking for someone to put up the signs.

It's about time

Going around the world on a ship plays havoc with the notion of time.  Going in a westward direction, as we are, means you lose a whole day, but you pick it up an hour at a time.  In the mad dash across the Pacific, we had three 25-hour days in a row.  (I waste the extra hour, every time.  I stay up way too late every night.  When we gain an hour, I stay up way, way too late.)

One casualty is times for sunrise and sunset.  Generally, you can count on the days getting a bit longer each day from the winter solstice to the summer one, and shorter each day the other half of the year.  But when you are moving through time zones, sunrise and sunset catapult around.  On days when the clock is moved forward or back, the sunrise time shifts a whole hour from the expected.

Days, too, are hard to account for when you are dividing the time into “sea days” and “land days.”  Saturday and Sunday are just names, not leisure time.  I refer to the calendar many times each day to confirm the date. I cross the days off, not in anticipation, but so I can locate “today.” 

I have a chart in my office that tells me when we are going to change our clocks.  I added a column to tell me what time it is back at home base.  I’m not calling; I just like knowing.

We’re traveling around Western Africa at the moment, and we were scheduled to change our clocks tonight, and again in three days as we approach Casablanca.  But not, as you might think, going back an hour heading west and forward an hour as we head back east. We were scheduled to go forward tonight, and then back.  I think the time changes may be related to observances of Daylight Savings Time rather than geographic location.

Rather than disrupt our sleep patterns twice for a zero sum change, the staff captain appears to have elected to tick to our own clock.  It’s a sensible decision, but it makes me vaguely uncomfortable to be out of sync, even if it’s out of sync with an abstract and arbitrary concept.

Ghana sits very close to the Equator, and they do not observe Daylight Savings Time.  All year long, sunrise and sunset are at 6:30.  You could set your clock by it.

In Ghana, the sun is the only thing that runs on schedule.

A room with a mind of its own

Today, technology turned on me.

Well, to be fair, it pretty much does that every day aboard ship, but today was a day that sorely tried my patience. 

The printer has a fun little quirk.  It randomly assigns itself to print double-sided copies, something it is very, very bad at.  I will be happily printing various documents, and without warning, one will print double-sided.  The print menu will say it’s printing on one side only, but out will come a double-sided copy.  This is especially annoying when I have asked it to print only the even pages of a document, in preparation for manually printing a multi-page document on both pages.  So, for those not following this drivel too closely, that means I have page 2 and page 4 on the front and back of the page.  

Fortunately, the printer also jams after printing a couple of these, a then I can crawl around for a while, unjamming it.  (Found a new way to unjam today:  SCORE!)

Another fun habit the printer has developed is randomly choosing to print multiple copies.  One of my jobs is printing out exams, so I’ll be printing 35 or 80 copies of the same document.  That number will get stuck somewhere in the recesses of the printer’s memory, and it will come popping out 

inappropriately like a verbal tic or a nervous response.  Not every time.  Not predictably.  Not often enough that I check, every single time, all the printer settings.  Just often enough to waste a lot of paper and bug the crap out of me.

Our IT team is as baffled as I am.  Intermittent problems are hard to diagnose, and they like to believe it has stopped misbehaving permanently.  But, like the bully who waits until the teacher’s back is turned, the printer is just biding its time. 

Meanwhile, the fax has gone on the fritz.  Whatever little gizmo signals the paper to feed has gone to lunch, and the fax keeps scanning nothing at all.  Two IT guys later, we have reached a truce, the fax machine and I.  Let’s hope it lasts.  It’s the only way we have to make copies.

Jim’s computer reset itself while we were off in Ghana, and it is back to signaling new emails with an obnoxiously loud chime.  And sometimes with a softer chime.  I have no idea why the volume varies.  And sometimes with no chime at all, I suppose, because it does not seem to chime in direct relationship with his complaints about an excessive number of incoming emails.  But I know it’s reset itself, because one of the things it does is reinstall nonexistent hardware as the default printer, something Jim doesn’t notice until he calls me over to figure out why his jobs aren’t printing.  Jim’s computer is very fond of the broken printer/copier we offloaded in California.

Our email system on the ship is a slot machine in disguise.  Press send and you might send zero, one, or eight copies of your email.  Today I got 8 copies of the Deans’ Memo.  Then 3 copies of an email from my work study student informing me I’d sent 8 copies of the DM.  Then 5 copies of an email from another student helpfully letting me know of the problem…

The Deans’ Memo also goes into my junk mail sometimes.  That just hurts my feelings, really.  But lots of things go into my junk mail.  I do not recall any actual junk going there, but pretty much everyone who submits items for the Deans’ Memo winds up there from time to time.  Awkward. 

A month or two ago, I started getting copies of my sent mail in my inbox.  A thoughtful update to Outlook.  Who, after all, would treasure my prose more than I do?  Multiply it by a random number of copies and it really does make following an email conversation difficult.

This afternoon, Land Boss started gently nagging me for something I sent him before I departed for Ghana. Something I had to send him because our feeble internet and my outdated browser conspired to prevent me from saving it on UVA’s website.  Something of which I found no trace.  Not in the Outbox, or the Sent mail, or the Drafts. On my desktop or on my laptop.  Something I then couldn’t transfer from my laptop, because it randomly rejects my flashdrive, my SD card, and my card reader. 

If you are counting, today’s casualties so far include my printer, Jim’s computer, Jim’s printer (which prints double-sided, but prints the back upside down on signal from my computer, right side up from his), the fax, the ship’s email system, and all the portable memory devices I have with me.  When the stapler refused to work, I fixed it with my best no-nonsense glare and I said, “You, I am not going to put up with.  If you continue to misbehave, you are going straight into the trash.”  Four or five crumpled staples later, I prevailed.

And then one of the Resident Directors came begging for a favor.  Three hours before the Talent Show, she had given up on her balky printer, and she needed 400 copies of the program, double sided. 

“Let’s try a test copy first,” I suggested. 

One spontaneous double-sided copy, one jam, one inexplicable reversal of the two inside pages, a dozen reformats and adjustments of margins, and 45 minutes later, we were ready to print.

The (outdated) job manual for my position is very clear:  don’t let ANYONE use the copier except you.

Who the heck would want to?

Monkeying around at work

I am sailing on a small ship on a vast ocean, but I do have an audience of almost 1000 people receiving the Deans’ Memo each day.  My boss is busy enough that most days he gives it a cursory scan at best, and the actual Deans almost never have any input for it.  Like so many other writing projects in my life, I wonder from time to time if anyone at all bothers to read it.  Today, I found out that they did.  Most likely while they are supposed to be paying attention in class, but, yes, they are reading the Deans’ Memo.

I am not fond of April Fool’s jokes, mostly because I always fall for them.  Also because I am not that great at thinking them up.  Since I am sailing with people who have swallowed some amazingly dumb stuff (my favorite is still the rope line across the International Date Line), it shouldn’t have been that hard, but I decided to go with a puzzle.  As a little plug for the fundraising campaign we’re in the middle of, I did a puzzle where the first letters of each of the announcement titles spelled out “GIVE SAS MONEY.”  This required some deviation from the usual format, since the second section usually starts with a date, and some weird titles, like “Variations on a Theme” for a talk about the 14 Dalai Lamas. 

The last announcement was “$13 for ice cream??” and it said there was a hidden message in the Deans’ Memo and the first one to heed it would win an ice cream cone.  (Because it’s 2013, they are asking for donations in increments of $13.)

Within 5 minutes of my sending the DM out by email, I had the first correct responses.    I got about 20 correct responses--and about 5 emails pointing out dumb mistakes, to which I replied, “We have those every day.”   There were a few people who picked up on things in plain sight as “hidden” messages, and some who questioned $13 for ice cream.  My favorite email said this:

>>I'm not sure if this is the actual message or just a weird coincidence but the first letter of each line in each paragraph spells out G-I-V-E    S-A-S     M-O-N-E-Y>>

I wrote back, “Ohmigod, that IS weird!  Must have been monkeys at my typewriter while I was at lunch.”  I mean, really?  That would be a pretty remarkable coincidence.

But no one was “heeding” the message, just solving the problem.  I sent out emails hinting they weren’t done until they followed the directions.  Got more specific.  Finally, a student came to my office, hungry enough for ice cream to go find the alumni coordinator and pledge.  She chose chocolate.

As part of the shipboard drive, we’re having an auction.  I offered my house for Finals weekend in some year other than this one.  A UVA undergrad snapped it up for the price of one weekend night at the Omni, corporate rate. The Deans' Memo book has turned into two, because two friends had their hearts set on it.

It’s always amazing to me what people pay for.  Dinner with the Captain is going for the same price as dinner without the Captain. A children’s book signed by Desmond Tutu will cost someone $450.  A week in a beach apartment in Ecuador costs less than $100 per person, but a 4 night stay in a British Columbia ski resort (owned by the Dean) was about 15 times that. 

I am unlikely to return to Semester at Sea, but if I do, I know what I’m filling my luggage with.  Girl Scout cookies went for about $25 a box.

This adorable family of monkeys is made from socks bought in ports around the world.  Today’s Birthday Boy will no doubt be relieved to know they will not be coming home with me.

I have, however, stocked up elsewhere.  Life should not be entirely without surprises.

Much ado about nothing

Life is just different at sea.

Back home, I hear that news happens.  Here, we are cut off from everything but wikipedia, and accessing that depends on our cranky internet.  Sometimes it parties like it's 1980, and other times, you just sit and wait.

But we don't much care.  Things get done slowly, or they don't get done, but either way it's soon time for lunch.

I got an email from my Land Boss, who politely reminded me I was seven months overdue on setting goals for this year.  Mm, maybe I'll just retire instead of doing them.  They don't seem terribly relevant under the best of circumstances, but from this distance I couldn't even pretend to care.

My goal, I said, is to learn to multi-task.  I would like to be able to point AND shoot my camera.  I am doing pretty well so far.

Around 1420, my Sea Boss invited me up to Deck 7, optimal viewing for the Event About to Happen.  This is where knowing the right people pays off.  I was sworn to secrecy, but the Captain was going to steer the ship right through Sea Zero.

Since the course of the ship is shown on closed circuit TV throughout the ship, literally second by second, it was not much of a secret.  Anyone could see we were heading closer and closer.  Still, Jim was not allowed to announce it, because the big moment was going to occur during class time.

The big event is the equivalent of your car's odometer turning all nines, or having a date that's a palindrome.  Interesting, but not exactly cause for a party.  Unless you're on a ship.

We took pictures of each other.  Nancy took some pictures of Jim jumping.  This is something the students particularly enjoy doing.  It requires point and shoot and jump, which is way beyond this year's goals.  A few students with GPS-enabled cameras snuck out of class.





















Once it was over, I could put a little blurb in the Deans' Memo.  Remembering Jim's prank about the yellow rope on the International Date Line, I wrote, "Did you see the orange buoy as we crossed through 0-0 0-0? (Neither did we.)"

I heard from several people there WAS a buoy.  It's white.  On the starboard side.  I stand corrected.

No one can give me an explanation for how it stays in place, three miles above the ocean floor.  No one  has been able to turn up any data on it.  But then the internet was down most of the afternoon.

And pretty soon, it was time for dinner.

Sea Zero: The big nothing

There is no yellow rope at the Equator, but you know when you’re there.

We’re back in the doldrums.  The sea is flat, there’s no wind.  The sea and air temperature are the same, which means the sea has warmed up 32 degrees in the last five days, going from 55 to 87.

We’re heading for absolute zero, 0-0 in latitude and 0-0 in longitude.  Wikipedia probably has a better name for it, but the internet is down.

Update:  I couldn't turn up a name for the intersection of the equator and the prime meridian.  Evidently an arbitrary line does not rate a name.  I did, however, turn up two non-royal passengers from Charlottesville who have never crossed the equator on a ship.  I am lobbying for a change of course, and I am claiming "Sea Zero" as mine.

There’s a closed circuit TV system on board and one of the channels shows the ship’s position.  I keep turning it on to check our progress.  At 0645 as I write this, we are 01 48.09 S and 000 54.37 E.  No word on whether Captain Jeremy is going to alter course to hit the big 0-0.  Last fall, the ship did cross precisely at that point, making the passengers “Emerald Shellbacks,” but it was their first crossing (fall was the Atlantic circuit starting from Halifax) and probably the other captain as well.  We’ve picked up a few passengers in Cape Town—no word on whether they’ve made a sea crossing, but I really don’t see anyone’s dunking the Saudi Prince in fake fish guts under any circumstances. 

Although we might like to.  Prince Fahad is one of dozens or maybe hundreds of Saudi princes; they are a billion a dozen.  (A student told me the other day, “He has $7 billion dollars worth of camels.”  I replied, “That IS a lot of cigarettes.”  Joke wafted right up over her head.)  He was brought on board as an Unreasonable at Sea mentor.  Let’s just say that the Unreasonable Institute has shown us over and over that their name is apt.  Just not for the reason they picked it.

We still have time.  The only people awake at this time (besides the crew) are the students trying to get in time at the gym before faculty hours start (at 0700) and the insomniacs.  Maybe we’ll hear from Captain Jeremy yet.

Talking about this in the office yesterday, my boss Jim (from Arizona) was reminded of the Four Corners, where you can put one foot or hand in each of the four states, AZ, NM, CO and UT.  I said, “Or, for some of us, sitting down would accomplish the same thing.”  I was reminded of the first time I crossed the Continental Divide, and Paul availed himself of the handy rest room.  I wondered idly how many men gave in to the urge to watch their pee divide itself between the Atlantic and the Pacific. 

We are at the end of Spirit Week, and it is “Wear the World” Day.  I am wearing a length of Indonesian batik fabric I bought in Burma as a skirt, with a t-shirt made in El Salvador over leggings made, to my surprise, in the USA.  The elastic holding up my skirt I got in India.  Pretty sure my Keens are from Viet Nam. Horn earrings from South Africa make it a three-hemisphere ensemble.

Meanwhile, Thelma and Louise is stuck on Channel 6 in the “Press Play” mode, unmodifiable until our AV guy shows up for the day.  Too bad; I like to watch the last scene, where my friend Chris goes over the cliff, goes over the cliff. 

Before reinventing herself as a savvy MBA and coming to work for UVA, Chris was a production assistant on lots of movies you would recognize.  Her stories keep me entertained on the rare day that my job doesn’t present me with adequate hilarity.  There are probably still a few people reading this blog who don’t know that Chris served as the body double for both Thelma and Louise for the scene where they drive off the cliff.

Speaking of outlaw heroes, we had an Explorer Seminar on pirates the other night.  (Back in pirate territory, evidently.)  In an attempt to get more than a dozen students to come to these seminars, the faculty dressed up, took pirate names, and assigned one person the role of chasing, capturing, and carrying off one of our staff members.  (Interestingly, this versatile young woman had, at 1830 won the "Twins Day" contest by dressing quite convincingly as our IT Coordinator Dan, complete with two-day beard.  At 2000 she was all girl, being carried off by a pirate.  "And other duties as assigned," all in the job description!)

The faculty deconstructed the pirate anti-hero and told us about some famous pirates and privateers. Urbane Sir Walter Raleigh wound up in prison for getting married without the Queen's permission, regained favor, but eventually had his head cut off.  It was the custom of pirate widows to embalm their dead husband's head and keep it as protection.  We even had a discourse on art painted by pirates.  This is a faculty that knows how to research arcane topics.

Then it was time for Captain Jeremy to talk about pirates in the modern day.  He does not find them romantic, cute, or funny. He observed, with his dry Britwit, that one could no longer dispatch pirates in the most expeditious manner, by killing them, as there are now pesky laws protecting their civil rights.  Neither can one bring them back to Britain for trial, lest that they seek asylum in a country that does not have the death penalty—and then where would we all be?  When caught, they are usually deposited in the Seychelles.  The US, he said, has the naval power to do something, but so few cargo ships fly under the US flag there is no incentive to address the problem.  So we are standing by with our extra watch, our crew members posted with high pressure water hoses, and our reports from British intelligence.

If you squint, I think you can see Sea Zero just off the bow, port side.  Unless it’s a pirate ship.

Easter surprise

We just spent six days in Cape Town, so it’s not clear to me why the ship did not have time to gas up, but I guess the gas station is not a particularly good place to have passengers embarking and disembarking, so we have spent all of today bunkered.  We sailed from one side of the docking area to the other and my view changed from water to gas tank.  Every once in a while, the staff captain comes on and reminds us that we are not allowed to smoke while the ship is bunkered.  (So polite:  Why not just say, “Stop trying to blow up the ship”?)

The worst part of this unannounced delay is that, after a week of high winds and clouds covering Table Mountain, today is a day when you could actually go to the summit.  If you could get off the ship, which you can’t.  Anyway, it should make for smoother sailing when we actually do leave. 

Today is also Easter, which I celebrated by wearing a skirt.  And earrings.  It turns out that holidays don’t really register unless advertisements make you aware of them.  It’s hard enough to keep track of days of the week when your only distinction between days is whether you’re moving through the water (sea days, when we work) or not (port days, when we don’t).  Valentine’s Day slipped by virtually unnoticed, since we were in Viet Nam celebrating Tet at the time.  On St. Patrick’s Day, the Lifelong Learner Coordinator, Deb, handed out Mardi Gras necklaces, I supposed because she forgot she had packed them.

A lot of us are reassessing what we packed and what we purchased, and trying to figure out how to get all of it home.  Several people mailed packages from Cape Town.  My plan is to stuff my coat of many pockets full of everything that won’t fit in my luggage. Some insane person actually brought a Le Creuset dutch oven and cookbook as an auction donation.  That's half the allowable weight of a suitcase!

The Field Office coordinator, Karen, a person of incredible energy and dedication, has been sorting through cabinets and drawers, organizing materials that are useful, and getting rid of things that aren’t.  Today, she found…teeth.

Yes, teeth.  This is m y voyage for teeth.  Not one, but two sets of dental models from an orthodontist in Charlottesville.  (Perhaps this is because I didn’t pick up any of the dental casts in Yangon?)

Best answer to “What were they thinking?” gets a more traditional, and quite lovely souvenir from my trip.  Your ideas in the comments.

Arch parts (from) the seas

We all knew this day was coming, but we still weren’t prepared.  Goodbyes are like that.  This last week has been full of requests for Arch’s time in classes, for photos with Arch, for movies featuring Arch, to show Arch movies he is in, to get Arch’s autograph.  His assistant Nancy (my boss Jim’s wife) serves as Arch’s gatekeeper, trying to preserve some private time and some rest time (he is 82, after all), balanced against his desire to say yes to as many people as possible.  It’s been a tough week.

I got my Arch time in early in the voyage, and I’ve enjoyed watching him from a little distance.  He loves the students and they love him, and there’s a little buzz that accompanies him everywhere.  When Arch dances, people circle him to film him dancing.  When he moves through a crowd, the seas part.  When we took our group picture, students who had staked out front and center willingly gave up their spaces to Arch.

His last day on the ship happened to be Palm Sunday, and he celebrated Communion with us.  Christine, the Resident Director in charge of spirituality, arranged to get crosses, lovingly made for us by several churches in Mauritius.  The kitchen offered communion wafers, but Arch prefers bread.  Mass for 400 is quite a production, even abbreviated.  Arch gave a small sermon (message:  God loves you, just because you’re you) and we all stumbled over the South African Anglican prayers, which are not quite like the ones back home. 

The Palm Sunday service was followed immediately by preport, where we officially said goodbye to Arch with a very touching video put together by the communications team.  (Again, our internet connection prevents my uploading it.)  His last hurrah was singing along with Doc Micah to “Don’t worry, be healthy.”

The one thing missing for me was a picture of Arch with Nancy.  For me, she was so much a part of his shipboard life.  She and Jim ate with him frequently, they had communion with him every Sunday in his cabin.  As a self-proclaimed shy person, Arch counted on Nancy to make things a little easier.

I asked her if she –after all the pictures she helped other people get—had gotten a picture with him.  No, she said, but that was okay.  She had lots of pictures of him with other people.  No, no, no, she said, it was okay.

For her, maybe.  It was not okay for me.  I asked her, would she be angry if I asked Arch for a picture of them?

Of course he said yes.  

I’ve taken thousands of pictures on this voyage.  This one will be one of my favorites.  I hope it will also be one of hers.

Crew members with Arch and Leah's luggage--and balloon menagerie

It ain't over till it's over

...and then it was over.

The Sea Olympics gave me an opportunity to find some sports quotes, and I chose Yogi Berra.  The title above is one of his most famous.

My work study student Heidi thought it was a typo and drew this little sketch.  We're making a book of quotes from the Deans' Memo for the Shipboard Auction in April.  She's illustrating it.  Yogi Bear won't make the cut, but he's cuter than the average bear, so here he is.

I could have also used the inimitiable Chickpea's "I won first.  And you won second."  There were some pretty amazing performances yesterday. 

The faculty came in fourth, a middling showing.  There was a little muttering over breakfast this morning along the lines of, "If they worked as hard on their schoolwork as they did on their karaoke..."  Their routines for that competition were impressive in both their creativity and technique. 

The last two competitions were the synchronized swimming and the karaoke/lip synch.  Because the seas were rough and all the water was sloshing out of the pool, the synchronized swim was moved to dry land, which presents some interesting challenges and hilarious results.

I was a judge for that competition, so no pictures.  Some of the kids did more dancing than (fake) swimming, but most were down there on the floor, kicking, diving, and doing water ballet. 

Luna Sea had planned on a Lion King number featuring a toddler and an older child as the two brothers, but scrapped it at the last minute when our team captain heard another sea practicing to the same music.  (Our team captain, the assistant dean of students, is VERY competitive.) 

Instead, we got four guys, with children's bathing suits on their heads, rocking a bizarre combination of sexy and baby to "Living the Vida Loca."  Turns out the crowd goes wild when the assistant dean of students rips off his shirt and demonstrates his zumba booty dancing skills. This picture was lifted from Rachel's blog, Sea What I See.


Sea Olympics is designed to break up the monotony of the long passage from India to South Africa, give the students something to think about besides drinking, and build team spirit.  The prize was the choice of getting off first or last in Barcelona (they choose).  The winners were the Caribbean Sea, who were convincingly pirates and had some amazing choreography for their cheer, karaoke, and synchronized swim.  One of my shipboard children said, "I don't want to win.  I want to get off somewhere in the middle!"  Lucky for her, they also get an ice cream social in the faculty lounge.

I learned some things, too:

1. Sports, even fake sports, are not very interesting unless you are watching them.
2. I am culturally illiterate.  At least half the music chosen meant nothing to me.
The noise of 600 cheering students is exhausting.

I am old.  Time for a nap.

Luna Sea reigns

We OWN the Eastern Toilet Squat.

In the Sea Olympics, every event has the same number of points.  There are 9 seas, so first place in any event gets 9 points.  This means that the person who comes in first in the (random) game of Captain, wave, ship earns the same number of points as the team that prevails in volleyball.  No points awarded for difficulty here!  (The point system is actually a bit more complicated for the sports with brackets.)

Like other Olympiads, competitions take place simultaneously at venues all over the ship.  The games started at 1000, with Jeopardy, Ping Pong, Dodgeball, and the Eastern Toilet Squat.  Having spent the first half of the hour watching Jeopardy, I wandered aft to see what else was happening.  There was an enthusiastic crowd around classroom 4, where the toilet squat was down to two competitors, my work study (from the Adriatic Sea) and my teammate Rachel.  For 40 minutes, these two had been going squat to squat, hands raised above their heads, feet flat on the ground, on deck 6 of a rocking ship. In a room of screaming people. 

Both of them looked a little green.  They were definitely trembling.  Heidi’s teammates shouted, “It’s one point.  No one will think the less of you if you quit.”  Her arms dropped below her shoulders.  She pulled them back up.  Rachel called for a judge’s ruling.  Finally, it was over.   The judge lifted Heidi to a standing position and the toilet squat was Rachel’s.  Her Luna Sea teammates howled our approval.

At noon, Luna Sea is in first place, having won the banner and Ping Pong and come in second in Jeopardy and pull ups.  Very poor showing in Ninja and Captain, ship, wave.  More to come.

And in late breaking news from Thailand, I hear from our hotel director Stefan that squat toilets have been banned.  The government is concerned about a high incidence of arthritis in the knees.  Stefan, who lives in Thailand with his Thai wife, points out that people spend a great deal of their time squatting in places other than toilets, so the ban is not likely to affect arthritis in Thailand. 

However, we who cannot squat thank you.

When the inmates run the institution

We are Lunacy.  It is all lunacy today. 

Today is the Sea Olympics, another of our diversions to make us forget that we are going 13 days out of 14 at sea between India and South Africa.  The students, whose residence halls are named after the seas, compete with each other in feats of strength, agility, speed, intellect, and most of all silliness.  The faculty, staff, life long learners, family members, and Unreasonable at Sea folks make up a giant team of over 100 people.

Having spent my school years figuring out ways to avoid all team sports, field events, and mob action, I was not terribly disappointed that I was not assigned a role in any of the competitions. The “competitions” include Sudoku puzzles, Jeopardy, and a shipboard version of rock, paper, scissors (Captain, ship, wave).  I signed up for several, but was not selected.  It’s not easy to figure out how to include everyone on a team that includes ages 2 to 80.  Or to explain to our eager elementary school students that the college students they have been adopted by are not to be trusted in dodge ball.

I’ve done my little bit for the team.  I was tapped to be the costumer, turning 10 yards of fabric into headbands, kerchiefs, armbands, and florets, and then decorating them with moons, stars, and our sea name.  I had to sacrifice for my art, too; that fabric was ugly, cheap, and icky to touch.  (Yes, I am a complete fabric snob.)  And don’t get me started on our “color,” which is grey.  Fortunately, I have a grey t-shirt and pants, but they are far below my standards.  

No one takes the faculty/staff team seriously.  We are playing for laughs and surprise.  Our entry in the cheering competition was a bunch of lunatics stumbling around in the dark chanting, “We will haunt you, we will taunt you, we will win the day,” followed by insane howling.  You know, the werewolf, lunatic, full on full moon insanity.  I gather that our karaoke number involves spit takes. 

I was hoping we could persuade Arch to be part of our team.  I’m pretty sure he could win musical chairs, since it’s quite likely a crew member would rush up to bring him a chair if one of our students were so bold as to not defer to him.  (Or maybe we would all wind up sitting on the floor together, singing hymns.  He likes to shake things up a bit.)  He would definitely take the stand up comedy competition. 

Instead, we have the advantage of the judges, all of which are on our team.  Not sure how that is supposed to work. 

As part of the opening ceremonies, we had the flag and cheer competitions. Our flag, designed by Charlottesville artist Kaki Dimock (who is also director of the Haven), has moons made by members of our sea, incorporated into one big moon shining over the sea.  That’s Kaki on the left. 

My little moon is on the right, over the red square.  It’s a silver crescent moon (cut from a Burmese candy wrapper) sewn with Indian thread onto a disk of turquoise cardstock.  (As usual, overkill.)

Nothing else even came close in design or technique.  The Persian Gulf had a drawing of a fluffy cat playing golf.  The Adriatic Sea banner had us all stumped until the Resident Director held it up. 

The cheers were harder to judge.  Some were unintelligible.  Others were too complicated for the teams to remember, or they dissolved into giggles when they messed up.  But some were well choreographed and executed.  Ours was so different it’s hard to compare.

The faculty/staff team has never placed above third in anyone’s memory.  I’ll keep you posted.

Beware the Ides of March

Today was Neptune Day, a day of pure silliness.  Dating back hundreds of years, it’s an initiation ritual for sailors crossing the equator for the first time.  Charles Darwin wrote about it on his voyage on the Beagle.  The Wikipedia article on it has a shout-out to Semester at Sea.

It is one of those loosely kept secrets.  We were warned we’d get dirty, we were invited to donate hair to make wigs for people with cancer, we were assured participation was voluntary.  We were advised to get sleep, because the festivities would start early. 

Faculty and staff members who have already crossed the equator by ship played the roles of Queen Minerva (Judy McLeod of Charlottesville, in a headdress of her own device) and members of the royal court.  King Neptune was played by Captain Jeremy, in a get up so bizarre it was only his English accent that revealed him to us.

It was pretty much impossible to get pictures.  Put 700 people on the pool deck and you can’t see the pool.  I got there early enough to get a stool at the bar, which was in the shade, but behind the royal proceedings.

The morning actually started with members of the crew providing a wake-up call, deck by deck.  They paraded through the corridors beating on snare drums and blowing whistles, dressed vaguely like Romans.  Hours later, the troops were assembled on the pool deck, waiting. 

Arch came.  He’s our rock star.  Everywhere he goes, he attracts a circle of attention.  When he started dancing, the cameras came out.  It did pull some focus from the Royal Court, who arrived to find attention was directed elsewhere.  No matter, they quickly took over.

To be inducted into the honorable order of Shellbacks, you have to prove your worthiness.  Basically, this is just hazing, but our version of it is good natured and tame.  The crew pours gunk on you (it looks like the fruit punch they serve for lunch), you jump into our tiny swimming pool, you kiss a fish (a real one, dead) and kiss King Neptune’s ring.  If you are willing, the Royal Barber shaves some portion of your head.

Jim was one of the barbers.  He estimated that 100 people had their heads shaved.  Arch was the first. 

Jim was at it for hours.  That part was not a secret, but there was no way to see the proceedings.  He reported later that he could barely breathe.  Students crowded in to see (and chant) from every direction.  It was brutally hot.

Finally, the barbers turned over their razors to the students.  There are now many boys and a few girls with shaved heads.  Or Mohawks, or other fanciful partially shaved heads. 

The water of our pool turned from crystal clear to brown.  The deck flooded from all the splashing, and clumps of hair sloshed from side to side with the deck’s motion.  The students started painting on each other with chalk and body paint they got in India.  I went down to my air conditioned office for some peace and quiet.  I knew Neptune Day was over when I heard the announcement that everyone needed to vacate Deck 7, leaving the crew to clean up after us once again.