Motion in the Ocean

[davidn]

The last time I slept overnight on a boat was when we were going to Germany, crossing on a ferry to mainland Europe when I was about ten. I remember that my mum assured me that the feeling of the waves was just like being rocked to sleep - something that I was later to find out was misguided optimism by vomiting most of the morning afterwards. I was quite confident when we were in the port in Los Angeles because we couldn't feel the faintest tremor from the sea, but despite all reassurances about stabilizers and the size of the boat and how I wouldn't feel a thing, we've been in a constant nauseating pendulum motion ever since we set off at six yesterday evening. It's not so much like being rocked to sleep as trying to sleep on a bed that's being pushed along San Francisco's ninety-degree angled hills.

This is the second day that we spent on the ship with a collection of botox- and silicon-based life forms, and all the stabilizers available can't disguise the way that we're powering along with a couple of giant engines on top of a great big blue wobbly thing. I felt quite ill in the middle of the day, but taking either dramamine or sugared ginger soothes it a bit (the former is preferable as the latter is disgusting). It also seems to help to stay somewhere near the middle of the ship, as the laws of physics tell me that movement is likely to be at a minimum there. Another thing that helps is being in the swimming pool, which is located almost literally right outside our room - it's filled with chlorinated sea water that's pumped in overnight, so it's cold at first when you get in, but becomes very welcome in the heat - and as the water moves along with the rocking of the boat you're completely unaware of it when you're in there.

Pretty much everything on the boat is provided as part of the total cost of the cruise (which I don't actually know as I never saw the booking for it, but I'm told that it's a figure beyond my comprehension), so there's no chance of boredom as activities are put on throughout the day. Somehow in my wanderings between them I have become classified as one of the golfers, even though I hadn't really touched it since I was about fourteen - there's a golf cage at the back of the boat, and a putting contest held every evening, where I'm the youngest by about half a century, and so far the two women have consistently outclassed the male rest of the group by about fifty points.

The meals are also included in the cost and are as posh as you would expect, with everything being served in microscopic portions on top of stacks of at least four plates arranged like the Towers of Brahma. As far as the normally ludicrously expensive stuff goes, so far I've discovered that caviar is all right if overly salty, but I've never understood the appeal of foie gras. I've had that twice in my life and both times were by accident, I promise. For those who don't know, you obtain it by shoving a cork in a goose and then force feeding it until it explodes, then picking up the pieces that are left over, which gives you a sort of blobby wad of not-very-nice pate that's smeared across your steak if you forget to ask for it without.

I thought I'd use some of the time at sea to do up my personal site again, so with the limited Internet time over the satellite (it's about 35 cents a minute out here, and that's if you pay for four hours in advance), I tried to download and set up PHP with IIS for myself, but I'm too stupid, so I'm doing it in Javascript instead.

Comments

[crassadon.livejournal.com]

Curious that being in a lake on a boat on the ocean is somehow less nausating, although I understan the physics of it.