Any comments or questions about this site, please contact Bob Zolnerzak at

bobzolnerzak @verizon.net

 

 

 

New Zealand/Hawaii

THURSDAY, 2/26/04: Back from getting my refill of Pravachol which I'd somehow neglected to get, and finding that Radio Shack didn't have my videocorder battery, but maybe they'll be able to order it if I give them the model number of the machine that uses it. Call Ken and the car is THERE already! I'm already panicked in packing, but everything's on the table or on the list and I manage to get almost everything into the bags, including weighing them, when the car calls that it's HERE (not ten minutes before, as I'd requested TWICE) at 11:20. Down at 11:27 and quickly to airport at noon, charged $5 for WAITING FOR ME (and I intend to get credit BACK). Check in and frequent flier card and get belt-searched when I can't take it off because it'll take me too long to wind it back into the loops with its age-flaking leather. Lunch at "7th Avenue Deli," when Ken originally wanted to go into the bar for a beer, but I find him a Cuban sandwich for $8 rather than the $10 from the bar, and he says his is good, and my tuna salad on black bread is so enormous that I put part of it in my bag. Got a lemonade for the bottle, but later get water on the plane which is a smaller, better size. 12:30-1 for lunch, then to gate 10, Ken CONTINUES his data-assault about the plans he's made for the ENTIRE trip, with step-by-step problems, and I finish today's Times and pee at 1:30. Board 1:44, "Light load." 5:31 minute flight. Off at 2:24, into cloud at 2:35, but then it clears over a snowy range of Appalachians, marvelously symmetric from plane-bottom to horizon, going to square farms, then as we get farther west (I never see the Mississippi) the farms become larger, then spread out, interspersed with desertified areas, and then there are more clouds over small mountains, and I shit at 4:24 in a patch of clouds. Don't bother to watch "Master and Commander" on the plane, nor do I on the NEXT plane. It gets more hilly at 5:24, 3 hours out, though I'm tiring of the flight: the guy next to me reads some kind of physical therapy manual and Ken chats with the girl in the seats in front of us. At 6PM there are SNOW peaks, followed by a GREAT expanse of Los Angeles. Land at 7:51, getting dark. Off at 8PM, and to Qantas at 8:30. Wait. Puzzles and read. Some CUTE guys around, none of them going on our cruise, of course, and lots of TERRIBLY old couples who WILL be with us, including the IMPOSSIBLY old fart who sat on the aisle (thank goodness there was no one in the seat between, so at least I could put my overloaded A&K bag (ridiculous ruling that you can't have more than 7kg in carry-on (mine was 6.5, so I couldn't take anything like the 2.5kg Ken was OVER) but giving him ANOTHER BAG into which to put his overage---and then made him promise not to put ANYTHING more into the bag: "No duty free, no books, nothing." Board at 11:30 and pee in the john and wash my face, which is a great relief. Flight is called at TWELVE hours, much better than 132. I note down that Auckland IS 16 hours ahead, but it's really EIGHTEEN, since just after midnight I switch to 6PM, all on a Friday, which of course is a switch of 18 hours. And there's a finicky, screaming in frustration, Mother not doing ANYTHING to quiet him, baby across the aisle.

FRIDAY, 2/27/04: Only by my switching my watch prematurely to Auckland time is this "completely lost" day in any way recovered. We taxi ponderously, the 747 having OVER 70 rows, most of them full, and I later go upstairs to see the four-across of first class fairly full too, and take off at 6:05, agonizedly slow, and then we're immediately over the ocean and the lights of land disappear quickly. The fasten-seat-belt sign goes off in about ten minutes, when we've not even gained final altitude, and when the announcements are over I find that I can play GAMES, and try solitaire to 7:30 and then Tetris and something called Double Dinner, or close to that, which was a "Concentration"-type "match the items of food" game that I progressed to the level of having to find THREE items that were the same in five rows of 6 or 7, which was really a bit much for me. Finished the tuna while waiting and still felt hungry, so I had two glasses of bubbly and waited for the dinner at 9PM of decent chicken and interesting vegetables that included lentils and corn, and rice which I left much of---oh, forgot that they DID serve lunch on the Los Angeles plane (for which Ken apologized, as if he were RESPONSIBLE for telling me what meals they had on the plane), and I said "No entree" and the steward said, "Oh, only the setup," and so I had a salad, and tomatoes and mozzarella, and a lovely piece of carrot cake, which was just about as much as I wanted. But when I started playing games afer I finished dinner, the plane was BOUNCING so much that I started to get concerned and stopped playing, just sat, and then when it quieted down pushed past the old geezer and peed and took my dinner, evening, and one Ambien at 9:12PM. Lights go out JUST as I come back from the john, and I put on the facemask and cuddle the seat-back around my neck and try Actualism, but it really doesn't work, but finally I DO drop off to sleep. Wake at 11:54, how lousy at only 2:42 for a sleeping pill, and take another Ambien.

SATURDAY, 2/28/04: Note at 12:07AM: STARRY smooth ride HALFWAY, looking at the map screen to just cross the equator and international dateline. Wake at 1:55, sleeping another 1:45, plus 2:42 a total of 4:27 with two pills! Four hours to go. Pee at 3:50, 2:20 to go. Breakfast at 4:44AM, take AM pills at 5AM, NO SIGN of dawn. Flight smooth, blessedly, lately. Get up and walk around to look at people, but not much to see. At 5:25 there's a PALE light line on the left-rear horizon. Auckland must be at WEST end of time-zone. No SIGN of sun at 6AM. They RARELY have seat-belt sign on, we go down VERY low, about 10 minutes before landing, when it finally goes on, though it's been a bit bumpy on the way down. Land at 6:21, NO sight of land before some scattered landing light below and then the greeting of " UCKLAND" from the airport. Raining hard, though not very cold. Through the baggage-claim area and lots of shops before we show our passports, but that's quickly done by 6:53. To bus at 7:08, carrying our own bags, and we're in the first bus to take off in the gray and rainy morning, bus goes from 7:25-7:55, nice suburbs with old, new, modern, awful, shops, industry all mixed in. Pleasant bus driver taking lousy questions from the people in the first rows, and we're in the second row. To hotel at 8:02, get told there are NO rooms ready, sign up for a 10AM city tour, and get back for me to have two lovely cups of tea with brown sugar and lots of milk, and finally cookies come of whch I take two of each of 3 and Ken has the NERVE to say he'll get his OWN, so he takes ONE of my 6, but I sure don't have the drive for breakfast that he has. Get told we can check much of our hand-luggage with the concierge, and Ken blessedly has a Balducci's for his wanna-take and has the red plastic bag from the Qantas "not-over-7kg" woman, into which I put ALL my stuff except for the cameras and a few maps, and persuade him NOT to eat in the hotel coffee shop but that we'll SURELY find something at the waterfront, which they say is only a 20-minute walk straight down the street, but sadly it's raining QUITE hard, and though Ken says that Hobson Street IS the one of two marked (aside from Queen Street) as a tourist-walking street, it's not at ALL interesting, and there's no easy way around many intersections (though the press-to-walk and VERY quickly changing-back-to-red green pedestrian crossings are VERY effective) and we get down to Quay (pronounced "key") Street to find NOTHING appealing, and the wind blowing VERY hard, and we're SOAKED, so we're back up the stairs to the highway and he doesn't want to stop in a few on-the-way-back places, but I rather INSIST we stop at Rebo, on the street-level at Sky City where his former seatmate was staying on his way to a self-guided-without-ANY-prior-studying trip through New Zealand and Australia, and glance quickly at the menu at 9:07, fearing it may take too long to PREPARE our omelets (bacon for me, mushroom and onion for him) that we won't have time to eat them, but the setting is fun, the transparent escalator amusing, people on many upper levels fun to watch, and we get GOOD omelets (he ends up THANKING me for forcing him inside) and pay $28 to the sweet young smiling waiter, trusting Ken's Insight Pocket Guide which insists there's NO tipping in NZ. Get back to the hotel at 9:50, having taken Roll 1: #1 and 2 in Sky City, #3 of Sky City in the rain, #4 of the Carlton Hotel atrium, and everyone's clustered on the sidewalk outside at 9:58AM for the bus with the VERY personable driver with FUNNY stories "No I don't have a record, do I still need one to get into Australia," and others, and the city is REALLY GREAT, though we can't see MUCH of it in the driving rain and accompanying fog, but pass all the piers and ferry-slips, see where our Discovery will be on Monday, pass Parnell, and across Tamaki Drive to Mission Bay, lovely ocean views across to old volcano-peaks in the bay, last one only 700 years ago, and past lots of tourist places (Antarctica, aquaria, and boat docks), lots of history and stories, Lord of Auckland, Lord of Eden for some, and stop past the Auckland Museum in the Auckland Domain, then to the MARVELOUS Winter Gardens with beautiful begonias, fuschias, datura with double and triple and QUADRUPLE blooms, cannas, aromatic petunias, enormous pitcher plants, fabulous orchids, some totally new, wonderful plantings and colors and even a few helpful tourists! Really love it, taking #5, 6, and 7 there, one of Ken outside at the lotus pond, and we pass the Duck Pond surrounded with ducks on the way up Mount Eden, wonderfully steep, great road, taking a picture in the BLOWING wind and rain of the metal table that says where all the major cities are from there, and MAYBE get the city in one shot and the Monument that took the place of "One-Tree Hill" that a political activist chopped down four years ago to make it "No-Tree-Hill," and back to read the sign to find we'd missed the fernery! To the hotel about 12:35 and find we have room 605 at 12:45, getting our checked stuff and our regular bags from their array in the open lobby-front, safe under their eyes, and Ken checks our dinner reservations while I unpack. He talks about choices, not wanting a Menu Degustation, giving ENDLESS reasons why, the most convincing being that the lamb shank is world-famous and it's NOT on the Degustation Menu. I start this just briefly, but told Ken that "I was ready when he was," and suddenly he started putting on his JACKET, and I had to put on my shoes and socks and pee and drink water and get MY stuff together, but we leave for the Art Museum at 1:53, AGAIN seeming to get lost, but through the BLINDING and BLOWING rain we're wet AGAIN, and get to the Museum to pay $7 (Ken) and $5 (me) with my credit card and get onto a guided tour with a cutie and his larger friend, seeing Maori paintings and getting an interesting JOIN of a Maori who let me hold his greenstone to "feel the texture." Get pictures of the quasi-Leonardo, and one of Lindauer's tattooed ladies, and then across to the new museum for a PRETTY erection in "Playing Tag" in a basement and in Buchenwald! AND a marvelous paint-scraping that I took #12 picture of. Back, having SIGHTED the Carlton across from the Aotea Center, havng FOUND Ken's "March Cuisine," but not his poster of four near-naked hotties, and back to hotel at 4:30 for Ken to fuss around confirming tonight's reservation at Vinny's and making tomorrow's reservation at Gault at George, or George's, depending on who you listen to, and I catch up with this by 5:46, just in time to dress for dinner. Ken INSISTS on reading the paper until EXACTLY 6:05, while I sit, jacketed, and twiddle (figuratively) my thumbs. Then we're down for the worst blow of the day (in fact, I asked the first taxi driver, Indian, if this were the worst day, and he said it was the worst day this year), and a taxi was sitting there that neither Ken nor the concierge had the wit to ask if it was available---until it moved off, empty, down the driveway. So the concierge called another cab, I talked Ken out of taking one of the hotel's huge umbrellas to take us to Vinny's, and a taxi came and took us there for $8 and change, and Ken actually put up his umbrella to walk the 8 feet under the protection of THEIR marquee, which threatened to blow away during our dinner, so they went out to retrieve the side-awning, which banged against the window with large effect. I agreed that the Degustation Menu didn't look that great---particularly for the price, and we got there about 6:15, literally opening it, and the great waitress said that the golden onyx bar-top may have been manufactured only five years ago. We sat at a perfect corner table so that I could watch the wind makng hash of the potted plants and the cloth awning, while not budging the solid underpinning of the marquee. The last appetizer was dates with mozarrella and prosciuto (bacon, really) and I fell in love with it, and then had the lamb shanks per Ken's bidding, and then he did have the fennel, argia, and (some particular name) crab soup, QUITE good with my spoon, and the dates were SO big that three were almost too much. Then my shank was tasty with an intense sauce, and the Ma Mere (or something) Road Riesling was good but not great, and I ordered a glass of merlot (gutsy, ready to stand up to the shank, per the charming wairess) and he a glass of pinot (which I thought paled in comparison) for his loinlet, or shortlet, of lamb, and I had the Turkish delight with some Sferre Frizzate for dessert, while he had the coconut creme brulée, with wonderful roasted coconut slivers. The whole bill came to $209 and she called us a cab which was $14.20 at night, and we got back at 8:43, when Ken quickly undressed and re-took up the paper, and I caught up with this until about 9 and then went into the shower to postpone deliciously getting to sleep for the first good night into the trip. Though I did NOT expect the tears and choking voice to come from Ken when his discription of a personality disorder of finding constant complaint I remarked reminded me of Jay, and confessed he feared it might be some microbe in his brain from the HIV infection he had, and I quickly said I hadn't realized AT ALL that this would lead where it did, or I wouldn't have done it for the world. It quickly passed, as did our bizarre discussion of WHY I though schizophrenia might be a choice, and HE oddly laid it to my malnurturing MOTHER, which I urged him to talk about, but he seemed merely to think she must have been neurotic and took it out on me, and we went onto more conversation about the wonderful food and the quality of the young people who loitered beneath the marquee to talk to each other or to someone else on their cell phone, one cutie baring a hair-outlined curve between his navel and his belt-line when he curved backward in some contentment to the phone call held to his ear. Back feeling VERY good, not really tired, but I finish this and get to my shower. Shower WONDERFULLY until 9:29PM, Ken agitating to go to bed, me still thinking it's too EARLY. We finally agree (along with an open bathroom door for THAT light) that he put in earplugs and on eyeshades and I sit in a chair in the hallway with only THAT light on, with a closet-door tilted to minimize the light into the bedroom. I read New Yorker and get to bed about 10:25PM, after getting up to take an evening's whole melitonin. Wake at 11:58PM, depressingly, and THINK I don't go back to sleep quickly, but when I decide to get up to transcribe the dream, it's 2:01AM, so I MAY have misread 1:58 as 11:58, but then I was SURELY awake, thinking and coping with a SEVERE heartburn for more than 20 minutes, so maybe I DID fall back to sleep for the dream.

SUNDAY, 2/29/04: Dream recorded at 2:15AM: I'm sitting in a room in the White House with shitty little Bush, with two gunmen on either side of him ready to kill me but I'm hoping to talk them out of it, secretly hoping to turn the gunmen against HIM and spare ME, by saying that SURELY someone will know that this is the last place I was, and SOMEONE will tell the truth, but he's sure that he has ABSOLUTE power and NO one will accuse him of being a liar, and I plead more and more convincingly until I'm QUITE sure that I've turned HIS accomplices into MINE, but I wake, as I said, with SEVERE heartburn that seems to be TIMED in a dream-like way: but it must have been in ANOTHER dream that I'm setting up the taping of a TV series and it'll say at the start of the program: tonight the program will be aired on Channel X, where X is NOT the channel that I'm on, and it's different EVERY night, and I surmise it's to PREVENT anyone from setting up a KNOWN schedule, "for a week," say, that will make recording it easy: you have to WATCH IT EVERY NIGHT to make sure you see all of it. Just as my heartburn seemed to be "in place A, but when that's cleared up, I have to turn on the other side and ease it in place B, and, even after that, turn and ease it in place C. But maybe I'm just "hallucinating" everything because of fatigue, and I sit on the john and fart smellily and pee and type this to 2:22AM, STILL in discomfort from an unburped burp in the middle of my chest. Maybe put the Rolaids out? 3:43AM I turn my card over to write the dream on the back so I won't forget it: I flush a toilet just as my A&K bag falls into it, and I gasp and stick my hand down the narrow pipe to retrieve first my old camera's Macro Zoom lens, then my new camera, wet but seemingly still operable in its wet case like the OLD camera, and this cycle happens two or three times. Then, or maybe later, is a fragment where someone operating a VCR tells me that there's a way of arranging it so that Channels 1 to 9 will operate actual channels 0 to 8 for some hard-to-understand technical good reason. Then at 5:08 on a Carlton sheet I note my dream of a lunch with Art Bauman and his BOSS, somewhat like Bob What-Was-His-Last-Name--Conkey or Husky or Malkin? And debate how the boss would accept my joke about "Not teaching old dogs new tricks" without being incensed with being called old. At a later time I dream about jerking off blissfully by myself, thinking how nice it will be to play with the final voluptuousness, and wake to find myself HARD, which is a nice change from the ordinary, thinking maybe GETTING HERE released my mind to more pleasant channels. Lay awake, debating getting up, and get up at 6:35, having thought about how WONDERFUL it will be to finish my web-site with each DIARY-page as one page, in order on one CD if I wish, and later to scan in all the Scientific American articles so I can access THOSE, with all the images of my videotapes, both me-made and me-recorded-to-save and porno, ALL in one hypercube of storage with billions of bytes, the model for "LifeCubes" of this type. Look out the window to see it still dark, but NO wind and NO rain! Open the door to check the atrium-light and find the Sunday paper. Finish this at 6:51, Ken snoring away at last sound, and will get yesterday's paper to go through that first. Look at Ken's good "Goldie" book to 7:03. Take 1/3 melitonin at 7:05. Ken's up at 7:36 and shaving. It's light out: sunrise at 7AM and sunset at 8PM in Auckland. Saturday papers to 7:36 and Sunday papers to 7:50 when we go down to breakfast where I have the Continental and "steal" two glasses of apple juice, two croissants, and a sweet roll for his Spanish omelet, and the sweet waitress substitutes hot chocolate for coffee or tea for me. Up and finish the paper and do puzzles to 9:50 when we walk to the Auckland Museum in a mizzling rain, getting to the LOUD and JAMMED museum at 10:53, having been to the fernery in the wonderful wet first. Pay $15 for Ken and $11.25 for me for a Maori show that has two fairly unattractive male dancers and one semi-attractive male dancer and one oldie and two smiley young women, with a show (with audience participation, of couse) that goes til 11:35, and then I video a meeting chamber and start through the Pacifica, Fiji, Cook Islands, New Guinea, Vanuatu, Samoa, Tahiti, and even a little of Marquesas and Easter Island, for sensory OVERLOAD, so I go upstairs to biology and geology and to the cafe at 1 to stand in line and Ken joins me and I have a rather filling bacon tortilla with a frozen chocolate milk and a peanut "brownie" that's really a somewhat crumbly cookie, quite filling as Ken had warned me, and then I'm up to the third floor for all the War Memorials and exhibits, including some harrowing Holocaust photos, and a Boer War abecediary, lots of WWI and WWII photos, and then down to floor two for the kiddy's center for ant colonies (but I can't find the queen, after I patiently sit until the nasty little kid who thinks he owns it leaves) and lizards and lobsters and exhibits, and then back to ground floor (taking #15 and 16 of a clearer Auckland from the window, and wearily down to the john to shit a bit for the second time, drink some sorely needed water, and Ken's not where I THOUGHT (though he said 5PM, he said) he said we'd meet at 4:45, and he's in the shop, buying a sweater(!) and postcards and ANOTHER postcard that he WRITES to Jay as I fume on the steps outside, terribly crabby from weariness, and I insist we take a taxi back, even though HE has to pay with HIS NZ money. Back to hotel at 5:06 and check with the Hospitality Desk and find that we're UPGRADED to 4405, a deck lower and with a WINDOW, even though we don't have a baggage slip for the new Bali deck, so we cross off Pacific Deck on our tags and write Bali deck, and Ken does NOT seem to have a Cruise Document, which I thought he had for the two of us, only a Cruise Itinerary which is the same as I have, and we're neither about to give that up as a ticket. Back to the room to type this to 5:45PM. Sky City unfortunately has brunch only on Saturday and Sunday, but that's past now. Ken fusses and says we don't have to leave for another five minutes, so I type this to 6:09PM, tired, but still determined to stay up late AGAIN tonight in hopes of sleeping later. Down for a cab, from a concierge who can't hear Ken, who speaks in an accent that the concierge can't understand easily. To Gault at George's (was always George's, but Gault took over in late 2002 and wanted to make sure everyone knew it was different now, though it's still listed as George's in most books), and get in at 6:25PM to another charming waitress who convinces Ken to try the tasting menu this time, getting bits of everything he wanted to try, $75 for 6 courses, and then adding lots of wine by the glass. The first frothed pea soup with truffles is sensational, the prawns with a choux that "waves" at you is truly a sight (the heat makes the very thin dough curl and uncurl) and tastes good, particularly the honey-soy sauce sprinkled on the bottom of the plate, which I clean with my finger as I did the pea-froth, but the sandwich of tuna is more of a problem than a taste, then there are a few more courses, we start with a great Pinot Blanc, but the wines sort of go downhill as the meal does, and the lamb loin is HUGE and not that great with lots of carrots and potatoes, but the mushrooms are good, as is the dough-covered onion, though I remarked that nothing had garlic! Two desserts that we wouldn't have ordered: a coconut pudding with pineapple granité atop, though the juice is good, and hot fruit (which I love and eat more than Ken) over ice cream and hard and soft meringue, which all turns to mush at the bottom of the bowl anyway. Some cute guys pass on Parnell, but it doesn't seem to be the gay Mecca Ken hoped it would be. Call for a cab after, a talkative SaMOan who charges Ken $10 after I pay $232 on Visa for the meal, and back at 9:10. TRY the puzzle, which is difficult, and I keep nodding off, and decide it's not worth the struggle and join Ken when he goes to bed at 10:05PM, getting to sleep fairly quickly it seems.

MONDAY, 3/1/04: Pee and shit a few small turds at 2:51AM, MUCH better 4:40 sleep for the first try. 6:30 pee and note dream of lying on a bed with RITA (aged about 14) lying next to me, and I'd gotten excited, somehow moving my cock around at the end of a rope, from which I could feel the balls nicely nestled up against the base of my cock, and when I ask her if she could please go into the next room, she sweetly asks, "Can't I stay here and watch you jerk off?" I want to say no, but say "I admire so much your asking directly that I'll say OK," but it never GETS to it, and I doze on and off, probably getting at least 2 hours more sleep, with another dream fragment about watching TV channels in a strange way (I'm probably obsessing about watching the Academy Awards, scheduled for 8PM tonight, when I HOPE we'll be finished with dinner on the ship and ready to sail, weather and scheduling and changes of schedule notwithstanding). Will take a SECOND city tour, thanks to a generous Hospitality Desk man who says he didn't hear me say we'd been on it before, signing us up again, and I note that we're to have the bags out at 10AM, check out by 11AM, check the now-scheduled departure for the City Tour at 12:30, "But which may be delayed," and bring hand luggage since we'll end at the ship. Finish this at 7:15 and check if there's another paper outside our door. Read and read the paper until Ken comes in for the bathroom at 7:46, and it's CLEAR outside! I dress and start to pack. Bit EARLY to have started File 2, I think, so I'd better be BRIEFER. Pack and leave at 8:30, order at Rebo at 8:40, eggs benedict and hot chocolate and orange juice for me that comes at 9:10, breakfast to 9:24, down to the ticket office for $15 and $13.50 for Ken and me and zip to the top with a surprise glass-fronted ascent at 9:29, and GREAT views all around, but no Discovery at the Princess Piers, though Ken says it was due in here DAYS ago, so they don't have to disembark before we board. Take pictures to #23 of a) Carlton Hotel and Mount Eden, b) the Auckland Museum, c) the Auckland Harbor Bridge, d) the boat basin, sold in PERPETUITY and controlled by an anti-extortional-pricing board, and e) comparative heights, with the Eiffel Tower on the right and Toronto and Moscow on the left, with many VOLCANIC peaks on horizons. Leave at 9:45 and get back to hotel to put bags out by 10AM and change watch from Monday March 2 to Monday March 1, but I wonder what that might have PERMANENTLY done to what HAD been accurate month-day counts to date, though not for this leap year. Stop now at 10:07 as Ken goes down to check what current plans might be for our day. Our city tour starts at 1PM now. The puzzle I'm working on doesn't solve. Read New Yorker and feel TIRED. To lunch at 11:55 in empty hotel resturant. GOOD cheese and honey to 12:40, not that great stir-fried pork with sesame noodles. Onto bus at 12:48 and tour starts at 1:04. #24 March Cuisine poster in motion, though Ken ordered three for us on the phone. #25 skyline from bridge at 1:33. Up Mt. Eden to cicada-sounds and photos thru #32. Winter gardens through #35 by 3:12. #36 Cenote picture, April 25 Anzac Day, and Auckland Museum at 3:20. #37 Discovery at 4PM, which I thought was new but our dinner companions said it was built in the 70s and was used as the "Love Boat," which somehow I doubt. Bus leaves us out at gangway at 4, onto ship line at 4:05, and to room 4405 at 4:15 and CHANGES OF PLANS: Ken's ordered Bay of Islands tour cancelled because of tides: no 9AM or 11AM tour, so no tour until 1:30 and we leave at 2. SHIP offers a flying tour and Ken asks, "Why, it's not a helicopter." Ken says, "I won't feel comfortable until I unpack so take notes on Bay of Islands, which I've read about." Talk starts at 5PM, there are 170 passengers from the last cruise, which was stopped from circling New Zealand because of the awful weather, and our couple stayed in bed most of the time! Tour Manager is John Jeung, who you can also watch on cabin TV. Tour desk is on 4, and we make bookings at desk. No time on tickets, read Discovery day-sheet. Meeting place for tours is Carousel Lounge at rear of deck 6. See Purser's desk to register visa for the Passenger Cruise Card which is our credit on the ship. Tenders for the Bay of Islands 8:30-2. Meet ten minutes before announced time. Tuesday predicted to be 59-77º, mostly sunny. I ask about the flight-seeing and he said it wouldn't be possible to combine it with any other tour, so I sign us up for the Glowworm Cave and the Kauri Forest, longest at 4 hours for $55. 6:12PM muster announcement, and we ONLY gather in the lounge and get TOLD we'd then be led to the lifeboats. Go to the free-sitting dinner, having waited in line to get our regular table, number 58, and then awful mixed vegetables and an entree I just CAN'T remember, starting with poor beef consomme, chasing a black and a white woman away from our single table, which Ken thought was terrible, and then to bar for Ken's poor Dark and Stormy and my single tiny Peach Schnapps and then I want to go up to watch deprture, sitting on deck almost alone until toward 10:30 when people come out on deck and on the balconies of the Hilton where we're docked, and wave us away in the chill night air. Bed at 11PM with very little ship motion.

TUESDAY, 3/2/04: Pee at 3:43AM, and again at 5:46, and up at 6:55. Find a two-person table for breakfast 7:15-7:50, poor salmon and cold scrambled eggs and lots of fruit and other stuff. News (of Academy Awards) isn't out until 4PM! To lounge at 8:15 and wait for VERY disorganized happenings (woman doesn't count how many seats left on tender because she obviously wasn't TOLD to; our time-change making tour BO2 leave first didn't get through to Nada (the cruise-director's assistant---appropriate name for how much she knew, usually); announcements didn't get through) and tender goes full with 60 at 8:45 and SLOW to 9:05 dock and sit on bus til 9:26. To Kawiti glowworm cave at 10:01, I get one of few brochures, wait for returns from toilets FAR away, and tour cave 10:20-10:45, some bright spots but mostly small and cramped and unimpressive. Take to #4 to 11:15, leave at 11:26, and try #5-7 of Hundertwasser toilets from moving bus. #8-10(?) in Kauri forest, large and impressive and mostly quiet til 12:29, #11 Kauri's healing sap at 12:35. Leave 12:47, then #13 oldest stone building from 1833 and #14 oldest wooden building from 1822, over rolling hills with finally two wild turkeys in fields rather like Ohio. Back at 1:38, fearing to be late, and OTHER bus arrives at 2PM and tender goes 2:04-2:18, faster, though wavy and some splash on our back seats, and get told that the Lido Deck will stretch lunch for us, so we're up and lunch on awful hamburg with Bransom Pickle to 2:55, and back to puzzle and feel poorly and TIRED, so I take a lie-down at 3:40, then up for a drink at 5:20, Tequila Sunrise, and take Bonine and to dinner at table 55, Virginia couple who find nothing to talk about during our sweetbreads and duck and good peach and OK cherries jubilee made by the bunch by bored waiter nearby. That goes to 7:05 and I'm up to watch sunset to 8PM, Ken phones Vanuatu for restaurant reservation at 8:12, and we're to Scrabble at 8:21, me clobbering him on first game, he getting me when I pass four times trying to put down COQUINA on a full board. Bed at 11:11, tired, having put watch back to 10:11PM as directed today.

WEDNESDAY, 3/3/04: Pee at 5:15, and up at 7:15 to shower for first time on ship, not bad, to 7:35, then up to the Lido Deck for omelet and fruit after signing to accept standard $142.50 tip for the ship for its 19 days of services, at $7.50/day only a waiter's tip on a $50 dinner, so why hassle about it? Sunny at breakfast, heat building up to 79º already, and down to finish this by 9:22, ready to watch "Bend It Like Beckham" at 10AM while Ken goes to "Welcome to Pacific" lecture 9:45-10:45, and I can brush teeth. Ken's got our credit up from $25 to $25 EACH, but demands it be the $100 we got for his registering early. He really does go after things: just as I did when I was younger and fuller of pep. Juliet Stevenson is one of the better things about the movie, though not really a reason to watch it without its being free. Up to lunch at a table for 6 with someone who came from Valparaiso via Robinson Crusoe Island and Pitcairn (where they couldn't land, but the natives came on board en masse to sell them things) and Bora Bora and then they couldn't stop at Rarotonga, how sad! Then to the cabin to do puzzles, then up to the trivia contest, which our team of 6 won (they saw me coming with my crosswords and called us over, but without "cod" and some of the other answers we never would have won. Then to room to dress for meeting the captain after dinner, not very good with so-so Saint Germain and same-same beefloin and bananas "flambee." Then shake the Captain's hand and he gets between us ("Which I never thought I'd do," as he says) for the photo, and then we get a champagne, watch people dancing, then go play a fourth game of Scrabble, he won the first and I the second yesterday evening, I the first this afternoon before 4PM and he the second after the dancing, ending at 10PM and we get down to set the clocks back AGAIN after reserving for 8PM dinner tomorrow in the Yacht Club, free save for the reservations. I stay up doing puzzles until 10:20, then sleep quickly, not much thinking.

THURSDAY, 3/4/04: Pee at 1:30 and 5:30, then up at 7:40, after lots of thinking, primarily about what's still to do in NYC, to shower briefly and get Ken out of bed at 7:55. Cloudy and slightly wavy outside. Breakfast 8:30 with charming opera-lovers from northern Ireland, then back to room for puzzles and start of "Julius Caesar" with Jeremy Sisto, Christopher Walken, Richard Harris, Chris Noth, and many others, but it gets boring so I turn to the first episode of "Six Feet Under" until it repeats, and turn to the climax of "Caesar" at 11:50AM, lasting til 12:15, sea "rough" with 9-15 feet waves, 9,840 feet of water below, with 81º outside, clearing as we go farther north, per loudspeaker at 12:15. Up to lunch with a charming couple from Phoenix who have been all over the world, but he particularly wanted to go to Pitcairn and was very disppointed when he couldn't go onshore. Then we go to the Espiritu Santo talk, nothing very interesting, Ken saying that our tours have it all OVER any of their tours for just about half the price. Then to Scrabble, and I end up winning ALL THREE GAMES today---ha ha ha ha HA! Down to the room with the news at 6:55PM, waiting for our 8PM reservation at the Yacht Club, which the Phoenix couple said was a good place. Oh, we also went to the Trivia contest, tying for first but losing out on the tie-breaker that CHINA has only 17% of the air traffic but 70% of the accidents, for which we said Russia, EXCEPT for the quiet guy who said China but neither Ken or I heard him. KEPT the Scrabble-win sheet! Ken reminds that we take Aralin tomorrow. He talks about our preparations for Port Vila tomorrow and I shit and get dressed and am ready to leave at 7:42PM when HE decides to go to the john for a last time and I can hear the strained farts of a SHIT! Nothing like planning ahead! Haven't done much in this today since nothing much happened: good companions at meals, nothing to look at outside, smooth sailing even though the condition is called "rough," and three winning games of Scrabble for me. So I can be tolerant of Ken on the pot. LOTS of stuff to take tomorrow: suntan lotion, hat, bathing suit, snorkel trio, undershirt, bags to keep things dry. Many tables empty in the Yacht Club when we're seated at 7:50, and service is slow of tofu and scallop, pumpkin soup, lemon sorbet, and his bass and my beef are good, but mousse and gingerbread creme brulée, lumpy, not good. Down at 9:15 to talk about tomorrow's plans, I read New Yorker, and we're to bed about 10:10PM.

FRIDAY, 3/5/04: Pee at 1:10 and 3:57AM, and shit while typing this at 6:05AM. Dream of sorting out boxes and stuff in a crowded bedroom like at 1221 Dietz, but take boxes of things from someplace like the Mattachine office to type (with a strange episode of stepping over tiny plastic buildings of a city-plan that were set out after a dance performance where the four leads got much less applause than I thought fit), and content that a box of envelopes with stamps can be condensed into my collection and my drawers can be organized NOT to be overflowing at LAST. Up at 7:30 after decent Actualism session, thinking lots about getting back to NYC and doing LOTS of things: proofing, indexing, IRS, CD-making, TV and my video processing. Open porthole-covers to BRIGHT eastern sun off waves. Shit's always been yellow and VERY difficult to wipe clean; hope nothing's WRONG inside! Ken's up and in bathroom before me for once. Decide NOT to take dinner-clothes all day in Vanuatu for glass-bottom-boating and museuming. Finish shower at 8AM and Ken goes to make Yacht Club reservations for 3/8. Turns out for the FIRST 3/9. To breakfast starting our own table for 6, with the couple from Ireland, and a couple from Point Something between Los Angeles and San Diego in California, in Orange County, who INSISTED that Tory Island was WEST of (actually, no, the IRISH couple insisted this) St. Kilda, so I beat it to the atlas to see St. Kilda west of Tory Island by a BIT, but much more of Ireland to the west of THAT. The room is being fixed, so I go up on 8 and THROUGH the hallwy with the 8000s on either side, and they're PALATIAL with console TVs, sprays of flowers, dressers and seating areas, and large beds covered with poufs (not those kinds). To the front to be shocked by a LARGE expanse of Vanuatu, lots of smokes from fires floating up to clouds, warm and humid, and back to room to be reminded to bring insect repellent at 9:30, when I finish this. #15 Vanuatu at 10:10AM; #16 2 capsized fishing boats from cyclone Ivy at 10:19. #17 ships in dock at 10:22. To cabin at 10:27, 86º at 10:36. Off at 10:47, bus goes at 10:52, taking most into town, a HORRIBLY demanding lady to the Marriott, then us to the Museum which proves to be CLOSED on Chief's day, March 5. Back to town, having covered most of the main city of 20,000, of Vanuatu's 200,000 in all. Stop in the tourist office for maps, get liquorice ice cream and lunches for $6 to 11:45, then get a cab who'll take us on a tour for $25, going up steep road to Klem's Hill for #18 and 19 at 12:13, lots of tree-remains from last Thursday's 250kph winds for two days, which usually last only 5-6 hours, and then down to falls for $10 each for entrance to climb hill, take off shoes and put on jellies to move to Mele Falls, up and take pictures, back to get shoes and eat lunch, putting on bug screen against malaria-carrying mosquitos, and take #24 of falls on the way down at 1:26. To View Restaurant for a Tank Yu Tomas---midori, malibu, pineapple juice, Cointreau, cream, and ice (Thank You Too Much) and Ken a Maitai and me a Victoria's Product, or whatever beer a VP is, for $20 and a postcard of the semi-naked men Ken hopes to see tomorrow on our private all-day tour of Santo, as everyone notes Espirito Santo. I change to trunks at 2:19, #24 ships sunk at 3:01, and woman-guide finally arrives for glass-bottom boat at 3:22, but it's right downstairs and we're ON boat at 3:29, maybe 10 of us, and we leave at 3:30, lots of yammer by the sexless married shirtless blond guide, and get to diving site at 3:50 and move around it a lot, NOTHING on bottom, and suit up and dive to 5PM, seeing 1) black-top white-streamline under, 2) angelfish in two white stripes on black, 3) golden angelfish, 4) wedge-shaped yellow in back, 5) yellow-with-purple-eye, 6) candy-stripe singleton, 7) white-tails, 8) parrotfish, 9) red-mouths, 10) red-backs, 11) all-black, 12) big distant bass, 13) tiny school of black-and-white, 14) many many more. Back at 5:25, shower, Ken crazy about going fast, out at 5:55 to get cab for $15 each way, get there 6:10, alone over fish, later with bright light and LOTS of action, my good potato-ginger soup, his bouillebasse, my great beef filet (one of their specials) with mushroom sauce, his (coconut CRAB their special) coconut PRAWNS, but sadly poor mango soufflé for him and orange crepes, flaming, for me, tasting off. Back at 8:20, to be met by ship's officer asking "4405?" "How did you KNOW?" "You're last one on." Down to leave stuff off, to top at 8:40 for two lamb chops and a glass of iced tea, then up to Deck 10 to walk around, then to front of Deck 9 to watch Captain lead us out, maybe with mistakes by pilot, and down at 9:30 and Ken goes to bed while I type this and finish at 10PM exactly, tired and ready for bed myself afer I clear away all the mess we wouldn't let Boy (who phoned to make SURE he wasn't wanted) look at until we cleared it up. GOOD DAY, even WITH disappointments. Bed at 10:15, except that I get up to get or do a few things that I absolutely can't remember now.

SATURDAY, 3/6/04: Pee at 5:23, a remarkable first-and-only night pee, and wake at 6:20 to think we might have stopped, then Ken's up at 7AM and I'm up to dress and pack bag and get overview of today's tour and catch up with this at 7:12. Up to deck to watch blue waters and low green islands pass until 7:28, then down to be first into breakfast at 7:30 exact, sitting with two people from Colorado Springs, an obnoxious woman in a brown head-scarf (who couldn't join us on our tour, said Ken blessedly) from Maine, and an Australian. Bacon omelet was huge and long-delayed, pancake, hot chocolate, and chat, returning to room at 8:18AM to find us DOCKED already! Type this to 8:20, ready for a shit. Shit, brush teeth while watching some silly thing on TV, and off boat and into the car at 8:47 (tour HAD been 8AM-5PM, but now must be 9-4), to go into the nothing main-street of town to u-turn for an ATM from which I withdraw 15,000VT, no problem at 8:51. #26 & 27 Matevulu River and mangroves at 9:13, quickly from paved road onto dirt road of two or three lanes, later to 2 and only ONE lane, grasses brushing both sides of the car at the same time. #28 vines forming their own canopy at 9:32. #29 tree-clumps at ocean at 10:36, finally to our National Park after rides up and down hills, past many people walking along street, numbers on horseback looking imperiously down on us as we pass, and he goes looking for someone, using the word "Purity" as in Ken's Lonely Planet South Pacific guide, and a bright-eyed barefoot twenty-something with a very French name like Alexandre or Antoine shows us the list of possible tours, the reasonable top being 700VT per person for a 1 hour 45 minute tour, but I DON'T see the bottom line, which is a 600VT charge for everyone for general admission. So it looks like 1400 for our tour, but when I take out 2000, they don't know what to do with it: NO one has any change. Later, we drive back a bit to send one of the owner's two sons to two different houses looking for change of a 1000VT bill and he finally comes back with four dirty wrinkled 200s and two 100VT coins, one of which disintegrates the lunch-calcium tablet in my shirt pocket. We walk through the forest starting at 10:45, with nice plastic drawings and descriptions of trees and bushes, seeing large hermit crabs in land-snail shells, one hanging flying fox, glimpses of a kingfisher in the trees and flycatchers on the road, and even parrots flying across the road before our speeding car, with the red flycatchers seeming to play games with our vehicle. Guide at the Vatthe Conservation Area walks fast, so we have to stare at the ground to avoid roots and rocks, and he often picks annoying items from the bottom of his bare feet. Lots of poison leaves and darts and spines, edible nuts (some of which we saw lined up on sticks at the market yesterday for 100VT) and fruits, and lots of bugs, though HE tells us that the MALARIA mosquito is ONLY out from 4-6AM and 6-8PM, which made last night's dinner a prime suspect, but when I look into the guide for malaria's symptoms, it only says fever, chills, and maybe just a not-well feeling. Hot and humid, not seeing much, and happily we're back to the road at 11:37! Driver and guide discuss the price, Ken admonishes me when I say "We went LESS than an hour, so wouldn't 1000VT each be OK," and when he DOES accept 2000VT from us, and I look at the rate: 700vt for 7 15-minute periods (1.75 hour) is 100VT/15 min, and that's 400 GENEROUS for less than an hour, plus 600VT entry. He seems happy. Shake hands and start back at 11:57, me wanting to delay lunch until the Blue Hole, NOT wanting to eat it in the truck as Ken suggests. #31 of Blue Hole (Spanish woman swimming AGAIN, saying it's wonderful, but Ken doesn't want to go in) at 1PM, we eat ham and cheese on white bread, banana, second bottle of cool water, and good banana bread for lunch, and leave at 1:19. #32 try to get luxuriating cows (Santos' main export) at 1:37, and pass wonderful treed areas with cattle grazing until we enter Fanafo at 1:47, getting out of car to be approached by lots of kastom-oriented boys in their mal mals, but none really attractive until their head male (the chief is out of town at the moment, but I take a video of his picture) appears with a decent compact body and green stuff on his forehead as "he has a headache," as the guide explains. Kids smiling and obliging, an old woman with bare breasts shakes hands with us, and we're led to the cooking tent where I make them all laugh with a flash photo, then around to take whatever I can, even of cooking trays, but not really MUCH (no trinkets and no kava, as I'd hoped for) to take, except for Susanne playing cards with the men, saying she was in NYC in the 70s, at Phoenix Project, and we leave at 2:46, video from road of surrounding trees, and back to town at 3:33, Ken finally buying, for 200VT, two cups of kava (dried) in the third shop we tried. Also stop at same ATM and I get 2,000VT more for the day, and down to wash bug-spray off hands and face and get to bar at 3:47, happy to be cool and dry inside, and order two each of the Daily Drink: $3.25 Islander Punches with vodka, cranberry and grapefruit juice, nicely cold and refreshing, me finishing ALL the ice, even when we go to the Trivia game at 4:30, again six, starting poorly, but we get 16 of 19, winners get 17, BUT one of our team INSISTS that the borders of Italy are France, Switzerland, Austria, and SLOVENIA, not CROATIA as the winners had said, and he gets the atlas and proves he's RIGHT, so we'll get our prize keychains TODAY! Good for HIM. Quick Scrabble game 5-6 which I win with two bingoes again, and dinner of steamed pork dumplings, tomato soup for me, curried chicken for Ken, and Teruaki fish, good, for me and pasta for Ken, and Delice de Dieux for Ken (sponge cake) and I-forget-what for me. I'm up at 7:45 to watch almost-full moon come in and out of clouds, with a BRILLIANT star in the sky, romantic rolls of the ship, dramatic dark clouds on horizon, then flecks of cold rain on my cheek and I'm back down for Concert from 8:30-9:25, violinist with good tone who seems to me to make lots of goofs, and cute pianist and solemn bassist, but good show except for LOUD CRUDE fellow-passengers we try to stare down. Back from concert at 9:25, tired, clocks ahead one hour, so bed at 10:33PM.

SUNDAY, 3/7/04: 6:55AM: NO pee during the night, not even WAKING until I wake from dream after 6:35AM, over eight hours, and have a brief set of mympths, as I did also yesterday morning, both on the YELLOW-colored side. PRIOR dream-fragment something about organizing furniture or books or papers in a room like one at 1221 Dietz, but the second was a GREAT sexy dream of a VERY humpy body who refused to be touched at first but who loved to pose, coated in a shiny slick oil, but I admired him so successfully that he let me touch him on the arm, then on the leg, and then I could EXPAND my touch beyond his designated area, and he loved it, until finally I could touch and caress him anywhere I wanted, but at the end he refused to let me kiss him, suggesting that when we were in private (people around us were watching us as if at a sex-show, or maybe we were being filmed) I could do that if I wanted. Then I coudn't take it anymore and grabbed my almost-soft cock and shot and shot and shot GOBS and STREAMS of almost-clear, hardly viscid, scattered volleys of cum, everyone amazed, my volume making up for any whiteness or stringiness, and it's one of the few dreams when I actually CAME in it, but not even hard when I woke after it. Pee and finish typing this at 7:02AM, neighboring toilet braying at me. Lay comfortably, the ship seeming to rock more than usual, and do a basic, good Actualism session from 7:22-7:46, and get up at 7:50 to open the portholes to cloudy-blue sky and a smooth-enough ocean, hopefully going faster because the fourth engine is finally installed? Though there WAS the rumor, said Ken, yesterday that we were NOT even going PAST the Tongan island. He's noising about the john as I type this at 7:53, having to pee again. He's out and I shower to 8:15 and we're out to breakfast, eating with two singles from England, ending excoriating the politics of our respective countries, clearly agreeing EVERYONE's greedy at the expense of ANYTHING else. I have Sugar Frosted Flakes with banana, half-grapefruit, orange juice, hot chocolate, two kinds of scrambled eggs and lots of bacon, and then up about 9 to take the chair and Ken fusses until he goes to the library before his 9:45 lecture on Captain Cook, and I put on the good Channel 40 music and sit at the desk and type this up to 9:58AM, glad that I didn't have to divide the day between file 2 and file 3, which is taking a LONG time to come up, but I'm clearly MORE than 1/3 through with clearly LESS than 1/3 my files used, so it looks good for me to be more loquacious. Fill out the "initials" quiz, which Ken finds he didn't even UNDERSTAND, and can't guess Massachusetts Democrat [Dukakis] or "Panther" Star [PINK Panther: Peter Sellers], but will check in the library this afternoon. After two days in Fiji, it's essentially one-day-sail, one-day-visit until Hawaii. Now to check TV at 10AM. "The Pirate Movie" is a campy takeoff on "Pirates of Penzance," with some INCREDIBLY sexy bodies it might be worth renting just to record (when I have the facility) for the ONE fabulous pose I saw before I switched to "Absolutely Fabulous," made obnoxious with an obtrusive laugh-track. "Shackleton" was the British-thin-lipped [Kenneth Branagh] guy's version, and "City of Angels" was the best to re-watch because of the chemistry between Nicholas Cage and --- Meg Ryan? Who? Ken suggests Scrabble at 10:45, which we play and he wins at 12, and I sit and watch blue waves in swells (and one white plastic floating cup, or something), then up to the Lido Deck to find that the hot dogs are just as awful as the hamburgers, until 1:05, with a scarcity of ice for the iced tea which I got for myself when it didn't come when requested---maybe it's a ploy to FORCE you to order booze for a price. Finally to File 3 at 1:15PM. Ken's showering before the Fiji recap at 2PM, and I go to TV or puzzles. John doesn't say much 2-2:35, save that we'll have Chief's welcome at 10, dancers at 10:30, BBQ lunch at noon. Scrabble to 3:52, Ken winning the second of the day, and I read "Think Vanuatu" in the library, watching the blue waves, until 4:13     when I go to shit, then Trivia, our team doing poorly with NINE against the winning 14. Then back to Scrabble and I win the third game of the day in time to go down to dinner: fig risotto, of which the figs are good; lamb, good with dark sauce and mint sauce on the side, with mashed potatoes and turnips and zucchini which Ken takes. Then red wine, more chilled as we drink, and cheese and plum tart for dessert with the same awful crust as the inedible key lime pie. Out at 7:55 to see an incredible moon rise out of the clouds, staying in the breeze outside, wondering at Venus near the moon and Jupiter high in the southern sky, and in at 7:40 to type this and get to the theater to see "Seabiscuit," which ad I wouldn't have seen had we not been forced to detour to the elevator because of a private party on 6 which caused us to go the OTHER way to the elevator down to 3. Leave for the show at 7:44. Not many people there, but good chat with Australians about Peter Allen and Hugh Jackman, they having seen "Cabaret" (with sound dyssynchronization) last night. Show starts at 8:02, is VERY slow getting started, with no attempt to make you think Tobey Maguire is really riding, and of course all the races that have to be won are won. LOTS of special effects credits, even for Maguire's stunt jockey. Back to room at 10:26 and finish this at 10:30, ready for bed. Bed 10:32, lay and think, and at 10:57PM I feel a tiny turd plop out of my crack, and I get up and wipe and pee some more and get back to bed to think and go to sleep at last.

MONDAY, 3/8/04: 12:26AM: Wake earlier with dream of being asked to pay $2 for a cane that Anna will need because she'll be limping from her injury for the rest of her life (probably from the two broken legs in "Seabiscuit" last night). I look in my wallet and find lots of receipts, not many $20s, and some smaller bills, though no ones. Other details I forgot now. Pee again at 5:53, then lay awake feeling vaguely ill, wondering if I might NOT have picked up malaria that dinner in Port Vila, and contrariwise thinking that thinking ABOUT it will make it even worse, or even "cause" it. Must doze off, because when Ken wakes me again by going to the bathroom, it's 7:32AM! He takes his usual long time, I dress and prepare my bag for the beach by taking out the billfold and taking $41 out of my wallet and putting it in my pocket. Use the last of the toilet paper when I shit and remark it to Ken, who says that I HAVE said that he uses a lot of toilet paper. I guess so? Ready for breakfast at 7:53 and he had observed that the Seven Continents didn't open until 8AM this morning, and it's TRUE! So I sit and type this to 7:59, feeling vaguely apprehensive about this unstructured day, condemning myself for feeling so. Mosquito bites on my left elbow itchy, causing me concern almost always. Down to breakfast at 8:02, sitting with the couple from Colorado Springs, who obviously have beaucoup de loot, and since the officials aren't even on BOARD yet, we go up so I can clobber Ken in a game of Scrabble, this time with lots of kibbitzers, and down at 9:38 to still await tender loading. To lounge at 10:05 for tender 1 to leave and to get tickets for tender 3. 10:20 tender 2 leaves and I'd gone down to get Scientific American to read to pass the time (which gets VERY wet from my having my bag against my wet tee-shirt and swim trunks in the afternoon) and my watch (which I kept looking for, so I decided to get it, but then it stayed in the pocket of my A&K bag all day) and tender 3 announced at 10:40. Tender fills and leaves at 10:47 and lands at the beach at 11AM, having to go down a gangplank whose end is washed by incoming waves, but I wait and time it properly and don't get my shoes wet. The beach is jammed with people and stuff, and find towels to take, then go down the beach to find a lone woman who says she'll be there the whole time (and who later says she's going back to the boat WAY before anyone else), and we put our stuff down and I want to go into the water but Ken needs a place to change! I go in, and there's lots of live coral, but with few channels out to the fringing reef it's difficult to move around without coming close to the shallow reef-heads, and very early on I brush HARD my left palm against a top, and I bring it back with fear, expecting to see streaks of blood, but thankfully the skin is unbroken. Swim for about half an hour and get back to find Ken, who's changed but we hear that the welcoming ceremony will be about 11:45. Stand around with a wet tee-shirt, which certainly makes the hot humid day more comforable, and take photos and videos of sexy men with too much decoration around their necks, some good polyphonic singing which Ken determines had started only AFTER Western influence, and the same seated dances that I remember being disappointed by in Suva before. Record a bit, then decide to get in the long line (which quickly gets MUCH longer) for lunch, having mostly fruit, pasta salad, and a vegetarian shish-kebab and a half sausage and some very good ribs. Then Ken wants to walk to the village, and it's a collection of scattered houses, later on including some larger buildings, and I take one panorama of an old obelisk to the right and a modern cross to the left. Chickens and peeps running around, everyone saying "Bula," with sales-blankets set up even in the village, and Ken wants to see more but I go back and talk to two women who say that the current through the pass I'd intended to swim through was strong even for a STRONG swimmer, so I look closer to the village for a broader channel out, with them, and go out to see good growing coral but not THAT many fish, getting the little ones in the shallows, some large white ones over the white sands, a possessive parrot fish, and some nice fringe-feeders, and finally flocks of tiny blue-white fish with which I delight in swimming. Tire, go back and find that Ken's not had luck with his attempts at snorkeling at all, but it's only 2:15 so I decide to go back one more time, seeing the same things in the same places (actually, I went out in the "good" place THREE times), until I make the "catch of the day": two charming squid looking up at me, changing color from brown to gold to almost white depending on where they thought I was seeing them against the varied background, and we swam and swam together until I was tired, moved on, then came back in, very tired, and saw a tender loading, so I grabbed my stuff and hurried on at 3:20, poor Milos had had to get a coral removed from his hand by a VERY sexy doctor. Back at 3:40 and take a LONG shower til 4, then up for the drink of the day, rather tasting of rotten pineapple, then the Trivia contest from 4:45 to 5:15 which we won again with 17, me choosing a nice pen, and then to convince him to try "Upwords," which he doesn't like at all, until 6, when we're down for dinner of waldorf salad, mushroom soup, and GOOD venison with "Maltaise" rice, awful, with good surrounding fruit, and then STILL very tired up to try to read from 8, but at 8:33 get tired enough to go to bed, having trouble getting to sleep, but finally doing so at maybe 9:30 or 10.

TUESDAY, 3/9/04: Pee at 12:38AM. Then at 3:35AM another hard-pellet shit and record a dream: I'm shopping at a huge store like Macy's, which keeps its doors LOCKED, and I'm somehow outside when I still have a loaf of bread to buy and my coat to retrieve from the coat-check room. I have a loaf of Entenmann's Whole Wheat which turns out to have a slit in its plastic wrapping, so I want to return that and get a Wonder Wheat bread, which turns out to be in the middle of the bread display and out of reach. Try to climb over the display-strut-structure to get it, but can't, so ask a clerk, first asking why it's out of reach: "It just came in, and that was the only place that had room for it." Then we get to chatting about some esoteric ingredient, and the manager comes by and praises the clerk's work, but says he should do more of it. There's a segment where only the middle of two [huh?] elevators will move from the second floor down to the first floor. Then, with my bread, I'm STILL outside and try to push my way past someone who won't let me in, and race to a door that closes in my face, and feel generally frustrated and mad at the stupid store! Another dream from earlier in the night concerns my moving into a large (7 bedroom, as John Lennon had with 50 acres in the Trivia question yesterday about who said "No possessions" while he had these?) apartment and get shown around, particularly noticing the worn-thin but still highly colored carpets on the floors, carpet-on-carpet when two rooms abut, the one larger one below serving as the runner through the doorway connecting the two, and I say "What I pity I threw away my carpeting when I moved from my old apartment." Recall to myself that I have to check this apartment's convenience to subway stations before taking it. Backs of calves and ankles blazing with sunburn, right elbow itchy from two mosquito bites, and will I see the CUTE doctor about possible malaria symptoms in my tiredness from yesterday that got me to bed at 8:35PM without allowing me to get to sleep? And GOT to brush my TEETH! 6:55 Ken goes to bathroom and I record another dream: I'm in Susie Mead's house and I've mixed her files up with my files, and when I think I've gotten all my stuff together, I find a complete FOLDER that's hers, with lot of other sheets of paper with HER handwriting on them, and sort them out and give them to her, and she, too, is amazed at the amount of stuff we confused with each other's materials. Then I'm standing in her hallway and a bunch of large red ants (moving rather like the small schools of light blue fish I swam with yesteray) dash across her rug. I try to step on them but they're very good at evading my foot. I say "I've never seen such BIG ants before," and she protests that they're actually rather small, and she'd like to see them on tennis balls. Then another, later, dream has me lying on a large flat area with lots of people around, but I have my hand contentedly at the top of Ken's legs, just under his ass, and don't seem to mind if anyone sees me doing this, and then I feel someone's heel in my crotch, and I'm getting hard, and I'm surprised, and know that Ken (whose heel I'm assuming this is) will be surprised because he's never experienced me hard before, but then he's lying apart some distance away and somehow I'm pressing down on my own cock, and I recover with some embarrassment. Now at 7:02 I raise the porthole-covers and the pilot boat Natuira is coming right at us, though we're docked, and the full moon is surprisingly high on the horizon. Sunrise today at 6:09AM and sunset at 7:11PM, so we might see it after dinner. Type until 7:33AM, Ken VERY antsy for BREAKFAST. Out at 8:17, SWAMPED by taxis and brown-scarfed woman, but no tour-car. Ken wants to go somewhere and phone, and I keep insisting we wait until 8:35, and at 8:33 the guy shows up, given a hard time by the harbor master, but we're to car and into Suva to stop at 8:40 for Ken's ATM visit and across the street to buy deodorant, and then Ken fumes as we wait for them in the square of the Visitor's Information Office until 9:10. #16 in Suva, Vice-President's residence at 9:24, the only "new" picture for me to take. To Nausori and market, since he clearly wants to waste time before getting to the village, and when I ask when we should be there, he says "11:30," and so I suggest we stop at the market 10:17-10:37, seeing lots of kava, waka (root) and lewana (stem), both of which MAKE the kava. Over longest bridge, built by US in 1946, soon to be replaced by another, and pass Hindu temple and Moslem temple, suburbs, old gun emplacements so overgrown we can't see them, great heat, and I take a video in the market to get a flavor of the place, with people. #17 in the village with poinsettia with white flowers at 11:24. We took a long boat trip, but I remember WAVING to the same people we STOP at to get out, which Ken hadn't realized, and it's Nasilai Village, which shows up later in the Suva Museum as the birthplace and on-going training camp for all the ceramicists on Fiji, which means in all the South Pacific. The "fat brother to banana" is bundi, the smallest is "Lady's finger." Kava before lunch, the two chiefs making noises in their language, the guy stirring the brew keeping looking at me. I drink, Chief drinks a LOT, Ken drinks, around again, the lady comes in with food, we drink more, urging bigger potions, and have lunch 12:30 to 1 when we can't think of anything more to say and I've forgotten my bathing suit and my WALLET, so when they ask for a donation for the village, Ken gives a measly $2 from his wallet which I hand over with a straight face and they don't kill us on the spot. Boat to see the 1901 church, where I take pictures of it and three trees, and #22 from river at 1:17. To car at 1:34, #28 of Mormon Temple with a golden-gleaming Moroni atop at 2:22. To Suva Museum at 2:33, Ken paying $5 for one of us for $7 Fiji, Kim paying the other from what he owes us, and it's quite familiar, except that they've improved the second floor somewhat, and by this time we're so inured to the heat and humidity that it's not that uncomfortable. I take pictures through #34 outside in the garden after 3:40, missing pictures of the mongooses, get asked for $10 for a 1-unit bill with Saddam Hussein on it, and lots of people stop, smile, ask where I'm from, shake hands, and chat, wishing me a good trip, even though I have to say something as silly as "We're leaving Suva in an hour." Meet them at the car at 4PM and to room at 4:15, hot. To drinks at 4:25, something with Brandy, Port Wine, and Triple Sec for me, and a Cosmo for Ken, and then as we play Trivia at 4:45 I order a gin and tonic and Ken another Cosmo, and we lose miserably. Stop at 5:10 because of the band celebrating our free drinks and fourth engine outside, and go out for dark clouds over Suva, a raucous crowd, and lots of free Mimosas, then a glass of champagne for me which I later get refilled with Mimosa, and plates of chicken wings, of which I eat about FIVE, while we chat with a nice couple watching as we sail out of Suva harbor. That pales by 5:43, when Ken wants Scrabble, and he wins while I take time out for a disappointing sunset around 6:35, and finish Scrabble at 6:52 and down to finish this by 7:10, Ken getting the laundry back (one shirt they wouldn't do because, as Ken said, "It was too grotty,") and me ready to wash and change for the Yacht Club Polynesian dinner at 7:30 tonight. Up at 7:25 and get seated WAY in the back, and only the Captain and his woman sit behind Ken. Start with *** [to be filled from menu, which I have], then good pumpkin and callalo (asparagus) soup and lemon ice, then I have FABULOUS pork strap (like thick bacon) with super-tasty hoisin, soy, oyster sauce, plus sugar, with beans and carrots, while Ken doesn't care for his Panache of Seafood with fish, mussels, shrimp, and scallop. Poor mousse we both have (and he finishes and I don't) because neither likes (he can't digest) coconut. Out at 8:40 and I go on deck to sit in west before it dawns on me that moon will rise in EAST, and go to front and stand looking at us slowly passing a lit-up boat on the right, with an "island" that doesn't change position and so isn't there, the moon behind clouds, and a blinking light from an island on the left all pass by, with no one else watching but me and the wind rushing through my hair and clothes. Down at 9:30 to wake Ken because I forgot to take my key, and get in to bed by 9:45.

TUESDAY, 3/9/04 NUMBER 2: Wake at 6:21AM, possibly even over EIGHT AND A HALF HOURS, since I got to sleep quickly with only a sheet covering my still-sunburn-sore calves, and have recollections of three (liar, forgot the last ALREADY!) dreams: 1) I've slipped my book into what I think is MY bag, but it turns out to be someone ELSE's shoulderbag, and when I ask for my book back he gets VERY angry and insists he doesn't have it, and when I look through, to his disgust, I can't find it, and want to put my name on a "If found please return to" list at the bookshop in which this happened, but when the head woman goes off duty (she seemed competent) a leering young man comes on and when I say I want to have my book back, he makes some snide remark and clearly doesn't want to do it, so I figure I'll have to buy another copy of Alan Watts' "A Perfect Philosophy," which I'd read and marked ONCE, and was in the process of reading for the SECOND time and marking AGAIN, which concept the sneerer could barely understand anyone taking the time to do at the FIRST round of reading, let alone the second. Total frustration. 2) Another dream in which I'm playing with my cock and get VERY hard, balls tight against my cock-base, and feel like it will be GREAT to cum, and wake with a semi-hard that quickly goes away. Then wake at 6:21AM with memory of those two and a LAST dream, go to pee, but by this time, 6:34AM, I can't recall the third, but maybe will when I go back to bed. Shower 7-7:20, delighted in finding BODY LOTION in the tray, so I don't have to try Hair Conditioner on my calves to assuage the pain and flaking of my sunburn. Ken said he'd already scheduled the remaining Aralen for the proper following THURSDAYS, since we gain a whole day crossing the dateline today, for which honor we each get a CERTIFICATE under the door for today, the first one I've done by SHIP! Take TWO calciums from Saturday's dose for my afternoon ones, and write a note for my pillbox saying that. Since breakfast is delayed til 8AM I use the opportunity to sort through my drawers and find that I'm missing the FIRST Discovery Daily, which I go to the desk and GET a, maybe the last spare, copy of. So I have a complete ordered set of THAT, under an envelope full of 1) my day-note cards, going to number 6 today, and 2) receipts, which I haven't put in order yet. Ken keeps talking about nothing, so I put on channel 40 for the ship and music, and sun's not visible out the front either. Ken insists on breakfast at 8:13AM. Breakfast to 9, to deck 9 to see nothing in particular, then do puzzles to 9:35. Start to watch TV and at 9:42 the POWER goes off. Into the hall to find the emergency lights in the back-end of the ship aren't even working, otherwise, the emergency lights seem pretty good, although there are none in the cabin across the hall, and a humpy guy hangs around his cabin door around 4395, and Boy makes the joke that "The ship didn't pay its electric bill." To Dorothy Pyle's "Bounty" talk, very full, since people have no where else to go: no lights in room, no TV to watch; and Talk goes to 10:39, when she shows the map as the lights go back on at 10:36. We go to the library and finally start MOVING at 10:56. Lunch is announced as delayed until 12:30. I was starting to worry about the frozen foods. Power OFF again at 11:08 ("Electrician to bridge, please.") as we play scrabble, and on again at 11:30. Finish Scrabble at 12:41, I winning two games. Lunch on Lido Deck, settling for tiny thick roast beef sandwich while Ken raves about the (fatty) lamb chops, and then stand on line for rum-raisin ice cream cone, Ken getting TWO scoops of Creme Caramel and eating MUCH more than me. Both drink lots of iced tea. More Scrabble, and he wins only last of three games---and that by a rather slender margin, two others he really says I SMASHED him. HA! To Trivia at 4:30, me ordering the drink of the day: rum, Blue Curacao, and Pina Colada mix, and we WIN the Trivia again with 16 right, glad they talked me in to "Reindeer" for caribou, but only I knew "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers," insisted on "zebra" for the striped football referee, and knew St. Bernard for the dog-hero of some movie. Amalia charms us all by knowing that LaLa is the yellow Teletubby. Down to get video camera for our close pass-by of Niuafo'ou, the farthest-out island of Tonga, subjected to constant volcanic eruptions and very isolated, though Ken said Lonely Planet described their AIRPORT (saying 284 Pa'anga (about $150) one way from Tongatapu to island). Take the #35-37 of roll 3 and Roll 4 #1-7 of the island and the sunset, taking videos of both, though I got a "tape" message that went away when I reset the film in the camera, seeing that I've used probably less than a half-hour of film in all. It starts to rain, there are fragments of a rainbow, and we see a fire starting and rows of houses, particularly two-story houses, probably the school and the administration center of the 700 inhabitants for 50.3 square kilometers. Ken insists on going to dinner when they first announce it at 5:55, but I say I want to watch the sunset, but at 6:03 I go down to find the table EMPTY, and he comes in a few minutes later to say he didn't rush because I'd said I'd be down in 25 minutes and told him to order the bottle of wine anyway. The "Antarctic Crab Shell and Avocado" salad was odd tasting and scantily tasted by both of us, but the Apple and Celery with Stilton, though it tasted nothing of apple, celery, or Stilton, soup was good, and the quail was excellent, good meaty sauce, with a good $17 ($19.55 with service) Pinot Noir, and his butterscotch pie and my cherry clafouti not bad, and leave at 7 and get to room for him to read me the tour scheduled for tomorrow, change the clocks an hour ahead (so that it's now 8:45PM), and take my dinner pills and recharge my battery and put things away. Ken freaks when I put on TV to watch the start of "Moulin Rouge," and I end up saying I'd like a half-hour to brush my teeth and he leaves with a book. Kalahari Nature film is on the Meerkats, which I've seen, so I switch channels and find John talking about the Apia tours until 9:34, when I shut off TV and shit. $1 = 2.78WST, and Aggie Grey was Michener's model for Bloody Mary. Shit to 9:43 and wash face. Ken NOT back by 9:50, so I shut lights off and go to bed. Pee at 11:30. Ken had gotten back about 10PM and went right to bed, though I thought he was still in the bathroom when I finally discerned he was lying, uncovered, in bed, when I peed at 11:30.

WEDNESDAY, 3/10/04: 5:39AM: One of the most AGONIZEDLY frustrating dreams in a LONG time. I'm traveling alone in northern Nepal or Tibet, waiting on a street, and go to where I'd left my bag, and there's my blue cloth bag sitting alone on a muddy bank just off the street with my WALLET sitting, isolated, in the mud in front of it. I take the wallet and try to scrape some of the thick black-gray mud off the side of it, and peek inside to see the much-used, dirty, wrinkled singles still taking the majority of the space, with clean new 10s and 20s peeking out for when I'd need them. Unzip my bag to quickly see that everything's still there, and resume my frustrated search for a taxicab along these dark, almost deserted streets. Every so often, up the hill or down another hill, people would get out of a translucent taxi which would light up its availability in bright white over its entire exterior, but always someone else was waiting there to get the taxi. Peered into tiny two-person cars hoping to find an unlit taxi, and even stop a small car with a shirtless muscle-builder in the driver's seat and ask if he'd take me to the airport for money, but he reacted with horror, as if I'd asked him to perform the most outrageously illegal act in his country, and it well may have been precisely that. My watch is always perversely upside down on my wrist, but it's getting close to my 6:25AM departure, surely within the hour, though I can't quite clearly read my watch in the darkness, and finally I see two semi-American semi-Oriental young women seemingly trying to flag down a taxi across the street, and go over to ask if they're going to the airport too. They react with suspicion, but finally they admit they're not only going to the airport, but have the same departure time and are going on the same flight to Pathankot that I'm trying to get to. Then, somehow, we're AT the airport, which is just a congested office building with no airstrip in sight, so maybe it's just the city office of the airline, who can somehow authorize us a taxicab to take us to the airport, and there are suspicious officious clerks who ask why we're traveling together, at which the women frantically disavow any knowledge of me, and I keep getting asked for my ticket, which is a thick booklet, like a ten-ticket raffle booklet with a blue cover with indecipherable writing and printings, in Nepalese-like circular scrawls (or is that Thai or Lao?), with a clear-enough PAH or PAT so that I know it's the right ticket, at LEAST. At one point I'm sent down a vertical stairway with RIDICULOUSLY small steps, like one-inch-apart gashes cut a half-inch into the vertical wall, up and down which frantic businessmen are climbing or descending one step at a time, moving incredibly fast to make VERY slow progress because of the minuscule steps. I pull myself up with my arms, covering a foot or so at a time, finally seeing the top after agonized minutes of alternating step-by-step inching and foot-by-foot musclings-up, and get to the top and muscle my way to the SAME room (to file 4 at 5:55AM 3/10, just over halfway through the trip) to find that my BAG is nowhere to be seen. Frantically race around the room, seeing the same bags and suitcases in the same place, but not my big blue hard-sided suitcase which now seems to have transformed into my searched-for luggage. Try to find SOMEONE who works there to ask or demand both my bag and my taxi, but NO one seems to work there: EVERYONE is just a confused traveler waiting for the right person to see. Accost a worker-seeming man who hurriedly-worriedly denies having anything to do with this office. Search again through the two or three rooms of the office: no bag, no hope of getting anyone to say anything, fearful that the two women have safely gone WITH my bag to the airport for the flight, but finding no way of confirming or denying that fear. Wake finally, blessedly, in the rocking ship to know it was only a dream and that everything is safely in its place. Grab AlphaSmart and sit on the pot after peeing until I finish this at 5:59AM. Pee again, foam in toilet still mounting alarmingly high toward the top rim of the seat before subsiding. Open the porthole to see color in the east, and get back into bed only to figure I've HAD my eight hours of sleep, and this will be an unobstructed sunrise, probably over the islands, so I put on pants and shirt at 6:10 and go up to watch from the 8th deck, out of the wind, with the large northern island of Savai'i whale-like to the left and very low clouds pinkening and orangening to give the impression of a quick sunrise, but as we sail into the 6:10s and 6:20s, the clouds rise higher, delaying the sunrise, while Savai'i looms larger until I can actually see white houses right at the southern shore, and lots of little islands between that and 'Upolu on the right, veiled in early-morning rain-clouds, and the clouds ABOVE which the sun MIGHT rise if it only went FAST enough turn out to be the ones that have to PASS OVER the ship so that the sun can "rise" from my point of view from BELOW the clouds, which it does in teeny-tiny part at 7:08AM, and only fully at 7:16AM, when I'm thoroughly windblown and almost fed up with the "Sunrisus Constantlius Interruptus," or more precisely "Delayedus." Lots of single birds floating past the front of the ship, the first, largest, might even have been an albatross from its size, and there was definitely a tropicbird flying past, and others were some sorts of terns or gulls, smaller, some skimming low over the waves. Took photos through #11 of various clouds, two of which were really WEEPING rain, which looked to consume them totally, and only at the very end was there one other passenger up on deck with me, though three or four singletons came out on the left flying bridge, below, to observe, clean the map-stand, or just circle around and go back inside, buffeted by the wind. My hair in the mirror as I type this at 7:26 is totally wild, and I guess I'll go to breakfast shortless, since it doesn't seem worth the effort to put on more clothes for the 7:30-start meal, but there'll be a long wait before we dock and get through the official visits before we can debark on our 9AM tour. Pity Ken doesn't enjoy such REAL "sea cruise" activities as just LOOKING at the sunrises and sunsets and waves and birds, lamenting ANY absence of ANY kind of fish-life whatsoever. But I enjoy these quiet moments more and more as time goes on. Breakfast 7:40-8:20 with Judy from South Wales who runs a 25-person retirement home in a former hotel, many of which went out of business when the drink-drive (you can't drink and drive) laws went into effect and people in the hotels just HAD to go to the nearest town to enjoy drinking in a nightclub. Then she was joined by Christine, young (40s?) and pretty, who says there ARE others like her aboard, and that the teenager is dyslexic and hadn't learned to read until three years ago. Judy also reports that there's NO one in the Beauty Salon when she's had her nails done and redone 3 times, and the Night Club acts (beside being awful) are so poorly attended it's really a disaster. Also she says this ship is so old she wouldn't dream of taking it into Antarctica, though she's not THAT rough on the ship in general though she's been on hundreds of cruises. I go up to 8 again to see that we've completely passed the island on the left, but are still quite far out from Apia, which can easily be seen from our windows anyway. Catch up with this at 8:38, Ken having given some address to Judy and come back to "pack things up here." I still haven't put on my shorts---maybe setting a pattern for the rest of the trip? Speaking of which, it's today Apia, tomorrow sailing, 12th Manihiki, 13th sailing, 14th Christmas for a LONG time, 15-16 sailing, 17-18 Maui-Kawai, 19th at 6AM to Honolulu, nights of 19-20 in hotel, night of 21 on plane and home early the 22nd. More than half through, generally successful but not one of the greatest. Ken agrees with that evaluation now at 8:42. 9AM announcement that we're soon to encounter the pilot and will be heading into Apia for landing, and at 9:15 we slow considerably. I and Ken change into bathing suits, taking shorts along in case we can change back, and I decide to get rid of the last of the potato chips. "Biggest turn of the trip," almost sliding the pillow and quilt off the top of the TV set, at 9:21AM, all set to go. Ken actually submits to watching the last few minutes of a spontaneously-funny "I Love Lucy" featuring Milton Berle, and look out the porthole to see the dock about 20 feet away at 9:41AM, but of course we still have to be cleared by immigration before we can get off the ship. 10AM: Authorities haven't BOARDED yet. HASSLE and leave gate at 10:28 finally with a taciturn driver, Tiai, in a clean white "Official" car, Shaddow having assumed Ken wasn't coming and planned NOTHING ahead, taking the car out from under the noses of three who wanted a taxi to drive them around, and he says almost nothing through the entire trip; at some points, I think, purposely leading us astray (like not going to Simui Village which was further out from the beach where we lunched and snorkeled). The Robert Louis Stevenson tour starts at 10:47, good place with lots of videos, and #13 of lawn at 10:51. #14 "End of cannibalism" statue, and tour people from the back, and end of tour at 11:14. #15 the villa at 11:18. #16 Bahai Temple at 11:30, he NOT stopping at the top of the hill as I'd asked for a photo. Papapapaiuta Falls #17. Sinalei Reef Resort at 11:53 for #19. #20 and #21 Sopoaga Falls, 180 feet, at 12:33. Lunch and snorkel at beach after getting hollered for eating lunch because we weren't on the bus tour, then being apologized to, good barbecued chicken leg and coconut milk fish and buns, which I take two of for the fish, the white ones MOBBING me and nibbling mask, fingers, and shoe-toes. Snorkel 1:13-2:05, Ken not doing well at ALL, and see blue stars, regular fish, some new coral but much blasted like everywhere else. Tiai makes 3:10 phone call to Shaddow, confused, driving in and out of hotels at random. To Museum at 3:38, quick through with photos to #26 to 3:58, when it closes at 4. #27 Aggie Grey's Hotel facade at 4:02. Ken talks to Tania Grey, the daughter, and she gives us a FREE TRIP! Great! Get huge drinks, take photos of place, back to ship and into room at 4:50, hot, and shower, to Trivia at 5:13-6, getting only 8 right. Watch boat leaving (trying to get rid of coconut pina coladas, not free) to 6:35 and dinner to 7:35, put stuff away and Scrabble to 9:25, he wins, I'm tired, put clock an hour AHEAD to 10:25 and bed at 10:30.

THURSDAY, 3/11/04: Pee at 3:40AM, over five hours of sleep, and then wake at 7:57 with Ken in the bathroom already, over NINE hours of sleep. Dream of being at HOME, with my stamps and other things spread over the dining room table, and know that if I put all those "other things" into their proper places, the dining room table can be kept PERMANENTLY for stamps, and that delights me. Everything else seems somehow "in order," too, and it seems like the state that I'm looking forward to at the end of this trip, with no specific trip scheduled, and no real tasks to occupy my time (except, in real time, for IRS). Raise the porthole covers to see cloudy sunshine, the rains from last night having stopped, but the BOAT seems to be stopping too, slowing down, then speeding up, and though some of the waves moving away from the ship are large, it can only be something (again?) wrong with the engines or propellers. Just as yesterday was a jinx-day for Samoa Something Travel, this whole TRIP is a jinx-trip for this SHIP! Pressure to shit, and I hope Ken gets out the bathroom SOON, now at 8:10AM, maybe the latest to breakfast? Ken comes out to get something from the closet, but when I rise to go to the bathroom, he simply says "Not done yet." Breakfast 8:35-9:25 with two older women with somewhat lively conversation, but I'm sorry that hot chocolate has gone down to two cups from three. Eggs and bacon and brioche and fruit and juice. Then up to "Early Pacific Migration" 9:35-10:l8 by Dorothy Pyle. Earliest was in Papuan language, about 8000BC when ice-age had lowered ocean levels, mainly by African-oriented southern peoples. Then about 7000BC horticulture allowed people to STAY in a place, and domestication of pigs meant they didn't have to hunt. South Asian/Africans went to Melanesia (Solomons, Vanuatu, New Caledonia, Fiji). Second were North Asian/Asiatics 6000-8000BP with no ice age, to Polynesia, and also westward to Madagascar. Samoa and Tonga later got some Papuan-type influences from Fiji, which three traded among each other. Samoa and Tonga were farther limits for Austronesians. Micronesia, north of Equator, was more recent, more from Taiwan (and, I say, from the Philippines). Stay in place as people move around for "Arthritis" by Dr. John McMichan from 10:50-11:42. Walking four hours a week helps HIP. Calcium carbonate is same as calcium citrate in same doses, but carbonate needs FOOD to go with. Forteo (needs injections) increases bone density, but you must do it for 24 months. Large (5000 iu/day) vitamin A intake increases bone loss. Ibuprofen for arthritis NEGATES heart-helping aspirin doses. Cox-2 inhibitors (Vioxx and Celebrex) are bad for the heart. Capsaisin (Zostrix) is OK on fingers. TENS can be good for knee. Glucosamine PLUS chondroitin relieves pain and MAY slow osteoarthritis. Start with 500mg Glucosamine and 400mg chondroitin 3 times/day and take for two months. If not feeling better, stop. SAM-e PROVEN effective against osteoarthitis-pain. Cod liver oil IS omega-3 acids, good. DMSO not good. I look through handout on Mayo Clinic and leave it behind for him to give to someone else. Meet Ken in the library and play a listless game (because I'm losing) from 11:45-12:35, and lunch 12:35-1:15 with hard-of-hearing couple from south Australia, talking of their stay on Norfolk Island, which they loved. I had an appetizer that I've forgotten (fried mozzarella bhujia, which was more dough than cheese), a soup, and a risotto with mushrooms that I supplemented with WONDERFUL sliced ham from the Carvery, then an unfortunate dry-end of beef that was much too big and I left much too much of, ending with cheesecake that wasn't bad. Then back to two Scrabble games, one of which he wins, second of which I finally win with two bingoes, and he refuses to start another at 3:45. Down to room to wash face and type to 4:28, then upstairs to find the story group running over in the Carousel Lounge and he ends at 4:37 and we win for the FOURTH time, choosing to get the little calculator that Ken says is pretty good after fussing over it from 5:15 when we get down to room and I finish this at 5:43, caught up at last, going to card 7, and dressing somewhat for the FORMAL evening at dinner, still very light at 5:44PM. Up to coconut shrimp that's not bad, a split pea soup that doesn't taste like split pea, and VERY good pork loin stuffed with prunes and dates and plums and other sweet things, over polenta that wasn't bad in the sauce, ending with a wonderful Passion Fruit pureed into Sabayon with mixed berries in it, sheer delight, with a nice Riesling which we hadn't tried before which was, as usual, warm at the start and quite sweet, though Ken called it fruity and liked it, and got colder and less sweet through the meal, and Giselle AGAIN presented Ken with a bill to sign for $0.00, and all the waiters are making jokes about our 100% discount. Finish at 7:07PM and can see the sun's beams on the curtains across the way, and he says he'll join me on Deck 9 to look at the sunset after he changes clothes, and I ask if he wouldn't please bring my A&K bag with cameras when he comes up, and planned to carry my jacket WITH me when he says he'll take it DOWN for me if I'd like, which impresses me. He goes down and I go up to 9 to get HUGE drops of rain on my blue shirt, so I scurry down to the doorway to watch the last of the orange-yellow sun dip below the clouds about 7:15 and rainclouds close in from the north and he comes back up in a tee-shirt and sneakers, looks at the waves and clouds for awhile, actually ADMITS that the deeply three-dimensional clouds of gray and pearl are something to look at, and then about 7:30 he suggests we're not going to see anything more and go down to Scrabble for, I think, three games of which he won two and I won one, and I thought I brought the scoresheets back with me but I can't find them. We play unil 10:25, he rushing me through a play that I'm sure I can Bingo at the end of BENT with BENTY, with my blankINTORY tiles, and he goes down while I continue looking through the permutations and finally find TRIONYM which would have given me 82 points instead of the 19 I got from TORY onto his BENT, and get to room at 10:40 to find him naked in bed (does he think he's sexy? He's surely NOT!) reading while I put things away and wash face for the third time, always HOT in our room, in the library, and on deck looking at sunsets-that-may-be. Put everything on the floor, AGAIN ready for the desk-clearing waves during the night (though the Southhampton couple the next morning said that the 6AM deck was dark and stormy and unpopulated, though he said that earlier dawns at 6AM saw a LOT of people on deck), and get to bed at 10:55PM, urinating to be sure, but you couldn't tell since I peed FOUR more times before getting out of bed in the morning!

FRIDAY, 3/12/04: Pee at 12:53AM, 2:57AM, and 5:25AM. 6:36AM: A real MELANGE of dreams, all since my last pee: 1) something involving Wallace Beery, quite definitely HIM, but not in a Hollywood context, sort of as if Fred Lasker had BECOME him. 2) An idyllic home in the south of France, with charming people, and I'm sitting on the bank of a small stream watching a little dog walk across this stream and the next little one, searching through his environment, and (added at 6:50AM as I remember it again) I'm sitting on a rock that's dry at the top so I'm not worried about staining the back of my pants by sitting on it, but as I sit the moss on the top starts to slide off the rock, and I move higher and higher while the turf (one of my words in Scrabble last night) slides lower and lower, until finally I can verify that the top of the bare rock is dry and I can sit on it easily, just soaking up the view of the streams and surrounding trees and suburban beauty of France (finish addition at 6:52AM), and there are well-behaved children in adjoining homes, sunlight filtering through high-leaved trees, the prospects of wonderful food for dinner with delightful sophisticated conversation with upper-class families. 3) A strange fragment in the loft of an actor in an off-Broadway play, his head shaved to the same stubble as his beard, and it turns into the fact that he's dying of AIDS and telling, partly the audience, partly his heirs, and partly me, that the two units on the side of his apartment can be fit into any small closet at ALL, and he demonstrates with one that each SIDE pulls down into a nested series of storage shelves, and then the CENTER pulls down in a magical way to make SQUARE YARDS of space for storage of anything at all, and I look on one shelf and see his private collection of lamp-pulls or electrical connections, all meticulously clean and jewel-like in clear plastic colors and geometrically connected shapes. 4) Somehow in an Italian family, all chatting with each other, and I ask if any can speak English, but they smile and none can, and then I ask if they can speak French, and one cute young man can, and then somehow without transition, but in the same environment, I'm in a bedroom, maybe being shownn where I'll sleep, and a handsome boy gives me a knowing smile and indicates I should follow him, and after a moment's delay I think I've lost him, follow one set of doors around to a maze of interconnecting bedrooms to still not find him, but somehow go back to the starting point and go the OTHER way, following a retreating shadow, and he enters a lit closet and turns to greet me in a VERY slobbery but still gentle series of kisses, hands going all over the body, and I wonder if he knows I'm so much older than he is, but he doesn't seem to mind, and I'm concerned about getting an erection, but it does seem to be growing, and I start adoring the front of his body in his white shirt and loose pants, and he seems to like this also, when without transition I'm in something like a department store, going up an escalator, surrounded by VERY sexy men, almost like a pornographic music video, and I'm caressing the man in front of me while the man behind me is tearing at my clothes, denuding me, and I bend backward and can see my cock hard in front of me, so I know I can at least be presentable to this sexy bunch of guys, and wake hard, trying to remember the NUMBER of dreams, meanwhile forgetting the CONTENT of the Wallace Beery dream which took place before the rest of them. Finish typing now at 6:48, and pee AGAIN. Stay awake thinking, and Ken's into bathroom at 7:35 so I raise portholes to see sun up into dark clouds and type ideas: 1) Use file 8 for a draft letter of complaint about cruise, 2) Complain to Promenade and AT LEAST get $5 back or change company, 3) Depression over "black wind of death" promised by al-Qaeda, thinking it might be Black Plague and my plans for liesurely future may be dashed. Go to file 8 at 7:42. He comes out of the bathroom without showering and I go in and finish shower at 8:10. Ask Ken if he wants to participate in the letter and he says curtly, "I think not." I take it away without a word. He goes to see the Head Purser about our $100 credit and is told she's not in until 9AM. He goes at 9:07AM and of course she's not in yet. He goes back at 9:15 as I type this. To breakfast 8:15-8:50 with a couple from Southhampton who sat in London Heathrow overnight in sleeting conditions waiting for a flight to Madrid, was put up in Madrid at a wonderful hotel waiting for the next multiply-delayed plane that took them to Santiago, where they were put up a wonderful night that got them late into Valparaiso where they had to be rushed to the Discovery which was waiting for them. Ken told story of his TWO flights from DC to NYC that couldn't land and finally landed in Philadelphia. I come back up and do pills to 9:18 and catch up with the rest of yesterday. Linda, the Purser, PHONES room at 9:28AM to ask for Levin or Zkcucjeukhl, saying that we now have $50 nonrefundable credit EACH in our accounts, and will get back about our bottle of wine. I write a note for Ken, who's off at the Scrabble tournament at 9:30 that I turned my nose up at, waiting for the 10:15 talk on Polynesian expansion through the islands. Do journal until 9:44. Had hoped the room would be made up while we were at breakfast, but it wasn't. Now to file 8 for the complaint letter. Finish that rough draft, which I'll probably insist on reading to Ken, at 9:58AM, still 15 minutes before I leave for the 10:15 Polynesian Migration talk. Do daily puzzle. To lecture at 10:17. Recent article in magazine gave these dates: 4000BP to Solomons and Micronesia, 3200BP to New Caledonia, 3000BP to Fiji and Tonga and Samoa, 2200BP to Society, Tuomotos, and Marquesas, 300AD to Easter Island, 400AD to Hawaii, 1300AD to New Zealand. Reasons possible: 1) "Zenith stars" over known islands, "Hey, more stars, more islands!" 2) Simple curiosity---"What's over THERE?" 3) Disasters: famine, warfare, religion, cyclones, exiled crimnals. Polynesian Voyaging Society (in Hawaii), had money, and 1) built a voyaging canoe, the Hoku'lea, from the name of the zenith star, actually Arcturus, over Hawaii, 2) sail canoe to Tahiti, 2400 miles, 3) Navigatiional skills (DEAD in Hawaii) from Satawal Island in Micronesia, passed down and REMEMBERED by Mao, who led trip PERFECTLY in the stated 30 days. SHE guesses Polynesians got to AMERICAS before Columbus. Polynesians WENT to South American and brought YAMS to Easter Island. First migrations did NOT go past Micronesian New Guinea and south to Australia. They navigate by: 1) stars, 2) ocean, a) current, b) waves, c) felt through navigator's TESTICLES in water in bottom of boat!, d) winds. 3) land-signs, a) birds, b) atolls REFLECT blue on clouds above. This goes to 11, we play Scrabble which I win. Back to room at 12:12 to type. We CAN get bill printed EARLY, so I say "After Christmas." Now 12:24 and Ken suggests lunch. Up to eat with lovely couple from Boulder, traveling all over the world, she reminding me of Anne McDonald, or whoever, he rather sexy and handsome. I start with chilled melon soup and graduate to black bean soup, then the beef goulash and Peach and Pear Jalousie, toughish, and we're finished at 1:40, Ken allowing me to watch some TV of "Absolutely Fabulous" before he leaves at 1:55 to his Scrabble tournament, and I brush my teeth thoroughly and watch "The Island of Dr. Moreau" with Burt Lancaster and Michael York from 2-3:38, probably cut? End watching "My Fair Lady" while waiting to leave for 4:30 Trivia, having put three layers of lotion on my bleedingly-red calves. Finish the potato chips at last, too. Trivia to 4:58 and we LOSE with a score of 19/21, winner, of course, having 20/21. Scrabble, he wins, and dinner 6:10-7:07, quite good duck and cherries for Ken and two kinds of veal cutlets for me with two sauces. Seems we might not have had much of the two courses that came before. We go right out to see what sunset there may be until 7:25, some color but not very fetching. Scrabble to 9:35, feeling tired, "letting" him win because I had lousy letters, didn't have the "lists" Dictionary with the 8-letter anagrams, and it was VERY hot in the library, and I felt sweaty and very uncomfortable and tired. We propped open the door to the back deck with a table-umbrella, but the open door sucked open the adjacent cabinet door which whacked under the EXIT sign and seemed to be STUCK there until a seward came and pushed the ceiling-tile up enough to clear the sign from the top of the door, but as soon as it was done it was flung open AGAIN, and the guy came to say it was ordered that the door be closed. Still warmer. Down to room, very tired, but still full from dinner, to read "Chicxulub" in New Yorker, so impressed that I strongly recommended it to Ken to read. He pushes it off, saying he wants at least to finish "The Story of Philosophy" on the trip. When our location was announced at lunch, they did NOT name the two atolls we'd not stopped at which had been announced. Finish the story and get to bed at 10:35, but still lay awake a bit.

SATURDAY, 3/13/04: Pee at 3:14 and then record the two dreams following. 4:44AM: Dream of having ridden on a bus for 8 (or 10) hours to get from NYC to New Orleans, where I get off in a very non-touristy-looking area and see a phone booth in the distance because I'm supposed to phone Mildred when I get in. I seem somehow to have done so, because without transition I've checked into a VERY strange hotel room which seems occupied by a half-dozen people who seem to be involved in some kind of accounting business which has them at desks and tables with all kinds of books piled in front of them, and on filing cabinets and bookcases around them, and I see a few beds around, but I wonder how we're all going to sleep or even agree on WHEN we're all going to sleep. I have to call Mildred back, and I've written her number down at the top of a small piece of paper with other things written on it, and I look and the number appears to be 07458, or something like that, definitely five numbers starting with 0. The phone is an old plastic one with the top DIAL somehow missing, so that I have to press hard on the NUMBER, which rotates, to dial it, and the TOP HALF of the dial contains the letters of the alphabet and the BOTTOM HALF the numbers, so I have to go WAY AROUND on the slippery plastic to dial a number. But someone jostles me, and I don't dial the number, then wander around the room for some reason, and Ken has joined me, and I know we're supposed to meet for dinner, but it's getting to be 9 and 10PM and later and later and I'm getting more and more frustrated until, in another mysterious transition, we've gone somewhere OUTSIDE the hotel and in getting back someone INSIDE raises a portion of the wall of the restaurant on the ground floor (which looks pretty decent, I think, and maybe Mildred will come HERE for dinner) to make it easier for all of us to get inside without going around to the narrower front door, and we're jostling each other to step over the low thick painted-concrete wall to step among the crowded tables in the restaurant, and some step WAY up and some LOWER up, but we're all finally inside and I'm without transition back in the SAME room trying desperately to find the slip of paper with her number on it, but find OTHER slips of paper (which are really water-dampened and wrinkled index cards), with OTHER numbers written on them, and I try and don't get her, and finally find Ken again and say "I guess I have to start just TRYING numbers until I get the RIGHT one," and he rolls his eyes in his typical way and I again try to locate the phone, let alone any of the slips which have some numbers which may be HERS written on it. Wake with GREAT relief that it was only a dream. Grab, with a rattle on the desk, the AlphaSmart and sit on the pot typing this until 4:57AM. 6:55AM: Incredibly, AGAIN I'm with a large group that's met in a manufacturing plant to see where films are---devloped? produced? made? not FILMED but MANUFACTURED (the frustration CONTINUES to the DESCRIPTION of the dream!) so that we can get an idea of that process before flying to Chicago for a few days of SEEING films that will have been manufactured here. I'm with a large group, and we're going from area to area in the building, but I get separated from them and don't know how to FIND them, because I don't even remember the name of the person who's taking us on this tour! Get to a phone-operator's room [start file 5 at 7AM 3/13, just THREE days after starting file 4; at this rate I'd have filled eight files in 24 days, less than the 26 of the trip!] when I see someone who's not talking to someone, and ask where someone's office is, and no one KNOWS. Women begin to confer with one another to see who can help me, and I, again without transition, find myself wandering down a green corridor to a door that opens onto a stairway that I KNOW I didn't enter by, return to find the only exit a 3x3 foot square that isn't even a DOOR, and get increasingly panicked (though before this I'd determined to go to the AIRPORT and see which FLIGHT I'd been reserved on to go to Chicago with the group, since there can't be THAT many flights this afternoon) and with increasing frustration, thinking "This CAN'T be!" I open a LAST door onto a huge vacant green-painted area with NO way to get to the floor of it and NO way out of it, and I think---but still thinking this IS real life---"This MUST be a dream," and for a few seconds endure the "real life" feeling of BEING in a frustrating situation that SHOULD be a dream before waking to find that it IS a dream. Dazedly get out of the rolling bed and sit on the john to type this to 7:06AM, peeing again. Calculating 3 days/file, I STILL have enough room left to finish the trip, almost FOUR files for TEN days left! Now 7:09AM. Up at 8:05 to open porthole for long-risen sun, and realize I hadn't taken my pills last night! Will take them when Ken finishes shaving. Breakfast 8:20-9:10 with a couple from Florida who seem VERY distant when we first sit down, but who become warm and chatty as the meal continues. I order waffles, probably better than Ken's, but they pour the maple syrup ONLY at the start, and I ended with not enough left, but we both used LOTS of butter as I shared one of their slices of burnt-black banana bread, a good extra orderable from the waiters. Up to the Christmas Island talk by Dorothy from 9:19-10, Largest atoll in the Pacific. The British in May, 1957, started A-bomb tests and finished with two H-bomb tests in November, 1957, for a total of 36 tests in all. About 2000 Micronesians there, imported to manage the palm trees planted to take advantage of the demand for copra, over 750,000 planted over the island, which industry is now subsidized by the government to give SOME work to the islanders, that happening after the demand for guano died out, that industry having been shared by the French, British, and Americans, all of whom wanted to EXPLOIT the island, none of whom wanted to SUPPORT or BE RESPONSIBLE FOR the island. It seems to be ONE island, caliper shaped, with Cook Island sandwiched in the inlet between the two chief towns of London and Paris. Also remembered that I looked out the window yesterday and saw a fleet of about 6-7 3-4 inch FLYING FISH skimming alongside the boat, but Ken couldn't catch a look at them. Forgot to mention that when we got back to the room last night there was a bottle of (cheap) red wine and two glasses and a green napkin on the table, with "Compliments of the Discovery to Robert Zolnerzak" on the card. And they'd brought my prize of the calculator. Desperate to get away from Scrabble, I suggested the Family Trivial Pursuit (between Genius and Children's) and we sat in the Palm Court and played a VERY silly-funny-ridiculously difficult game where Ken managed at last to get TWO wedges and I got FIVE (though he protested mightily when ONE of my wedges was won by being a question they'd selected for the evening Trivia groups), but neither hardly EVER got the ORANGE, sports and entertainment, group, because it was so HEAVILY British and PARTICULAR, ala the Rugby team that got four in-bounds after having won three in a row in the 1966 Tourney in Azerbaijan. By far the FUNNIEST was "In what rural sport is there the "nonsphericalization and 100% organic" rule, which totally broke us up when it turned out to be "cow pat tossing." Ken began suggesting "The Queen Mother" for each unknown answer, including planting her to get a crocus. We went through ALL the blue cards by the time it was time to go down to lunch at 12:10, sitting next to a Hungarian from South Carolina and Ken, the Magician, who lives on Hawaii and will perform a close-up act tomorrow after we get back from Christmas Island. Oh, I asked Dorothy if anyone ELSE was going to say anything about Christmas Island, and Ken could only say he'd ask John, who later said the islanders sent out boats to take people ashore at unknown times, maybe taking people to a bird-island, maybe to a beach, maybe to the hotel (which someone else said wasn't worth anything) and we were properly warned about the enormous quantity of beer cans and JUNK around, since their civilization had been built on the BIODEGRADABILITY of all their previous waste products (food and fish and plant), but the CONVENIENCE made canned tuna and corned beef and other things irresistable without having any way to dispose of the REFUSE from the modern containers. So in a sense it wasn't really their FAULT. The taco meat for lunch was good, though sadly the tacos were stale, and the green pea soup was great, compared with the cold avocado soup, which was almost too sweet for dessert, and starting with "fruit plate with smooth cottage cheese" which turned out to be REGULAR cottage cheese, and the cake for dessert wasn't bad either. Good talk with the two older men about adult-onset arthritis, at their ages of 62 and 56, so I still feel lucky. Then to MONOPOLY, Ken reluctant but happy winning from 1:10 to 3:40, when we were to the room for me to take a shower and fill my camera with a recharged battery in preparation to go outside at 4:14PM, order a drink, and put chairs down in preparation for the 4:31 King Neptune entrance to the music from the BAND. No one has the nerve to stand in front of us, though one woman demanded that I hold her STANDING room next to me intact, but she only went for a cushion to sit on. The band struck up a dirge and Neptune and Neptuna descended from the port wing, followed by the MC, the Astronomer, and a parade of the doctor and his assistants, with Espin and a woman in neck-ropes, and the hammy MC proceded to tell the audince when to cheer and when to boo and condemn as each was proclaimed guilty of alliterative indecencies and put on the table to be pelted with raw eggs, vats of colored dyes, trays of pasta and sauces, the smells of which reached us in the back, and Espin threw around a few meatballs to convince us. Then they jumped into the pool. It, in fact, lasted less than half an hour, and my newly-refreshed camera managed to take 10 minutes of film before blinking off, only to be resuscitated by being left off for a few minutes so I had the chance to take a picture of the sea through the picture windows of the Palm Court, and a general view of the Carousel Lounge with the groups gathered for the 5PM Trivia Contest. Also took still photos #30-something through #36 of the posing "victims" and the technicolor operating table. Also some closeup videos of the doctor that I hope show how cute he is. Then race to the front of the sixth floor for the trivia contest, in which we make 17 points (because we didn't know a polar bear (not hyena) could smell a human from 20 miles away, no one contested my guess that a sonnet was 18 lines long (14), and no one knew that astraphobia was fear of LIGHTNING! Over at 5:30 and down to the room to type some of this before Ken's impatience led us up to dinner at 6:03, taking our freebie bottle of red wine from Cogolin, France, for free opening and not-bad drinking with my cheese souffle appetizer, consomme with a funny taste, including prunes, and his linguini and my Guinea Fowl with dry white meat and flavorful leg meat but not nearly enough foie gras jus. My lemon-lime tart had an interesting mint chantilly, and Ken's cake has an interesting coulis that I finished with my finger, to the smile of Roy, who really seems to be intelligent, shy, and cute when he smiles and reacts physically in an amusing way. Finish at 7:17, amazingly dark out, and go up to 8 to find it INDEED almost totally dark, and down to the room for me to finish this by 7:51, Ken having showered while I was typing the first part, and he wants to go to the concert by the pianist at 8, but I'm not sure I want to go, feeling tired again with STILL the vague idea of the possibility of malaria hanging on in the back of my mind, even though only Christmas Island tomorrow remains before the three stops in Hawaii of Maui, Kauai, and Honolulu, where it seems almost impossible to make arrangements to see Doris Duke's house "Shangri-La" near the point of Diamond Head, which everyone says is truly paradisiacal. Read the US News, mostly bloody killings described in detail, and miserable political and international news, and nothing more to say now at 7:55PM, having just newly lotioned my calves. Ken and I leave for the piano recital at 8:05, and he's nervous, praying not to be sea-sick, and cute as hell, having VERY fast fingers but making rather too many mistakes in runs and transitions. The audience is enthusiastic and he seems to be having a good time, changing the program and ending at 9:10, at which time we go back down and look at the thick document on Kiritimati (Christmas) Island, and tell Ken I want to be up for the 6:30 sunrise and 7AM approach to the island, and we agree we have to be in the lounge early to get a Tender 1 ticket. Take money and water and binox and cameras etc. #37 of room at 9:30PM, going to Roll 5? Yes, that is the case from my global search. Put things in A&K bag, Ken saying NO beach activity because of metal scrap and sharp coral, and he's taken "a heavy-duty sleeping pill" and I leave porthole covers OPEN to wake at 6:30AM. Bed at 9:50PM. Can't sleep. Pee at 10:38 and close porthole because night-running lights too bright coming in at the head of my bed.