Today Steve woke up and said, “You know what I miss? Spices. Using spices on my food myself.” Then we both agreed – We both miss talking to family and friends instead of only each other. We miss waking up and walking to the kitchen to make my own coffee instead of dressing and going up to the Lido Buffett. There’s a host of things we miss.

Yes, we’ve been gone over two months and there are things we miss or should we just say we look forward to having back in our lives when we return!

Also, in the morning, we turn on the TV to see the map showing where we are in the world. They have music on this channel. This morning the music playing was a song by Ram Jam called “Black Betty.” Made me laugh as it is not a song I would choose to wake up to at 5:15 AM LOL. Especially in this age of political correctness. Especially on a proper British ship. If I say don’t listen to the lyrics, I’m sure you will.

This very flattering portrait of HRH the Duchess of Cornwall’s photo to remind us we are on a British ship.

More lectures today and lunch at The Verandah restaurant. There is so much food, we most likely won’t go to dinner.

We will attend more lectures. One of the new lecturers is quite interesting. Kate Schroder is an Archeological Forensic specialist who is further specialized in facial reconstruction. She does work with the FBI, the British FBI equivalent, doctors who are reconstructing someone’s face after a bad accident and also prehistoric human remains found in ruins. In her talk, she walked us through how she performs facial reconstruction from a skull. Fascinating profession requiring amazing expertise and loads of data regarding facial features, the effects of muscles on skull markings, ethnic/racial skull features, etc.

Then the man who lecturers on history, Keith Hockton, explained how Major General William Farquhar really founded Singapore and not Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles. Both worked for the British East India Co. Farquhar served 33 years and was a resident of Malacca for many years. Raffles was actually kind of a political scoundrel who stole other people’s ideas, plans and discoveries and made them his own. Singapore will be celebrating it’s 200 years since being a city/country established in 1819. They now are recognizing Farquhar by naming a street after him, and there is a Farquhar section in one of the primary Singapore museums.

The evening meal and associated event was Roaring-Twenties themed and adult dress-up. We donned our finest, long enough to get fed. Seven more gala’s, then no more formal attire until next fall. Woohoo! We can temporarily forget how bow ties work and how to latch and unlatch very tiny and complex jewelry connectors around our necks. Maybe we are of an age to get pre-tied bows and bigger/easier jewelry connectors?

The flower arrangements are amazing on this ship!