{"id":12037,"date":"2011-04-19T10:48:46","date_gmt":"2011-04-19T15:48:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/?p=12037"},"modified":"2011-04-19T11:01:26","modified_gmt":"2011-04-19T16:01:26","slug":"quiet-lives-of-desperation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/?p=12037","title":{"rendered":"Quiet lives of desperation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I did the unthinkable and went on a cruise. The venue was forced by my austere budget constraints coupled with my desire to take a break and spend time with a friend. I think that all of my reservations about taking a cruise were confirmed and perhaps amplified, but like all things in life the experiences shared with a friend made all of them resonate with laughter and memories.<\/p>\n<p>When I say cruise do you instantly conjure up an image of what the cruisers look like? I do, but actually there were Serbians, Romanians, Ukrainians, Indians, Philippinos, Turks, Nigerians, and I could continue but that is only the staff. I found out about the plentitude of Eastern Europeans when I decided to speak in Croatian to insulate our conversations. So gle ovo (meaning look at that!) was picked up by the first Serb and then I knew we better speak in whispers a la Louise from <a href=\"http:\/\/thelouiselog.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Louise Logs<\/a> (one of many lol moments recalling Louise being an efficiency expert).<\/p>\n<p>One thing I can tell you is that in a crowd of cruisers it is hard to remain anonymous. Not only do they get nicknames &#8211; the &#8220;thanks for dressing up&#8221; guy the comedian pointed out to the audience but you do too &#8211; &#8220;EXCUSE ME&#8221; chorus from those almost knocked down on the running track that spanned the top of the ship. We started with the mantra &#8220;do not make eye contact&#8221; and by the second day believed others were not wanting to make eye contact with us.<\/p>\n<p>Ship? When I say ship, I use the term loosely, this was a monolith, a behemoth, a floating city or shopping mall depending on your state of mind, it was like nothing I&#8217;ve ever experienced in my life and most like never want to again. It was a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.royalcaribbean.com\/findacruise\/ships\/class\/ship\/home.do?shipCode=NV\" target=\"_blank\">cruise ship<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Warning objects in rear appear smaller than they actually are:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.dangermond.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/P4160017.jpg\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" data-attachment-id=\"12065\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/?attachment_id=12065\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.dangermond.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/P4160017.jpg?fit=3968%2C2976&amp;ssl=1\" data-orig-size=\"3968,2976\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;5&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;uT8000,ST8000&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;1302952777&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;5&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;64&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0.0015625&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA&quot;}\" data-image-title=\"OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.dangermond.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/P4160017.jpg?fit=640%2C480&amp;ssl=1\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-12065\" title=\"OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.dangermond.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/P4160017-300x225.jpg?resize=300%2C225\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.dangermond.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/P4160017.jpg?resize=300%2C225&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.dangermond.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/P4160017.jpg?resize=1024%2C768&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.dangermond.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/P4160017.jpg?w=1280 1280w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.dangermond.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/P4160017.jpg?w=1920 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I did the unthinkable and went on a cruise. The venue was forced by my austere budget constraints coupled with my desire to take a break and spend time with a friend. I think that all of my reservations about taking a cruise were confirmed and perhaps amplified, but like all things in life the experiences shared with a friend made all of them resonate with laughter and memories. When I say cruise do you&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[423,422],"class_list":["post-12037","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main","tag-navigator-of-the-seas","tag-royal-caribbean"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1kHSD-389","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12037","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12037"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12037\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12067,"href":"https:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12037\/revisions\/12067"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12037"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12037"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12037"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}