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.

Left behind

In Ghana, particularly in the northern portion of the country, it is considered extremely rude to use your left hand.  You accept packages only with your right hand, you present money only with your right hand, and most especially, you eat only with your right hand.  

This presents some problems for a left-handed person. 

I am a left-handed person.  I am a stubbornly, impossibly left-handed person.  I am left handed, left footed, left eared and left eyed.  I am unthinkingly, instinctively, intractably left handed. 

I found eating right handed slightly easier than eating with chopsticks.  I mention this because we had rice at every meal.  (Except breakfast, when we had beans.)  Fried rice, jollof rice, plain rice, saffron rice, vegetable fried rice.  Rice with palava sauce, rice with tomato sauce.  All of it delicious, and all of it, as it turns out, rice that slides easily off the awkwardly held right-hand-held fork of a left-handed person. 

Eating with my right hand felt like trying to maneuver a crane.  So much room for failure between plate and mouth.  Some meals, I just went native and ate with my fingers.  Then, the challenge was optimal use of the one tiny napkin that comes with the meal.  All good practice for Morocco, where I will be staying with an actual Moroccan family, eating out of a common bowl.  I believe my multicolored print shirts will find their way into my overnight bag.

Ghana presented many challenges to the Western mind and body, right handers as well as left.  I stayed four nights, in three different hotels.  Here’s a catalog of hotels:

Nights one and two:  no hot water.  No water at all coming from the hot tap.  TV does not turn on.  Ceiling fan rattles and buzzes and apparently shorts out overhead light.  Air conditioner out of reach and cannot be adjusted.

No one takes your word for anything.  First remedy for “no water” is “you have to turn on the hot water switch.”  Second remedy is “we fixed it.”  Third remedy is the man turns on the emergency cut off behind your back and shows you the water is working (and now, in fact, it is), making you look both cranky AND stupid.  Then he tells you that the reason it’s turned off is there’s a leak and they don’t want you to use it. 

This hotel has a dining patio overlooking the beach, a lovely place to spend a few hours waiting for your food to arrive.  We are a table of 8, and our dinners straggle in over a period of three hours, in no particular order.  We joke that they have to go and catch the fish, butcher the chicken.  It might be true. 

View from the hotel restaurant

On day two, I order fruit with ice cream instead of dinner.  It comes promptly.  Ice cream in one dish, fruit in the other.  Mostly watermelon.  I have had watermelon on easily 90% of the days of this voyage.  It is a staple for breakfast on the ship, it is dessert at every meal in China as well as at Chinese restaurants in Vietnam, Burma, and India.  The ports we have visited run on watermelon and rice.

Completely non-ironic hotel art at Hotel 1

Night three:  Room is nicely equipped with a brand new, energy star refrigerator and two bedside lamps.  One of the lamps has no bulb.  The other lamp has a plug that does not fit into the African socket.  The bulb in it does not work in the lamp with the African plug.  The fridge is not plugged in.  It and the TV share a single socket.  That’s okay, though, because the fridge plug is also a Euro plug, incompatible with the African socket.  VERY energy efficient this way.  Air conditioning is off, does not respond to the remote control.  (Oh, THIS is how you adjust the air conditioner you cannot reach!)  AC is also not plugged in.  Once plugged in, AC works, but remote does not.

We have had a long day, mostly in the bus.  I find that people are ordering food to be delivered to their rooms.  Looks like I will be dining solo.  On my way back to my room, I see a computer room. Three monitors, three keyboards.  One computer.  The internet doesn’t work. 

I take a refreshing shower and wait for my meal.  For two hours.  At ten, I try to call the restaurant.  The phone does not work.  Unlike the lamps, it is plugged in.  And dead.  I get dressed and walk down two flights to the restaurant, which is empty and closed. 

The next morning, even the Ghanians are complaining there is no breakfast.  Breakfast is a piece of toast, a spoonful of beans (canned pork&beans with a few raw carrot shreds) and some raw cabbage.  There is evidence there was also pineapple and eggs.  I take the last fork, but the beans are not worth the struggle.

Day 4:  No fake lamps.  No lamps at all.  No fridge.  No expectations to be dashed.  No shower, buckets in tub.  No towels.  I call for towels.  Someone comes to check.  No hidden towels, no towels I somehow missed, really, there are no towels.  A man brings me towels, towels such as you would have grabbed off someone else’s towel rack.  As in, not folded, slightly damp.  Possibly taken from a clothes line somewhere, but I would not bet on that.  I debate the relative merits of a bucket bath followed by air drying vs sleeping in dried sweat/sunblock/DEET and fall asleep.  Sometime in the night, I hear a crash, as the light in the hallway outside crashes to the ground. 

2D camera does not capture creepy 3D JC.

At 5:45, I get a helpful call from the desk:  your bus is here.  The early risers are taking a morning bike ride, the rest of us are leaving at 7:30.  It’s not my bus.  The desk argues that it is.  “I’m not getting on it,” I say and hang up.  The guy across the hall, the one with the loud voice who has not shut up even for one minute in the last four days, is going on the bike ride.  I know this because the room has cross ventilation and the windows do not close.  There are open windows into the hallway and I know my neighbors quite intimately.

I think, well, there’s plenty of time to air dry now that I am wide awake.  However, there’s no water.  None at all.  No hot, no cold.  Not in the sink, or tub, or toilet.  I call the desk.  “I will come.”  Ghanian English for, <shrug>.  No one comes.  This also has the benefit of keeping them from discovering the dark hallway full of glass.

I walk outside to enjoy the relative cool of the morning.  Ghana’s daylight is from 6 to 6, year round.  I go back in to get my things for the day.  More lights are out in the hallway.  I find there are four steps, not three, down to my room.  It is not a pleasant revelation.  Still no water. 

Hotel 3 walkway

After breakfast (hotdogs and cabbage, eggs, dinner rolls), the non-bikers go to the craft market.  When we get back, the water is running, but the lights are now strobing.  It’s too late for a bath, but there’s no hot water anyway.  There’s a water tank, the shutoff valve is open, but there’s no hot water to the room.

To be fair, there were also many enjoyable things about Ghana, and I will write about them, too.  So that I do not sound entirely like a cranky American tourist who expects four stars in her hotels, let me say that I have no problems with cold water, or lengthy waits, or adapting to the culture, or carrying my own potable water.  What I object to is being told there are amenities that do not exist.  I can sleep without air conditioning in Africa, but if I pay for air conditioning, I do expect that it will be functioning.  I believe that a hotel that includes breakfast should have it for all the guests, not just for the first half.  I brought my own shampoo and soap, but thought towels were part of the deal. 

And, for the record, I accepted the “bush stop” bathroom cheerfully, if not with the enthusiasm of the 5 little boys who conducted scientific experiments to see which kinds of contact caused the “touch-me-not” plants to close up.  I have discovered the ideal volume of drinking water to minimize both dehydration and need for facilities.

Restaurant of Hotel 3 has stunning view

Stop thinking about that movie, right now!

A couple of the hotels had some stunning local art.  Hotel 1 had beautiful wood carvings--whales and crocodiles 8 feet long and elephants 4 feet high.  It also, inexplicably, boasted the horse with sunglasses.  Hotel 3 had a sculpture garden which included the woman holding her baby aloft (something you aren't likely to see, as they are securely wrapped on their mothers' behinds until they are old enough to be looked after by a sibling).  It also had freakishly large Obama eyeing the Chrysler Building at the front desk and creepy 3D Jesus on the job in the bedroom.

Obama, another leftie.  He has visited several of the countries on our itinerary and left a host of images, on local goods as well as tourist goods.  It is quite impossible to think of his predecessor memorialized on a calendar or a keychain.

Happy birthday today to my left-hand buddy, currently serving as my right-hand gal.  You exceed any expectations I could possibly have.

Hot time in the old town

The reason we can’t get excited at sea is, I see today, because we need that excitement for LAND. 

GHANA!  We’re in Ghana!

I’m going on an overland trip with a bunch of faculty, staff, and children, around 20 in all.  I write this as we’re stuck waiting for our passports to be released.

People who are not staying overnight in Ghana are streaming off the ship.

Tour guides are patiently waiting for us.  Here’s ours.

It’s hot and sunny.  And really hot.  ETA for our passports is “an hour or two.”  I feel bad for those guys, hopefully studying all the passengers to find their charges for the day. 

I checked with Aparna before making a sign to tell our guide we’re delayed.  But then all the other guys kept standing there in the sun.  So I made this sign.

Welcome to Ghana.  I’ll catch you up next week. I'm leaving the computer behind.

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.