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At sea on our way to Thailand.

 

Sailing into the Gulf of Thailand

 

 

At sea
There is a navigation option on the TV in the room - like on an aircraft - that displays the route and gives latitude and longitude 
but Google Maps is (graphically) more informative.

 

There's seldom a dull moment on the ship for those who like to be entertained, be beautified, exercise or gamble.

Or, if you don't care about skin cancer, you could join the hundreds, many getting horribly sun-burnt, out on the upper deck.  One can also sit in a bar - with the semi-permanent inhabitants - but some can get a bit rowdy.

Alternatively, there are pleasantly quiet places, to read or to play games.

 

Mid-ships atrium and treeThe library is behind the (real) tree - a nice place to sit and read.
The games room is below it - Mahjong anybody?

 

The stateroom balcony

Of course there is always the 'stateroom' balcony - very pleasant - with the ocean swishing by

 

We like the trivia competitions. Yet, against teams of 8 or 9, we generally fall short, unless we join with a quiz grandmaster (rain man/woman), as happened occasionally on previous cruises.

It's seldom ignominious, except for sport (don't even bother) and that music quiz that featured Disney tunes and their matching animated movie and performer. I think we got 'Frozen' and 'Snow White', but who sang them?   And what were all those others? Where does one hear this muzak?  Obviously parents and grandparents get exposed to animated movies but how do they remember the music; or who sang the song?  Yet one of the LBGTQIA+ group, aced it!  Grandchildren??

 

The ship's full-time musicians and singers provide backing to guest entertainers.
There is a new guest performance in the theatre every night, repeated once the same night.
This guy could do a very plausible 
Roy Orbison, as well several others of that vintage.
But he moved a bit too much to be the real Roy.

 

 

 

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Travel

Bali

 

 

 

 

 

At the end of February 2016 Wendy and I took a package deal to visit Bali.  These days almost everyone knows that Bali is a smallish island off the east tip of Java in the Southern Indonesian archipelago, just south of the equator.  Longitudinally it's just to the west of Perth, not a huge distance from Darwin.  The whole Island chain is highly actively volcanic with regular eruptions that quite frequently disrupt air traffic. Bali is well watered, volcanic, fertile and very warm year round, with seasons defined by the amount of rain.

Read more: Bali

Fiction, Recollections & News

Recollections of 1963

 

 

 

A Pivotal Year

 

1963 was a pivotal year for me.  It was the year I completed High School and matriculated to University;  the year Bob Dylan became big in my life; and Beatlemania began; the year JFK was assassinated. 

The year had started with a mystery the Bogle-Chandler deaths in Lane Cove National Park in Sydney that confounded Australia. Then came Buddhist immolations and a CIA supported coup and regime change in South Vietnam that was both the beginning and the begining of the end for the US effort there. 

Suddenly the Great Train Robbery in Britain was headline news there and in Australia. One of the ringleaders, Ronnie Biggs was subsequently found in Australia but stayed one step of the authorities for many years.

The 'Space Race' was well underway with the USSR still holding their lead by putting Cosmonaut, Valentina Tereshkova into orbit for almost three days and returning her safely. The US was riven with inter-racial hostility and rioting. But the first nuclear test ban treaties were signed and Vatican 2 made early progress, the reforming Pope John 23 unfortunately dying midyear.

Towards year's end, on the 22nd of November, came the Kennedy assassination, the same day the terminally ill Aldous Huxley elected to put an end to it.

But for sex and scandal that year the Profumo Affair was unrivalled.

Read more: Recollections of 1963

Opinions and Philosophy

Luther - Father of the Modern World?

 

 

 

 

To celebrate or perhaps just to mark 500 years since Martin Luther nailed his '95 theses' to a church door in Wittenberg and set in motion the Protestant Revolution, the Australian Broadcasting Commission has been running a number of programs discussing the legacy of this complex man featuring leading thinkers and historians in the field. 

Much of the ABC debate has centred on Luther's impact on the modern world.  Was he responsible for today? Without him, might the world still be stuck in the 'Middle Ages' with each generation doing more or less what the previous one did, largely within the same medieval social structures?  In that case could those inhabitants of an alternative 21st century, obviously not us, as we would never have been born, still live in a world of less than a billion people, most of them working the land as their great grandparents had done, protected and governed by an hereditary aristocracy, their mundane lives punctuated only by variations in the weather; holy days; and occasional wars between those princes?

Read more: Luther - Father of the Modern World?

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