The gym was too hard to find, although I found the comfy chairs on Deck 5 and in the library just fine. Books, games and my computer. Bliss.
I played another game of chess, and my winning strike came to an end. I was up against a Russian-born Canadian named Sam, who beat me like an ugly step-child. Such is life.
Emma finished book number four, I finished a piece of sound-editing, did a few Sudoku, and read a bit. Tiring stuff; how could I be expected to find time for the gym?
In other news the coffee has regressed to the primordial sludge it was before. I suspect they found the skilled coffee maker and threw him overboard so the others wouldn’t look so bad. It didn’t work - their coffee still sucks.
We went to the casino in the early evening. The pokies sucked US$14 out of Emma, while I finally joined the table playing Limit Hold ‘Em Poker.
This was my first time at a casino table, and I was a bit nervous. As it turns out there wasn’t much to be nervous about as most of the players were pretty weak and would play any two cards. I never got a decent set of cards and still ended up $5.
We attended our usual 10pm late show which featured Gary Stirling, an entertainer in the Sammy Davis Jr song-and-dance tradition (originally from Georgia, now based in Sydney), and a classically-trained singer named Davidia who mainly did various musical from shows like Phantom of the Opera and Sound of Music (who is either from New Zealand or Australia, I think the former, Emma the latter).
Day 30:
Much busier, although the gym still manages to elude me.
The highlight of this day was the Sun Princess Cup horse race.
This was a a highly sophisticated horse racing system. Six wooden horses and two dice: someone rolls the dice, and the red dice indicates which horse moves, and the white one tells how many spaces.
There was a horse auction a few weeks ago, with horses going for about $US300. Most people bought them as part of a syndicate, although there were a few sole owners. The winner won the pool of whatever had been bid.
Once in possession of a horse the owners had to decorate the horses. Some people went to extraordinary lengths, and wrote up long histories to boot.
One couple from Maroochydore, Qld bought a horse, which they dubbed “Guinness” and decked out in all things Irish. They needed a “jockey” for their horse, the jockey’s role being to move the horse as the dice rolls were called out and, in their case, to wear a rather stupid looking Irish hat and look like a complete idiot.
So they thought of me.
Well, I lost, so my career as jockey is over. Two crushing defeats in two days. Such is life.
That night was the staff talent show. Many were still in uniform having come directly from work. It seems there isn’t a Filipino on this ship who can’t sing, including Emma from the waiting staff who has a stunning voice, and a chap from the galley who played guitar and sang a song in Tagalog.
The finale was the cruise director’s department who did a song/sketch about what they’d be doing if they weren’t at sea. Extremely silly and hysterically funny.
Tomorrow is Auckland and hopefully a good cup of coffee.
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