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| The Oasis Is No Mirage |
Greetings from the user- friendly universe of the USA. After discovering the God Molecule, flying a Russian MiG-29 at Mach 2 and Taking A World Cruise in Zero Gravity- I am a mere civilian again.
Life After Luau A good-bye is never painful unless you're never going to say hello again.Aloha Sea Aloha Land. I know travel zoos are no longer in my good graces.Neither is eating on a cruise ship. Certain illusions about freedom plague them both. Life off the cruise ships ,however,isn't much of a culinary life. It is like an end game in chess, a game with few pieces. The elements couldn't be more simple, nor the stakes higher. I have to pay for stuff...as in food stuffs. This is certainly different from the luaus and eat-what-you-kill safaris and big game fishing expeditions I took this year, where no matter where I was ,the stuffed animals on display all looked the same. Staged authenicity and First rule of cruise club-never miss a meal.Second rule-don't forget the first, and don't miss the 6pm all aboard. It has been predictable as an episode of Seinfeld. Yadi yada yada. No more choc-a-holic and midnight buffets. My favorite food on the ships had been Seconds! And the desserts. It was the life of pie. Playing the game of staged authenticity in the tourist themed spaces of Tahiti, Fiji et al.,while it was't the Mcdonald-ization of the South Pacific, it played more like a Disney animated feature film The Burger and The King featuring the fat Elvis belting out his own karaoke version of My Way like a good old hound dog with a few miles left to go. Now, the sum of my problems is the inability to sit quietly alone on a ship! It is easy to mistake motion for progress and no problem is so big and complicated that it cannot be run away from. I should know, I've been at sea for 4 years. Now the ship is not the solution, it's the problem.
