Another sea day today after a super stop yesterday in Bali. I posted my blog on that but will wait until after tomorrow's full day excursion in Java to some ancient Buddhist ruins to send out another notice about it.
I'm joking about the conversions from metric to English measurements. Sorry if I confused you, but I'm really making fun of a lot of the passengers who seem to need announcements that have to say, "It's 28 degrees C today. That's 82 degrees F." It seems to me that if you pay to travel around the world, you can get a crib sheet or figure it out yourself. The cruise line caters to some dummies with a lot of money. My first number is usually the correct one. We did hike 1 1/4 km each way to see the dragons plus some walking around the built up area around the pier for a total of maybe 2 or 3 miles all together. Of course, a km is 0.6 miles. A nautical mile is 1.15 statue miles, and one C degree is 9/5 an F. "30 is hot, 20 is nice, 10 is cool, and 0 is ice." So there.
The free 7 day cruise (or 7 days applied to a longer one) is because I reached 350 days on Silversea Cruises in the 14 or so years since they started. At 100 days I got an extra 5% off the price and unlimited free laundry and then another 5% discount at 250 days plus early embarkation and late disembarkation privileges. At 350 and 500 days you get free 7 days and 14 day cruises that can be used. Not a bad thing at the prices. Look at www.silversea.com and look up the fares. I usually get my 15% discounts plus some more for one reason or another. So with special deals I usually pay less than 50% of the published price. Otherwise, forget it.
In the picture showing my being presented with the "7 free day cruise" certificate, the captain was in white. The lady is the ship's salesperson who hosts the repeaters' party. There were 115 such people there out of the 311 passengers on this cruise. Total, there are over 100,000 people who have sailed on Silversea. I don't know how many over 100 days on this cruise who don't pay for laundry, but it has to be a lot. With the 90s temperatures (F, of course) with similar humidity yesterday in Bali, I suspect a lot of us are using the free laundry service. At least I hope so.
We took on fresh local water all day yesterday in Bali. So now the desalinated water from the taps isn't yellow any more. The ship's "made" water is safe, but all the drinks, coffee, etc. are made from bottled water. [Ed note: After I wrote this I found out that the ship made their coffee and poured water from "filtered ship's water" that is the desalinated water run through a graphic/sand filter to remove the yellow minerals. After finding that out, we always asked for bottled water at meals.] The bottled water looks a lot nicer. The ship's tap water tastes ok, not salty. It's yellow from minerals I suspect, not white wine unfortunately--unless the porcupine wine is involved.
Look carefully at the dragon I was petting. IT'S MADE OF WOOD. I'm crazy but not stupid.
As for how far I am from home... It's probably about 10,000 miles, but I'm too lazy to look it up. Lat and long now is 7S 114.5E which puts us about as far as possible on this trip. We're in the Java Sea, just north of the east end of the island of Java and NW of Bali. Hong Kong and Sydney are closer to Colorado. Play with Google Earth and see what you come up with. As for time delay, use 5 microseconds per mile for radio--so it's a quarter second through a geosynchronous satellite--or about 7 microseconds per mile for optical fiber, like on a phone call from land. The Internet is through a server in the States. So the time delay is probably about 1/2 to a second plus all those routers. Data rates for downloads is still about 100 kbps, not Comcast speeds but could be a lot worse.
Hope that answers all your questions.
Cheers from near the Equator...
Mike ('cbu/YB)
2010/1/30 w4aba <w4aba@comcast.net>
Hi Mike,
Well, congratulations on being awarded a 7-day FREE cruise--neat! Were you the only one to get something like that? What do they go by: number of cruises, number of days aboard, number of miles, or number of dollars they've received from you over the years?? Hi-hi! Did you already decide when and where you'll use that? In the photo showing your receiving the award, I assume that was the Captain in white--but who was the lady in blue?
Sorry to hear that the over-ambitious butlers that you've described before, are even too eager with your laundry, even though you try to "hide" it. Oh well, they'll learn. And that was quite an experience, brushing your teeth with what tasted like Chardonney---I hope they have fresh water by now.
I hope you enjoyed petting the Geico gecko's relative there---wow, is he big! He didn't bite, did he?? When you described your walk along that guided path on Komodo Island, the distance you walked sounded interesting---the 1 1/4 km distance you mentioned and the 6 furlongs seem relatively close to each other, but that's also close to about 0.7 miles, not 70 miles---right?? That sure would be quite a walk, even for an experienced hiker such as you. I know: you're just testing your readers to see how closely they read your writings, right?? Hi!
Anyway, are the temperatures about the same as here----75 for a high and 65 for a low?? Not bad, in either location. Did you ask your GPS how many miles you're away from Boulder---or how about here in Delray Beach?? What bearing? Umm--assuming groundwave, how many microseconds would it take for your radio voice to get here? Hi!
73 for now,
Jim
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