Feb. 13th, 2007, Murka left us quietly.   At the moment she was going, I hope she was not scared.
Sometimes, death is just so close.
Feb. 13th, 2007, Murka left us quietly.   At the moment she was going, I hope she was not scared.
Sometimes, death is just so close.
Until this day, I never realized how stupid I was to bear hunger on the first night in this floating food warehouse.
When I was enjoying the doze after I woke up in the morning, Ron told me that he would get up and go to a cooking lesson on the ship. I was wondering whether I should go with him. But, but, just let me be with my pillow for a little while… The next thing I know was he was gone and clock said 11:30AM. OK, even though today we were not going to any port, I probably should not spend the whole day sleeping. Not everyday can I get the chance to see this floating hotel. Let’s spend time wisely.
Quickly I washed up, ready for food!  I figured that  Ron would come back soon from his cooking lesson. While I was waiting for him, I picked up the daily schedule which came to our mailbox everyday.  It was the first time that I read it in detail. Ron always read them so he was able to provide some useful information. I found out that the Lido restaurant was always open for breakfast, brunch, lunch and dinner till very late at night. Even after midnight, there would be snacks provided. WTH? Why did I bear the hunger and thirst on the first night? “As God is my witness, I will never be hungry again! …At least on this cruise ship!” Ron came back to the room and I asked him whether he knew the wonderful food schedule. The answer was no. What the hell he was reading? :@ Anyway he was very excited about the cooking class and he told me he would try the turkey breast recipe he learned from our executive chef after we got back home. Oh… back home? Will that really happen? Let’s not think about it right now.
We had brunch at the Lido restaurant. Again, happy happy meal.
At brunch, we decided that we would go to a diamond tutorial presented by our cruise shopping ambassador in the Queen’s Lounge at 2:30.Â
It wasn’t a very interesting diamond lesson. Ron had learned a lot about diamonds from our engagement ring shopping experience.  So it was not that useful at all.  In the middle, Ron left and went to the bartending class. Of course he is more interested in alcohol than expensive shining stones. I stayed and hoped to win the diamond necklace from the draw. In the end a lady sitting in the first row won. Sigh… I just never ever win anything from lucky draws in my life. Something must be wrong with me.
After the diamond thing, I wandered on the ship for a while. I didn’t feel that comfortable to be one of the very few asian faces among the westerners except Phillipino servers. Why not sleep? I went straight back to the room and immediately rested myself in the bed with my novel. Shortly Ron came back with a very strong alcohol smell. Jesus, what kind of class? Was he learning or drinking? Afternoon was ended after we woke up from our nap.
Our dinner setting was at 8:30PM. So we decided to go to swim in the swimming pool before dinner. There were two swimming pools on the ship. Both were on deck 9. The one in the middle of the deck was for kids(with a sliding celing, very cool). The one in the back of the deck was for adults(outdoor, and with two hot tubs, also very cool). Sunset was around 6PM, by the time we were there, it was getting dark, hardly anyone on the deck. Only three teenaged girls were there playing in the water. They were very good swimmers. They jumped into the water time to time.  I will never try that way to go into a pool. When I was a very little girl, I had swimming lessons for a while. The teacher thought I was a promising star and recommended me to attend a junior swimming match. At the game, I jumped into the pool to get myself ready. The pool was for adults and we were at the deepest side. Nobody told me that and until I found out I was on the pool floor very far from the water surface. It took me a while to realize that and went back to the surface. Lifeguards were going to drag me out of the water if my little head hadn’t showed up. After the game, my teacher told me that I swam into my neighbour’s lane and I was the second last. Well that ended my swimming career and since then I don’t really like water.
Ron was in the water already, and those young girls swam like fishes. I looked at them jealously. I want to be a good swimmer but it is just so hard now.  It was very windy and wavy. The water in the simming pool waved from one side of the pool to the other side with the movements of the ship. Again, COLDNESS.  Sometimes being fubsy would be beneficial. I hesitated for a while.  “Not everyday can I swim in a pool floating in the Carribean sea…” thinking of that, I stepped into the water bravely. This time Ron pushed me into the water immediately. Oh, it was warmer than the sea water. But it was deep! With my height, I can only stand on the shallow end with my nose barely out of the water. At the time Ron was waving to me at the other end of the pool, I insisted that I would just practice my awkward frog style at the shallow end.  It is a vacation, safety is most important! 😛
It was 7 o’clock.  Nobody was using the hot tub.   We went into the tub.  Sitting in the tub, with the wavy sound of the pool, we enjoyed the view of some stars, sky and the sea.  It was wonderful.
After that, we went back to the room and got ready for the dinner.   It was the first time that I had dinner in the Vista dining room, Deck 2.   The Vista dining room was a two floor fine, grand dining hall. Ron had his dinner here  on the first night. So he knew some of our tablemates who showed up on the first night.  We were the first to arrive at the table. Shortly two American couples arrived at the table as well.  Ron introduced me as his imaginary wife.   Both wives in those two couples were very talkative, while their husbands were relatively quiet.  Nichole was a black woman with a strong southern accent.  I could catch most of what she said, apparently she was a very enthusiastic lady. She said all she needs in life is fine food, traveling and a baby.  I can understand the first two parts but am suspicious about the baby part. :P Anyway, I couldn’t contribute to the conversation very well and at most time I was just trying very hard to listen. After the food came, I focused on the eating. RELAX, no more English listening tests!
After the dinner, we went to the Vista theatre lounge for a new year performance.  A singing and dancing live show was very well performed. I felt amazed about how sophisticated the stage layout was, all the fancy lights and stereo…on a ship.
Tomorrow we would arrive in St. Thomas, a jewelry shopping land, they say. I started to look forward to it, just a little bit…
I woke up by the bright sun light coming through the gap between our thick curtains in the room. I also heard some announcement from the speaker in the corridor. Curiosity dragged me out of bed very quickly. I opened our verandah door, immediately my eyes were filled with dark blue sea, clear sky and pleasant sunshine. I couldn’t see a beach from our room, but yes, this is just so right!Back into our room, I checked the cruise schedule. It said that we would arrive at an island called Half moon Cay in Bahamas at 7:00AM. I checked the time, it was 9:00AM already. Which meant we had already docked! Ron was still sleeping soundly. I didn’t wake him up immediately, figured he must be very tired from yesterday’s chaos as well. I finished my shower and found that he was still sleeping. I couldn’t stand anymore, go sleep back in cold Canada, man, not in this lovely place! When I tried to push him out of the bed, I felt this was so strange since in Canada it is always he pushes me out of the bed.
At the time we got to the Lido restaurant at deck 9. I felt I was withering away, I hadn’t had any food or water in the last 20 hours. I grabbed a glass of ice tea immediately, drank up….I felt I could think again! Even if the ice tea was a bit weird — it was not sweet. But oh Mama, we were surrounded by food! It was a large buffet restaurant with lots of breakfast food varieties. I couldn’t wait to go through all the food sections — they all looked delicious. Ron and I both had French toast, bacon and grape fruit. I had some extra fruit and salad. The wonderful meal satisfied both my stomach and mood. We noticed that most people around were dressed in beach style. The ship had been at Half moon cay for at least three and half hours. I figured we should get off the ship and get on the beach as soon as possible. Rushed back to room, put on the swim suits under T-shirts and shorts, applied sun block then we were off. Apparently Half moon cay is a small island privately owned by Holland America. The ship dropped anchor in the middle of the sea because there was no pier. We embarked on a tender. On the tender, being so close to the big metal ship, I indeed admired this beautiful piece of human’s work! There was bright funky carribean music playing on the tender, and not very far away, white sand beach and enticing blue sea water waiting for us. The relaxing atmosphere filled the whole tender. I told myself this was indeed called vacation. oh and I wouldn’t have a second thought about spending my whole year here.
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Ron brought his heavy camera with him. We walked on the beach, took some shots. Soon we found the camera was a burden — we wanted to swim, who would take care of the camera then? We walked half way along the beach and didn’t find any locker room. The solution arose and it was that we took turn to swim. Ron went to swim first while I lay in a hammock. The sky was so blue but the sun light was a bit strong. Soon I became bored and wished I had my novel with me.
Ron does love water! He was a bit reluctant to leave the water and come back, I felt. Finally at 15 minutes before our parasailing excursion, I got my turn to taste the sea water. The result was pretty disappointing. I stepped into the water but when the water reached my waist I gave up. Ron was laughing at me and when I saw people playing in the water I knew I was stupid. But it was damn cold! I think I have an excuse, I believe my body temperature is usually higher than others. 😛
Anyway one o’clock was our parasailing time. We waited at the dock for about half an hour. The parasailing boat finally returned and we embarked on it after previous passengers left. Three black guys were working on the boat. They were friendly but looked a bit tired. I was indeed anticipating this excursion but I was a bit worried if there would be an accident and I would be dropped into the cold water from a high place. Soon, we were in the water far away from the island. I was worried about how safe it would be, but another couple took the first turn. 😀 As more and more rope was released from the boat, they were farther and farther away, became a very small dot in the sky… Each turn took about 10 minutes. I examined their faces when they landed, they were pretty happy. I reassured myself, it should be fine. Then came my turn. Without even time to ask where I should hold, I was lifted out of the boat. The driver of the boat asked me if I wanted to get wet. “No!” I yelled. My voice was still in the air, my feet were in the cold water already. I suddenly got scared, how far would they drop me in the water? But just a second, I was lifted away. They are very experienced and picked the right person to scare. The boat was getting smaller and smaller, I saw Ron’s camera lens pointing at me. He must have taken a lot of pictures. Soon I couldn’t see them clearly, looked around, I was in the sky. Quiet, extremely quiet, only wind passing by. The cruise ship was far below me, island, beach, father and father… No humans, just enormous sky, blue sea and me breathing, listening and looking around. Wow, a bird’s life isn’t bad. So peaceful… just a bit windy though. I was just going to meditate in the peaceful place, but they started to pull me down. A couple minutes later, I landed. I saw Ron, boat-mates and heard voices. From a different perspective, things are just so different. Ron gave his camera to me, and went on his turn. He was a pretty figure under the parachute, some times he played dead, sometimes he was very frenzied. As a boy nearly forty years old, he is so funny sometimes. But when we were filling some waiver form before the parasailing departure on the boat, he asked me how old he was!!! I nearly fainted. Sometimes, his bad memory really pisses me off… Anyway I used his camera and kept clicking the shutter for a while. I felt I looked very professional with his huge camera lens. And it was very heavy….
After the parasailing, we still had some time before heading back to the cruise ship. I started my second attempt of the day to swim in the sea. There were less people on the beach. We found an empty couch, and hid the camera bag under the towel and clothes. We both went into the water after promising each other that both of us would keep an eye on the camera. Again I stopped in the water, cold, cold, cold. Ron was in the water already and enticing me by saying “believe me it is not cold at all after you are all in the water.” I was going to go back to the beach again since we needed someone to look after the camera as well.. 😛 Ron pushed me into the water. Damn you…. well it was indeed not that bad. Soon I started to swim in the salt water. Floating on a mattress we picked up, I enjoyed the view of the sky and clouds . After my last trip to Thailand, five years later, I was in the tropical water again.
Having reached my target of swimming in the sea, we took the tender back to the ship at around 5:30PM. Ms Zuiderdam was going to leave Half moon Cay and head to the next island in half an hour. After we washed up and rested ourselves for a while in the room, we dressed up for dinner. We booked our dinner at Pinnacle Grill today. Ron did some research before and it was said that the Pinnacle Grill was the most famous and best restaurant on this cruise line. Since it was new year eve, we decided to pamper oursleves a bit with some even better food. Since we hardly ever have sea food at home due to Ron’s limited food choices, I ordered some crab legs and some kind of fish fillet for myself. Ron ordered a fancy steak dinner. The restaurant is especially good at making steaks. The waiter showed us a display of raw beef with differnt cuts before we ordered. The meal was great and we both had a glass of red wine.
After that, night life started. 😀 We started to explore the ship. We explored the jewelry shop, library and passed through the casino. Ron dislikes the casino a lot, otherwise I wouldn’t mind spending a bit more time in the casino…. watching. In the 007movie, James Bond was very cool on the poker table. Although I have no idea how to play any game in the casino. We both brought our laptops. When we were in the line to check in to the cruise ship in Fort Lauderdale, a couple in front of us was shocked seeing that both of us carried laptops. The guy said that he wouldn’t want to see his laptop at all during his cruise. I told them that we were such nerds that we couldn’t live without computers for a single day. To this day, we still hadn’t opened the laptop bag yet. After checking the price of internet access in the library, we concluded that we wouldn’t need our laptops in the trip. The price was ridiculously expensive. That couple were indeed exprienced cruisers! Sometimes being a nerd is pricey.
It was New year’s eve! We found various performances going on in our daily schedule. So we went to different decks to see the different showes. Always singing and dancing. Ron never dances. So we just sat and watched. Many senior couples enjoyed themselves. What a nice view! New year was approaching, we decided to go to the big hall on deck two to celebrate the new year. On the way there, lots of snacks and champagne, no wonder people say that it is very easy to gain weight on a cruise. We found it was impossible to squeeze in to the big hall by the time we arrived there. It was very crowded already. Instead we found seats in the piano bar nearby. I couldn’t see the piano player since he and his piano were surrounded by people as well. Apparently he was playing some popular ballads, most people knew the tune so well that they started to sing and dance. Ron and I were sitting in a corner. A waiter served us two glasses of champagne. After the last ten second count down, people started to shout happily and sing a song unknown to me. I drank the champagne and celebreated my first new year with my husband. Strangely in the noisy atmosphere, I felt a bit lonely.
Enough for one day. Bed, bed, I am coming!
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Our flight to FLL was 6:30AM. After packing, we went to bed around 12:00AM, thinking to get 3 hours sleep. Unfortunately I just couldn’t fall in sleep at all. Because of the holidays, I usually went to bed at 3 o’clock in the morning those days. Just as I managed to get to sleep, the alarm went off. WTH, Oh well…
For various reasons, we left the house at 4:30am, half an hour later than what we had planned. While approaching the Toronto airport, we discussed if we should use the airport parking or a parking place a bit farther away for which we had a coupon. 😛 We made a decision which proved to be a very wise one afterwards — To use the expensive airport parking.
We dragged all the luggage and presented ourselves happily at Air Canada international checkin counter in Terminal one at 5:30AM. Instantly we were told that we were at wrong terminal. WTH, oh well…
On the shuttle bus to Terminal two, it was 5:45AM already. I asked Ron if we missed the flight can we catch the next one. “If we miss the flight, we will miss the cruise. I am sorry.” Ron said that firmly. I nearly burst into tears. Oh dear, this supposed to be our honeymoon…
Ron did one thing very wisely last night and it saved us. He checked in both of us through the web. So we didn’t need to wait in a long line to check in, we just needed to drop our luggage. Since I am not a Canadian passport holder, I had to go through all the US immigrations checking. While I was still getting my finger prints taken, Ron’s luggage had already gone to the plane. When I was talking to the US immigrations officer, I was thinking : if he rejects me, Ron will have to spend the honeymoon himself on the Caribbean beaches. This reminded me an episode in Friends, in which Rachel went on Ross’s honeymoon trip alone accidently. People all pitied her for being alone in a honeymoon suite. We wouldn’t have a special honeymoon suite, but Ron probably would be very lonely in the Caribbean sunshine…
After we landed in FLL, we went to claim our luggage. My luggage didn’t show up! Beause I took extra time in US immigration, my luggage didn’t get on to the plane as I did. My mood was completed ruined. The fact that I didn’t have any sleep last night apparently didn’t help at all. Well, boarding Ms. Zuiderdam excited me a bit. She was a huge beautiful floating hotel! I can imagine how fun it would be if I had my luggage with me.
I guess my bag felt my anxiety, it showed up in our stateroom after we came back from an emergency drill.Aircanda sent my bag on the next flight and Holland America took it to the pier directly from the airport, one hour before the ship’s departure. That indeed cheered me up.
I spent the rest of the day sleeping while Ron went out exploring the ship and had a nice dinner. I was awakened in the middle of night by hunger and thirst. Not knowing where to find food, I had to go back to sleep. I regretted for a while not going to the dinner with Ron. Well, with my dear lovely luggage, tommorrow it would start to be a flawless and perfect cruise trip.
We have been working very hard on the leftover in the fridge these days.  Finally, stomach is very full and packing is almost done.  It seems all left to do is to set the alarm clock at 3AM and rest ourselves in bed for a while. This time tomorrow I will say hello to you from Ms. Zuiderdam.
Today, during the dessert time, I asked Ron to boil some water for the tea again. He got very suspicious and asked whether this was a trick. But he still went to the kitchen, filled and turned on the kettle. After that, he sat back with us.  Two seconds later, he stood up and went to the kitchen to check the kettle, “Did I turn on the kettle?” …..
Today I read an anticle forwarded by one of our co-ops in the team. I like the last sentence. 😀
Electrical Engineering vs. Computer Science
Once upon a time, in a kingdom not far from here, a king summoned two of his advisors for a test. He showed them both a shiny metal box with two slots in the top, a control knob, and a lever. “What do you think this is?”
One advisor, an engineer, answered first. “It is a toaster,” he said. The king asked, “How would you design an embedded computer for it?” The engineer replied, “Using a four-bit microcontroller, I would write a simple program that reads the darkness knob and quantizes its position to one of 16 shades of darkness, from snow white to coal black. The program would use that darkness level as the index to a 16-element table of initial timer values. Then it would turn on the heating elements and start the timer with the initial value selected from the table. At the end of the time delay, it would turn off the heat and pop up the toast. Come back next week, and I’ll show you a working prototype.”
The second advisor, a computer scientist, immediately recognized the danger of such short-sighted thinking. He said, “Toasters don’t just turn bread into toast, they are also used to warm frozen waffles. What you see before you is really a breakfast food cooker. As the subjects of your kingdom become more sophisticated, they will demand more capabilities. They will need a breakfast food cooker that can also cook sausage, fry bacon, and make scrambled eggs. A toaster that only makes toast will soon be obsolete. If we don’t look to the future, we will have to completely redesign the toaster in just a few years.”
“With this in mind, we can formulate a more intelligent solution to the problem. First, create a class of breakfast foods. Specialize this class into subclasses: grains, pork, and poultry. The specialization process should be repeated with grains divided into toast, muffins, pancakes, and waffles; pork divided into sausage, links, and bacon; and poultry divided into scrambled eggs, hard- boiled eggs, poached eggs, fried eggs, and various omelet classes.”
“The ham and cheese omelet class is worth special attention because it must inherit characteristics from the pork, dairy, and poultry classes. Thus, we see that the problem cannot be properly solved without multiple inheritance. At run time, the program must create the proper object and send a message to the object that says, ‘Cook yourself.’ The semantics of this message depend, of course, on the kind of object, so they have a different meaning to a piece of toast than to scrambled eggs.”
“Reviewing the process so far, we see that the analysis phase has revealed that the primary requirement is to cook any kind of breakfast food. In the design phase, we have discovered some derived requirements. Specifically, we need an object-oriented language with multiple inheritance. Of course, users don’t want the eggs to get cold while the bacon is frying, so concurrent processing is required, too.”
“We must not forget the user interface. The lever that lowers the food lacks versatility, and the darkness knob is confusing. Users won’t buy the product unless it has a user-friendly, graphical interface. When the breakfast cooker is plugged in, users should see a cowboy boot on the screen. Users click on it, and the message ‘Booting UNIX v.8.3’ appears on the screen. (UNIX 8.3 should be out by the time the product gets to the market.) Users can pull down a menu and click on the foods they want to cook.”
“Having made the wise decision of specifying the software first in the design phase, all that remains is to pick an adequate hardware platform for the implementation phase. An Intel 80386 with 8MB of memory, a 30MB hard disk, and a VGA monitor should be sufficient. If you select a multitasking, object oriented language that supports multiple inheritance and has a built-in GUI, writing the program will be a snap. (Imagine the difficulty we would have had if we had foolishly allowed a hardware-first design strategy to lock us into a four-bit microcontroller!).”
The king wisely had the computer scientist beheaded, and they all lived happily ever after.
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Is anybody bothered by Ron’s memory capability?Â
Yesterday, my friend Helena came over and we had a nice dinner together. Some random topics came up. One of them was about pregnancy. Helena is a young mom, she said she feels herself dumber after she had the baby.  She can not remember things as well as before. (I have heard others said the same thing, oh poor women, always suffering).  Ron said immediately after… if he was a woman and had a baby, he probably couldn’t remember his own name anymore. oh right, I totally agree with that.Â
If somebody wonders why, here is one thing happened afterwards. I asked Ron to boil some water in the electric kettle to refill the teapot.  I saw him filled the water, turned on the kettle and sat back to the table. Perfect! We kept talking and probably five minutes later, the kettle turned off by itself — water was boiled. I asked Ron to bring the kettle over to refill the teapot. He went to the kitchen — good boy! Then he yelled and turned on the kettle again ” Damn, I forgot turning on the kettle!”
……
As people say, it has been broken for years.  But there are some really exciting progresses recently.  After some endless shopping experience in homedepot, last Sunday,  our shower finally got a layer of tiles! Although it still needs quite a bit effort to be a fully functional shower, it does look like a shower now! Tiles are so crucial to the shower’s definition.Â
Tiling on the shower is an exhausting process for two ppl who split 24 hours as sitting in front of the computer and lying in bed.  I didn’t think it would be so tough, tiling… just put some squares on 8*8 square feet wall… plus Ron planned everything so well that he drew the shower plan and calculated every detail of a tile how it should be put…and we got everything ready… It appeared that I was just too naive.
We worked from Sunday noon till 2:30AM Monday straight.   I believe that we both are people with strong will ( Let’s not think the reason we have to work hard is that we have to return the tile saw as soon as possible since we don’t want to be charged badly),  we were both defeated at the time that only one last row of tile are left not done in the late night. I told Ron:” Forget about returning the tile saw in time, I just want to lay myself flat.” Ron had the same thought.  Ron usually will not say give up easily but I know that he has been working very hard on the shower and he is really depleted.Â
We went to bed and got up around 11 in the morning and finished our last row at the bottom of the shower. The last row was most unpleasant to work on, since it involved lots of cutting and we had to worked all bent.   Oh… our poor bone…
RIM offers a training called speaking Strategies for Technical Professionals.  I always want to be a technical professional, so I am attending the training. 😀
The training turns out very hillarious.  After every class, I bring the stuff what we talked about to my co-workers. Chris always laughs at it like a child (but that is the way he usually laughs).Â
 Here is an instance:
The teacher wrote two sentences on the whiteboard and asked us what’s the difference. “He is very concentrated on…” and “He is very concentrating on..” A girl sits besides me said it was very similar as the way “surprised” and “surprising” is used. He is surprised means he is surprised by something. He is surprising means he himself is something surprising. “Good,” the teacher says,”Concentrated means something with high density, like concentrated jam and orange juice. If you want to say the person is focusing on something mentally you should use ‘He is concentrating on…'”. Oh….. my goodness, I must have been saying he is concentrated on … for decades now.
After less than a second, a girl in the front asked:” if a person is very short and small but very smart, can I say he is very concentrated?” ….
BTW, we are all Chinese technical professionals in the class. :DÂ