11:13 [A record day for photos: I only took 5]
 |
| The day's agenda |
There was live music last night and after a while I went back to the cabin, got my ukulele and asked Chris if I could play. He got me all hooked up with the mic and the uke cord. I sang ‘Music in My Mother’s House.’ A number of people said they liked it and that I should do more. Chris said that he hoped I had some more songs to do. I said I did so more musical fun may be on the horizon.
This is very awkward at the moment. My keyboard just died and I’m trying to type on the keyboard on the screen. Not recommended! We are on our way to Greenland and we have wind and seas. I asked someone about the height of the swell and she said it was three meters. That’s about right according to what Barbara and I experienced last summer. Richard says he is fine as long as he is lying down so that’s what he is doing. I went to breakfast and Christine wasn’t there either. I listened to a talk on Inuit culture, came down to see how Richard was doing, and now I’ve found myself a window with a deep ledge just behind reception where I can put my tablet on the ledge, stand up to work, and look out at the sea. Every once in a while some fulmars do a fly by and I can see an iceberg on the horizon. It is working quite well. I can stand with my body against the wall, and brace my elbows on the sides of the window ledge if I need to. In the meantime I can type and look out the window.
 |
| My workstation |
I like feeling the roll of the ship. It’s as if someone is rocking me in a hammock and I can totally relax. The movement of the waves is quite hypnotic, with their ever changing colours and patterns. Okay this is driving me nuts. I’m going to go make a cup of Chai and plug my keyboard in. I’ll take a photo of my private work station and then wait until my keyboard is, once again functional.
14:37
It’s now after lunch. I didn’t get a cup of chai because the machine that does the steamed milk was out of order so I drank my water and thought I’d fill it up with cold water and ice. No ice. By that time it was time for lunch.
I’ve found a spot in the Compass Club where no one else was sitting and I think I can understand why. The sunlight is blasting in the window and reflecting right off the top of the glass table into my eyes but since it’s warm in the sun I may have a solution: put my jacket or my bandana down on the surface of the table so it isn’t going directly into my eyes. Done, now it’s only reflecting off the water but at least if I look down at the screen it’s not blinding me.
The sea has calmed down quite a bit and Richard got up and had some fruit for lunch. This is the time that is scheduled for workshops but I tuned in to a Q&A from the cabin and it was already finished. Richard has gone to tie knots. I didn’t feel like getting frustrated. I’m okay with the clove hitch and the half hitch and then I get confused especially when people start reviewing the bowline and there’s one way that’s a bowline and one way that’s something else and I can’t seem to straighten them out.
I just moved from the hot spot to a spot beside the window which was recently vacated. It is much more comfortable. The man across the table is sleeping and kicked the table in his sleep so I moved the table closer to me which is now just the right distance for the iPad if I have the keyboard on my lap.
I changed the bandaid on my knee today because the other one fell off and it’s coming along fine. The knee, not the bandaid. I have a bruise on the outside of my knee and the sensation there is a bit strange, not exactly numb but duller than usual.
This post really is about a whole lot of nothing which is about what I’ve accomplished today. Problem is when the seas are high I don’t want to do anything that requires me to look down for long periods of time. I learned that lesson last year. I would love to have been out of deck watching the fulmars but the outer decks were closed so nobody would slip and fall, blow off into the sea, or amputate an arm or leg when going through one of the vicious doorways. I could probably go out there now but I’m happy sitting here. It’s interesting to watch the musical chairs game for the seat I just vacated. Apparently others don’t like the sun in their faces anymore than I did.
There’s a line from a poem that is running around in my head and it refuses to be anything else but a fragment. “Out of the cradle, gently rocking…” That’s all that I can remember and it’s been running round and round in my head since this morning. Each time I make it stop and examine it for more clues, it simply skips off only to return moments later when I’m thinking about something else.
The guy across from me has been holding his phone while he slept and he just dropped it on the floor thus waking himself up. It landed by my feet so I picked it up and gave it back to him. Now it seems he too is vacating the premises. I’ll say this: it’s interesting to people watch on the ship. Maybe I should be drawing them but I’m not. It’s quiet here. People are reading or napping, or looking at their phones.
Jon, one of our assistant expedition leaders, just steamed through at breakneck speed. I don’t think he ever sleeps on these cruises. I had a nice chat with Julie out of the bow as we cruised by the ice face before the fog closed in yesterday. I’ll miss these folks. A woman I was chatting with this morning said her brother and sister-In-law had done a lot of travelling with Adventure Travel and had had good experiences with them. I didn’t ask if they were an American Company but I expect they are. Still, it’s always good to get info from people who have been with other tour companies. [It’s a Canadian company out of Vancouver. Yea!]
I’m not sure how I like the new Adventure Canada model of the small 70 passenger ship being the one that is more ‘family’ oriented, i.e. less expensive. It doesn’t have free booze or free internet which the bigger ship, about the size of this one does. I don’t care about the booze or the internet really but I can only think that a smaller ship will be even less comfortable than this one in heavy seas. Oh well, there isn’t really a trip I’m just dying to do with them anyway. Alana said the other day that the main reason for giving up on this ship was its age and how much fuel it burns. They wanted a ship with a better environmental footprint. Apparently Iceland now has charging facilities for smaller ships that do day trips.
Apparently a National Geographic ship was in Grise Fjord the day we were supposed to get there. After some discussion, the consensus was that it was probably a higher ice class than this ship, or they got lucky with the ice and were able to get in and out before the ice choked the landing spot.
The keyboard seems to be behind the screen in terms of showing characters. That’s also a bit annoying but it’s probably a signal that I should stop babbling about nothing and pack it in for the time being, which is exactly what I’m about to do.
21:47
We have yet another time change tonight. I think that makes for one every night for the last 4 or maybe 5. One clear disadvantage of going this direction. Strange, I feel that the important part of the trip is over at this point. It was the part of the Canadian Arctic that i hadn’t been to that I really wanted to see. I know Greenland will be good because it always is. I think this will be my fourth time here. I can say ‘here’ because we can just see some bumps of land on the horizon. We’ve had our leisurely day and tomorrow we have to be up at 6:00 and disembarkation starts at 7:30. Yikes!
We had dinner tonight with June the matriarch of the Swan clan. She is a very interesting person. She was a social worker and then went into private practice as a psycho analyst. I asked her what the distinctions were between psychiatrists, psycho analysts, and clinical psychologists. She explained it was the kind of training each one received. I knew that psychiatrists were the only MD’s in the bunch but I was confused about the difference between the other two. She came up through the social worker stream and she said that clinical psychologists probably had PhD’s. I don’t think all of them do but those two branches are closer in that they both deal with counselling and psychiatrists don’t do that kind of follow up.
She also said that if you went to see a counsellor and didn’t start to feel better in a few sessions that you should look for a new one because there had to be a fit between the patient and the counsellor. That makes sense to me. She thinks that there is too much medication being prescribed and the terms like depression, anxiety disorder are being thrown around [my words, not hers] too freely and that too many young people are starting to define themselves by those labels when what they are really feeling is a natural spectrum of emotions in times of stress.
I like hearing people talk about their areas of expertise. She said that she and Matthew, one of the founders of Adventure Canada, tried to discourage their kids from going into the business but the kids, one by one went there anyway. The kids tell her now that the reason they can all get along is that she was adamant that they have family meetings to discuss issues. When the kids were little that was okay but they hated it when they were teenagers. Cedar always wanted to go into the business but they insisted that she go to university so she did and then went into it. Alana was a social worker, and I forget what MJ did before he got involved. Cedar loves to be the public face of the company. Alana can do whatever is needed when it’s needed and MJ grounds Cedar in the financial realities of ideas and possibilities. It’s an interesting story and it will be fascinating to see how the company manages having two ships on the go during the summer season and the upscaling of the larger ship in terms of the amenities offered. I don’t know if we will travel with them again but I think I’ll still watch what they are up to with interest.
I think that’s about it for tonight. Tomorrow is going to be an early one at Innaanganeq. Aka the Greenlandic archeologist on the ship asked us to please use the Inuit names for places so I’ll endeavour to do that. I’ve heard this said a couple of times but I don’t remember how to pronounce it. I’m happy to write it, except that I notice it is spelled in two different ways on the slide that gives us the itinerary for tomorrow. In the first instance it’s spelled the way I have copied it above. In the second instance the middle ‘n’ has been left out.
The iPad is down to 55% battery and it’s time for me to pack it in for another day. Richard pointed out that in another week’s time we will be in Toronto. Time goes fast on these trips, that’s for sure.
 |
| The old familiar hallway to our cabin |
No comments:
Post a Comment