Aloha, gentle readers. Greetings from beautiful Maui. The weather is balmy - short sleeves and shorts are perfect. The trade winds are blowing enough that the humidity isn't uncomfortable. Perhaps you will wish you were here.
We flew over on Saturday from San Francisco, uneventfully, and joined our ship, the M/V Pride of America. Part of the Norwegian American fleet, she is U.S. registered and carries a U.S. crew. This enables her to sail from and to U.S. ports without the required stop in a foreign port that non-U.S. flagged ships must make by U.S. law. This law is, of course, protectionism directed at maintaining jobs for Americans.
A cruise ship crew of Americans doesn't treat passengers with the same degree of "kiss up" that people have learned to expect from third world crews. On the other hand, all the crew we've dealt with are nice young people who are very pleasant and doing their jobs well. Of course the other DrC and I have spent a lifetime dealing (mostly) with young Americans of about the crew's ages and that may make a difference in how we're treated.
The other DrC is lecturing onboard, talking about how to capture your memories of a trip. She shows various ways to combine pictures, souvenirs, and a narrative to create a trip log or journal. She gives her second talk this afternoon.
More later...mahalo for your interest and aloha until we meet again in this space.
