The Queen Mary II departs Fremantle 6 March 2014

I’m back on air, after a week with no internet.  It felt a bit frustrating at times to be so out of touch.  Boy, we’ve certainly come to rely on it.  It’s part of daily life now, for me anyway.

So here goes with eight days of posts in the form of my diary of the trip.

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Thursday 6 March 2014  Departure from Fremantle on the P&O Arcadia

What a day! At this moment, 9.15pm, I am upset and angry on board Arcadia.  Uh oh, Pete’s upset again, what a surprise. It’s my normal state, isn’t it?  Maybe I shouldn’t have been upset when I found that P&O had cancelled my ticket without telling me.  Or finding that the fridge in my cabin doesn’t work (I need it to keep my insulin cold) and getting a dismissive attitude from Reception. “It’s not a fridge sir, it’s just a chiller.” (They never followed up – no-one ever came to look at it. Other passengers told me theirs is really cold.)  Things on the ship aren’t available or can’t be done or don’t agree with what I’ve been told.  So far.

Start with the good things.

The cabin is very nice.  Even though it’s an inside cabin with no porthole, I don’t feel claustrophobic.  It’s like a 4 or 5 star hotel room and quite large. There’s a queen sized bed with nice linen, the decor is very tastefully done, I’ve got an L shaped couch, an armchair and another chair, a small table and a fresh chrysanthemum on it.  And a 24” LCD TV.

The bathroom is en-suite and plenty big enough.  Good shower.  Lots of cupboard and wardrobe space. A safe in the wardrobe.  Mood lighting. A desk to write at.  All in all, very nice.

On the aft pool deck the entertainment guys were going in overdrive, playing loud music and getting everyone to move with it. He was trying to get the Queen Mary passengers to respond, but to no avail.  What a reserved lot they were.  They must have heard his calls to wave, but very few did.

The Queen Mary II passengers.  What a stuffy lot!

The feeling on our ship was great.  Even though I didn’t join in all the dances, I thought it was fun.  I was feeling quite “pumped”. 🙂

The departure of both ships, the Arcadia and the Queen Mary from Fremantle, was delayed an hour because, I was told, someone hadn’t turned up. The Queen Mary II was in front of us and I’m not sure who was lacking a passenger, them or us, but I got to see the QM II ease away from the wharf and motor out into the sunset. It was quite spectacular.

The Queen Mary II

They don’t need tug assistance because they’ve got side thrusters, so they just very slowly start moving away after they’ve cast off.  Notice how I know all these nautical terms?  Aft, cabin, cast off, deck.  I’m an old salt from Rockingham days.

The sun sets on the British Empire.  Bloody Poms everywhere.

Shortly after 7pm we too pushed away, turned 180deg. and then headed out through the sea walls to the ocean.  A nice cool breeze and calm sea meant it was super smooth.

At 7.15pm all the lights of Perth, Fremantle and Rockingham stretched for tens of kilometres in both directions.  Perth is no small city!  By any world standards, we’re big and this is the way to see it. Lights as far as the eye can see.

That’s the good bit.  Now for the P&O hassles.

When I arrived at the terminal at 1030am, P&O did not have my name on the passenger list!  When I checked my suitcase in downstairs they didn’t have a cabin number to assign it too.  “Just go over there please sir, and wait.”

So after a five minute wait I was ushered upstairs for more waiting, an hour and a half before check in started at 1220pm.  I got through the chaotic queues (the aisles are too narrow!) only to find that they really didn’t have a booking for me.  “Hmmm, please wait over there, sir, while I look into this”, and he took my ticket and passport away.  As of now, I still don’t have my passport – they keep it! Not happy about that.

I had paid by BPay last week, directly to the travel agency. It seems that Holiday Planet didn’t pay P&O, so P&O cancelled my ticket two days ago, without telling me.  Yet I had a confirmed e-ticket and a booking number and a cruise passenger number.

All this took about 90 mins to sort out, so I twiddled my thumbs some more.  “A diabetic never willingly goes without food.”  I was hungry, but at the small bar in the passenger terminal the only thing I could get was chips or a blueberry muffin.  So I settled for the $4 muffin and $3.50 (!) for a bottle of water.

Finally at about 2.30pm they came and got me and I went through check in.  The travel agent lady said she’d given me $200 credit on the ship as compensation.  That’s something I suppose, but when I asked about it at Reception, they didn’t know anything about it.  We’ll see.

Next job, take my insulin pens and put them in the fridge.  But the fridge is barely cool, let alone cold.

I ask at reception for the fridge to be turned on or adjusted. “Oh no, sir, they are only meant for chilling.”  So there’s no fridge in the cabin after all.

“Well, I need to keep my insulin refrigerated. What can I do?”  Um, phone call in Urdu or something (they’re all Indians) and I’m told to go to the Medical Centre between 3-6pm and they’ll store it for me.

So I arrive at 3.30pm and it’s closed. Dial 999 in emergency.  Oh well, I’ll leave it until later.

My suitcase had arrived at my cabin by now so that was good.  I settled down for a nap but was woken by a faint announcement over the PA of a lifeboat drill at 4.30pm, so that was that.

After we reach the open sea, I tried the desk again about keeping my insulin cool.  They don’t seem to understand what I want or why.  But, I say, there must be hundreds of diabetics on this ship.  Given that nearly all the passengers look 60 or over, with several in wheelchairs and walking frames and some who look as if they could drop dead at any moment,  and people much bigger and fatter than me, I cannot be the only diabetic with this problem!

We don’t get many requests like this, he says.  What?!  But even if they only get a few requests, they should be aware of the need and make provision for it!

The Reception guy phoned the medical centre. It’s closed (of course) but the nurse answered and said she would store it for me, but I must bring it down in a plastic bag. She’d open the door for me.

Can I have a plastic bag please?  Umm, ummm, they don’t have any.  A steward finds one in his rubbish pile. So much for hygiene.  I take my insulin down to deck A and find the Medical Centre closed and locked.  I knock loudly, two or three times.  No response.  So my insulin is still in my room in my esky, and cool, but not cold.  I’ll try again tomorrow.  “Can I just ask one of the barmen to put it in their fridge?”  No sir, hygiene rules prohibit food items being in the bar fridges!

By this time it’s nearly 8pm and I’m famished. But all three of the restaurants I try won’t admit me because I’m not wearing long trousers and shoes and socks!

This is a tropical cruise!  I didn’t bring any trousers (and besides, I don’t own any and I can’t get socks and shoes on anyway, due to my swollen feet.)

So it appears that there’s only one restaurant open to me, the buffet. Oh well, that seems OK.

Aaarrrgh, this was some of the worst food I’ve ever been served.  By any standards, this was gluggy, sticky stodge.  It’s yer standard chicken or beef curries, overcooked spring rolls and samosas, awful hard, doughy pork buns, stale bread rolls …  It filled me up, but I did not enjoy it.  Some others I talked to loved it, but I don’t think their standard was very high.

It’s 9pm by now and I’m not satisfied, but it’s too late for a drink even if I could find a bar that will serve me.  And they charge for drinks!  Beer is GBP3.50 ($6.48) for a 330ml bottle of Carlsberg.  That’s higher than I pay for draught beer at the pub near me at home.  A 250ml glass of wine is GBP6.50 ($12.03!)

As you can tell, things started out badly, seemed to come good for a short time, then rapidly went bad again.  I was very crapped off.

Oh, yes – there’s only one power socket available to me and it’s not near the bed. That means my CPAP machine has to sit on a chair with its power cord pulled as far as I can pull it, and relying on the air hose reaching me.  It seems to work, but when I ask the steward for a power extension lead, he can’t provide one. He’ll  get back to me. I’ll bet he doesn’t. (7pm next day – one has appeared in my room.  It takes time … I give him credit, he did what I requested.)

Again, this is a cruise for oldies.  With around 2,500 passengers, there must be hundreds of CPAP users.  Why aren’t we thought of and catered for?

End of day 1

There's me, on the main mast.  ©  PJ Croft 2014

Ahoy landlubbers. Today I set sail for Singapore. Yes, at 6pm the P&O Arcadia casts off and heads out through Gage Roads, up the West Australian coast to our next port, Bali. We get there at 8am next Monday and have the day there, setting sail again at 6pm.  I hope to catch up with friends there.

Then we berth at Singapore next Thursday morning at 8am and that’s the end of the cruise part.  Five nights in Singas, then flight back on Tiger the following Tuesday.

Baz is picking me up at 9am and I’ll have to fill in time at the ship terminal until noon check in time (Baz has appointments this morning – good bloke).

One thing I have to carry this time is my esky with a couple of insulin pens being kept cold by ice bricks. There’s a fridge in the cabin, I’m told.  Then transporting them cold from the ship to the hotel in Singapore and I’ll dump the esky.

My BSL control is much better now – averaging 8-12. The aim is to reach 4-6, but that’s a bit low for me from experience.  I’m carrying jelly beans in my bag now, for the first signs of hypoglycaemia.  It’s very noticeable.

OK, time to sign off. Next installment from Singapore, I would say.  Lots of photography and video, I hope.

Holy baggage, Batman!  My suitcase ended up at 17.4Kg, but so much of that is made up of “stuff” other than clothing and toiletries.

• CPAP blower (not bothering with humidifier – it should be humid enough where I’m going);
• Power cables – for that, plus for laptop (I have to take it);
• Battery chargers for phone and camera batteries;
• Power adapters, AUS to UK;
• All my many pills, enough for 14 days, plus all my or4iginal prescriptions, just in case;
• A good book and set of magazines;
• Headphones, small cheapies that I can discard when I get to Singapore and buy a better pair;
• Two cameras and two fairly bulky lenses, although nowhere near as bulky as they were a decade ago;
• Walking stick, in two pieces.

Notice I haven’t mentioned shoes! I never wear shoes any more and to take them and my sandals would be a huge extra bulk. Sandals only, I’m afraid, and if they don’t meet the dress code in the dining room, I’ll eat in the snack bars.

Cheers

As you can see, I’ve just changed themes.  It’s just a trial.  If you find the font size too small, press and hold the Ctrl key and use the + key to increase the font size (or the – key to bring it down again).  This affects your browser and will be remembered between sessions.

I used my new Neato robotic vacuum cleaner for the first time yesterday. It runs on batteries, of course, so it had to snuggle up to the charging base for a couple of hours first.  I use the word “snuggle” purposely – see below.  I left it to charge and went into another room.  After a while I heard this roaring sound and wondered, “What the …?”  Then I realised it had started up and had set off doing its job.  There had been enough charge when I first tried to power it on to let me try to start the clean, but it had to charge further. It remembered my instruction, so after it had enough charge, started itself.

It was fascinating to watch. It seems to be pretty random in the way it turns, but it keeps trying to go around chair legs and between things until it finds a way.  Move forward a bit, come near a chair leg (it doesn’t actually touch it), back away, swivel a bit, move forward, repeat as required.  Just leave it to do its thing.

However, I came to realise pretty quickly that it will take a long time to do a floor because it doesn’t do what we would do – long, straight strokes. No, it does little movements and lots of them. It covers the same area, but it’s slow – and thorough, I suppose.

But that means the motor roar is there the whole time, I mean two hours or more, until it decides the battery is low enough and it needs to return to the charger.  I actually hit the pause button as the TV news had started and I couldn’t hear it.  When I hit pause, it gave me a menu of choices such as “Wait 1hr”, “Resume” and “Return to charger”.  I chose the latter and off it went, turning, swivelling, wiggling, moving left, right, forward until after nearly 5 mins it found itself back at the base. Even then it backed away, moved a bit right, then left, backed away etc, then funnily, did a little wiggle as it moved its curved front with the battery contacts against the broad charging contacts on the base. It rubs itself against them!  I think I’ll shoot some video of this and post it because it’s quite funny.

The navigation back to the base is amazing. This thing has turned hundreds of times since it started operating, but somehow it remembers where the base is, or detects it, but how? Radio signal?

As for the noise, you can set it to do its job while you’re out.  But that and the movement might trigger the house alarm.  I’d have to leave the alarm off.  Let’s hope a burglar would hear the noise and think I’m home.

To be continued – this thing is interesting.  That’s the last time I buy an appliance from Amazon, though.  I must have had a brain fart when I bought a Harmon Kardan stereo amp last year.  I completely forgot about its mains voltage and it’s 110V.  If it had been a Japanese amp it would have been a switchable or universal voltage device, but I had to buy a small step down transformer for it. That was only $21 but … being a US design, it also only suits US standards for AM radio station spacing and FM de-emphasis.  Luckily I get my only desired AM stations OK, and the de-emphasis just means the sound is a little brighter on FM.  Not that I can hear the highs any more anyway.

As I say, if this was a Japanese made amp, all this would have been switchable.  But not a US (Chinese made!) device.  Oh no, there is no world outside the USA, is there?

In this case the mains battery charger is just a Taiwanese generic 12V DC charger that runs off 100-240V AC.  Apart from having a US style plug, it works fine here.

I must make myself a sign – “NO USA APPLIANCES!”

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Same device - I don't think JB HiFi are going to sell many.

I also bought one of these last week too – a Logitech Harmony Touch remote control.  At Office Works!

What an elegant design.  I got sick of having to juggle three remotes for the TV, DVD/HD recorder and amplifier for the volume and source.  This remote combines all three into Activities, labelled Watch TV, or Play a DVD, or Listen to Music, or Listen to Radio, and puts them on a small touch screen like an iPod.  Everything now happens on the Harmony – channel change, volume, DVD controls, track selection, program guide and recording and so on.  Just one thing to operate.  So nicely designed.

I bought the first version of this back in about 2006 and I’ve still got it, but I had endless trouble with the gold battery charging contacts (I had to rewire an additional connector), then a failed battery (hard to find then, easy now, but $50 per).  Then because I was opening the case several times to fix the charging contacts, the micro-USB connector broke away from the thin PCB. It’s surface mount with tracks at about 0,5mm spacing too.  I’ve had one try at resoldering it but without success. The tracks and positioning are just too fine for my eyesight.  I won’t give up – I’ll have another try later … one day! It still works, I just can’t reprogram it for the new equipment I’ve got now.  That makes it effectively a glorified volume control for my 20 year old Sony amplifier and not much else.

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I’ve been devoting a bit of time thinking about cars and it would be quite feasible to buy one of the above.  It’s a 1994 Mercedes 500SL convertible.  There are quite a few for sale and they go for between $20,000 to $30,000.  They originally cost about $210,000 when new in the 1990-95 period, so they’ve dropped most of their value already.  They aren’t collectibles yet, but their value has probably hit bottom and might start to increase in the next ten years as people like me show interest.  In the meantime, you could probably resell it for what you paid for it.

Why do I want one?  1.  Timeless styling.  It still looks the business even after 20 years;  2.  Sheer driving pleasure – a big 5 litre V8 with 5 speed auto and all the features we take for granted now but were revolutionary back then – ALB, automatic roll bar, power everything.  A motorised soft top folds down behind the seats and it comes with a hard top as well (but you have to fit it manually – not easy);  3.  Smooth quiet power, gliding around, but oodles of oomph when you want it.

Mainly though, I just can’t think of a modern car that’s interesting to me, but that I can afford.  I’d like an MX-5 for example, but they’re still up around $30,000 for less car.  Or a good BMW 5 or 7 series, but they have an awful reputation for needing expensive repairs.  A Boxter?  Too expensive.

I can’t think of much else I want. Honda S2000 I mentioned a couple of weeks ago?  Manual only. As it should be, but not for me any more. Auto only.

These Mercs are in Adelaide, Melbourne or Sydney.  FF points fly over, and after an RACV inspection, drive it for several weeks around the eastern states then bring it back here. Could be done.  I probably won’t, but I can dream.

It’s not 100ml, or 260ml.  That would be a huge quantity.  The figures are the insulin concentration in International Units (IU).  I don’t inject 46ml, I inject 46 IU.  Big difference.  Sorry, I’m new to this 🙂

Yesterday I said the insulin pens only hold 100ml.  I must admit it seemed a bit small.  This morning I had a closer look and the big 100ml figure on the side is the concentration. They actually hold 260ml, therefore good for five days at 50ml per day.

My fasting BSL (or BGL, blood glucose level to be correct) was 8.7 this morning. Getting there.