December 5 - At Sea

 We learned this morning that our tour in Manaus, Brazil to see a rubber plantation and village has been canceled due to the low river level.  We have booked a different tour to see the meeting of the two rivers.

This morning was a Sunday buffet in the Grand Dining Room starting at 9:00 am.  We had forgotten that and just by chance had gone to the buffet up on Deck 9 since Jan and Tom were running late this morning.  But here are a few photos of the buffet before it really got going.

We went to the morning lecture on Brazil - Generals, Gods and Guns which was interesting.  We had lunch at the buffet and the prime rib they were serving was better than the filet we had in the Tuscan steak house a few nights ago.  In the afternoon there were two lectures, the first on the Birth of the Atlantic Ocean which was really interesting, although it didn't sound like it would be.  I didn't know that every 500,000 years or so, the magnetic poles reverse themselves.  He said it happens pretty quickly, like over 2,000 years and we are overdue for the next change.  He did admit that he didn't know exactly how that would impact us.  Guess we won't be here to find out.  Michael decided to take a nap during the third lecture on Artificial Intelligence given by Bill Lee who used to be a coder for IBM.  That was also a good one.  He thinks it will be decades before AI is really able to take over and prefers the term "artificially intelligent" since it still depends on human coders using mathematical algorithms to tell it what to do.  It's not really thinking for itself, but "learning" based on what we tell it.  Hope he's right.  He gave the example of Google offering free photo storage because they then use all those photos we give them to educate its AI.

Here are a few pictures of the ship.

The Barista, the coffee bar

This is along the hall towards the theatre.

The pool deck on 9

We've noticed that there are very few announcements on Oceania.  Peter announces when the ship is cleared and we can go ashore on port days and usually at least once daily gives an activities highlights.  And the Captain comes on at noon on sea days to give our position and weather report.  But on port days there is no announcement before we sail.  We're used to an announcement that all passengers and crew are accounted for, that we'll be casting off, and what sort of weather we can expect for the overnight and early morning.  We've been on other cruise lines where there are several announcements each day, and that can be annoying, but I would like at least a daily report on the weather and what we can expect from the seas in the near future.

Trivia was pretty good again.  We got 12 out of 18 which got us a point.  No pre-dinner cocktail for Michael and me.  We met Jan and Tom for dinner in the Grand Dining Room and again it was good.  I had only a Caesar salad and the salmon entree as I've been eating too much.  The Humphrey Slokum ice cream flavor tonight was Toast and Jam.  Michael ordered it and we all thought it was much better than last night's Black Sesame.

The seas have been rolling all day and it's still that way tonight, but I don't mind as it often makes for better sleep.  For many, but not all, of our turn downs at night the stewards have left small (maybe 2x3 foot) cotton towels on the floor on either side of the bed.  We saw our stewardess tonight and I asked her what they were for.  She explained that you could use them to wipe your feet after using the bathroom during the night and before getting back into bed.  Something new to me that I'd never thought about before, but I will certainly think about now.