What else are you into?

[mushu mama]

p.s. I hate carrots!

And there you have it....

Julienne, chunky, raw, roasted, steamed, or soaked in honey and sesame seed.... any way you slice it... I love carrots....

just goes to show one orange vegetable is not like another....

And I am not a car girl so you'll get no argument from me on the V8 supercar score.
My son just bought himself a commodore and the constant discussions about what can be done to his new baby is driving me spare. Actually beyond spare.

~ Lisa ~

[sandie]

My son just bought himself a commodore and the constant discussions about what can be done to his new baby is driving me spare.

Peter will be heartbroken - what happened to the love of Mopar?

Sandie

[mushu mama]

The VL might be the current squeeze but when he decides to settle down I'm certain Mopar will be 'the one'.


~ Lisa ~

[ajp]

oh yeah.... and pole dancing....

Hmmm, now that could be worth exploring more. And I back you all the way with the pumpkin thing. That is one of the foods that I really can't see what all the fuss is about.

VL Commodore? What is it with these kids that think that old Holdens are cool cars? Anyway, He'll need to be careful of a cracked head in the 6 cyl VL Commodore, and they also happen in the car as well . Seriously they were prone to cracked heads in the motor. I trust the car was checked before he bought it. But whatever the car is, it is the first car, which always makes it the best! Good on him.

and V8 SuperCars!!!!

Sandie

Now was that you hate V8Supercars or you're into them Sandie?

[KeithS]

And I back you all the way with the pumpkin thing

Me too!! I hate getting the "what do you mean, you don't like pumpkin?? Everyone likes pumpkin!" - not me!!

I can't comment on the VL - I'm not a Holden person, but like Anthony, there is no car like your first one - I knew my first car was rubbish, but it was still cool! It was an old XD Falcon - now the XD was a great model - but mine was the severely underpowered 3.3 litre version - why oh why did they make a 3.3!? Most people don't even realise there was a 3.3 - thinking the 4.1 was the lower end. If you switched on the aircon, you felt the speed drop! haha, but it was mine

[ajp]

Oh to have a 3.3L Falcon, mine was a Datsun 120Y coupe - AUTOMATIC! Arrgghh! Everytime I floored it all that happened was noise, and no movement. But hey, it was mine and I was free. The XD was a great range of it's the time, especially coming from the XC, but what about the people who would have bought a 4 cylinder VB commodore .

[mushu mama]

Thank the Lord..... I was under the impression that I was the only person in the entire world that didn't like pumpkin.

I've been telling Zach for years that I don't care what car he gets for his 1st car, as long as it's not a commodore!

I've never owned a car, what I drive is not technically mine ( nope, its not stolen - its my ex's). So I have a '1st car' still ahead of me - one day. Trouble is, if I had the money to buy a car, I'd probably blow it on a holiday

mine was a Datsun 120Y coupe - AUTOMATIC! Arrgghh!

I wouldn't even know how to drive an auto. Gear sticks are more fun. -/
~ Lisa ~

[mushu mama]

oh yeah.... and pole dancing....

Hmmm, now that could be worth exploring more.

Not nearly as exotic as it sounds..... Like a great pair of heels, it might look good, but until you master the moves, it just plain hurts. But it is great exercise thought.
And like my tattoo.... very few are likely to see either - Unless of course I overindulge in the aforementioned tequila.
~ Lisa ~

[calisota]

Damn, I am into so many things it's scary...and some of them are even legal!

Greg

[sandie]

Damn, I am into so many things it's scary...and some of them are even legal!

I think you need to list them.........

Sandie

[calisota]

Damn, I am into so many things it's scary...and some of them are even legal!

I think you need to list them.........

Sandie

Hmmm, something to think about as I'm going to sleep so I can list it all tomorrow.

Greg

[KeithS]

Hmmm, something to think about as I'm going to sleep so I can list it all tomorrow.

We shall be waiting here, quivering in anticipation - but at the same time, I reckon we can rule out visiting casinos as being on Greg's list of things he's into!

[calisota]

I think that any list of the things I'm into is going to sound remarkably similar to everyone else's.

I have a number of PC's around the house I've built that are networked together.
I was into home theatres at a time when most people were still getting to grips with CDs.
Travelling. I think I've made it to about 30% of the countries in the world now so I still have a little way to go. I can say that I've been on every continent other than Antarctica.
The All Blacks.
Reading...over 100 books in the libarary and growing.
Archaeology/History.
Sitting in front of the TV.
Things with buttons (other than mobile phones).
Want to travel, write about it and get paid for it.

Greg

[KeithS]

Hey Greggy - are you ever going to up date us on what happened in the last few weeks of your cruising life?

At one point, you were about to enter the Pacific and head north to Alaska - and then...there was silence!

We missed six weeks of news, then we received an email saying you were in Seattle about to head home after "a month from hell". You can't leave us hanging like that! This isn't an episode of 24 or Lost You have to fill in the gaps!

What were the Alaskan cruises like? Did you jump ship in Seattle, or did you finish up in Florida? Did you have to go out of the country and back in again to get a tourist visa (I remember last time when you had to stay the night outside of the airport in the Bahamas watching the giant rats and being spoken to by the police!) Did you go back to WDW? Disneyland? (You could have caught up with Mushu when she was there - if only she had let us all know when she was heading off instead of keeping it a secret - hehe.)

I'm sure you've got some great stories

[calisota]

The last few weeks of the contract certainly weren't as good as the rest of it.

We ended the world cruise in New York, with most of the passengers getting off there but for some reason known only to himself the captain decided that no crew were allowed off the ship. That upset a lot of people since we were moored within walking distance of all the best attractions of Manhattan. Very frustrating. From there we went to Florida with the passengers that hadn't gotten off in New York and a whole lot of new ones. From Florida we did what is called a "relocation cruise" which is just to get us from Florida to Alaska. It's sold as a proper cruise but the ports we stopped at were just not very exciting after having seen the world and it was a completely different feel with a new bunch of people on-board. The other problem for me was a change in management and somehow I seemed to have upset the assistant manager (who did the rosters) and I was given port manning in every second port all the way from Florida to Seattle.

I had been told by a number of people that Alaska is really, really quiet for the casino. Turned out not to be that way. The type of passenger changed dramatically after the world cruise and it got really busy. The workload increased and the tips (our main source of income) decreased so much that I didn't even bother picking up the last weeks when I got off the ship. The other thing I noticed was dramatic decrease in the quality of the food once the world cruise ended. I knew it was the 50th anniversary world cruise and it was on the flagship for the whole fleet but I hadn't realised just how much more effort had gone into everything until it "got back to normal". Not that the normal food was bad or any other level of service, just that it had been so good before.

The ports were really nice, if incredibly expensive. I would recommend going as early in the season as you can if you're going to do a cruise in Alaska because there is much more snow and ice on the mountains and the view is amazing. I was only there for a month but the change in snow cover was dramatic in just that time. I have seen a bit of the world now and can tick off a number of world heritage sites and even as a proud Kiwi who has seen Fiordland I have to say that Glacier Bay is probably one of the, if not the most, spectacular natural spots in the world.

I did all the things I wanted to do while I was there but there were many work related issues that I can't go into that just took the gloss off the last month. It's easy enough to say the the benefits outweighed the problems, and they did to a large degree, but it's a strange situation where you can't even escape work by going home. You essentially live where you work.

While I was there I went whale watching, kayaking, I saw otters playing on the rocks and in the water simply as I was walking into town, I saw so many bald eagles they became as common as seagulls. I watched the famous fish throwers at the Pike Place Markets in Seattle, I ate in a restaurant where they filmed Sleepless In Seattle and sat in Tom Hanks' seat, I visited the SciFi hall of fame and the space needle. I ate clam chowder in restaurants all over Alaska and Canada and even went to the original Starbucks. I found an Irish pub in Victoria that had fantastic food, local beer on tap, live Irish music and the most stunning group of waitresses in little tartan mini skirts and boots. I sat in a genuine American diner where I was the only non local and talked to a man who had grown up as a kid in a logging camp out in the wilds of Alaska, and he looked like it too. I went to the movies in a theatre that was straight out of the 60's, i played pool in a pub with a bottomless basket of pretzels and a barmaid who asked for my ID because she thought I was under 21!

I managed to squeeze a lot in but with the things happening on the working front I took every opportunity to get off the ship I could and that left no time to write. I did take lots of photos though.

Greg