Thursday, May 10th, 2012: At Sea between Hawaii and San Francisco
Bob: At the penultimate rehearsal of the Pop Choir, I was singing very pianissimo so as to save my poor, abused vocal cords, which still felt tender. Although due to necessity, that may have been a good thing because it forced me to listen, really listen, to exactly what the other singers in the tenor section were doing. Our section of tenors was rather thin, down to about six by that point, and unfortunately quite often there seemed to be disagreement about exactly what notes we should be singing. In particular, when we were singing the harmony line, most of the tenors seemed to want to cross over and sing the melody line with the basses and altos. But I found that we were typically singing the same harmony line as the sopranos (of whom we had a huge and very vocal mass), only an octave lower. So the tactic that worked for me in the end was to kind of key my ears to listen to what the sopranos were doing and just sing an octave lower than that to keep myself on track. [Sheet music would have been such a godsend!] |
Monika: After lunch we met our tablemates in the Razzmatazz, where the cruise staff was helping with some circus skills. In particular, they were practicing spinning a plate on top of a stick. When we came, we were impressed by Roya and Alex who seemed to be quite good at it. Of course, Bob had to try and after some practice, he two was spinning his plate around and around. I enjoyed taking pictures, while Judy and Ian watched. |
Bob:
The Special Interest lecture for the day by Paul Eschenfelder was on Charles Lindbergh and Beryl Markham, two pioneering aviators with remarkably dissimilar backgrounds and, I would say, very different approaches to making record-setting flights. Lindbergh came from a middle-class Midwestern US family and meticulously planned and carried out all of his record-setting flights. His marriage to Anne Morrow was stable and relatively normal aside from teaching her to fly and taking her on some of his later journeys.
In contrast, Markham grew up as the privileged daughter of an English plantation owner in Kenya. But her mother left early on to return to England, so the daughter was raised by the Masai housekeepers more or less as a boy and she had no role models for a good marriage. Her father callously married her off at 15 or so to cancel some of his debts, and that marriage as well as subsequent ones were troubled and short-lived.
Markham was a good pilot and courageous beyond a doubt, but apparently on her east-to-west crossing of the Atlantic she had not familiarized herself with the complex switching of gas tanks necessary for such a long flight and almost went down due to fuel starvation. Still, she made it, but did not get any of the endorsements and other financial benefits that Lindbergh had until Hollywood turned her story into a movie 35 years later! It was a curious story of two contrasting pilots, to be sure.
Bob: The evening intertainment was a Crew Show that had some quite nice solo performances and then ended with a traditional bit of Tomfoolery that I have only seen on cruise ships, and probably for a very good reason! The crew staff mugged a set of performances about alternate careers they might have had ashore. The tag line for introducing each new profession was, "If I were not upon the sea, a _______ _____ I would be." The whole thing is really a slapstick skit, but when done with panache by crew members hamming it up, it can be quite funny. |
Monika: At dinner, we had the parade of the chefs, and all the undercooks also came and could get a well deserved round of applause for all the great meals we have had. Evening entertainment was the always popular Crew Show. Before the show, balloons were batted back and forth all over the audience. Great fun. The show itself featured some really good singing and dancing. It is always a pleasure to see and hear some of the amateurs who don't often get to perform in front of an audience. The last number was the even more popular "If I didn't go to sea, a " ... " I would be", where the cruise staff imagines themselves doing completely different jobs. As the final crowning moment, our cruise director entered as a ballerina. Ok, you had to be there. |
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