Life on the ocean wave
We’ve been at sea today and thanks to the laundry services back in Lake Worth, I didn’t have a date with a washing machine!
We were sailing south east, just off the coast of Cuba this morning, and are making our way towards Willemstad, Curacao. The weather’s been fairly sunny, though a chilly breeze has kept things cool.
We spent most of the day in the theatre, listening to some interesting lectures. This cruise is associated with the Artful Travelers program and so we have several accomplished journalists and broadcasters on board who are offering a wide range of talks. Today, we heard Paula Apsell, the director and producer of NOVA, a television science series inspired by the BBC’s Horizon. Though her talk was interesting, I just can’t let go of work and couldn’t help but make observation performance notes! I found it surprising that someone working in a visual medium hadn’t embedded her video clips into a presentation program and that after each one, the whole theatre viewed her personal homepage whilst she navigated to the next clip. Even if she didn’t have the time or the ability to do it herself, surely she had someone in her team who could have done it for her? The tutors I work with are able to do it, for sure!
But I really can’t criticise the next speaker, Terry Breen, who is a long standing and very popular speaker on these long voyages. A Cultural Anthropologist, she specialises in telling stories about people and places and her ability to speak coherently without notes for an hour about Cartagena, our first “real” port of call, was very impressive indeed.
After a light lunch, we heard Dan Balz, Chief Correspondent of the Washington Post speak about the American Election of 2012 and he offered a fascinating insight into the back story of the events surrounding it. What impressed us most was his ability to be completely non-partisan throughout: We left the theatre without a clue to his own, personal politics and for that alone, he deserves every credit.
An interesting day, then, if not the best for taking photographs!
We’ve just returned to our beautiful suite to relax a little before getting ready for dinner and Zahid, our delightful butler has just brought us a plate of enormous prawns and cocktail sauce. Did I say how well we are taken care of here? With a glass of cold sauvignon blanc straight from the fridge, we are watching the sun go down.
Oh, and I nearly forgot, we went to Trivia this afternoon ;-)
