Week Five: Part Two...

Hey everyone, long time no post. I wish I had a good excuse as to why it’s been so long since I’ve posted a new blog. Something like “I’ve gotten especially busy”, or “I’ve been really preoccupied with some great project I’m working on”, or simply “pirates”. But nope, life on the boat remains exactly the same: Sleep, waffles, Law & Order reruns, sleep, sporadic comedy shows, sleep, gym. Not that I’m complaining about my itinerary - far from it. But I really have no idea where my time has been going lately.

But for now, let’s take it back a week (or two), to when I last updated the ol’ blog. It seems like every day or so on the boat is another crew party, which suits me just fine. Especially since they usually have free beer. This particular party was down on one of the lower decks, near the engine room. The room was unbelievably cramped, but that just added to the fun:



Here’s another picture of Rusty and his girlfriend, Andreea:


And here is the night’s entertainment: Next Stage! They’re one of the musical acts here on the boat. Next Stage is a group from the Philippines, and have been really hospitable to us ever since we arrived here on the boat. Here they are, I believe rocking out to a cover of Aha’s “Take On Me”:


The rest of the night is kind of a blur. Thusly, the next day was pretty low key. We stopped in St. Thomas, and I pretty much slept until noon. I only ventured out long enough to check my e-mail at a nearby coffee shop (and drink a delicious Vietnamese latte, made with sweetened condensed milk). Oh, and I also snapped this picture of my first yellow terrorism alert:


Patriotic!

So that night was a pretty cool event for the whole Second City cast. One of the dancers from the ship also reads tarot cards for passengers. Apparently, he’s been studying astrology for some years now. This, is Jared:


He enjoys dancing, Harry Potter books, and the dark arts (I doubt the last two are a coincidence, do you...). So Jared offered to read all of our fortunes for us, and though I don’t usually believe in such things, I am self-absorbed enough to enjoy having someone talk exclusively about me for 20 minutes.


A good time was had by all that night (with the exception of Katy and Derek’s oddly ominous fortunes). We ordered a ridiculous amount of room service, and each person had their cards read personally by Jared. For the record, here’s what I ended up with:


Evidently, I will be forced to make an emotional decision in the near future, as well as displaying hermit-like tendencies and finding new opportunities in my chosen career. Sounds pretty good to me. Oh, and if you look closely, Jared has really kick-ass dragon tarot cards. Not that they tell the future any better; dragons are just awesome.

(Speaking of telling the future, I am currently watching Ben Affleck’s “Paycheck” on TNT. It’s such a shame when good books are made into really terrible movies.)

Anyways, we were due for another trip to New York, and this weekend Michelle was meeting Susan, a friend of hers.


Susan is absolutely the bee’s knees. Not only has she lived in New York for several years and yet remains and entirely sweet human being, but she was also in the New York cast of “Tony ‘n Tina’s Wedding” (she played Marina). So I tagged along, and we all went down to Chinatown to get some lunch.


As you can see, a street festival was in progress. Thing was, no one we asked knew what the festival was for. Not only that, but each group marching through the street was representing a completely different cultural group: there were Mexican children doing a traditional dance, Koreans doing tea kwon do demonstrations, etc. Shockingly, even though the parade took place on July 1st (Canada Day) there was not even one Canadian group to be seen. My repeated attempts to march in the parade were met with police resistance, and eventually, hostility...

Later, we had some delicious Vietnamese food at a place Susan recommended (hmmm... I’m noticing a Vietnamese pattern. Improv rules dictate that I should “heighten and explore this pattern”. Preferably by eating more delicious Vietnamese food...). After that we wandered around Chinatown for a while, which was a-ok by me, seeing as how it was a gorgeous day.


Susan soon led us to our next destination – The Chinatown Ice Cream Factory!


This place kicked ass, for several reasons: a) it was not a factory at all, and was instead more of an exotic ice cream emporium, b) the mascot on the banner kind of looked like Bowser, the final boss in the original “Super Mario Bros” NES game, c) Their ice cream selection was both varied and delicious! After being temporarily disappointed several ‘out of stock’ flavours (notably strawberry cheesecake, ginger, and wasabi) I finally settled on their green tea and pumpkin pie concoctions.


See that smile on my face? You have not lived until you have tried pumpkin pie ice cream. Iced treats in hand, we then strolled through the streets in search of a subway stop. Which took forever. Luckily, this afforded us time to get lost- I mean, wander through Little Italy.


Man, those Italians love selling Sopranos merchandise...

Seriously, Little Italy was great, with some of the streets being blocked off for people to walk through on the weekends. I’d love to go back and visit, if future weekends permit.

Eventually we bid Susan goodbye, and climbed back aboard our floating shopping mall for another week of carefully structured and focus-tested adventure! We all went out for sushi that night, partly to thank Jared for the free tarot readings, and partly to get some damn fine sushi. Seriously, $15 dollars for all you can eat! Not only that, but the sushi is probably some of the best-prepared food on the ship.

Here’s Amanda and Marco, enjoying the edemame beans:


Here’s Katy and Jared:


And here’s Derek, looking entirely filled up:


And here is a time-lapse representation of my sushi experience:





More... pickled... ginger... blargh...

Well, it’s about that time again: the time when I get too lazy to continue writing. Seems to happen a lot lately. Anyways, I’ll leave you all with a picture of a beautiful sunset I happened to catch right after sushi. This week, I’ll have a nice long blog of mostly pictures, to catch you all up on our high-seas adventure. Cheers!