Susi Rajah

Lifestyles of the Newly Wed, Overfed & Nearly Dead, Part III

This is what a fake island looks like.

This is the fake island directory. If you could read it, you would see that the island has a lot of naturally occurring bars serving unnaturally potent cocktails.

The beach, battery-chicken style. Baste and roast.

Tropical island food.

Lifestyles of the Newly Wed, Overfed & Nearly Dead, Part II

Okay, so it isn't so bad here.

And if you escape from a tour you can eat conch fritters and drink beer here.

Watch a cricket match.

Visit police headquarters.

And decide that this is not the place to have brain surgery.

Lifestyles of the Newly Wed, Overfed & Nearly Dead, Part I

Through a series of unfortunate events, some of which cannot be publicly disclosed, I end up with a stateroom* on a three night cruise at exactly the same time my apartment was uninhabitable due to toxic fumes from an adjoining renovation. Serendipity, you might say. And you might well say it if it were a different kind of ship, say, something in the Cunnard or Crystal line. But the ship I find myself on is not that kind of ship. (*There was nothing stately about that stateroom.)

It is the other kind of ship. With a casino on board, all-day bingo, pina coladas in plastic souvenir glasses—a flashing, colorful light was built into the base of the glass—and a happy hour that never ends. It’s the kind of ship that sails away on a Bahamian Adventure instead of taking you to the Bahamas. The kind populated by the newly wed, overfed and nearly dead—the cruise industry’s description of its clientele, not mine. It you're fond of a buffet—and tray-sized dinner plates—this is the cruise for you.

The ship stopped for a day in Nassau and encouraged all passengers to take one of many tours offered, many of which took you to Vegas-like attractions or water sport activity-centers and ensured that you did not have to actually see any of Nassau, or meet anyone who lived there, or eat any local food. It was hard to see the Bahamas for the water slides.

And just in case going to a real live island was too much of a culture shock for the average cruiser, the following day the ship docked at a small island owned by the cruise line—one that was decorated to look like a Disney version of Nassau, where you could lie on the beach, eat, eat, eat at the beach buffet, shop at a mini straw market, all without encountering any pesky local people or, God forbid, another culture. Suffice to say that when I dug too deeply in the pristine white sand of the beach, I found concrete.

Still, the air was fresher than the fumes in my apartment, the sun was shining, and there was no lack of food or alcohol. So, as far as forced vacations go, it was certainly better than dying of epoxy poisoning. Just.

Postcard From Dublin

This is what a tree looks like in Dublin. There's a reason everything is so green there. It rains all the bloody time.  When I arrived, I was told it'd been raining for 38 straight days. That's only two days short of requiring an ark. But the sun came out later that day, a very fortunate turn of events as I had not remembered to pack two of everything.

This is what a library looks like in Dublin. Long Room, Old Library, Trinity College. In every nook was a wonderful window seat, perfect for curling up with a book. Only, there wasn't anything to read unless your literary taste runs to moldering old tomes. Novels weren't big back when this library got its collection together. Speaking of moldy manuscripts, the library houses a very important one, The Book of Kells (which, I'm guessing, is a guide to the lives and mating habits of Kells). It is a very nice 680 page book, painstakingly illuminated by monks in 800 AD. It must have taken them years of work, especially if they weren't good at Latin, but there was no HBO back then so it probably gave them something to do in the evenings. The Book of Kells is now, of course, available on DVD-ROM. See some pretty pages.

I'm not including a picture of an Irish pub because the Irish pubs in Dublin look like the Irish pubs everywhere else in the world. They pretty much exported them whole. There are several on every street, festooned with Guinness signs. They take drinking very seriously here but not everyone drinks Guinness. Our driver told us he couldn't drink Guinness because he couldn't hold his beer the way his friends could. He said he got "sloppy" after about twelve beers, whereas his friends were still fine after twenty or so. So he switched to drinking scotch. With scotch he could keep up with his friends. I don't know what I was more concerned about at the time. His and his friends' livers or that he was driving the car I was in.