Normal Life Living on a Cruise Ship (Dalian, China)

Also file under, “How living on a cruise ship is different than normal life.”

Weird things you find yourself saying frequently on a cruise ship:  “I have to be up for immigration at 6am.”

Yesterday was just one of those grueling days. It started with said immigration check and went non-stop until 7:30pm. It involved a major network hardware failure, a satellite communication failure, disembarking 600 people, embarking 600 people and setting up 15 laptops (we needed two more but the keyboards were bad).  These were the headlines. Add to that an enormous amount of general stuff that comes my way like accounting reports not balancing, payroll issues, password changes, printer malfunctions, and and and… It was a banner day. I did take a half hour for lunch. I may have had dinner, but I honestly don’t remember at this point.

That is stupid number one: Grueling work days.

The cool is when you finally decide you have had enough of dealing with all that, that things are band-aided enough until tomorrow, and you can blow work early (yes, 7:30pm is considered blowing work early), it is only a three minute walk to the spa and steam room. Oh the spa and steam room, how I did deserve thee yesterday.

Cool: Living three-minutes walk from a spa and steam room.

Stupid number two: Broken headphones and the search for their replacement.

My headphones broke (probably got that from the stupid statement). So I needed to head out and buy new ones. Being that today we are Dalian, China, this meant going into Dalian China. An hour and a half after leaving my office (had to change, deal with immigration and catch a bus), I arrived at the shops.  Next, I had to find a shop that sold earphones. Luckily earphones have a good universal symbol: stick your fingers in your ears and dance a little. People generally get the idea what you are looking for.

I found earphones, “Yeah!” 

Oh, but, he wanted the equivalent to $50 for them. I DON’T THINK SO.

We haggle a bit. We get to $30. I give up.

There is no way I am paying $30 for earphones.  

I search some more. 

No luck.

The outing: 3-hours.

Outing outcome:  Nada. No earphones.

Stupid: How hard it can be to get simple things when living on a cruise ship.

In hindsight, having written this, I realize how stupid it was not to pay the $30. I am going to have to do the whole dance (somewhat literally, with my fingers in my ears) again in some other port.

But there is a cool, and it is the collateral damage....

Cool: Taiwanese Taro Mochi! I love this stuff. 

I guess I should explain what that is for my non-Asian readers. Taro is a fruit. Mochi is usually a rice based pastry dough. The taro is made into a kind of paste filling. Then the rice dough goes on the outside. Taro stuff is generally a light purple (like strawberry stuff is generally a red). It is lovely, light purple doughy pastry. I need to find these things in the US. I have no doubt there are somewhere. They may even be at my local supermarket given how Asian my area is.

And lastly, the view as I write.  I had no idea what this building was and neither does Google or Wikipedia. I guess it is very new.

I felt bad leaving this as a cliff hanger, so, after much searching, it is apparently the Dalian International Conference Center. 

Interesting. I have to say... it looks far nicer on the architectural drawings available online than it does in real life, but perhaps that is the effect of the smog.

Back to work.