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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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The lectures raise a lot of interesting issues.  For example in Lecture 1, dealing with pre-history, it is convincingly argued that 'The Secret', promoted by Oprah, is not a secret at all, but is the natural primitive human belief position: that it is fundamentally an appeal to magic; the primitive 'default' position. 

But magic is suppressed by both religion and science.  So in our modern secular culture traditional magic has itself been transmogrified, magically transformed, into mysticism.

Read more: Science, Magic and Religion

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