Today saw us getting more into the swing of things onboard ship. We are ever so slowly ratcheting down the high RPM that marks a usual day back in the 'Burgh. The morning began with a 2.3 mile walk around the promenade deck of the ship. That was by no means an easy task given the elements. A lashing rain made the teak decks slippery and every so often an errant wave gave one frightening thoughts of being pitched over the sides into water the Captain told us was 3000 meters deep. This coming one day after viewing Pirates of the Caribbean 2 with its oh so lovely depiction of Davy Jones was a most unwelcome thought.

The QM2 is so big that one circumference of the Promenade deck equals 1/3 of a mile. The most amazing aspect of the morning walk though was the wind. I recall the very first cruise ship field trip undertaken by the ETC. It was on the Regal Empress out of NYC on a cruise-to-nowhere, and we did it on September 8, 2001. I wondered what would stand out most in student write-ups. Would it be the nonstop indulgence of food and drink, the gambling, the cramped accommodations, the mix of formality and leisure, the darkness of a night at sea, or the coming together of friends and colleagues? Lo and behold, the most prominent factor mentioned by students was the wind. Most had never experienced wind of such strength and duration, had never felt they truly could be moved off their centre-of-gravity by a natural force as simple as the wind. Well today the wind was having the last laugh.

Unfortunately, email consumed much of my morning. In other words, one of the main reasons for sailing to Australia instead of flying (i.e. getting away from it all for a little while) was rapidly vanishing. In fact, it was gone. Thanks to satellites, I was as connected as ever; even more so as on journeys to strictly terra firma locales. I do enjoy the connection to friends and colleagues, connections which make this diary possible in fact; it’s the nonstop conflict resolution that wears one down.

As a respite from the respite (so to speak), we attended an afternoon concert by the Russian pianist Liana Forest. She performed a collection of Rachmaninoff, Debussy, and Gershwin pieces, interspersed with tales of growing up in Russia. I enjoyed this immensely as my experiences working in Russia remain a high-point of my life. She was technically proficient but lacked emotion, an oddity for a Russian pianist. Still, being able to attend a classical music concert onboard a cruise vessel is a rarity and remains an experience essentially confined to Cunard.

After the concert we made our way to the Illuminations Theater for another astronomy presentation. This one did not utilize the Sky Skan Planetarium, but instead featured a dynamic power point presentation titled "Our Little Corner of the Galaxy" by a very good speaker named Christopher Butler. Whereas yesterday Tom Hanks delighted in telling us how inconsequential we were in the overall cosmic scheme of things, Mr. Butler’s warped little pleasure was in describing how our sun would eventually morph into a Giant Red Star, and when that happened the Earth would be turned into something resembling a charcoal briquette. It definitely gave one pause with house renovation ideas; I mean, what’s the point when in only a few million years it will all be for naught.

The evening entertainment was a musical dance review called Appassionato. There was something both bizarre and rewarding in watching dancers from Russia, Uruguay, Argentina, Ukraine, Australia, and the UK dress up as American sailors singing On the Town then donning poodle skirts, bobby socks, and slicked back hair, to dance scenes out of American Graffiti. The Argentinean dancer stole the show however with a 'gaucho’ performance that had everyone hailing his virtuosity and physical stamina.

One bizarre 'fun fact to know and tell' that we learned at dinner is that during the first leg of the QM2's Round-the-World voyage, FIVE passengers expired! That's five deaths onboard ship in the course of four weeks, an average of better than one a week. All of these deaths were due to natural causes (thankfully), and when you consider the elderly status of the clientele it isn't all that surprising in the least. Goodness, there is a lady at a table adjacent to us that I am betting will expire sometime before American Samoa given the ferocity of her nightly hacking, which, by the way, does wonders for curtailing one's appetite.

Of course, this knowledge begs the question: where are they putting all these dead bodies? The answer I discovered is very simple: there is a morgue onboard ship! Presumably, actuaries somewhere in London calculated how many deaths should be anticipated on a world voyage lasting three months and peopled by elderly seniors and other geriatrics. I don't know why I was so surprised, though I guess it had something to do with romantic notions of being buried at sea.

In all honesty, there are enough wheelchairs, walkers, and carts clogging corridors to make installation of a traffic light a necessity in the main lobby. And, naturally, they get right-of-way. Half the time I feel like Thomas the Tank Engine shunted onto a siding so as to allow Hudson the streamliner to pass ahead of me.

Our tablemate said she actually observed one poor old chap expire the moment he walked up a flight of naturally hewn rock stairs somewhere in South America. He made it all the way down to the ocean to see a famous cave and then trekked back to the top, but as soon as he stepped back onto the majestic look-out point he keeled over dead. How's that for a story to share with friends and family back home?

Needless to say, this has made me weary of any shore excursions requiring the traversing of steep stairs leading to or from caves. Hopefully, the voyage we booked for Honolulu on an actual tourist submarine will be less eventful than that. Stay tuned…