USN59-79

You should notify the front desk a day or two before it happens. Once my DW left the ship in Keelung to stay a few days with family and rejoin in Hong Kong. The ship arranged with local authorities for a customs check when she disembarked. When she arrived in HK, she needed a new key card to embark. Also, they didn't charge her gratuities for the days she was not on board. Incidentally, I stayed on board and met her at the airport in HK when she returned. All in all it worked out well. Ray

Roy, your description of what is happening with your medical alert device sounds very unusual. First, the batteries should not have been installed before it was shipped. Second, it should have not been turned on. Third, how does the device have your personal info and even the info on your pastor before you have received it? If it were sent to me, I would immediately return it and order one from another company. Identity theft??? Ray

I agree with @aliaschief about breaking up a long flight. We have found that we can live with a ten hour flight in coach and have done that Seattle to Tokyo or Seattle to Taipei one way. Two choices I see are Seattle to Honolulu, overnight, then Honolulu to Sydney. Another is Seattle to San Francisco, then SFO to Fiji and Fiji to Sydney on Fiji Airlines. I noticed the Roll Call is kind of sparse on Seabourn. One reason may be that they don't have a Meet and Greet. Anyway, looking forward to something different after 1200 days on HAL. Ray

Finally some cool weather here in the PNW. Went from the 90s to the 70s and looks like we will have that for the next week or so. Still no rain, though. I went to my oncologist yesterday for my 6-month checkup for my leukemia. Had the labs done Monday. Every test that had been high the last two times was lower this time, such as white blood count and lymphocytes. And the serendipitous thing was that I weighed eleven pounds less than my last checkup. So that is some good news on health front. The oncologist said that it is unusual for someone to improve without treatment, but it happens in about a third of the cases. We have booked a cruise starting this February from Sydney to Taipei. It is part of the WC on the Seabourn Sojourn, for 33 days. After a few bad experiences on our last HAL cruise, we decided to try a different cruise line, although it is still part of the Carnival group. The only concern now is how to get to Sydney from Seattle in reasonable comfort without paying an additional $10K for business class. Ray

HAL glues on little cloth stickers with a laundry mark on it to your clothes. They are especially irritating on the neck of your T-shirt, so I pull them off as soon as I can. But I do take a picture of the laundry form each time. Ray

I am guessing that what @Seasick Sailordiscussed is what happened. It has happened to us. Unfortunately, there is a certain type of person who will not do the right thing. Ray

Thanks. That sounds fair. I think pre-covid HAL would have been higher, but we have experienced it before and after. We have decided to try Seabourn for our next cruise. Ray

Yes, it is helpful. If HAL got 88 and 85, what score would you two give Royal C? Ray

Sue, it is sad to hear that a relative died while on the World Cruise. But a few details might make us understand what happened. Saying "ill in Africa" is like saying "ill in North America". Where did this happen? Apparently HAL helped get him to a hospital. What other help could HAL have provided him? Was he sailing alone or did he have a spouse with him? Ray

Nice comfortable, but dry weather here in the Pacific NW. Thought I would share an incident that happened this morning so you all could avoid it. I have an older iPhone Xr. It is in a leather case and I was trying to pry it out of the case to put a paper with phone numbers back there. Suddenly got a loud warning noise and it automatically called for help. Finally turned it off, but then got a call asking what was my emergency. Told him no problem and what happened and thanked him for responding. Then went online to find out what triggered the call. Apparently on that type of phone, if you simultaneously push a button on both sides of the phone, it will call for help. I did that trying to pry the phone from its leather case. Now I know. Have my monthly eye appointment at the retina center for the shot in the left eye. Sounds worse than it is. Looks like the treatment doesn't cure what they call neovascular AMD, but it does seem to keep it from getting worse. Ray

Not sure why an interconnecting cabin is a negative. We have had them on other ships and never gave them a thought. After all, the door between them is locked. Something positive about Sihanoukville, and Cambodia. We were on the Westerdam in 2020 when it was sailing aimlessly between the Philippines and Thailand and no country would allow us to land our passengers. Thailand actually sent a Navy destroyer to escort us away from their country after they had previously given us landing permission. Only Cambodia would welcome us. When we landed in Sihanoukville, their leader landed on the pier in his helo gave us all a ceremonial scarf. We eventually flew to Phnom Penh to await flights home. While there is not a lot for tourists in Sihanoukville, the country does welcome tourists.

Thanks for that. We just booked our first Seabourn cruise and trying to learn all we can before we board in February.

You are right; he was a great teacher. Those times were so different from now. In 1957 Russia sent up their Sputnik satellite and we were very far behind. We had a 40 acre farm, so lots of room to play with home made rockets. And we could go to the local drug store and buy chemicals that would not now be available to an individual. We made simple rockets using car exhaust pipe, metal fins attached with sheet metal screws, and a carved venturi made from a brick. We found that potassium chlorate and powdered zinc made a fairly safe fuel, safe meaning that it burned at known rate rather than simply exploding. We also made some other things from that oxidizer that I won't mention as they were very dangerous. Sure hope @DeeniEncinitashome is safe on Maui. We have been there a few times and my DM was born at Lahaina in 1910. Ray

We had an interesting day yesterday. Drove to Ellensburg, about 150 miles from here to attend my 65th high school reunion. About 25 students and spouses were there. Had something to do with today, also. One of our students was an indigenous boy whose family often picked fruit for a living in various parts of the state. Thus he often missed school. In his senior year he had an issue with the history course calling his relatives murderers in their dealings with settlers arriving on covered wagons. It went all the way to the State Board of Education, but basically nothing happened. He left school at that time to join the Marine Corps. Got his GED in the Corps, but the high school principal refused to issue him a diploma. 65 years later, he got his diploma yesterday. It was great to go over some of the times we had in school that I had mostly forgotten. Another student and I, who got his PHD in physics but is no longer with us, decided to make a liquid fuel rocket for a physics project. It was fueled by red fuming nitric acid, a very dangerous chemical, and kerosene. I was able to buy some from a chemical company in Seattle. It came in a wax-coated bottle with a glass stopper that was in a metal box shielded with mica bits. We got the metal shop to help us weld it together and when we showed it to the physics teacher his reaction was: Stop right now. Don't go any farther. Donate it to the class and you will both get an A for your project". I wonder what happened to it. I learned much later that this was the same fuel used in the Scud Missiles that Iraq was sending toward Israel a few years ago. Interesting times in 1958. Ray

This is one of the things that I love about CC. I would never in my life realized what that small bar in a shower was for if it wasn't for these posts. Ray

Another book about Hiroshima and the bomb is The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes. It is more technical than the Hersey book and more than 800 pages, but I found it interesting to learn how fission was discovered and the breakthroughs that happened after 1932. Maybe you would have to be kind of nerdy to appreciate it. About 20 years ago I started to buy used books to add to my collection with plans to read them when I retired. Just got around to reading this one a few days before we saw the movie "Oppenheimer". Ray

These two Chinese sailors didn't just break some Navy rules. They committed espionage against the United States and were paid thousands of dollars by the Chinese government for the secrets they delivered. One of them just became a U.S. citizen in 2022, the year he betrayed his new country and started delivering classified material to China. It is a Federal crime, not a Navy crime that would warrant a court martial. Ray

To put this into perspective: I have sailed 1800 days on two cruise lines and have never ordered a meal that they didn't serve me. Think how much food must have been wasted as they must always cook more than they will need. Maybe the people in Seattle will recognize that they have a chef that wastes less food than average. Ray

Thanks for your service, Jack. I didn't know that the Coasties wore leggings or spats with their dress whites. Otherwise similar to Navy uniforms. ETCM, USN Retired Ray

I have often wondered why it is so unusual that the dining room runs out of a popular dinner menu item. Maybe it is because we usually eat first seating. My question is: If the waiter knew that an item might not be available, did he or she recommend something else? And, if so, did you refuse the suggestion? Ray

Sometimes. Generally I book onboard. Ray

That is why I let my TA deal with it. His website works fine. Ray

I don't understand why they do it that way. They already know you are 4 or 5 star, but insist on charging full price to your CC. Then they may or may not refund it. This is one of the reasons that although we have more than 1200 days on HAL, we may choose another cruise line for our next cruise. If we do another cruise. Ray

I have very much enjoyed your report, Tim and envy you having a young grandson to share the trip with you. One question: Since you live so close to the cruise terminals in Seattle, why did you choose to take a ship out of Vancouver? We live in Kitsap County, and have done both, but only chose Vancouver when we couldn't do the same thing from Seattle. Ray

No OBC and I checked my statement regularly. That is how I noticed that they also charged me half price for our first Pinnacle Grill dinner. As 5-star, the first two are supposed to be free. The front desk was able to fix that. Ray