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Tails from abroad: Britain.
14 years ago
General
Should I rephrase this? Nah, nevermind. It's gonna get misinterpreted anyway.
A number of people have expressed at least passing interest in hearing about my world antiterrorism cruise, so I've been looking through my Cruise Log and typing up a few excerpts from the interesting parts. Let me know what you think!
28 May
Well, don't I feel important. The UK delegation that's embarked with us wanted to use one of our classrooms for a briefing. The laptop that was in there didn't have all the right software drivers, so they sent me down to connect ours and set it up. I ended up spending about fifteen minutes teaching them how the smartboards and our AV gear works.
I can't read their uniforms as well as I can ours, but those guys were pretty important. "Commandant" sounds important, and... Britishey... They ended up deciding that the classroom was too noisy and moved somewhere else. I still enjoyed the chance to talk with them. They seemed like a good bunch of folks and it looked like they were enjoying themselves. It's probably because they're not on their own ships doing work. They're just here to check out all our cool stuff, which I got to be a part of!
My workcenter had an inspection by the Commanding Officer too. I didn't have to do anything besides retrieve the Captain from his office and get him there, but he was spot-checking one of my guys while he was performing maintenance, so it was still my pride on the line. Naturally, I waited for him for about 45 minutes. He's a busy man. He's not much of a talker one-on-one the way the old CO was. I suppose he's got a lot on his mind. The spotcheck went fine, got hung up on some acronyms and little things, but he knows his stuff.
02 Jun
Well London was fun. I saw a lot of cool stuff from the outside, too bad everything good had either a huge line or a football riot outside. Or both in the case of the National Art Gallery. Apparently Manchester United was playing Barcelona that weekend. I know this because I was reminded of it every time I stepped outside.
Public transportation is actually quite remarkably good over there. We were able to show up and get where we were going really without any idea what we were doing. I got to take a real shower, which was great. I think that's really what this abscess I got from the smallpox inoculation really needed. It's looking a lot healthier these days. Itches like a sonofabitch but my shoulder is a bit more useable now. I think there's some hope for it eventually healing.
I went and saw Stonehenge. Honestly that was pretty lame. You can't even walk up to the stones anymore. There's a fence fifty yards from them that you have to pay eight pounds to get inside so that you can look at the stones from behind the moderately closer fence. It's an experience that I replicated with the zoom function on my camera. Naturally it was windy and raining, as it was every day, so my autofocus stopped working because my objective lens was wet. It wasn't the surreal, isolated experience that I was expecting. There's a highway that goes right by the thing and the visitor's center is packed with tourists.
03 Jun
Bath ended up being a lot more fun. I actually did get to go into the Bath abbey. It was a very moving sight. Though this house of God was built by man, I could not help but feel compelled by it, seeing His hands at work. I actually said that aloud and saw someone writing it down, it made me feel all profound and whatnot.
I had fish and chips and a pint while I was there, so I did a sufficiently British thing and enjoyed it. Had afternoon tea, too, but it wasn't great. Thank God for that Demerara Sugar they have over there, it's good stuff. Strongbow is an aptly named drink by the way. I had two and my face was numb. Wheeee. I think it was just because I don't drink much. It was listed at 4.8% ABV and I believe that statistic now.
The Roman baths were actually quite interesting, well worth the line and the twelve pounds. There was a self-guided audiotour terminal that they handed out and you could get as much or as little detail as you wanted. Some of them were narrated by Bill Bryson, which I thought was cool because I've read one of his books.
I had always known that Roman baths were centers of social exchange and meeting places, but it was interesting to see that they were also places of worship. The Romans believed that the goddess Minerva breathed heat and life into the waters of the hotspring. Pewter tablets were discovered at the spring's source, cast into it as messages to the goddess. Many were curses or requests for divine intercession. It's funny how simple and petty some of them were; usually it was the theft of a traveling cloak or sandals or some other similar article. I imagine such things were somewhat more valuable at the time, but it still seems like such a small thing to demand eternal torment for.
They say that if we sell enough tickets they can buy out an entire amusement park for the day in Spain. I hope we do, that would be totally freaking metal.
***
I'll be making a few more of these detailing my other port calls in the coming weeks. Here's hoping they're as much fun to hear about as they were to live.
28 May
Well, don't I feel important. The UK delegation that's embarked with us wanted to use one of our classrooms for a briefing. The laptop that was in there didn't have all the right software drivers, so they sent me down to connect ours and set it up. I ended up spending about fifteen minutes teaching them how the smartboards and our AV gear works.
I can't read their uniforms as well as I can ours, but those guys were pretty important. "Commandant" sounds important, and... Britishey... They ended up deciding that the classroom was too noisy and moved somewhere else. I still enjoyed the chance to talk with them. They seemed like a good bunch of folks and it looked like they were enjoying themselves. It's probably because they're not on their own ships doing work. They're just here to check out all our cool stuff, which I got to be a part of!
My workcenter had an inspection by the Commanding Officer too. I didn't have to do anything besides retrieve the Captain from his office and get him there, but he was spot-checking one of my guys while he was performing maintenance, so it was still my pride on the line. Naturally, I waited for him for about 45 minutes. He's a busy man. He's not much of a talker one-on-one the way the old CO was. I suppose he's got a lot on his mind. The spotcheck went fine, got hung up on some acronyms and little things, but he knows his stuff.
02 Jun
Well London was fun. I saw a lot of cool stuff from the outside, too bad everything good had either a huge line or a football riot outside. Or both in the case of the National Art Gallery. Apparently Manchester United was playing Barcelona that weekend. I know this because I was reminded of it every time I stepped outside.
Public transportation is actually quite remarkably good over there. We were able to show up and get where we were going really without any idea what we were doing. I got to take a real shower, which was great. I think that's really what this abscess I got from the smallpox inoculation really needed. It's looking a lot healthier these days. Itches like a sonofabitch but my shoulder is a bit more useable now. I think there's some hope for it eventually healing.
I went and saw Stonehenge. Honestly that was pretty lame. You can't even walk up to the stones anymore. There's a fence fifty yards from them that you have to pay eight pounds to get inside so that you can look at the stones from behind the moderately closer fence. It's an experience that I replicated with the zoom function on my camera. Naturally it was windy and raining, as it was every day, so my autofocus stopped working because my objective lens was wet. It wasn't the surreal, isolated experience that I was expecting. There's a highway that goes right by the thing and the visitor's center is packed with tourists.
03 Jun
Bath ended up being a lot more fun. I actually did get to go into the Bath abbey. It was a very moving sight. Though this house of God was built by man, I could not help but feel compelled by it, seeing His hands at work. I actually said that aloud and saw someone writing it down, it made me feel all profound and whatnot.
I had fish and chips and a pint while I was there, so I did a sufficiently British thing and enjoyed it. Had afternoon tea, too, but it wasn't great. Thank God for that Demerara Sugar they have over there, it's good stuff. Strongbow is an aptly named drink by the way. I had two and my face was numb. Wheeee. I think it was just because I don't drink much. It was listed at 4.8% ABV and I believe that statistic now.
The Roman baths were actually quite interesting, well worth the line and the twelve pounds. There was a self-guided audiotour terminal that they handed out and you could get as much or as little detail as you wanted. Some of them were narrated by Bill Bryson, which I thought was cool because I've read one of his books.
I had always known that Roman baths were centers of social exchange and meeting places, but it was interesting to see that they were also places of worship. The Romans believed that the goddess Minerva breathed heat and life into the waters of the hotspring. Pewter tablets were discovered at the spring's source, cast into it as messages to the goddess. Many were curses or requests for divine intercession. It's funny how simple and petty some of them were; usually it was the theft of a traveling cloak or sandals or some other similar article. I imagine such things were somewhat more valuable at the time, but it still seems like such a small thing to demand eternal torment for.
They say that if we sell enough tickets they can buy out an entire amusement park for the day in Spain. I hope we do, that would be totally freaking metal.
***
I'll be making a few more of these detailing my other port calls in the coming weeks. Here's hoping they're as much fun to hear about as they were to live.
