Island Guardian

Monday, December 29th

Part Seven - Notes From Down Under

We had dinner with the ship’s Navigator tonight. He was in full dress uniform. He was from Latvia but has recently immigrated to Auckland. He had the waiters bring around good Aussie wine and keep all the glasses constantly full. I really hope we find our way to Tasmania. We haven’t seen land for three days. I hope it is not because of the wine.

We docked in Tasmania very early. What an island. This is a place where you would not be surprised to see dinosaurs. We saw Wallabies, Wombats, Kookaburras, Anteaters that look like Porcupines, and many exotic birds and plant life.

We have been to many ports. Security is tight. I have never been through more metal detectors or had to pass through more security checkpoints than in the last several weeks. The security guards are used to it. They have a good laugh once in awhile.

Passing through one checkpoint today we asked the guard, “Do we look suspicious?”
The good-natured policeman replied in the Aussie dialect, “Not enless ya’ve gat a tay taal on ye hade”.

Now I don’t want to you to think that there is some kind of profiling going on but did he just say “tea towel on your head?” Yes. Anyway I broke out laughing and so did he. He slapped me on the back and we headed on our way. Little did he know this statement would be on the world-wide-web in a few short days but that most people will not have a clue what he said.

As a foreigner I have to do a lot of active listening in order to get around. I am getting better with the language everyday. I have the basics down, but it really helps when they use their arms. For example, words such as “ovaah theyaah” and “ovaah heeeah” are easy to understand when the speaker points.

And the natives are always pointing out the fact that Australia is a “beeg country” with many “nwice seetees” with many “paaacks” where you can “aave a peekneek”. I have to agree that there are many nice cities and swell places to picnic in the park.

We took a long walk today along the waterfront beaches in Melbourne (pronounced Melbun). We were sitting on a paaack bench when an older gentleman in a wheelchair rolled up and began a monologue that lasted over 30 minutes. We found out a lot about Austraalier that we did not previously know. We found his opinions about women as breeders, corruption on the police force, the suicide rate among men in Melbun, global warming, looming planetary destruction, and his cynical views on politics and religion to be fascinating.

(Gordy graduated with honors from Seattle Pacific University with a degree in Philosophy. He also attended Theological Seminary. He has spent most of his life in the San Juan Islands. He once owned a small chain of grocery stores in the islands. He has many years of active participation on utility boards and in countywide planning under GMA including membership on the original Citizens Committee for drafting the Comprehensive Plan, Vice Chair of the Countywide Steering Committee, and Chairman of the San Juan County Planning Commission. Most Recently, he served our community as an elected Freeholder from District 1)
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Monday, December 22nd

Part Six - Notes From Down Under

Part 6

I don’t know today’s date or I would post it here. The floor mat in the elevator always announces the day of the week. I believe this is for the benefit of the older folk on board or those who may lose track of days on vacation, so today’s carpet says “Saturday”. It would be easy and fun for the crew to change it around just to mess with us. Who would know? Not me that’s for sure.

Today it is very stormy. The sea is a cruel mistress. We have been told to stay inside the ship (as if we would abandon ship). It is hard to stand up. It is helpful to grab on to an old person for support. For those of you who have heard that they give you a lot of food on a cruise ship, it’s true. That’s because they know you will throw up a lot. They have hung racks of barf bags on railings all around the ship. Lori and I are fine so far. We have just as good of a chance to get seasick at home but we don’t.

The Cruise Director came on the intercom and announced that the afternoon movie will be the Poseidon Adventure. They will hand out life jackets to moviegoers at the door. Tonight’s double feature will be the Perfect Storm followed by Titanic. The kitchen officially cancelled the 10:00 am Dutch pea soup special. (I’m not making this part up.) Apparently there would be a shortage of barf bags had the soup been served.

We are heading for Tasmania. We couldn’t find anything to spend money on in New Zealand. I’m not sure why because we were willing consumers. We purchased a few things but overall I don’t think they have gotten the idea of capitalism yet. That’s okay. It’s just the opposite of Wal-Mart. Customers are trampling the greeters to death over there and punching each other out over video games. Not in New Zealand. No sir. Nobody is going to fight grandma over a wool sweater or a jade carving.

We visited a small town about the size of Friday Harbor yesterday. We did what no other cruise ship passengers do. We went to the town’s only grocery store, not because they didn’t feed us properly on the boat, but because we love to check out food markets. It was like a typical small town store you would see in the States in the 60’s or 70’s. I would have a hard time living here because there is nothing hot in the teensy Mexican food section. The meat case was loaded up with every cut of lamb. We could never sell that much lamb in our markets.

They had one thing I’ve never seen before, a big refrigerated dog food section. The dog food was in big tubes like polenta on steroids. They had fresh liver, horsemeat snacks, and lamb treats. Interesting. Lady, our English Springer Spaniel, would love it here!

The Skipper spoke to us on the intercom telling us that we are experiencing force 11 gusting to force 12 (hurricane force). 140 kilometers per hour. The Captain said again that it is “very risky to go outside”. We are on deck 6, about 50 feet above the waterline, and spray is flying above us at times. Sightseeing is cancelled for today.

I almost forgot to mention something that had us laughing our heads off. We were bouncing along high country roads in a Mercedes 4 wheel drive Unimog. If you have never seen one of these vehicles they look like some kind of Lunar landing craft. It was so bumpy you could hear spines crack like an elephant stepping on a box of Wheaties (this is why old people should not go on these adventure trips). We were getting to know the others in the vehicle because they were literally bouncing up and landing in our laps. We tore 2 sets of step stairs off the vehicle going through a riverbed.

Okay, here’s the funny part. This French couple were in the seat in front of us and the wife was so focused on taking photos that she missed most of the scenery. Anyway she stood up to take a shot of a cute little lamb out the window just as we hit a big pothole. She cracked her head on the ceiling and got knocked back into her seat like her butt was attached to a rubber band. Then she stood up again immediately and it happened again about four more times in rapid succession. Bam, bam, bam, bam! On her head! She looked like one of those paddle-ball toys.

Ordinarily we would not laugh at someone else’s misfortune. But we had been giggling the whole time because it was like a roller coaster ride and you just can’t help but laugh. And this was funny, like the kind of funny where someone falls down and rips the crotch out of their pants. So we laughed hilariously over the staccato rapid-fire head bumps for the rest of the ride. The slightest eye contact between us sparked another laughing fit. Mrs. Frenchie Photo kept looking back and giving us the stinkeye but we couldn’t help our selves. I do hope she did not hurt herself or rip her pants. How very immature of us.

Late in the day we worked our way out of the bad weather and ducked into Milford Sound. Sightseeing is back on! This large fjord was breathtaking. The mountains rise about 5-6,000 feet straight up. The water depth is between 1,500 and 2,000 feet deep. It reminded me of the Grand Canyon except wet. Very wet and cool. Just like home.

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Monday, December 15th

Part Five - Notes From Down Under

Part 5

Dunedin is a Scottish settlement. I am feeling pretty good about that. We saw a parade today and I finally found out that Lori thinks Bagpipes are more obnoxious than the Banjo. Since I play a little banjo (not referring to size) I am pleased. I want to thank the old Scot who invented the bagpipe. Before this revelation from my wife, I had thought if I ever met the man I would kick him straight away in the arse (This means “butt” from a dialect that I will be discussing below).

Seriously, what kind of instrument is the Bagpipe? A windbag filled with bad breath and squeezed under the armpit by a man wearing a dress (commonly with no shorts) blown through a pipe by a mouth full of bad teeth. The loud nasal drone produced by this has to be one of the most insufferable sounds known to the human ear. But I sort of like it because it makes the banjo sound good.

We are not the youngest folks on this cruise. There are several younger than us. This has its advantages. For example there were no crowds on the river jet boat and high country Unimog expedition. We had fun but the bone crunching, jaw-grinding action is not for the octogenarians.

It is also easier to negotiate our way through the buffet line. A well placed hip check or an occasional thrown elbow gets you plenty of space to load your tray. After dinner the crowds thin out as grandma and grandpa drop off to bed. We have the disco all to ourselves. We also have quite the advantage in name that tune and trivia games. (It is a good thing we do not play bingo, eat prunes, or like big band music).

We also thought this age difference would be an advantage around the pool. It turned out not to be the case. The older folks take up most of the lounge chairs. They come up to the pool deck in the terry-cloth robes provided in each room. It can be frightening when they disrobe proving once again that partial nudity is still the best birth control method as we age.

Now international travel has some complications. Language is the biggest obstacle for most travelers and the main question becomes, “What the heck are they saying?” Being totally immersed in the language and actually communicating seems like a miracle sometimes. But reading and writing in a new language is very different. That is why I need to spend some time illustrating the dialects from “down under”.

Aussies say “er” for “a” and “a” for “er”. For example pizza would be “peetzer”, upper would be “uppaw” etc. Words that contain “ick” are pronounced “eek”. For example, sick is pronounced “seek” like, “Does theese ruff waadaas mike ya seeseek?” Now an Aussie guy might say, “Leets gow to the uppaw deek and peek up some cheeks”. He would only say this for example, if he had never actually been to the pool on the upper deck. In proper English the correct reply would be, “You sick bastard!”

(Gordy graduated with honors from Seattle Pacific University with a degree in Philosophy. He also attended Theological Seminary. He has spent most of his life in the San Juan Islands. He once owned a small chain of grocery stores in the islands. He has many years of active participation on utility boards and in countywide planning under GMA including membership on the original Citizens Committee for drafting the Comprehensive Plan, Vice Chair of the Countywide Steering Committee, and Chairman of the San Juan County Planning Commission. Most Recently, he served our community as an elected Freeholder from District 1)
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Thursday, December 11th

Part Four - Notes From Down Under

Part 4

Since we are in the Capitol City of Wellington, we went straight away to the Parliament Building to get an update on the political situation here. The NZ economy is officially in the crapper. The unemployment rate is creeping up, the dollar is way down, wages are too high, and their export markets are faced with huge competition from China. China now has more sheep, a lot more sheep. Investment in the economy is falling. New construction is not very prevalent. It looks obvious that the building boom stopped about 20 years ago. Infrastructure maintenance has been deferred, and there is stagnation in the towns and cities. The health care system has a major shortage of general practitioners and nurses. The retired men are restless. The only time they don’t feel like they have to pee is when they are peeing.

They just threw out the Socialist Government and elected a more conservative bunch. I have my doubts about how the new regime will fare. It is almost impossible to cut programs and services that people are dependent upon and that is exactly what needs to be done. It will not be popular.

We just crossed over the Cook Straight to the South Island today. It is identical to the San Juan Islands. We went out exploring in a small boat to look at stuff. We saw some amazing homes on the waterfront. These are not big fancy places just cool looking houses with docks and boathouses. We both love to do this. The Port of Picton reminded us of home. The only difference between this place and home is the water temperature is about 20 degrees warmer and there are some different plants and trees that grow here in a bit warmer climate.

In Christchurch there is actually a Jewish place of worship called Christchurch Synagogue! I got a kick out of it.

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Monday, December 8th

Part Three - Notes From Down Under

The ship is actually a small town. It has everything found in a town with the population of about 2,000. The crew offered a kitchen tour and we took them up on it. This is a gigantic stainless steel jungle. The bakery area alone is enormous. 5 pastry chefs make a variety of pastries and sweet rolls everyday including 800 croissants, 800 Danish and sweet rolls, doughnuts, éclairs, cookies, etc. Five bakers make 250 loaves of variety breads and 4,000 dinner rolls. The restaurant boasts a weekly consumption of 10 tons of meat, poultry, and seafood and about the same amount of vegetables and fresh fruits. 18,000 eggs are served in an average week. I found these volumes amazing. The Captain may be wrong. I think there could be something else besides Kleenex that is clogging up the ship’s toilets.

In the town of Napier we went on a scenic tour. This is a very beautiful part of the country. The sun was out and the temperature was in the high 70’s. This is a wine growing area and new vineyards are popping up everywhere. Interestingly, the Japanese own many of them. Apples, avocados, and olives abound in the nearby Tuki Tuki valley. Pampas grass, eucalyptus trees, willows and palms all grow in with the pines. It was beautiful.

Deer farms are common. They export the horns to China and Asia as aphrodisiacs (thus the term horny) and venison to Europe. Earthquakes are prevalent. This area was destroyed on February 3, 1931 by a big one that reshaped the landscape radically. Art Deco was the theme for the entire new town as it was popular during the 30’s when it was rebuilt. There are many small older homes and many government housing projects. Hospitals have closed all around the country. Bus driver again made jokes about the rich.

We hit the NZ Capital City of Wellington today. It was sunny but very windy. They say it is windy here all the time. It was blowing 50-60 knots all day with higher gusts. It made walking around outside unpleasant. So we visited the big museum and spent most of the day exploring 6 floors of exhibits.

We read the original treaty between the Maoris and the Queen of England. The document was written in English and translated into the native tongue. Guess what? The native language scholars say that even though a hundred or so chiefs signed the treaty they would never have signed a document like this if they understood what it meant. They would never have given up their sovereign rights. And so it is a real mess down here because the Europeans are afflicted with a bad case of white guilt and apparently can’t apologize enough for taking the land away.

Didn’t everyone come from someplace else? These natives were kicked out of Tahiti or Polynesia or somewhere and paddled over to these islands coming here as immigrants. It seems to me that it is no different for the Europeans. It is like two fleas arguing over who owns the dog anyway.

Around the dining room table the subject of politics inevitably comes up. About a third of the passengers are American, one third Aussies, the rest are Canadians, Brits, Japanese other Europeans, and a few others from exotic places, in that order. Most are retired folks with one thing in common. It just so happens that most of their pension funds went bust between the time they booked their trip and the time ship sailed last week.

Who do they blame for this? Us. By us, I mean the folks who decided it was a smart idea that everyone should have a home even if they had no way to pay for it. Then there were the stupid Americans who had no means to buy a home but bought one anyway. Then there were those who agreed to facilitate this irresponsible idea and sell it to idiot third parties who bundled the loans up and rated and insured them and sold them again. That is who took all the money from the Aussies, Brits, and Canadians, whose pension managers had invested their retirement in this sub-prime mess. So it is us that they look at across the dinning table and blame us for this global meltdown and crisis in personal responsibility.

I guess when the global economy is good we don’t get any credit whatsoever and when things go wrong we are a bunch of idiots who absconded with their money. Don’t get them started about CEO golden parachutes.

They are nice about it and quite polite when we are sitting with them but if there is a table full of Aussies or Brits with no Americans around you can usually hear some loud-mouthed chowder-head going on about how stupid Americans are. But mostly they are civil. They are understandably upset because they are broke and they have to blame somebody.

We found out one important thing that we suspected but now we know for sure, the foreigners on this ship get all their information from CNN and the New York Times. They believe everything they hear in this corrupt media environment. It is our fault as freethinking Americans that we have allowed this blatant media bias to thrive. If intellectual honesty and journalistic integrity have gone by the wayside our nation is in true peril. However, two things are certain, the people we are seeing are nervous about our new leaders and they are having a hard time spending money.
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Wednesday, December 3rd

Part Two -Notes From Down Under

New Zealand is nuke free. They told our Navy to go home. Now they are almost virtually defenseless. They have almost zero military spending. They passed this “no nuke’ policy in 1989. For the record, San Juan County did it first. I’m not saying that the Kiwis did it because we did, but they might have. I think a small well-armed group of militants could take over this country and sail it to the Philippines or Indonesia.

We visited the small village of Te Puke. We saw signs like, “Loose weight at Te Puke gym”. I know you can get sick from working out and throwing up is one way to loose weight. Or how about “Te Puke Fish and Chips, Takeaways!” Not the best advertising. It is actually pronounced “Tee Pookie”. It just looks wrong when it’s written.

We had an intense day of immersion in the Maori culture. This came as a surprise to us because it was not really mentioned in the tour package. But these people have a history of cannibalism. And their culture is viewed in a most sacred way by the New Zealanders.

The Maori hunted the large Moa bird to extinction. If original peoples do something like this, it is described as a natural act and a result of their inevitable quest for survival. If the white man does it there is no end to the lectures about environmental destruction and disrespect for mother earth.

The tour guides always speak about the natives with a hushed reverence. They used to eat human flesh for crying out loud! And in the tourist show the heavily tattooed Cheiftan really joked about eating us. The women danced around and shouted angrily in our faces until their eyes actually bugged out like Marty Feldman in the Mel Brooks movies. The men poked at us with spears in a most unfriendly and intimidating manner. They stick their tongues out as a way to say “We will eat you now!”

The NZ government is actually paying reparations to the Maori. I wonder if the politicians are afraid of being barbequed? I think it is time to say a few words about multiculturalism. In NZ this phenomenon has overtaken everybody with its insidious political correctness.

If you think rationally, it is obvious that Western Civilization has brought some great advantages to the modern world. The native peoples have admitted this to me today. They want to live in two worlds, to have their cake and eat it to. The Maori Chieftain said, “We must know where we came from to know where we are going”. What does that mean? A little John Lennon is handy here. “Imagine all the people living for today. Hey hey.” Most people living today had absolutely nothing to do with events that happened before they were born. That’s true only if you think rationally.

One interesting thing about this last U.S. election is that, in America, we will no longer have to consider reparations to blacks. As long as history has been recorded in the U.S. blacks have protested and defied the authority of their white European oppressors. They have refused to conform to the white mans society and they have dubbed him “The Man”. Hey, who da man now?

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Monday, December 1st

Notes From Down Under -Part One

Editor's note: We asked Gordy to send us his observations as he and wife Lori take a winter vacation cruse. Gordy replied with the first note, and the comment that "the following articles are random notes from a trip we are taking 'down under'. Many of you have been all around the world and will not have the slightest interest in my observations." We found them to be entertaining and interesting; we hope you will too. Here is the first one.

Part One

Many rumors about this place are false. For instance, you do not need magnetic shoes to keep yourself on the ground. They would come in handy on this rocky ship. I am always hanging on to the rails and lurching around. I stopped off at the front desk to find out what my balance was and the guy pushed me over. The funny thing is we are still tied up in port.

Last night we met the Captain. He is Dutch. The crew is made up of Indonesians and Filipinos. It was hard to understand the Captain because he spoke vith a wary heevey accent. “No ting goze into de toilet except vith de toilet paypperes pleezee!” He said, “To doo odorwise vill clogg up ebbreeting.” This message about toilet flushing has been pounded into the heads of the passengers. I have come to believe that the crew is on the verge of mutiny. If they have to unclog one more toilet with Kleenex flushed down it the Captain will be handed over to the cannibals and the crew will set sail for Indonesia and the Philippines.

Today we visited the surfing port of Tauranga. This is a sub-tropical climate area with beautiful beaches. We saw Kiwi farms, sheep, lots of sheep, vast pine forests with a thriving lumber industry, ripening oranges, palm trees and giant tree ferns that look like palm trees, beautiful lakes and streams filled with huge trout, and miles of green pastures. Their gardens are to the point ours are in June.

We found out that the average annual wage in the country is $36k. The New Zealand dollar is .58 of the US dollar. We traded in some US currency and hit the jackpot! The income tax rate is 19% for those making under $60k and 39% for everyone over that. There is a 12.5% sales tax on everything. They pay a sales tax on real estate. License fees are exorbitant and so are utility fees. SO there is no real incentive to earn, let’s say, $60-100k. That is why we are seeing some apparently lower middle class vs very rich. The rich New Zelanders are not very popular with the bus drivers here. They must pay for everyone else’s social program plus their own so you would think they would be loved. But no.

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