USN59-79

A few years ago we subscribed to the local newspaper. We found that when a customer told the delivery person to hold the paper for a few days or weeks while out of town, the delivery person would pass that info to his friend who was a thief. We stopped our subscription. We let our neighbor know we will be gone so he can pick up any advertising newspapers that are thrown on our driveway which after a few days tell any drive by thief that the house is vacant. Prior to covid we have cruised 2 to 3 months each year and have not had a problem.

Thought I might mention something about stairs and us older people. I think the main concern is about falling on them rather than whether or not we have the strength to climb them. We have a two story house built into a hillside. The main living area is upstairs, but downstairs includes the laundry, two other bedrooms, a bath, living room and a large storage area plus a bar. I have to go downstairs to refill my wine glass, so I use the stairs daily. However, I am not concerned about falling because the stairs have a thick carpet with a pad. So if I fell, the tragedy would be in spilling my wine. A second language is how I met my DW. I was living in Taipei and wanted to learn Chinese. She had attended English school there, but the instructor was Japanese, so she needed to learn to pronounce the English words. We exchanged language lessons twice a week; she helping me with Chinese and I with her English. That was 60 years ago and her English is much better than my Chinese. Ray

In 1968 we were living near San Francisco and I was teaching at a Navy electronics school and we decided to buy a new car. I was interested in a Pontiac Firebird with the six cylinder engine. The salesman was only interested in talking about the monthly payments, not the cost of the car. I took out my pocket slide rule and figured the cost, which was close to $4K. The salesman sneered at me and said "If you want to save money on a car, maybe you should buy a Volkswagen." We went directly to the VW dealer and bought a VW fastback at about $2400. Ray

For @dfish I suggest you do a Google search for homes for sale in Midland, MI. A couple of sites like realtor.com and homes.com will come up describing about 300 available homes there with new ones added daily. Another thought is that a high percentage of current offers do not end in a sale as mortgage rates are increasing or a costly defect is found in the inspection. So that house may be back on the market again. Ray

@dfish I would suggest, if the seller is being so hard to deal with, that you have your realtor show you similar houses in that area that are for sale. It is possible that there are better houses at a similar price with more willing or reasonable sellers available. In our area, the hot real estate market is not so hot as it was a few months ago and many sellers have had to reduce their asking price. As mortgage rates have gone from 4% to 6%, there are not as many qualified buyers either. In other words, it has gone from a seller's market to a buyer's market. Ray

We visited the Shanghai zoo a few years ago and saw both the giant pandas and the red pandas. I was much more impressed by the red pandas. Although they are both called pandas, they are not related. Their similarity is that they are both bamboo eaters and apparently the Nepalese word for "bamboo eater" sounds like panda. One of the reasons the red pandas were attractive was that they clean themselves like a cat, while the giant pandas were not clean at all.

We are having pleasant end of Summer weather here. Sara saw here eye doctor yesterday the day after cataract surgery and all is going well. He gave her some well-fitting sunglasses to wear in daytime and some clear glasses with foam around the edges to wear at night to protect the eyes. As a child and teenager I was a rockhound. Grew up in Central Washington where there was a lot of petrified wood and agates in the hills. My parents bought me a lapidary outfit so I could cut and polish stones. My father turned our milk house over to me to set up the cuting and polishing equipment when we go rid of our milk cows. I now have a wooden dynamite box in the garage filled with rocks I collected as a kid. Surprising I have held on to that box for more than 60 years. There are a lot of veteran's organizations; American Legion, Veterans of Foreign Wars, Vietnam Veterans of America, Disabled American Veterans, etc. I belong to the DAV, as they were very helpful when I needed to file a claim to the VA for my leukemia associated with my service in Vietnam. Ray

I think the issue would be the time and distance to get from Japan back to Singapore or Indonesia or Thailand. Two days to get there and two days back is four sea days for a single Southern port. While the Westerdam is travelling up from Singapore, she is travelling around Japan for a couple of months, which would require the foreign stops. Ray

Actually, a lot of people came to our aid. The U.S. Embassy was extremely helpful setting up a desk in the hotel and having people at the airport to get us around some of the Cambodian laws about how long you could stay without a visa, etc. The HAL CEO was also there making sure everything went smoothly. Ray

Can you tell us something about the Japanese cruise industry? I have heard that the Asuka II started cruising in Japan in November 2021 with about 300 passengers and there is another ship Nippon Maru. It doesn't sound like a big industry compared to the major foreign flagged ships that cruise around Japan when they can. Ray

Kind of a busy morning. We had to be at the Navy Hospital at 0630 for Sara's cataract surgery. Got home about 10:00. She has three different eye drops to use every four hours, and then goes back tomorrow morning for a follow up. Seems to be going well. We were in Sihanoukville a few years ago on one of our Asian cruises. I remember a shuttle took us into the town and there wasn't much to see. We walked over to a hotel and got a couple of dollar beers in the lobby. A sign on the wall said "Rooms $5.00 With Air Conditioning $10.00. We then came back to the ship on the shuttle. We also stopped there in 2020 on the Westerdam as it was the only country that would let us disembark. Their ruler flew to the pier by helicopter to greet us and give us all a traditional scarf. A couple of days later we flew from Sihanoukville to Phnom Penh and stayed in a nice hotel for a few days while they arranged for us to fly home. Here is a picture of how we got around town and one of the crowded airport. Actually we were supposed to leave the day we arrived at the airport, but it didn't happen. So we picked up our luggage and got on a bus to the hotel. But it dropped us off at the wrong hotel, so we waited a few hours there, loaded our luggage in a new bus, and finally got to a hotel where we stayed for a week.

That was me. I was confusing the Charles Smith wine of the day with Charles Shaw, the "Two Buck Chuck" sold by Trader Joe's. Ray

We often enjoy today's meal. The word looks unpronounceable as written. It is pronounced "sway jow". We usually buy them frozen in Asian markets or Costco. If first boiled then fried, we call them "pot stickers", but the Chinese name is "jow tse".

I read somewhere that RCL was going to be using the satellite system that Elon Musk has developed for folks that live in areas without internet. Have a friend who uses it and is very happy with it.

60 Minutes had an excellent program this evening; the whole hour was interviews with and footage of the fire fighters who were lost while saving lives at the Twin Towers. That morning we had just gotten up and received a call from my DW's brother in Taipei telling us to turn on our TV. Interesting that he got the news before we did. Concerning today's wine: Isn't Charles Smith the name associated with the wine known as "Two Buck Chuck"? Ray

On one of our long Asia trips we requested our absentee ballot be sent to the U.S. Consulate in Hong Kong. Went to the Consulate in Victoria, told them what we wanted and they had the ballots. We took them back to the ship, voted, and mailed them from the front office. I don't remember it being expensive to mail them. We had requested them from and mailed them to the voting registrar in Kitsap County, Washington. Worked fine for us. Ray

Thanks for the update. I remember once on the Amsterdam that the Captain's wife, the Chief Engineer's wife and the Cruise Director's new wife were aboard. Ray

We have done 7-day and 30+ day cruises on HAL and the onboard experience is very different. On a 7-day, everyone is in a hurry to make sure they do everything that is available in that short week. On a long cruise, people have time to meet and get to know their fellow cruisers and plan to do something together ashore. Anyway, that is our experience. Ray

Thanks for your interesting blog. Glad to hear that Henk is aboard as Hotel Manager. We have spent a few hundred days on the Amsterdam and always enjoyed him as Hotel Manager and his DW Christel as the Guest Relations Manager. Remember them both cruising around the ports on their tandem bicycle. Is she aboard also? Ray

Thought I should say something about Boracay Island in the Philippines. We lived in the Philippines for three years at the end of the Vietnam war. Traveled around a lot, but not to Boracay. I have read that since then the tiny island has been developed for tourists, but I would be surprised to see a HAL ship stop there. It has had some infrastructure problems in the recent past. In 2018 President Duterte called it a "cesspool" and shut it down until it's sanitation improved. Later a lot of Chinese businesses moved in and he had a lot of them shut down if they weren't employing local people. We lived at Naval Air Station Cubi Point, near the main Navy base at Olongapo. Off the base we got around on jeepneys, which were taxis converted from (originally) WW2 jeeps, but by the 70s the drivetrain was mostly made from Japanese cars. When we were in Manila a couple of years ago they were still using them for public transportation. Here is how we ended up in the Philippines. I had been on a ship for three years and was due for shore duty after two tours in Vietnam. I called my detailer and said I would take anywhere West of the Mississippi. He thought it was humorous, as the Philippines is certainly West of the Mississippi. Ray

I just returned from a seminar in Bremerton and my DW gave me the sad news about Her Majesty. She was a person that I always admired and respected. The seminar was at the Disabled American Veterans (DAV) facility and I learned a lot. The DAV was the organization that helped me submit a claim to the VA when I was diagnosed with leukemia a few years ago. They were extremely helpful at the time, but I hadn't been in contact with them since then. They gave me a binder to put all the paperwork that my DW will need at my passing. Also learned some of the rules regarding whether or not she will receive part of my disability compensation after I am gone. If I die of leukemia within ten years of the diagnosis, no problem. But if I die of something else, like a heart attack, she gets nothing. After ten years, she gets the compensation no matter the cause of death. I remember my oncologist saying that I would probably die of something other than leukemia and I didn't give it much thought. Now I realize that he was saying something that could be important. Something to be aware of for the next three and a half years. Ray

A good day here in Western Washington; 75 degrees and mostly blue skies. I have always enjoyed reading, whether fact or fiction. Before I retired I collected a lot of books mostly from library sales to read when I had a lot of free time. A couple of weeks ago I noticed that I had a bookshelf of old National Geographics, maybe 200-250 of them. I decided to take my time to inventory them and read them one at a time if they interesting articles. Some of the oldest were from the 1920s with interesting ads and great articles. Saw how a refrigerator was an oak cabinet that held a block of ice that evolved into a metal, electrical box. Just today I saw ads for HAL and Princess cruises in a 1975 magazine. The costs were similar to what we would pay today, but a 1975 Ford Granada was only $3100. Got some good news today. The IRS finally sent me a check for last years tax refund. Included $19. interest for being late. Ray

@Cruzin TerriIt is a very simple job to replace the hose to the toilet. Doesn't make sense to hire and wait for a plumber for that. Obviously the water is already turned off at the hose. Just take a pair of pliers or a wrench if you have one, unscrew the hose from the faucet and the toilet tank, and take it to a local hardware store to get a replacement. Cost will be less than $5. 90% of the hoses have the same fittings as yours, you are just taking it to the store with you to be 100% sure it fits. Screw the new one on, turn on the water, and your toilet is fixed. On the same theme, it is a good idea to check the hoses to your washing machine as they can fail the same way. We always turn the water off to them when we go on travel just to be safe. However, I have never thought of turning the water off at the toilets. Ray

The song is "Gotta Travel On" from about 1965 and made famous by Bobby Bare, Bob Dylan and the Kingston Trio. Ray

Thanks. Nice to hear some good news. Ray