“When all else fails, try modern technology.”
Yeah, Mom, for better or for worse technology can definitely make things, well, different. In some ways.
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Whimsical buddha
You never know when or where you might get an idea for a new blog post. Or for a new story or novel, for that matter. Or for how to live your life. It’s not just the dark inner creative places where these things bubble up from; it’s also the sum of your experiences and your relationships and your emotions and thoughts and dreams, and your way of making connections among these things.
Looking over the statistics for this blog for the last few days, I noted a search that had resulted in two views. The search term was “whimsical buddha”.
What was this person looking for? And why? Did he find it?
Would I be disappointed if I knew?
Well, I don’t know, but I do have a whimsical buddha for my mystery searcher, wherever he is, if he’s still looking. The buddha sits in the garden at night in the drenching early April rain. “He looks so forlorn,” I say to Dan. “I feel sorry for anyone who has to be out in the rain on a night like this.”
“Oh–just a minute,” replies my kind-hearted husband, and the next thing I know he too is out in the cold rain carrying an umbrella, to lend the poor buddha a hand.
The Halfling’s Court
My friend Danielle Ackley-McPhail, whom I have never met, is launching a new book. Strike that “never met” part: We may have said a few words at Balticon a year and a half ago. Or maybe not; in any case, it never got as far as, well, names or anything. We’ve gotten to be friendly through belonging to the same writers’ group and through Danielle’s writer-oriented Yahoo group. I’ve also gotten to be friendly with some of her other friends in these groups, and it feels kind of strange and nifty to have a circle of friends whom I like but have never met.
The new book is called The Halfling’s Court, and it sounds like a good read. I’ve read some of Danielle’s other books, Yesterday’s Dreams and Tomorrow’s Memories, and I enjoyed them very much. Danielle is good with characterization and descriptions and doesn’t draw back (as I do) from blood and gore, either. The Halfling’s Court, like the other two, blends hard modern times and the Land of Fae. Danielle mixes them well and pours a pleasant tale.
The Halfling’s Court will be launched officially at Arisia in Boston in January, but it’s already hit the ground running (er, hit the air flying?), with a listing in amazon.com and reviews starting to come in.
What an exciting time for a writer! I wish her so much success!
Views near Golden Grove
July 15, 2008 at 5:34 in the morning. It was worth getting up for.
Views near Golden Grove
Views near Golden Grove
Our last trip out to the island already seems so long ago! It’s hard to believe it was less than a month, and harder still to believe that the fall season is almost over. On that last trip, we spent a good part of Friday on the standby line at Point Judith–from an hour before the first ferry of the morning until the 3:30pm ferry, when we finally got the car onto the boat. “We have to get a house someplace closer,” Dan pretended to complain that evening. “We left the house at 6am, and we didn’t get here until 5pm.” But on a day that promised only clouds and rain, the sky gave us a treat at Pt. Judith as the storm system rolled in–and another one on the island when the sun lined up with a gap in the clouds for an unexpected display.
Cloud front moving in at Pt. Judith
A hole in the clouds just at sunset
Cruise Day 15: Our wonderful staff
The Serenade of the Seas is steaming (or actually jetting) toward San Diego, and on this last full, crowded, chaotic day of the cruise, I’d like to write about our wonderful staff. With pictures.
If only Royal Caribbean could distribute more widely the magic that their staff has on board Serenade of the Seas, they could make the world a significantly better place. Here are people who are away from their families and their friends and their homes for months at a time. They must be sad and lonely at times, and yet they always have a smile and a friendly greeting for everyone. They come from all over the world, all different backgrounds and cultures and religions, and yet they work together as a supportive team.
May I present some of the warmest, most smiling people in the world:
Wayan, from Bali, Indonesia makes sure that our cabin is always perfectly ready for us, down to a full bucket of fresh ice.
Our wait staff—Remi from Mumbai, India is our personal hero in the dining room. We’ve set him particular challenges, such as metamorphosing “Surf and Turf” into a double-lobster “Surf and Surf”, and he has always accomplished them. Remi is supported by the lively Liodela from Colombia and our competent head waiter Puran Singh from New Delhi. I’ll show Remi and Liodela first.
Jehiny from Colombia and Keisha from Trinidad and Tobago are our baristas. After only one day, they had us all figured out. They knew exactly what Dan drinks, down to the extra shot, the skim milk, and the sugar put in before the coffee. And they knew, even when I came separately, that I had been with Dan and drank what he did.
When it comes to a cocktail, we’ve become particular clients of Dijanna from Bosnia. She was only 11 years old when there was war in her homeland–a sad story, but she is not a sad person, at least not for us. She has been on the ship only two months so far (and is still smiling). Dijanna has gone out of her way to make sure we and our mothers have seats together in her section.
Possibly the very most helpful person on the ship has been Rahim in Guest Services. Rahim is from Lyons, France. He has a smile as wide as the whole Centrum and is always ready with a cheerful hello. He has helped us deal with a difficult situation involving a cigar smoker upwind of us who has made our balcony largely uninhabitable, and with a number of smaller questions and issues as well. Rahim never loses sympathy, patience, or understanding.
Aren’t those great smiles? Dan and I surely wish these people and their companions well. RCCL is lucky to have them aboard.
Cruise Day 13 (Puerto Vallarta, Mexico): Art
It’s hard to go to Puerto Vallarta without thinking about art. The town is full of art. For example, you can find shops that sell objects of art still being made according to ancient tribal techniques. These decorative items are made of beads pressed into beeswax on paper mache.
You can also find strictly made-for-tourists art for sale at reasonable prices on the way back to the ship. This seriously talented young man creates detailed scenes entirely by fingerpainting! I wonder what he was like back in kindergarten.
One thing my mother likes in Puerto Vallarta is the formal sculpture along the beach. She made sure that I photographed some of them. (Hi Mom! Here are some pictures for you!)
I like these sculptures, too. But even more, I like the street art: crumbling walls painted in strange glyphs that evoke other, impossibly distant civilizations. Like some of the best graphic-novel art, these paintings evoke moods for which we have no words.
And what else I like about them is their universality. This could be the street art of an ancient Mixtec culture. Or the street art on Beta Centauri 4. Or then again, it could be the street art of San Francisco.
Cruise Day 11 (Acapulco, Mexico): Not in the Rain
“It never rains in Acapulco.” This is the first thing our tour guide says as we start our tour. So please just pay no attention to any umbrellas you might see in these pictures.
Despite an innate predisposition against organized tours, we have signed on for a tour arranged by an acquaintance of my cousins Steve and Henny.
Like us, Steve and Henny are on a cruise that is transiting the Panama Canal. But they are on a different cruise line (one, I might add, that unlike ours provides umbrellas for its guests), and they are traveling from west to east. Incredibly, we are both in Acapulco on the same day. We are in a van with a total of twelve passengers in addition to our driver/tour guide. Whatever we want, he will accommodate us.
We all want to see the cliff divers, who put on a breathtaking show. We huddle under umbrellas, but the divers don’t mind the weather. Hey, they’re going to get wet anyway.
Other than this, we all want different things. In a tour that lasts from about 10am till about 4pm, some of us want to stop for lunch. Others refuse to eat anywhere in Mexico but on their ship. We have been promised the crafts market, but most of the tour members don’t want to go there. A few do, one of us (guess who) very much. And so, in the end, we get the standard tour, minus lunch, and with an early return to the ship for the non-market-goers.
In addition to the divers, here’s what’s on the tour:
There’s a big, famous cross on a hill, which is not only wet but also cold and windswept.
There’s the sad, rundown Casablanca Hotel, which houses a gorgeous but rundown Diego Rivera mural as well as a view that is second to none.
(In this last picture, you can see our cruise ship, the Royal Caribbean Serenade of the Seas, and our cousins’ cruise ship, the Celebrity Mercury, back to back at the Marine Terminal.)
There’s the Los Flamingos Hotel, made famous by somebody famous—Johnny Weismuller, I think—and his movie-star cronies of the day. It too has a lovely view of the bay. It also has a lot of drenched semi-outdoor spaces.
Despite its gorgeous setting and the magnificent views, Acapulco on this wet tour seems reluctant to let go of a past long gone. The city seems to be weeping.
On the brighter side, there’s the Las Brisas Hotel, a fancy hotel all in pink and white, also with a stunning view. And gorgeous bathrooms.
And there’s a whimsical mosaic wall by Diego Rivera that just can’t be beat.
The tour van crisscrosses back and forth across the main downtown area, which is completely jammed with traffic. The—how shall I say this?—wetness in the air doesn’t help. Stopped at a traffic light, I catch sight of a strange structure inside a parking garage; the concrete columns appear to be coming to life.
If only they ever got any rain here, I could imagine this structure might leaf out.
Views near Golden Grove
Today I am in an oceanside town, but it’s the Pacific Ocean. So our visits to the archives continue with this dazzler from October 18, 2003.
Sunset over Sachem Pond, October 18, 2003