Sea Day - February 17

Today we continued on various Northwesterly courses towards Papua New Guinea. We sail towards the open sea into the Coral Sea Islands Territory. 

 flying fish

We were back at Bingo after our time off the ship and I won the first game for $30. 

There is a new Assistant Cruise Director, Simon and he was trying to teach the new Russian Dancers to call Bingo. He acted irritated to be there and he was so poor at doing the bingo himself that the poor guy trying to learn and obviously never seen or even heard of bingo, was really at a loss. I felt so bad for him. The small crowd of players were mad because Simon just started calling numbers and never said what game we were playing. Then, he continued to call numbers at light speed and everyone was saying to slow down. Then, he smarted off and said “I guess the new people that just joined need to have it slower”. No one in the room was new. He may have just gotten on in Sydney, but most of us have been here for over 40 days. We hadn’t been since he got on since we were off the ship between Sydney and Cairns. To top it off, he kept calling the wrong numbers. The board would show “I – 26” and he’d call “I – 24”. One game he displayed a different game than he explained. It was either top line AND bottom line or top line OR bottom line. He didn’t seem to understand that there was a difference. So, he finally said it was both lines despite the board showing that it was either one. Then, someone questioned it again and he said, it’s just 1 not both. 

Bingo is not rocket science and should be fun!  

So, then Simon had the Russian dancer call the next game. English not being his first language, I can forgive him not knowing the numbers to read them correctly. (not sure what Simon’s excuse was) Anyway, it didn’t go well and he was so nervous. Then, Simon took over and was equally bad considering he should know how to do that. He questioned how we “normally” play in regards to the bingo only counting if it’s on the last number called. They haven’t cared if it was on the last number and so we didn’t imagine it would have changed. One lady called one and it wasn’t on the last number. We said if he wasn’t calling so fast she would have had time to see that she had a bingo. They counted her bingo.

We opted for lunch at the buffet as they featured “Pies” Mexican and Australian styles. 

The show tonight was La Forza – Australia’s answer to Il Divo. Pop Opera male trio. We have seen these guys before and they are fantastic. (a tenor trio)

We have 1 more sea day before we stop at Rabaul, Papua New Guinea.