Today we're sailing. North. Not quite the same as yesterday...
The sea is a bit rougher, morning lectures and videos don't happen, too much chance of someone falling over. We are encouraged to stay in the bar or our cabins. Though speaking of falling over: the bar only serves alcohol for an hour or two before each dinner.
I spend five or ten minutes on the poop deck. It's cold -- but has been colder. The temperature may have reached double digits. The sun shines. A woman is reading her smart phone on deck six. A man is just sitting, sheltered from the wind, enjoying sunshine on deck seven.
Deb watches the 1933 movie of Little Women. It's one of six movies on the tablet, the first we've watched. (I watched half an animated movie, Bling. That one starts with the message that ostentatious wealth is good, after that it's a standard cartoon.) I loaded Little Women because Deb had listened to the book. Deb says the movie is much the same, perhaps a little less cloyingly (my word) sweet.
The afternoon sea is a bit smoother. With occasional extra rocking and rolling. Deb is at a video, something about ice. Five minutes on deck is enough for me. There's a woman, rugged up, listening to her music on deck six. There's a man listening to a book on deck seven, not so comfortable since the sun went behind a cloud.
This afternoon we return our cold weather jackets. We are definitely out of Antarctica.
Something else may happen. [Something else did happen. It's towards the end of this post.]
I'll fill in with a few items that I may have missed. Time is such a universal constant that you may as well assume that any action happened today. Or tomorrow. Or... perhaps I should stop reading Terminator and Philosophy...
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I lent the Terminator book to a fellow passenger. He, of course, enjoyed it, it's a great book :-) I read just a couple of articles at a time. Now the book is returned and I'm ready to read a couple more.
Another passenger has been studying philosophy for a couple of years. He's interested in the physics stuff, I'm more interested in the social stuff. He did provide a good bit of philosophy. It seems that there are two -- alternative -- views of physics (by which I mean the hard side of science). (1) It explains reality. (2) It provides a model to predict reality. I like 2, it allows application despite uncertainty.
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When we arrived on board there were two "personal" mugs in our cabin. All tea and coffee on board is in ?machined aluminium? mugs. These two had the Heritage logo engraved on them. Well, they soon disappeared back into the ship's supply. But we grabbed two more and put them away. Now we grab a new mug each time...
And each day I have to bring maybe a dozen empty mugs back from our cabin. I'm sure we don't drink that much ! I suspect that the mugs are multiplying... I wonder what the two in our suitcase are doing.
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The ship historian, David, lost his day's update to the expedition log. His laptop fell off his desk and the open document "disappeared". He asked me to help. I think he had been pointed at Griff, who was sitting next to me. Aahh, we have both worked with computers so we are both experts :-)
As far as I could tell, the open document was empty and there were no autosave copies. I can sort of guess at a cause but could not help recover anything. He had to retype the morning's work. It's okay, he called me Griff, I didn't correct him, so it's not *me* to blame...
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Speaking of computers... and other technology. We have an Apple Mac laptop, an Android tablet and two smart phones. Each has its own purpose.
My phone is for calls in transit, ie when we have any phone connectivity. Our "emergency" phone with a lot of stored phone numbers. Three weeks into the trip I decided that it could also tell me the time, so I recharged it. It's dead.
Deb's phone is for Deb to listen to audio books. She makes even less phone calls than me. On this trip Deb listens to a book while knitting. She also has a few photos of cat and grandson, for the occasional Oooohh and Aaaahh. I suspect the cat gets less attention than in the past... pre grandson.
Our tablet has half a dozen movies on it. Plus forty or so ebooks, for me. The tablet is also for this journal and for reviewing books as I read them (another blog). I type the journal as an email, with no formatting beyond paragraph breaks. The next step is to email each post directly to a blog.
This ship offers its own email -- with its own address -- but no internet. So I type a blog post into gmail first. The journal post is then cut & pasted into the ship email system, then sent to the blog. The book reviews just sit on the tablet, waiting for a free connection.
A son provided a Mac, an old one that he has replaced. I copied all my ebooks onto it so that I can read while Deb watches movies on the tablet. The movies are from Google and only run on Android. I also copy photos from our cameras, as backup. And I tried to type the journal on the Mac.
It's very reassuring to have a backup of the photos. And I've looked at some of them on the laptop screen. Which is bigger and better than the camera screen. I've done a tiny bit of work with one group of photos -- more on that later -- but most will wait till we're home. With more familiar organising and edit apps.
I tried to type the journal on the Mac... but it loses "draft" copies ! That would be annoying for the journal, I'd have to type it all and email in one go. (The ship email system also has no "save draft" option. And it tends to time out while I'm still typing.) All of the book reviews (eleven so far) are saved as draft, waiting for the free internet. So... all blogging and emails are done on the tablet.
I considered getting a 30-day free copy of Word for the trip. Glad I didn't. The email approach is tried and true -- therefore simple to use.
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We have two cameras. Deb bought a Panasonic Lumix just a week before we set off. I have the operating manual on the Mac. Deb has learnt a lot, the camera is a success.
I have my Pentax with two lenses. One for most shots, a very standard lens (35 to 50mm?). Another 70 to 300mm (I think). I've used the long lens quite a bit for photos from the ship. I prefer the standard lens for most use: if I can see it, the camera will capture what I can see. Can capture it a bit better, actually, unless I happen to be wearing my distance glasses :-)
Our photos are, "What we saw on holidays". Memories rather than technical marvels. Good memories :-)
I've collected a photo of each passenger and each Heritage person. My "photo edit" efforts have been to rename each photo with the person's name. And occasionally to rotate the photo. They are of very mixed quality but I can now "remember" people's names. If given time to get back to look at the photos...
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Finally (possibly) we have the GPS. The annoying "Tracker". Which may or may not be working. I think I now know which pattern of lights means that it claims to be working. I occasionally take it up to the poop deck, or shift it round in the cabin, to get it started again. But it still won't tell me where we are -- not till we get an internet connection.
Next time... I will bring a real GPS. Our Garmin would also settle the early debate on the ship, about the time of sunset and sunrise. Those times are just two of the built-in functions.
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A lot of the above is for my own learning: what worked, what didn't. Especially, what to bring on future trips. It may help other people... If not, don't worry. Tomorrow (or the next day?) we should be the next island. There should be *expedition* stuff to write about :-)
Oh, and Happy Hakiwaki Day ! (I hope this is not read by a sensitive Kiwi. I keep forgetting the correct name.) It's the NZ national day. Our menus have a vague NZ theme. Dessert tonight, for example, will be "NZ meringue". I bet it looks like pavlova but there are too many Aussies on board to claim the name.
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Deb has just headed off to a talk on the Antarctic treaty and politics. We've sailed into light rain and gloomy skies. There's a storm in the area but we should reach the shelter of Campbell Island before if gets too rough. If anything more exciting happens today -- I'll be back.
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Oh, did I mention yesterday that we had to re-do the fix to the sunrise/sunset window? The fix fell apart. Doesn't matter, the nights are getting longer. We also had a banging next to the bed. Just now and then. A loud banging, like a door slamming. No idea what it's from. Doesn't matter, we slept despite the noise.
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Ten to seven. We're playing cards before dinner. There's an announcement of a NZ Day ... thingy... in the bar. We go to the bar.
It's a Maori speech night interspersed with translations and songs. I think the songs are part of the speech night. Some information on the Treaty. Singing of the NZ national anthem. It's about as bad as ours but half in English, half in Maori. It's all interesting. (No, not the anthem. The whole thingy thing.)
There's a brief briefing on tomorrow at Campbell Island. Key points are, breakfast at 7am, briefing a bit later. (Deb remembers the time.)
Then we go to dinner with a New Zealand theme. Green-lipped mussels in spaghetti. NZ lamb or Stuart Island salmon. NZ meringue. It did indeed look a lot like a proper Aussie pav. Best meal for a while :-)
So. Time to rest. Big day tomorrow.
(For a day with nothing happening, I sure did write a lot.)
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