5 October
Lahaina (again) The Island
A small
brekky then caught the Abs class and stayed on for 2 hours in the gym. I was
chatting with one of the (male) dancers again and J is ssssssssssso jealous. We
met another English/US/Aus couple for trivia which went well, although we ended
up changing 2 correct answers. They have a sister & partner who will make up
a 6 for Progressive Trivia. The new scheme is that winners will get signatures
from the hosts on a card, which can be redeemed at the end of the cruise, as
per Cunard. This will be much better than accumulating a dozen luggage tags and
pens.
A short
while later there was a landmark trivia where we recognised nearly all the
famous places. We seem to keep confusing the mosques in Istanbul. We caught a
dash of sun and had lunch then I went ashore while J went for her 5 stage
massage. More sun, zumba for J, afternoon trivia, where we did very well with
yet another fresh group and back in for dinner. One of the ladies had a
birthday and received heaps of presents as well as a chocolate cake, which we
had for dessert. We pretty much fell asleep watching Troy right after dinner.
Jess had
posted a video of Michaela doing her first crawl. Very accomplished – push
up/collapse forwards/push up.
6 October Dr
Who
We are
actually heading slightly eastwards towards French Polynesia (used to be the
Society islands).
We headed for
morning trivia early because we were hoping to sort out a team in time for the
Progressive Trivia, which start this afternoon. The couple from yesterday
morning failed to turn up and we were putting off sitting with the others from
yesterday. I headed off looking for the first lot and caught sight of somebody
who looked familiar. I realised in quick succession that we had cruised
together, in fact we did trivia together, in fact we won the Progressive event
on the same boat back in February with Warren. Small world. It was Greg from
Colorado and in due course his partner Steve from British Columbia turned up.
We have booked them for the Progressive afternoons and we will just sit with
whoever we see in the mornings. We won the morning trivia with 16/16 and took
off the tie breaker to win max points.
We took in a
talk about Polynesia, had lunch, and J went to watch the glassblowing demonstration,
which is staged in a workshop up on 15th in front of the grass
lawns. This is a hell of a boat.
Afternoon
trivia went very well. The boys had fallen in with an Aussie couple, the man
being blind. They suggested Mixed Nuts for a team name. We managed an equal top
13/15 and were very happy with the team dynamics. Late gym session afterwards,
mini dinner in the buffet then we dressed up and joined the diners for dessert.
Paul had mentioned that he was a keen Dr Who fan, and that the show had just
passed a 50th anniversary, which happened to be a question during
the progressive.
We didn’t
bother with the big show, which was a repeat of the aerialist extravaganza of 4
days ago. Had a huge sleep instead.
7 October
Winning
Correspondingly
early start (for at least one of us). We have a substantial German contingent
and all the public announcements are duplicated. It seems they have their own
exercise classes as well.
J showed the
young’uns how to shake it at zumba, I lost my cabin card and we sat through an
unconvincing talk by someone who was going to teach us how to sharpen our
mental faculties. We are still having to have food served to us. The captain’s
club rewarded us with another stream of Cosmopolitans and tasty snacks, we had
a quick tan on our balcony and took to the Progressive Trivia, where we started
and ended badly but got everything in between to go 1 point ahead of a pack of
27 teams. That is huge. What was Casanova’s first name?
We bumped
into the elusive English/Aus chap from Day 1, who was in extremis with the bug. Poor fellow looked awful. They have a
Downs daughter travelling with them.
They had
lamb shanks on the menu again so we turned up for dinner with one of the other
couples. The evening music trivia (divas) sucked but the karaoke was quite good
– you would have to say the Aussies are much better than the Yanks we had last
week. Somebody else did Sweet Caroline, which gave me the chance to practise
furtively at the bar – I might give it another go. I’m also curious whether I could
get underneath Suspicious Minds. BTW Casanova was a Giacomo.
8 October
Crossing The Line
Gym Zumba
etc. We thought we had done well in morning trivia with a bunch of strangers
but we didn’t even get a signature. (We got 14 out of 15) After lunch we watched the glass blowers make an
ornate champagne bucket. It is a really interesting process. We crossed the
Equator at 2pm and we watched the somewhat restrained ceremony from the
windproof vantage point of the 15th floor lift annex. Nowhere near
as gaudy as the MSC version. J took in the guest talks about Great Guys of the
Movies and also Marvellous Sea Mammals.
We secured
the same secluded little nook we had yesterday for the PT (trivia), which suits
us because then we can talk quietly for Rob’s benefit ( he’s blind) without
being overheard. We were pleased to see that we were 1 point clear of one other
team, with 3 others a point below that and another 3 one point lower. The
questions were challenging and we had to guess and reason our way through some
of them. Once again the chemistry was excellent and we were somewhere between
hopeful and confident. Imagine our delight to get a perfect 15 . . . 2 points ahead of the rest and apparently 5
clear of the team that were second, who must have had a shocker. At worst,
there could be 3 teams 4 points behind us but there are still 7 rounds to go.
We had
dinner in the buffet and took in the evening music quiz, with our customary
dismal output.
Awwww
Awwww
9 October
South Pacific
No gym, J
did zumba while I walked the deck/wind tunnel, laundry, morning trivia (2nd
in a huge field). There is a pair of Australian twins who we noticed singing in
the karaoke and frequenting the trivia and we thought we might resonate with
them and their wives but, having shared lifts with them a couple of times, we
now think of them as The Brothers Grimm. Last night both husband/wife pairs had
matching Hawaiian shirt/dress outfits.
We won the
spelling competition (mostly foreign words) with an obnoxious Canadian, sat
through the Battle of the Sexes, won narrowly by the women, and went into
trivia quietly confident. After 7 questions, I idly remarked that the questions
seemed very easy. We had to guess a few and fared less well with that today,
ending with 10, although it was apparent that nobody else was over-enthused
during the marking. It turned out that one other team had 10, so we pulled further
ahead of everybody else. So far we have been 1st equal in 2 sets,
and won the others outright. 6 to go.
In between,
J managed to sit in on the talk on Fab Film Females. We heard that our
English/Australian partner from day 1 actually has chronic heart trouble and is
on watch for evac in Polynesia, but is currently doing well.
10 October
The usual.
Big gym after breakfast. We scored signatures all day long, watched Milos(h)
talking about extra terrestrials and won the trivia again, this time one clear
of one team and then the field. Steve was very good value today. Afterwards, we
went out on the back of 14 and won with Rob and Helen, sneaking in ahead of the
Brothers Grimm. We went into dinner for the surf n turf, which was lacklustre.
The steaks can be tough, probably because they have been frozen ex Miami. Most
of the food during the current season will be freighted to Sydney from Miami
and brought aboard as required.
J took in
the evening mixed-up midcruise show and then we drifted into Sudoku . . umm
karaoke. I then fell into the trap of getting caught in a trap. Hint for young
players – do not get up in a room full of people to sing an Elvis song if you
don’t know the song structure and you haven’t heard which key it is played in.
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