Monday, October 30, 2017; At Sea

Monday, October 30, 2017; At Sea

We had to move our clocks back another hour last night, so it was light by 5:00AM as our ship cruised within 4 miles of the northern tip of the Philippine Islands this morning.  It was foggy, so all you could see was a shadow off in the distance as we cruised by.  The seas looked quite severe this morning.  The swells were 8 feet with 30kt winds.  By 7:00PM, the seas are predicted to reach 16 feet with 35kt winds.  

We had breakfast in the International Dining room and met a couple of women from Mercer Island and a couple from Oahu.  All of them were second and third generation Japanese Americans.  They had all had relatives who had been interned during WWII, and the older woman from Mercer Island was a little girl who had experienced internment.  

We met up with our trivia friends for the morning trivia, and we spotted Daniel sitting by himself, so we had him come join us.  That was fortunate because one question “What does Domingo mean” required some Spanish, which Daniel was able to answer correctly for us.  We ended up winning, but to our surprise, Ken brought out some Princess Sports water bottles he must have had from a secret stash, rather than handing out more foam fingers.  

Next, we lined up and got into a Halloween mask making activity.  The program said it was limited to 70 participants, but they figured out a way to probably double that number because there was a huge demand.  The Japanese seem to want to participate in everything offered on the ship.  We received a plastic eye mask and used sticky dots to decorate the masks with black silk flower petals and a plastic spider ring.  

We had lunch in the dining room and met a couple who had moved from Chicago to New York, and then most recently to Atlanta.  The gentleman was Chinese American, while his wife was Japanese American.  He recently retired from Pfizer in the manufacturing division.  The other couple were two ladies, one of whom had lived in Yokohama in 1943.  Her father was a manager for The Sankeien family in the silk trade.  They lived in what is now part of a museum on the hill overlooking the Sankeien Gardens.  They had survived several bombing raids.  They were very near a boy’s school, and one day, the government raised a flag at the school.  The next day, it was bombed by Americans.  She had become fluent in Japanese, while her French mother couldn’t speak a bit of Japanese.  Consequently, she had to be the one to scurry around Yokohama during the war to find food and other essentials.  During the American Occupation, they were kicked out of their house and ended up living in a nearby school until her parents could get visas to return to the US.  She ended up going to a boarding school in NYC when she was 14 years old because it took years for her parents to finally get a visa to return to the US. She then ended up living in France, where her mother had a home, and eventually ended up back in the US.  That sounded like a story fit for a Hollywood screenplay.  

Our afternoon trivia featured a few trick questions, which threw us off the track.  One was “Who is next in line for Queen” and the answer was Camilla- who will be the “Queen Consort”, and not Charlotte, who is next in line to be the next Queen of England.  Another was “What mammal is responsible for killing the most humans in Africa?  The answer was Man.  The most common trivia question is what animal kills the most people, and the answer to that is hippopotamus.  The last question was asked verbally with a picture of the album cover for Abbey Road, with the central portion blanked out.  The question was “How many Beatles/Beetles (homophones) are on the cover of Abbey Road?”  The answer was 5- John, Paul, George, Ringo, and a VW Beetle in the left of the album cover in clear sight just up the street from the sidewalk.  We got beat by 4 points, missing out on another string bag.  

We watched “The Man from UNCLE” on the room TV and had dinner in the dining room.  Our neighbors from Edmonton were replaced by a non-English speaking couple of Russian ladies.  We learned that if you don’t show up for your assigned seating, people who request alternate dining can be fit in on a first come, first served basis.  

We were able to catch the early Princess Theatre showtime featuring the Diamond Princess production dancers, singers and band doing a medley of Billy Joel, Neil Diamond, and Elton John.  They did lots of great songs and put on a great show.  We retired to our room afterwards and watched the beginning of Inferno, a sequel to the Dan Brown DaVinci code series with Tom Hanks as Professor Robert Langdon.  It was a decent enough movie but we ended up pausing it and going to bed at 10:30PM because neither of us could keep our eyes open any longer.