Crumbs! www.theguardian.com/world/2003/feb/13/gender.uk  And he was an eminent (whatever that means) surgeon to the Queen Mother.

Clarissa Wright died yesterday.

© P J Croft 2014 The Sun setting over the sea from cruise ship Arcadia March 2014
Olympus OM-D E-M1, M.Zuiko 14-150mm lens at 150mm (300mm) hand held.

Everyone’s raved about Gravity, with George Clooney and Sandra Bullock.  I watched it last night.  I give it 12/10 for effects.  Yes, it’s spectacular.  Such smooth zero gravity motion is quite impressive.

BUT!  Did you expect an uncritical review from me?  I’m Mr Picky, I know, but I’ve seen comments from science web sites that the science is pretty accurate.  Maybe, but I found myself gaping and laughing in disbelief.  If it had been in a cinema, I would have had to suppress my hoots of derision.  I might even have walked out.  What a joke.

1. First and most obviously – I’m the last one to call myself a feminist, but the put-down of the female and the male bias was so obvious! Poor little Sandra, getting in a tizz all the time, and good, strong masculine George always coming to her rescue.  What??!!

First, if she was so helpless, how did she get selected as an astronaut?  These people are chosen for their science and engineering background, along with their unflappability.  One thing you must not do in space, or any high tech, high stress occupation, is panic. As soon as you do, your judgement is lost.  I know, I’ve been there.  People who work in these occupations are very noticeable for their coolness and level heads in a panic situation, their leadership and their ability to think coolly.  They don’t hyperventilate and natter!

Poor little Sandra was breathing so fast she must have been hyperventilating and that’s seriously bad.  An astronaut would know NOT to do that.  But good, strong, masculine George was as calm as a cucumber, coming to her rescue again and again.  What a joke.  Strike 1.

2.  All the Earth features were constantly in high contrast and colour.  All the space images I’ve seen show that the Earth, although very visible, is cloudy!  It’s hazy.  You don’t see all that colour in the mountains and canyons from space, not until the images are processed and enhanced, or shot at specific times of the day when the sunlight is glancing.  Strike 2.

3.  The USA again!  Good ol’ USA spacecraft is destroyed by a Russian satellite explosion.  Those damn Russians, can’t do anything right, can they? Strike 3.

4.  Once our two heroes  (all Americans are heroes, aren’t they?) have been separated from the good ol’ USA spacecraft, they decide they can propel themselves to the International Space station which is just over, there, don’t you see it?  It’s not far. C’mon. Let’s go.

What??!!  The diameter of the Earth is 12,700Km and its circumference is over 40,000Km. Spacecraft are not spaced “just over there”.  They are thousands of kilometers apart!  The idea that astronauts in free fall could just use their jet packs to move, accurately!, thousands or even hundreds of kilometers to reach the ISS is absolutely unbelievable.  Don’t forget, when you have almost no control over your path, a tiny, tiny error in your aim is catastrophic.  If you miss by even 2m, you’re lost. You’ve overshot and you wouldn’t have the fuel to stop, reverse course and try again.  What a joke.  Strike 4.

5.  Our heroic pair see all these high velocity fragments of the exploded spacecraft flying toward them, and they don’t get hit.

For a start, little bits of debris like that move so fast that you’d never see them in a million years. Not outside a Hollywood movie.  You’d never know what hit you, literally. Phhht, you’re dead.  Strike 5.

6.  So, the ISS doesn’t work out.  Where are all the crew members?  The ISS has a crew of six.  Where are they?  Are they all dead?  Where are the bodies then?  I laugh out loud.  Strike 6.

7.  Good old big guy George sacrifices himself and little helpless Sandra can’t do anything to help him except pant even harder.  She gets inside the ISS and fights a massive fire that would have asphyxiated her in a very short time, but she doesn’t even get a sunburn.  Of course, as in ALL American films, the control panels belch sparks and flames.  Funny, in 33 years of electronic and electrical engineering, never once did I see anything like that happen.  It’s not true.  It just doesn’t happen that way.  Strike 7.

8.  I should have mentioned before now – little Sandra, our PhD scientist who doesn’t seem to have a clue what to do, Doctor Sandra, is also a sex object.  When she shrugs off her spacesuit, she’s a sexy shapely chicky bird in singlet and shorty shorts. It’s just like Barbarella!  Remember the 1960s film with Jane Fonda as Barbarella, the sexy space girl who strips in weightlessness?  Here it is again.  Whoo hoo, sexy dumb but beautiful space scientist.  Strike 8.

9.  So she somehow manages to slip back into her space suit in the ISS in seconds flat and exit, to move on to the Chinese spacecraft.  No need to replenish her suit’s oxygen or water or propellant for the attitude jets.  Oooohhh, LOL!

Once again, in a miracle of navigation over thousands of kilometers, she manages to precisely hit the Chinese satellite. Literally.  But she’s not harmed.  There are no suit leaks.  She just opens the airlock and enters.  But where are the crew, again? Did they all go home?  Where are the bodies?  Was there ever any crew?  If not, why is it built to take humans?

So then she starts to randomly punch buttons labelled with Chinese characters.  At a great rate.  She doesn’t stop to be sure she’s reading the labels correctly.  Any mistakes could be catastrophic, but she’s American, right?  She must be getting it right.

All the while, some inane Chinese capsule communicator is making jokes about his family or something totally unrelated to spaceflight.  What is going on?  She talks on the radio as if it’s a normal face to face conversation.  There’s no, “Ground control, this is Jian 1, do you read?” and waiting for a reply before continuing.  No, she just gabbles on, never waiting for a coherent answer.  She’s a Murrican, right?  They must understand her.  She carries on punching buttons at random, without knowing what they do.  Ha ha ha ha.  Strike 8.

9.  Good old big guy George comes back and comforts little girl Sandra. It’s only a dream, but the woman needs the man to keep her spirit up.  How did she ever get selected as an astronaut?!  Strike 9.

10.  Somehow, we’re not shown how, she computes the precise time and rocket burn time for a return to Earth in the Chinese spacecraft.  She doesn’t have to wait for the precise time in the Earth’s rotation to bring herself down in a proper landing place.  Anywhere will do, OK mate.  How about just over there? Middle of the ocean? Sink like a stone, two kilometers down?  No problem.

So she plummets down and survives the re-entry, and the spacecraft lands in this lake very gently.  It doesn’t make an almighty splash and sink many meters, then bob to the surface and go down again. No, she’s got it exactly right, first time.  She’s a Murrican, right?  Comes out in her wet T-shirt, all sexy again.

11.  The inertia effects are all wrong.  Yes, the weightlessness looks real, but the motion doesn’t. And what’s with all those dozens of long, tangling straps that seem to have no purpose except to snare their legs?  Hah!  Strike 11.

12.  Finally, what’s with all the country and western music playing over the R/T all the time?  Oh, I forgot, this is America.  Strike 12.

I’m glad I didn’t waste my money on a movie ticket.

Insulin.  I haven’t mentioned it for a while.  Above is one resultant graph of my BGL readings 2hrs after the evening meal.  The graph goes back to 19 December last year, but I only started the insulin on 6 February this year.  The improvement is quite visible.  The trend line is Excel’s, not my own estimation, so it’s pretty accurate.  Here’s another graph, of my BGLs first thing on rising, before breakfast:

That’s also pretty clear, that the insulin is working.  The doctor said they are taught, “Fix the early morning readings first”, i.e. judge progress by whether your overnight fasting level is falling within the 4-6 range.  Once you’ve got the insulin dose up enough for that, then decide whether more is needed during the day.  I’m on 56 units now.  Probably 60U will be about right.  There are 260 units in a pen, so that means a new pen every four days. And I wondered why I was given five boxes of five pens each when I first started. Hah!

The results? I’m not as weary as I was, not as tired.  I don’t need to sleep as much during the day.  My vision has slowly improved, so much that I need to take my glasses off to read. I’m using single vision “computer glasses”, formulated for short distance work, but they are actually good for long distance, not short distance any more.  But with my vision changing so much, it’s hard to know when to get new glasses made.

However, I still have very low muscle strength and endurance.  I’ve noticed that my 20Kg suitcase, which in my travels before I never used to have much trouble lifting, is now almost more than I can manage.  My muscles have really atrophied in the past 4-5 years.  I can walk short distances quite easily and I don’t get short of breath, but my legs just won’t carry me any further and I have to stop and rest.  Carrying a fairly heavy camera bag is hard on my spine, too.  Sure ain’t like the old days, Ma.

Here’s what I see out of my hotel room window.  That’s 16 storeys of flats.

Here’s another view.  I think they dropped it when they built it. 🙂

More rain today, but that’s good.  The newspaper says they’ve had almost no rain for the past two months or more.  Very unusual, almost unheard of, in fact, for this part of the world.  Plants and trees are dying.  The rain in the past two days will perk things up considerably.

__________________________________________

I’ve just had lunch at an Indian restaurant.  For a samosa entree, curried fish main course, biriyani chicken rice as a side dish and two 300ml beers, S$52.70 or A$46.23.  Ouch.  More than I intended to spend, and more than I intended to eat, too.  I had no breakfast at all, so I was pretty hungry, but I’m not now!

_____________________________________________

People sometimes ask me what RAW files are from digital cameras.  Here’s a RAW file:

Notice how the lines are curved and the corners are dark (vignetting).  It’s also a bit flat, lacking contrast and colour.  Here’s the .jpg (finished file) from the camera:

Notice how the lines are straightened, the vignetting is gone (at the expense of a bit of cropping) and the look of it is a bit brighter.

The point is, all this is done for you in the camera’s internal software and the jpeg output is what you get, regardless of what you might choose to do.  You can’t override these changes.

But the RAW file is what comes from the sensor without processing.  You have the choices then to make whatever changes and adjustments you like.  Once you’ve made your own improvements, you then save it as a .jpg or .tif or .bmp or whatever you like, and the RAW file remains for different adjustments at another time.  The RAW file is the “negative”, the jpeg is the “print” in film and paper terms.

The correction of lens curvatures means instead of lenses having to be designed with extra glass elements to correct these faults, it can be corrected in software.  The lenses can be smaller and lighter without so much glass.  And cheaper too, as highly corrected lenses are expensive to make.

It’s all good stuff, and progress.

Here’s a sight you don’t see much any more:  film!  It’s good to see it’s still available, but the advantages of digital on SD cards are far too great for me to go back to film.  The very fact that I can publish this photo, shot only half an hour ago, is proof of that.

______________________________________

Rain!  Steady, soaking rain.  I set out to walk to the MRT station but it was too wet and the pavements are too slippery.  I actually set out to go to the Bugis St station, but due to a building site blocking off the footpaths, I ended up almost back at the hotel where I started, having walked around the block.  Oh well, it’s good exercise.

Brunch at the Sim Lim Square food hall again.  Lemon chicken rice for $3.50. Nice.  Then, plain buttered pancakes and iced coffee at the coffee shop while I read the paper and watched the rain. S$12.20!  That’s a bit steep and reinforces the view that Singapore has become very expensive.

I also read an article in today’s paper about the lack of empathy and consideration from Singaporeans and I’d have to agree.  When I get onto the trains, I’m feeling fairly tired and would really like to sit in the Seniors seats.  But in every case so far the seat has been occupied by a young woman (usually) who pays no attention and carries on her texting. When I walk along, people walk across my path regardless of me, or walk straight at me, forcing me to diverge. Repeatedly. All the time.  No manners, no politeness. Although I must say that when I’m dealing face to face with people, they are very courteous and polite.  But maybe that has to do with me paying them some money.

The theory in the paper, and I agree, as I’ve long thought this, is that Chinese people in all Asian countries are almost entirely focused on money and wealth and the security of their own family and position.  They have little regard for anyone else unless you are of use to them in boosting their wealth and position.  Why is this?  Because China has always been so densely populated and competitive that survival depends on elbowing your way above the ruck, pushing away all distractions from the need to gain the wealth to rise to the top of the seething crowds.  C’est la vie, literally.

_______________________________________________

Phones and tablets!  They are virtually ubiquitous.  Everyone is holding a conversation on their phone. A bike rider is seemingly talking to himself as he rides in the rain. All the young people are madly texting on the trains. People walk along the street playing a game on their tablet or phone as they walk, oblivious to their surroundings.  So many people of all ages have their ears stuffed with ear buds, deaf to outside sounds.  This is madness.  They walk without seeing or hearing or interacting with others.  It’s a revolution.  But where will it lead?

____________________________________________

I return to my room and once again the cleaner has dropped the air con temperature from my 24C – 26C down to 18C today.  Are they too hot while they work?  It’s too cold for me.

The rain is still falling at 3pm leading me to stay in my room to read and write and listen to music.  I brought five good DVDs with me, Gravity; Argo; The Battle of Neretva; The Ghost Writer and Hoffman, with Peter Sellers, but I’ve only watched the latter two.

The Ghost Writer is so obviously based on Tony Blair and his part in putting the UK into the Iraq war that I wonder he didn’t try to suppress it.  I’m sure the producers must have worked closely with lawyers on that one.  Coincidentally, it turned out that I’ve read the novel before I bought the DVD, without realising they are the same story.  I recommend both.

Prattle, prattle, prattle.

It’s been a quiet day, nursing my left foot.  It has been very painful but is recovering quite well.  I set out walking to the Little India MRT about 1pm but half way there realised I’d forgotten my MRT stored value card.  Damn. I had no particular destination in mind, so I turned around and went back to the hotel, very slowly.  It’s a beautiful, if overcast day.  Not hot at all – maybe 28C. While I was standing on the corner of Bukit Timah Rd and Selegie Rd reading the historical sign about Little India, an old guy came up to me and started gesticulating and saying something about “half a mile that way”.  I could hardly understand him, but I got an impression that he was saying there is a parade, as he was wiping his arms and face as if to say, “They are in costume” or something.  I really couldn’t work out his meaning and the idea of walking half a mile out of my way didn’t appeal, so I thanked him and moved on. Pity.  I don’t know what I might have missed.

From the hotel I changed direction and went to the Sim Lim Square food hall.  This is local food at its best.  Well, its fastest, maybe.  I had Vietnamese beef noodles today.  I asked for a spicy dish but this was a bit bland, no spice at all.  Oh well, for $5.00 I’m not complaining.

However, I would complain at the restaurant in the corner of my hotel.  The prices are beyond my limit.  I saw a very delicious looking dish in their window menu, but it costs S$28 !  All their dishes start at about S$18 and rise to S$68.  In a recent survey, Singapore was rated No. 1 of the world’s 10 most expensive cities.  As I’ve said, you can eat quite adequately for S$7.50 in a food hall, but off plastic plates at plastic tables on plastic chairs.  Taxis are now almost unaffordable (avg. S$15 per trip) compared to S$5 – $8 ten years ago.  This hotel is A$140 per night, but although the room is described as “Superior”, the room is very small and as I said, lacked a fridge, or an armchair. I have a small steel framed chair at the tiny desk, but it’s hard and uncomfortable. The room is smaller than the cabin I had on the ship.

As I also said, goods here cost more than they do on-line in Australia now so there’s no fun in shopping any more, except for finding nice things.  But when you’re hobbling along with a painful ankle and foot, it’s not much fun.

_______________________________________

Interesting:  I bought a CD yesterday and played it for the first time in the CD/DVD/BluRay drive in this laptop, listening on these beautiful new KEF headphones from the laptop’s headphone socket.  The CD is an HDCD, meaning extra high specs.

It sounded superb.  Deep bass such as I’ve never heard before, smooth strings, rich sound.

Today I converted and transferred it from the CD to my iPod Touch as mp3 files and listened again on the iPod.  Hmmm.  It’s not as good.  It’s hard to pin it down, but the sound is very subtly grainy, not as smooth, the strings are a bit coarse.  This is the difference between uncompressed CD quality and the highly compressed mp3 format.  Mp3 is not hi-fi.  The conversion to mp3 involves high levels of compression, discarding a huge amount of the original data to reduce the file size and data rate.  Mp3 stands for “mpeg” (Motion Picture Experts Group) “layer 3”, which is a section of the mpeg data packet used to transmit compressed video and audio over satellites and cables.  The method used to compress the audio for the mpeg data stream happened to be convenient for other uses, so it’s become ubiquitous. Pity.

___________________________________

For this post I’ve been trying to convert some video to include in the posting.  But WordPress doesn’t seem to accept anything I try!  I’ve tried .mov; .mpg; .avi; .mp4 – all are rejected.  One I suppose I haven’t tried is .flv.  Watch this space.

OK, it won’t accept .flv either.  So what video format will it accept?  I don’t know.  Annoying.

Albert Street Mall. A Parisian influence?
Do I have a fisheye lens to get this super wide angle?
No I don't.  This is a series of shots taken with a 28mm
and stitched with AutoStitch, that marvellous free software.  Love it.

Good sleep.  There’s a huge apartment block next door so the daylight is fairly weak through my windows.  Oh, my aching feet and legs and back.  I’m paying for yesterday’s walking, so I’m taking it easy now trying to let the aches improve.

Lunch in Sim Lim Square at 2pm. Kimchee fried rice.  I’ve never had kim chee – now I have an idea of what it’s like.  Think chilli hot spicy cabbage.  It’s not bad.

I walked around the ground floor of Sim Lim, but I wasn’t tempted.  I have everything I want and there are no bargains here any more, just instant stock if you are interested in something. Back to the hotel very slowly and painfully.  My left foot is very sore. I’ve just discovered a big blister on my big toe. Damn.  I had a good swim in the pool at 5.30pm and was reminded how good the water feels.  This pool is only 1.2m deep all the way, and that’s ideal for water walking.  I did quite a few laps.  Back to the room, too sore to go out for dinner.  I’d order room service, but they don’t seem to have that.

Singapore at 6.24 am

I was up at 5.15am, showered and out by 0600, only to find that we’d already arrived.  It was still dark but we were turning 180deg. and backing very, very slowly into the wharf.  It took nearly an hour, with the dawn light slowly increasing.

The Singapore Marina Bay cruise terminal. It leaves Fremantle looking like the 1960s shed that it is.

At 6.45 am

The Pan Pacific Hotel at 6.47 am

At 6.53 am

At 7.08 am

There was a lot of haze, and of course, as they announced, it’s from Indonesian forest fires. This is a bad situation. It goes on year after year, caused by clear felling and burning of dense native forests for profit, both for the timber they cut and to plant palm oil plantations.  It’s changing the entire ecology of the region.  I noticed today how dry all the lawns and plants are looking in Singapore and apparently they haven’t had much rain for two months.  I can see it.  This is highly unusual.  This is climate change in the flesh.

Breakfast at 0830, then final packing.  I couldn’t put my suitcase out at 6pm last night as they wanted us to because I needed my CPAP stuff overnight and my diabetic stuff in the morning.  I told them this at the desk and they sucked their teeth and looked disapproving.  Bloody hell, surely it should be obvious that we can’t always do what they ask.  This morning I put the case out in the passage and it was gone when I came back, so someone took it ashore for me.

Then there was a long boring wait until 10am when my cabin group was called to disembark. It was a long walk along the airconditioned catwalk and into the terminal, and there was my case, with a trolley next to it. Good stuff.  After a short walk through X-ray inspections, then through the “Nothing to Declare” channel, I was out.  There was another long walk to the taxi rank, then I had a Mercedes taxi to the Parc Sovereign Hotel in Albert St, Little India, arriving about 11am.  Room 915 is on the ninth floor, but my only view is of the tower block of flats next door.

The room is tiny but perfectly formed.  It’s small, but not claustrophobic.  It has a Queen sized bed, but no fridge!  And Wi-Fi, but I have to pay —  S$10 for two hours, I think. (No, update, the $10 is for a full 24 hours, so that’s good.)

I headed out about 1.30pm after an hour’s good sleep.  I asked at the desk about getting daily ice for my insulin and the guy couldn’t seem to understand what I was asking.  Another guy did understand, suggesting I try the 7-Eleven shop next door.  I have enough ice in the Esky from the ship, so that can wait.

I took a tourist map from the desk and asked the young guy for directions.  He was bamboozled!  He couldn’t even find the this hotel on the map. As for directions, he had no clue.  An older guy had to step in and circle this hotel and the nearest MRT.  Amazing.  The young guy is way behind.

Off to Little India MRT, buying a stored value card for $30. Lots of walking!  Ooowww.  I took the MRT to City Hall via Dhoby Gaut.  I had a very nice lunch of “cereal fried rice” and iced lemon tea.  It turned out quite expensive when GST and 10% service was added – the bill was nearly $20.  Ouch.

Then I walked to Coleman St and saw lots of delicious camera gear,  but it’s more expensive than home prices!  I’m very tempted by the Fuji X-T1, but the body only price is S$1950.  The Australian on-line price is $1250!  Anyway, I’m not really serious.  I have enough cameras.  You never thought you’d hear me say that, did you?

The windows are full of delectable second hand gear, but it’s not the same as 10 or 20 years ago – It’s stuff I used to covet, but I can’t use it any more.  It’s all film gear and different lens mounts from a different era so all the fun has gone.  I used to spend hours gazing at all the second hand bargains but there’s no point any more. Pity, a big pity.

Then to the Funan Centre for a power plug adapter and 16GB SD card, a bit cheaper than Perth.

Then across to the Adelphi building where I found the KEF headphones I was looking for – “Yes sir, we have them in stock, would you like a demonstration?” In Perth, it would have been,  No mate, but we can get them for you.

I said to the guy, “Every time I come to Singapore, I seem to buy another pair of headphones.”  It’s true. But these are special.  They should be, at A$325.  I’m happy.  The sound, especially the bass, is incredible.  I had been using a tiny, tinny pair of Koss  HP1s, but I tossed them in the bin, they are so bad. (But I retrieved them later – waste not … )

Then a I made a loooong walk and MRT rides back to the hotel.  Bloody hell, my feet are aching, especially the left foot.  I’m hobbling and later had to use my stick.  I had a lot of trouble finding the hotel – I took a wrong turn out of the Little India MRT and got lost. Even with my TomTom GPS, I was disoriented.  Which is surprising, given I’m in the Orient.   It seemed everywhere I turned was the wrong way.  Eventually I made it, hobbling, almost dead.  It wasn’t a hot day, or even especially humid, but I was bushed.

When I got back to the room, I found they had installed a fridge for me!  I am very pleased.  At last, someone has listened to me and acted on my problem.  I had been grumping to myself about this, but they’ve regained their brownie points with me.

Then, after sorting myself out in the room,  I walked up to the Albert Street night market.  I was ambling along looking at the restaurants when I heard someone insistently asking me if I was from some cruise ship (insert name here – can’t remember).  I said no, but they seemed to want to talk and it transpired that they were on a cruise and thought they recognised me from their ship.

Anyway, I joined them for dinner, so that was nice.  John and Carol from near Dover in the UK.  He used to be an Operations Technician at one of the Dungeness nuclear power stations. Retired now, of course.

My meal was bloody awful.  My spring roll was good, but the salt and pepper squid was just squid rings deep fried to death in a sweet batter on a few limp lettuce leaves.  Awful, chewy, boring.  To me, salt and pepper squid is big chunks of diamond scored squid, dusted with salt, pepper and flour, then very quickly shallow fried so as to remain tender, no more than 30 seconds or so.  Served on a bed of crispy rice vermicelli. Even I can do that.  This was terrible stuff.

Two big Tigers dulled the disappointment somewhat.  The bill came to S$30.07, and I handed him a $50 note.  I would have given him the 7c, but he took off too quickly. I thought he’d bring me a $20 note as change, but no, I got $19.95.  What a weird …

Dead tired at 1030pm, but the music on these new headphones is great.

Another boat, but heading north.

Must have been a boring day because I can’t recall anything specific, but for two things.

They rigged these at port and starboard stern quarters –

I’ve heard about these. They are high intensity sound generators, designed to ward off pirates by projecting an intense beam of low frequency sound at any boats alongside.  They are designed to be non-lethal but very unpleasant.  Why not?  There were also high pressure water hoses rigged at several places along each side.

Then this:

© PJ Croft 2014

© PJ Croft 2014

Nice, huh?

Another good sleep.  I awoke at 0530 and dozed until 0630.  Two laps of Promenade deck, equalling about 1Km.

I saw a crewman carrying a small rubber mallet.  I wondered if he was detailed to testing passengers’ reflexes in case any were dead.

Grey day, not much to see. A few boats and a big tanker heading south in the morning.  Slept 0930 to 1100. Had a very nice drink at 1pm – ginger beer and lime juice.  Must remember this.

I ate too much lunch at 2pm – cold meat and salad.  Why is fruit juice unavailable after 1145am?  Rigid rules on this ship.

My Olympus battery ran down, so I charged it using the Hahnel Unipal universal charger. This is a good device. It worked fine.  Coffee in the Piano Bar.  I wondered if they’d try to exclude me after 5pm?  Should I try?  I didn’t.

I gave Reception the copies I’d made of my old 1977 Arcadia ship’s cruise log and menu and they seemed pleased.  They asked me to write an accompanying note, then they put it all in an envelope to give to the captain and cruise director.  Did I hear anything from them? Nope.

5:15pm  drinkies. Glorious sunset – and I got it all on “film”.

After dinner I made a 5 min  slideshow.