Journey To The Center Of The Earth (Part 1)

Just to provide an idea of where our room was, that was where our room was located. Right in the front corner of the ship on the 11th deck. Cozy little corner without too much 'traffic' from wandering passengers.

Also note that we were at one end of the ship and to get to the other end of the ship, we had no other alternative to get to the other end but to walk.

There was this one time, I wanted to go to the arcade, and when I approached this 'map layout', to determine where I was and how far the arcade was, I took a good look at it, and discovered I was at one of the ship and the arcade was at the other. If you take a look at the lower overhead-view of the ship, the arcade is the top shaded blue area and I was at the "You Are Here" point. (Please note that all my pictures from the trip are on my MSN Space, so if you want a look at all the pictures I took, go there and look, but I will post the 'interesting' ones here.)

When I saw this, I was thinking, "No problem. I can walk fast, so getting there shouldn't be an issue.

To my dismay, it took me a good minute to get to the arcade, walking at a pretty fast pace. It seemed endless. Like I've been walking for an hour or so. Unbelieveable. I still remember saying, "Is this gonna end!?" The ship was really long. It's massive!

FYI, these are the ship's specs taken from the Star Cruises website:

Ship Facts
Gross Tonnage: 76,800grt
Length (metres): 268m/879ft
Width (metres): 32m/106ft
Average Cruising Speed (knots): 24kn
Maximum Cruising Speed (knots): 25.5kn
Number of Stabilisers: 1 set
Bow & Stern Thrusters: 3
Full Satellite Navigation System: 2
Number of Cabins: 980
Passenger Capacity (based on lower berths): 1,960

Alrighty, I'm not entrely sure how I'm gonna blog about what happened on the cruise but I will try. I'm thinking about doing a walk through from the moment we approached the ship to the moment we left it. And then maybe I can fill in on whatever 'little' occurances happened during that time.

So ladies and gentlemen, sit back, relax, and enjoy my little journey of the best trip of my life.

_________________________________

The journey started with my mum and grandma coming over to my grandma's place (where I usually abide) to visit my grandma and to 'collect' me. Nowadays, we try to kill two birds with one stone because in Singapore, the pace is really fast so if you 'watch' too much of what is going on around you, sooner or later, you'll find yourself leaving on a plane going back home to Northern Ireland, if that's where you came from.
They stayed for an hour or so, and at 3pm, we decided to leave, just when the rain started pouring. On a random rain-scale of 1 to 10, I'd say that the rain was a 7. Heavy enough to make you soaking wet in a matter of seconds if you go stand in the pouring rain. That was basically what happened all throughout the afternoon and evening. We took a cab back to my other grandma's place to 'relax' and await the check-in time at 8:30pm.

By 7:50pm, we were out of the apartment and downstairs. It was there that my mum suggested that we take a cab instead of taking the bus like we originally decided a few minutes prior to coming downstairs. So we waited in a level 2 rain-scale. It wasn't too heavy, but it might just stuff up your gel if you stay out there long enough. We stood there for a good few minutes before getting impatient of the 'location' we were situated. We suddenly became nomads. We wandered up the road and soon found ourselves looking out for any vacant taxis on the main road.

After waiting another good 10-15minutes, my mum got a bit more impatient and started suggesting that we take the bus. ><" In response to her sudden change of mind, I declared in acknowledgement that this may offend some girls, "You women are so indecisive. Can't decide what to do. Always changing your minds when things aren't going so well. You see for me, I choose before I do something and I'll stick with it until the end. No point wasting time what the 'other side' could be like." In the end, we did end up taking the bus.

We made our way to the bus terminal and waited in the bus stand for the bus to arrive. As we waited, there was this 'poor' guy begging and pestering people in the bus terminal for money. In Singapore, this is discouraged, so for me, a future law enforcer, to see this, it really opened my eyes to see that I will be handling these kinda people in a short time. It's sad, but it'll be something very new to me. Normally, I'd just ignore these kinda people but I'll have to confront them soon.

Anyway, this guy then came towards us and started raising his voice with my mum and grandma. I also knew that he stared at my grandma who was seated next to me, but my grandma just looked away. He stared for quite a while. Maybe 30 seconds, he was staring as he raised his voice. I couldn't help but be on the alert that he may start to do something funny like grabbing my grandma. In my head, I told myself that if he touched her, I would seriously get off my seat and stare him down really viciously. Alright alright. In actual fact, I told myself that if he touched her, I would grab his arm and twist it in such a way he would be trying to get my hand off his arm. I knew I could take him on, but as I thought about the situation, I wondered, 'What would Jesus do?' It was a really difficult question to ask myself because this guy could do something really inappropriate and if Jesus were here, I seriously doubt He would do what I wanted to do. So I thought maybe I shouldn't be so violent with him but rather, give him a warning if he did anything funny. Which is why I thought about giving him a good stare. A good 'if you don't back off now, you're gonna be in a lot of trouble' stare. Ok ok, this probably isn't something that Jesus would do, but I guess it's something that someone like me would do because I have to protect my family.

Fortunately, he didn't do anything funny with any of us, which meant I didn't have to resort to such violent actions. He just walked away and started pestering other people in the bus terminal.

We continued waiting for the bus and not longer after, my mum started to complain that the bus was taking forever. I guess we could have been waiting in the bus terminal for 30 minutes or so. On average, that is pretty long because during peak hours, the bus comes every 10 minutes, and during off-peak hours, the bus comes every 15-20 minutes. So to have to wait at the bus terminal for 30 minutes was really unusual.

It was then that my mum said, "I have a good mind to go to the office and complain why our bus is taking so long." And as she said that, in the next few seconds, our bus came.

She concluded, "See, they're scared that I'm gonna complain to them."

The bus trip took around 10-15 minutes and when we got to the Habour Front Shopping Centre, we crossed the overhead bridge and into the Shopping Centre. While we were on the bridge towards the shopping centre, I was able to take these blurry shots of the ship. I didn't figure out how to take clear pictures till near the end of the trip, so bear with me with some of these ><"

When we got inside, we found our way to the departure hall and it was there that we noticed this really massive line. I thought, 'Nah, the direction for cruise departures is pointing the other way. That's not the line we're supposed to stand in.'

Then this guy in uniform approached us and asked, "Star Cruises? May I see your tickets? ... Hmm, world cruiser. Ok, one of you stand at this line *pointing at the massive line* and one of you can go and check-in *pointing in another direction further away*"

The 'massive' line was basically a formation of a square with 3 'sides'. One side basically the length of the picture below, as we stood at the end of the line. The picture doesn't make the line look long enough. The actual line is another few metres long, but you get the picture =P

So we waited and waited...

... and waited and waited, until I got bored and decided to take pics of my legs and feet cause I was looking down and wondered, 'what a lovely picture it would be if I took a picture of my legs!' BANG! Beautiful.

You can see how bored I was waiting. Just like how any one reading this will have to wait for my next post! =D Keep waiting. Maybe you can see how beautiful your feet are when you start taking pictures of your feet as well! ^^

To Be Continued...