Before Yokohama

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Sorry for the lack of updating in general recently. I think I wrote about this one time already, but everyone on the ship has been having some trouble with e-mail recently. I know that personally a few people have said that they’ve sent me emails that I never received – I don’t know if that’s a problem on their end or mine. But almost everyone on the ship has been saying that their outgoing emails bounce back a few hours later with a “delayed” message from Super-Hub.com or something along those lines – me included. So I’ve tried sending a few updates, but they keep coming back to me. I’m sure you’re all absolutely devastated.

It is actually pretty annoying though. Whenever I respond to someone’s email, I never know if they’ll actually get it, or if I’ll have to keep resending for days and days until I finally don’t get the bounce email. I think that’s happened to like five people I’ve sent stuff so far.

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Most of the people on the ship right now are watching the Superbowl. That’s right. We’re on a cruise ship watching the Superbowl. They closed the computer lab and asked everyone to stay off the internet if at all possible so that they could get the best streaming quality (they told us in advance “no promise of HD”). It’s kind of a sight to see, actually, roughly 700 people (adults, students, children) sitting in the Union on the sixth deck of a boat, rocking somewhat strongly back and forth, watching a football game taking place 5,000 miles away and 14 hours ago.

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My left palm reads: “I lost my voice”

My right palm reads: “I can’t find it anywhere.”

My left hand’s back reads: “I licked one door knob too many.”

On Friday night, my group was waiting to meet with Don Gogniat, our global studies teacher. It was a really, really long line because all of the other groups were waiting too. He was sitting in the back of the Garden Lounge (the cafeteria on the sixth deck) and all the groups had formed a line that went out of the cafeteria door to see him. We had to sign our names down to finalize our groups and also give a title to our project, so they’d know what we’re working on.

It was nice to chill and talk to my group while waiting. Katie is in there (the dean’s kid) and she’s really funny, and there’s a girl named Dani who’s very interesting. The first time I met her, I told her I thought we’d been introduced before and she said, “No. What are you, some kind of stalker? You creep.” She ended up being really cool though. Her friend Melinda is also there, as well as a guy named Ben who’s nice and I think from the Midwest. We talked about the times we almost died, local ghost stories, things like that. Really uplifting things. We were sort of annoyed with how long we were taking to get to see Don, but we appreciated that we got to hang out as a group for a while.

Anyway, the point of that story was, I totally lost my voice in the process. By the time we got to Don it was mostly gone. But it was okay, because the other people in the group know what’s going on perfectly well so even though I sort of put together the group/the idea, it’s totally fine without me. I think it’s a really cool group and I’m excited for the project.

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Our group projects are supposed to have something to do with the nine topics of sustainability. I forget exactly what they all are, though I know about some of the projects. Many of them are what you’d expect – sustainable transportation, urban planning, waste management, alternative energy sources, etc. I heard of at least one that I thought was amazingly interesting and I was jealous of the idea. That group is trying to study whether or not culture as an institution is sustainable. I wanted to do something that I actually cared about studying, and lucky for me, the ninth topic of sustainability was well-being! So I started a group by asking if anyone wanted to study happiness and whether or not it was possible to be sufficiently happy within a sustainable culture. A couple kids got on board, and some came and went, but we ended up with a good seven-person crew.

As for the idea, in case it doesn’t make sense yet, I’ll try to explain it. I would say that everyone on earth should have an enjoyable life and that they should be happy. I think well-being should be one of our top priorities. Now, think about how happy people were in the 1770s, and compare it to how happy we are now. Do you really think we’ve made significant progress towards happiness in that time? Do you think that the amount of earth that we’ve raped is really justified by how much better our lives have (or haven’t) become in that time?

So it’s sort of interesting; the earth keeps getting in worse and worse shape and we pretty much stay the same as sort of enjoyment of our lives is concerned. But the kicker is that if we go too far, then the planet will just be totally inhabitable and we’ll pretty much kill ourselves off. So wouldn’t it make much more sense to just chill with all the earth raping and be happy like we were when we were hunters and gatherers?

Of course there’s a happy medium. The question is to find that, sort of.

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There was another coffeehouse last night after our Global Studies exam. That was sort of an event unto itself actually. Don got on the loudspeaker and addressed us as “Fellow Academic Adventur-ers” and told us to go to Union, 5th Deck or 6th Deck cafeterias. It was mostly just recall stuff, so it wasn’t too bad. I’m a little upset with myself that I didn’t know exactly where Indonesia was. I think I may have confused it with the Philippines.

I also went upstairs and got a hamburger afterward. It was pretty good.

Anyway, I had been laryngitis’d for about 48 hours at that point, which is the earliest end of the breaking point for the sickness. I could feel that my voice was coming back a bit, so I went to the piano and tried playing Difference. I could do it for the most part, except that I still sounded a bit gravelly, and couldn’t really hit that high E-flat. Anyway, I don’t want to talk about my performance too much because it was one of my worst, but I played/sang “The Disloyal Order of Water Buffalo” and was very unconfident because my voice sounded like gravel. Oh well.

Heather played bagpipes while Mischa played drums. Mischa did another poem again and totally just poured her heart out on the floor. I have mad respect for how honest she is up there. I think she’s one of the coolest 16-year-olds I’ve ever met. Max and Tolan did some more musical comedy about dying due to a botched vasectomy. Spencer did an AWESOME song on ukulele & vocals about William Howard Taft with some call and response. Amber did a slam poem, and a couple other kids read some poems as well. Tolan played a song about robots (philosophical, not comical). Emerson sang “Nothing at All” with Emily on guitar, and she played “Hide and Seek” on her own later. The girl whose name I forget played a cover song on guitar that she learned that same day. A couple people did some karaoke and they were all quite good. Zach played a piece of Liszt on piano and it was really, really pretty. Danny played “I’m Yours” on ukulele and pretended to be the little kid that covered it on YouTube at first. Zach S played I Kissed A Girl on ukulele and sang, and some faculty and their families played Wagonwheel on country instruments. One of the kids there played violin like a madman and he’s like twelve years old, it was insanely impressive.

It went well past quiet hours.

I wished that my voice had been better, and that I had played my song on guitar instead, or that I had just played a piano solo instead. But whatever. It was an amazing night. The entire Union was packed and people stayed till the very last second. It was as popular on the ship as the Superbowl is. I love it.

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The boat hit some rough seas yesterday and for the 24 hours prior to that. It was different this time though. Before, we were sort of in the south Pacific and the water was calm for the most part. The swells were huge and rolling and smooth, and if you looked out the side of the ship you could see them coming from the side.

The north Pacific is a lot colder and a lot choppier, and now we’re going into the swells head on, so you can’t see them coming. They’re pretty much undetectable, so even though they’re either the same size or a bit smaller than the ones before Hawaii, they’re probably more annoying to deal with because they surprise you. The only way you can tell one is coming is if you’re hanging out the side of the boat on the top decks, or if you pay seriously close attention to how long you’ve been experiencing some extra gravity and then wait for it to pound you back down.

Speaking of which, it’s kind of funny to see how people get adjusted to the rocking here. One of the coolest things we figured out is to just wait at the bottom of the stairs until the boat is rocking forward, and then gravity is a little less difficult to overcome and going up the stairs seems sort of effortless. This only works for driving head-on into the waves though.

The smart people always sit such that, if there is a strong wave, their drink won’t fall on them. Where you have to sit changes depending on where the waves are coming from.

If you’re sitting in a seat and, say, you want to get up and go to the starboard side of the boat, it’s way way easier if you just chill out in your seat for a minute and wait for the boat to rock such that the right side is below the left side.

Kids were sliding back and forth on the wooden stage in The Union last night during the coffee house. There wasn’t much they could do about it, but it was pretty fun to see.

A bunch of people went to the back of the fifth deck (outside) yesterday during dinner because the waves were pretty enormous and you could see how big they were as the ship went through them. Sometimes the ship would dip down really far and hit one slightly other than straight on and a huge plume of water would wash over the fifth and sixth decks aft parts, and the kids got all wet. It was cold but they were still loving it. I was standing inside, behind a window, because I’m a little sick and didn’t want to get wet/cold. If the boat goes down far enough with a big enough wave from straight on, the propeller puts out a bit of a rooster tail, which is pretty awesome. But also a little scary.

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Fun things about Semester at Sea:

Apparently we do NOT get a military escort when we go through the Straights of Malacca.

However, we’re the 2nd fastest ship on the seas, so pirates aren’t really interested in putting out the effort to catch us anyway.

Furthermore, our entry points are all at least 25 feet off the water or so with level seas, which is pretty annoying for anyone trying to take over a ship.

If we turn on all four engines (we usually use only one), the ship goes so fast that it puts out a rooster tail constantly. Imagine that. Twenty-six-thousand-ton boat going 32 miles per hour and putting out a stream of water in the air behind it. That’s crazy.

The Discover Channel was supposed to do a special about Mighty Ships that featured us – we were the “mighty with ideas” segment. Apparently they backed out because they didn’t have enough time to do it. That’s too bad, because it would have been really exciting. They were supposed to join us between Mexico and Hawaii. Oh well!

Peace out.