World Cruise - Day 81 - Apr 2 - At Sea

Finally back with a decent sunrise photo:

The clocks turned back an hour last night, so I was going to say it was a little easier to get up early for the sunrise, but of course the sunrise is pretty much 24 hours from the day prior, only difference being how much we have traveled west that elongates the lunar day.  But I was up at 5:30a due to the clock turn and getting this photo at 6:10a from back of the ship on the lido deck was easier than some of the mornings where I didn’t really want to get out of bed to get a sunrise photo.

Here are the winners from the Cruise Critic photo competition for Segment 3.  We don’t have a category (like “Seascapes” as the category for the ship’s photo contest), just best photos.  Since I only have gold medals and silver medals available (I get them in ping pong and they only give out a gold for first and a silver for second), there is one gold medal and four silver medal.  So essentially one “top prize” and four “second place” photos.  Here are the four second place photos (you can click on any of these to get a larger photo if you are at the Blogger site):

Chuck Weinberger took this photo in Vietnam, love the both the subject and the contrast of the intricate colors of the vases against the rusting metal and containers in the background:

Roberta Beckman took this photo in Hiroshima.  I like how she focused on the foreground images (the tree and concrete statue) giving the background images a more faded look:

Rick Rogers took this photo.  I like how the photo almost looks black-and-white except for the brown pool at the top and bottom and the greenery top left, while catching the movement of the waterfall:

Lanny Alexander took this photo at the Great Barrier Reef.  Underwater photography is very difficult to get a clear and colorful image, this is the best one I had seen of The Great Barrier Reef:

And this is the gold medal photo, taken by Jim Mundell:

It is a photo of two komodo dragons facing each other.  I love the contrast of the textures of the dragons against the roughness of the bark and how he caught the forked tongue of the one dragon and the blurred background.

There were many other photos, a total of over 100 were entered, all of them were excellent photos, making it tough to judge the top five.  On the last segment, we are going to do the Fantastic Fifty Fotos and then put them up on a photo sharing site after we return from the cruise.

We pirate safety drill this morning (they have a special code that they use that I’m not going to post here just in case pirates are reading my blog).  When you hear the pirate alarm and announcement, you have to go to your cabin using only interior hallways, then close your balcony door and curtains and open your cabin door to the hallway so that you can both hear the announcements (they are only made on the interior of the ship, not the exterior) and to be accounted for.  It took 8m45s to get everyone into their place and accounted for, setting a new record for the ship (last year it was 9m something).

We did a photo of everyone on the ship this morning.  I took this photo before everyone got situated just to give you an idea of how many people are onboard (this is not the posed photo, I just took this before the actual posed photo, which is available for a fee from the ship’s photographer):

You can make the photo above bigger if you are at Blogger by clicking on the photo.  You can see Krissie standing at the top of the left hot tub area, wearing a salmon-colored dress, she is just slightly to the right of middle.  Lorraine and Chuck are on her right (or left of her as we view the pic).

We tied again today at trivia with 24 out of a possible 29, then won our second tiebreaker in a row (we’re now something like 4 out of 20 on tiebreakers, whoo hoo!).  The tiebreaker question was:  What year was the accordion invented?  The answer was somewhere in the 1820s, we said 1850 and were closest to the right answer.  Other questions we either got partially right or missed (they were giving multiple points for some of the questions, hence the 29 total possible points vs. 20.  What were the first names of the members of ABBA?  Anna, Bjorn, Benny and Agnetha (we missed Agnetha).  Who killed Abraham Lincoln and on what date (four possible—assassin, day, month and year)?  John Wilkes Booth on April 14, 1865 (we said April 12, 1865).  What is the temperature of absolute zero?  -273 degrees Celsius (we said -273 Fahrenheit).  How many feet in the length of the human intestines, 25, 50 or 75?  25 (we said 50).  The accordion was invented in what country?  Germany (we said Switzerland).  What year did Al Capone conduct the famous Valentine’s Day Massacre?  1929 (we said 1934).  Other interesting questions that we got correct:  What famous actor/director/producer was born Allen Stuart Coningsberg?  Woody Allen.  What was the year that the first Academy Awards were given out?  1927.  Acid rain consists of what two types of acid?  Sulfuric and nitric.  What nationality was Agatha Christie?  English.  What does AIDS stand for?  Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome.  In what decade was Alcatraz Prison closed?  1960s.  Our galaxy is known as Milky Way, what is the next known galaxy?  Andromeda.  A battery has a negative and positive charge.  The negative charge is known as the cathode, what is the positive?  Anode.

I’m not doing trivia in the afternoon for the rest of the cruise since we now have a pass to the Thelosotherapy Spa (not sure if I’m spelling it right).  One of our tablemates from a prior segment won the pass in the drawing and she didn’t want it, so she sold it to us at a discount.  So we will spend more time in the afternoon hanging out in the front of the ship.

The entertainer tonight was Dorothy Bishop, “the Diva of the High C’s” (opera singer):

Tomorrow is Chennai, India.