Because we were in Hong Kong on April 4, we are having our anniversary dinner (No. 29) with MaryAnn and John, and Lu and Mike, tonight in the Steakhouse. Today is the 13th and 1 plus 3 equals 4. Also, 4 is bad luck in China and 13 is back luck in the US so today's date seems somewhat appropriate.
Frankie's International White Elephant Auction Sale Extravaganza and the Book Club led by Riz, of which Sara is a member, were held today. Many passengers were willing to part with their carefully chosen souvenirs from all the ports we had visited. Frankie, the deputy cruise director, tried to teach us how to act correctly at an auction but failed. Any money collected could be kept by the donor or donated to charity. We contributed a necklace from Rabaul that Sara had bought, which went before the auction started for $2 to the woman who is a Dramatic Winter who really wanted it, and a pair of genuine Gortex gloves that Ken bought in Tiananmin Square for $4 and wore on the cold, windy day at the Great Wall, which someone bought for $2. (We know that they were genuine Gortex because the word Gortex was spelled backwards on the one glove.) Sara added another $1 and gave $5 to Mary from Cruise Critic and the boat building contest to give to the Roman Catholic priest on board. (Mary and Ed are such good people!) Who said that you can't give away money even if you don't buy anything at a sale?
Hot sellers were a Rolex watch from Beijing, an alarm clock with Mao on its face, bottles of Australian wine, a mirrored wooden compact with an inlaid pearl geisha from Hanoi (bought by Frankie for $1 and sold for $10) and beautiful jewelry from countries we have visited. Many passengers negotiated individual sales before the auction started. Two souvenirs that covered a certain part of the male anatomy were a shield and an enlarger. Frankie promised another white elephant auction during the fourth segment of the world cruise.
Sara has been a book club that reads a new book each segment of the cruise and then discusses it over afternoon tea. The first book was The Time Traveler's Wife. Sara had listened to the first eight tapes of the book on her car radio before we left on the cruise, and then skipped three tapes to listen to the last one. She never learned how the couple had their daughter after the wife had had several miscarriages and how the time traveler had had a horrendous accident. Princess Cruises had sent only five copies to the ship so no one finished the book in time to give it to Sara to read the chapters that she had not heard. Of course, that did not stop her from going to the book club discussion. Then, Riz, our discussion leader from the cruise director's staff, gave her a copy of the book, which she finished. The book did not receive rave reviews from the group. (While a good book, it is somewhat confusing because of the time travel aspect and the main characters are at different ages during much of the story as one might expect from a time traveler.)
The second book was the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith, which everyone liked. It was such a popular book that the author has written a number of sequels. Passengers showed up for the discussion who had read the original book and all its sequels.
The third book was Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austin. The reviewers in an appendix to the book, either adored it, thinking it was the best piece of literature ever written, or hated it. Sara tried to plod through it, realizing she had never read it in high school and needed to read every word, sometimes more than once, to attempt to understand it. She compared notes with Riz whenever they were both in the beautiful library on the ship. Riz had started to read another novel that she liked much better while Sara had given up reading any other books on the ship because she thought she should be able to finish Pride and Prejudice. If someone is in a book club, that person should read every book even if he or she is not that enchanted by one of the selections. When Sara was still 70 pages from the end, Riz told her that every other member of that discussion group had already turned in their copies to her, saying that they did not plan to finish the book because it was too heavy reading for a vacation. Sara did finish the book but missed Darcy's second proposal to Elizabeth and had to reread that section. Fortunately, Elizabeth did recognize the proposal and accepted it. We assume that they lived happily ever after. (Note to Princess Cruises: Be careful about the books that the corporation chooses for its book clubs. This was obviously not a good choice. Who recommended it and why?)
Pride and Prejudice was replaced by Tuesdays with Morrie, a book that Sara had previously read for a church book club in Richmond, watched the TV movie, and enjoyed very much. She appreciated the book even more in her second reading. In seventh grade, Sara's English teacher made her students find a quotation from each book they had read that they deemed important. In Tuesdays with Morrie, the readers could find such a quote on almost every page. The one that meant the most to Sara was, "Death ends a life, not a relationship." (Okay, Princess Cruises, overall your headquarters has made good choices. We hope that this continues. Please continue to take your audience of passengers into consideration.)
Our book for today's discussion was Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia, a chronicle of the author's year of spiritual and personal exploration while traveling abroad after her traumatic divorce from her husband (whom she never names) and a devastating breakup with her lover David that started almost immediately after she moved out of her beautiful house with her now ex-husband. The passenger in our discussion group who was born and raised in Great Britain and now lived in Canada said that she thought the author was a tad self-absorbed. We asked her, "How big is a tad?" But in the author's defense, aren't we all somewhat self-absorbed? Before we started the discussion, we learned that the book was on the New York Times Best-Seller list for more than one and one-half years, the author appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show, and Columbia Pictures has optioned the book for a movie with Julia Roberts slated to star. Her sequel, called Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage, was released by Viking in January. The woman in our discussion group who had read the sequel did not want to spoil us for us and would not tell us if the author had remarried and whom she married if, indeed, she did remarry.
The reason that the group gave for why the book had sold so well was that most women can visualize themselves in who the author is and can identify with many parts of the book. The majority of the group appreciated the 108 short chapters but most thought the book was too long. As for what the author learned in Bali, Sara asked the group members if they wanted a Brazilian lover like Felipe who kept telling her how beautiful she was and how he would love her forever. The group commented that your spiritual journey in your 30s and your concept of love was very different than what you have in your 50s, 60s, 70s or 80s. Now Sara is concerned that they view her as a hopeless romantic or a sex feign. The group rated the book a solid 8 on a scale of 1 to 10.
Then we dressed for our anniversary dinner with MaryAnn, John, Lu and Mike at the Steakhouse. We both wore black and royal blue. The adjective we would use for the dinner was magical. Absolutely everything was perfect. The meal consisted of appetizers (we had the scallops and foie grass), soup (black and blue onion soup), salad with all the extra ingredients, the main course (we had the filet mignon), and a variety of desserts. We had asked Steve, the bartender, to help us select the best wine. He chose a red wine from the House, or Chalet, of the Popes, from France that he said he could sip all day, which was a good enough recommendation for us. (Ken has a photograph of the label with the exact name.) John was overwhelmed by the wine. He told us that when they were on a cruise to France, one of the dining room's staff asked him to buy him a bottle, no matter what the cost. John claimed that it was one of the best wines in the world. We quickly ordered an extra bottle in addition to the two we had ordered before the dinner. In addition, the wait staff brought a small anniversary cake to our table and sang to us, including their rendition of "Let Me Call You Sweetheart."
Somehow the conversation took a turn to older men who date and marry younger women. Mike commented that he, John and Ken were lucky to have married their trophy wives on the first go round. The three women at the table now want to nominate Mike for sainthood, no questions asked.
When we got back to our room, the anniversary cake was waiting for us along with a chilled bottle of Korbel (one of our favorite champagnes) with a note from MaryAnn and John. Three "happy anniversary" balloons decorated our door. It truly was a perfect day! In fact, because we have celebrated all three anniversaries together and have no more, the group decided we should eat one more time at the Steakhouse in early May to commemorate any other special events that may happen in 2010.
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