Copper10-8

Yeah, the only "easy" one is the fourth one in succession which will always be Ketut. Happy New Year back at ya! 🙂

Pax total onboard for this trip is 2,606, but not as many kiddies as last week

Yes, Putu is an Indonesian boys/men's name but, more specifically, it is a Balinese name from the island of Bali. All Balinese people are generally named one of four names: Wayan, Made, Nyoman or Ketut. This is applies to both men and women. Every Balinese child is simply named by his or her order of birth. The first born, boy or girl, is Wayan. The second born is Made (pronounced ma day). The third born is Nyoman. And the fourth born is Ketut. If a family has more than four children, the cycle repeats itself, and the next ‘Wayan’ may be called Wayan Balik, which loosely translates to ‘another Wayan’. Girls/women are given the ‘Ni’ before their name, as in Ni Wayan. It’s much like ‘Miss’ or ‘Mrs’. Men use ‘I’, as in I Wayan, much like ‘Mr.’ But if you thought it was done, you are wrong since here it tends to get a bit confusing! The first born child could alternately be named Putu, the second child could be named Kadek or Nengah instead of Made. The third could be Komang (or Koming for girls) or even NgNga (a very rural name) instead of Nyoman. However, the 4th child (and multiples of 4th) is destined to be Ketut, and only Ketut. For girls however, there is another name for the first born; Luh (which makes it Ni Luh and usually called Iluh). A first born boy can be called Gede, which only applies for boys which makes it I Gede. Balinese people also give their children a second or third Hindu name that has a positive meaning. Examples include Suardika, which means ‘guiding light’, Setiawan (faithful), or Dewi (goddess). Sometimes Balinese people use this Hindu name or shorten it to create a nickname. For example, Budi might be short for Budiasa, Widi could be a shortening of Widiarta, and Nuri might be short for Nuriasih. To make it even more confusing, almost every Balinese has another nickname, given by their friends in school or in the village. For example, a guy that is called I Made Budiasa can have the nickname of Lompok. Or a girl that is called Ni Wayan Wardani can have the nick name of Desi. To summarize it: First born Second born Third born Fourth born Wayan Made Nyoman Ketut Putu Kadek Komang Luh (girl) Nengah Koming (girl) Gede (boy) NgNga (very rural, hardly used)

Found out today that Nick, K-dam's cruise and travel director hails not from South Africa, but from Belgium, as does her GRM, a good friend and former co-worker

THU 29 DEC 22 - Leaving for San Diego (con't) We decided on dinner tonite inside the Lido Market. Why? Because in the “Distant Land” section of same, they were serving “a taste of Indonesia” For us, that meant feasting on Nasi Goreng (Bali fried rice), Beef Sumatra (spicy and hot) and Green Beans with Sambal (spicier and hotter). Enak sekali/delicious! From dinner, we strolled over to the World Stage showroom all the way up front for the now standard embarkation night presentation of Holland America Line’s “Origin Story”, a maritime journey of HAL’s history back in the 1800’s out of the city of Rotterdam, the Netherland's second city behind Amsterdam!! The movie was presented by K-dam’s cruise and travel director Nick Hollevoet. Nick pronounced very Dutch names like “Nederlandsch Amerikaansche Stoomvaart Maatschappij” flawlessly but I have a feeling he’s South African, rather than Dutch. The presentation itself about HAL’s history was informative and well done! Upon its completion, we caught the final numbers of the BB King’s All-Star band in their Blues Club on Deck 2 where there were lots of folks cutting a rug. After their last set, the place turned into a night club with a DJ providing more dance music. We called it a night around 11:30 and found a scorpion towel animal on our bed. Tomorrow, Friday, is a sea day on our way south to Cabo San Lucas. See ya then! /

THU 29 DEC 22 - Leaving for San Diego Left home at around 1000 hrs. after saying goodbye to our 12-year-old cat Stiv, not a happy camper we’re on a road trip, and Maria’s mum who’s house/cat sitting, and got on the 110 (Harbor Fry northbound. But first made the obligatory stop for a cup o’ Joe at the local SB’s. Transitioned to the 405/I-5 southbound. Traffic was surprisingly light for a weekday but that changed after an hour when we arrived in the San Clemente/San Onofre area where it was stop and go due to volume. That happened twice more near Oceanside and Encinitas (traffic collision in the northbound lanes so, naturally, lookie loos in our lanes) That all added to our driving time, and we arrived at the Broadway Pier at 1230 hours to drop off our baggage with one of the porters. We then made our way to Aladdin’s multi-story parking garage on Kettner where we found a nice spot for the Bayerische Motoren Werke, AG X-5 who had handled the road trip very well while alluding any lurking Chips along the way. Aladdin provides a free shuttle to the pier in all about 10 minutes, a pretty comfy experience. Btw, taxis with passengers ARE allowed inside the Broadway Pier lot to drop off the latter, I asked one of the traffic directors. Good thing to remember for April! We entered the Broadway cruise terminal proper where the eastern portion is a taped off "slinky" path where you first show your picture I.D, and boarding pass to an agent and then go through airport-like X-ray machines operated by contract security. Had a short conversation with the friendly operator and learned that the former HAL SECO, first name Mike, no longer runs the security operation at the San Diego cruise ship piers. After security, we moseyed in a westerly direction through said terminal for the actual check in process which via the “fast lane’ assisted by another friendly agent who looked us up in her laptop. She actually used our head shot I.D. pictures from our last cruise in August so we could by-pass the still relatively new "facial recognition" machines. Your actual /ship's I.D./room key is in a sealed envelope in the mail slot outside your cabin. Last up was the obligatory welcome aboard pics by K-dam’s photo staff before boarding HAL lead Pinnacle-class ship via an escalator and the shoreside/airport like retractable gangway. Even though the “slinky process” tends to look intimidating when you first enter the terminal building, the entire process before boarding took all of twenty minutes! Certainly not bad; thanks San Diego Our cabin is on Shubert deck, starboard side, smack caddy corner from the Neptune Lounge where concierge Vinnie from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil “resides” and does one heck of a job keeping their guests happy. Since it was now lunch time, we accomplished that on Deck 3 mid-ships at the Grand Dutch Café where we each had a “Broodje Kroket” and a cup of “Erwten soep”, Dutch split pea soup. Had that really good lunch and then strolled to our muster station, 3C where a crew member (Moyo, one of the shoppies in real life) gave us a short and sweet brief with instructions to watch the onboard “Safety at Sea” video and listen to the captain’s safety speech over the P/A. This is the current “Covid-style” muster procedure on HAL which eliminates large groups getting together and standing in very close proximity to one another. Btw, your TV channel is set to that safety brief, and one is unable to change channels until after you watch/listen to the entire brief; good idea! Our two stateroom stewards are Putu from the beautiful island of Bali, the lead, and his assistant Aris from Jakarta, the capital and largest city on Java, the world’s most populous island, who together have 28 cabins on Shubert Deck assigned to them. By the time we got back from lunch and muster, our valises had arrived so time to unpack and put away stuff. Btw, Koningsdam is named for the current King (Koning in Dutch) of the Netherlands, Willem Alexander, hence the portrait of him and his very nice looking wife, Maxima, originally from Argentina. Around 3:15 PM, Captain Robert Jan Kan came on over the ship’s P/A system with his safety announcement as well as our departure and route info once leaving Point Loma behind us, making a hook shank to port, and heading southbound towards Mehjeeko. At around 4;30 PM, Koningsdam let go of her lines and shoved off her berth with Capt. Robert Jan (great name) backing his big ship up, turning her around in San Diego Bay, being vewy, vewy careful not to back her into the USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72) and, joined last week by one of her big sisters, USS Carl Vinson (CVN-70), both berthed at their home port, NAS North Island. He then followed the perimeter of that same Naval Air Station North Island, passing Naval Base Point Loma (working on a nuclear attack sub inside auxiliary floating dry dock "Arco" ARDM-5) and old Point Loma lighthouse on our starboard side, and headed towards the Pacific Ocean where the San Diego harbor pilot was dropped off on his fast boat.

Ours is at 1230 - See ya there!

Time to hit the road in about nine hours southbound on the 405/I-5 to San Diego where we will board Holland America Line's ms Koningsdam, the first of the tree Pinnacle-class ships for nine days worth of Mexico (Cabo San Lucas; Pichilinque/La Paz, Loreto, Puerto Vallarta & Mazatlan) incl. a New Years celebration at sea. Should be a good time! See ya there!

Jennifer from the Republica Dominicana! Earned a promotion again! Good for her!

From what I've read, understand the marine crustaceans, especially the Homaridae, are playing hard to get as they are dwelling on the bottom, especially the ones from the Pine Tree State

If you've never been to the "Ask the Captain" segment at 1400 hrs in the show lounge, consider going. It's a pretty interesting presentation - if he does the power-point of the bridge, especially the K-dam bridge because it's a bit of a different concept, more "Star Trek-looking" with pilot-like chairs and joysticks - The questions from the audience can be interesting also

Yeah, it is/has been/will be tomorrow a huge mess in airline world 😌 All the best to the folks flying! It's only a two hour - or less if the Chippies aren't looking 😉 - drive for us

Welcome to San Diego! Hey, that's the parking garage where we'll be parking on Thursday 😉 See ya soon!

9% chance of rain on Thu - increasing to 31% in the evening when K-dam will be underway southbound away from any rain 😉 Safe/good flight! San Diego is an always interesting experience on short finals getting fairly close to the buildings southeast of Lindbergh Field Thu 29 | Day 59° 9% S 7 mph Cloudy skies. High 59F. Winds S at 5 to 10 mph. Thu 29 | Night 50° 31% SE 5 mph Cloudy skies with a few showers later at night. Low around 50F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 30%.

Thanks for the vid! We also would like to see the return of the former full cast with four vocalists and six dancers but until/if that happens, Step One provides excellent and energetic entertainment! Humanity is a good show but we like In Tandem

This first one - Krupuk (Javanese for shrimp crackers - Kroepoek in Dutch) has been my fav since I was a young lad growing up in Amsterdam

By the looks of her pics, K-dam is at Muelle No. 3 adjacent the small Armada de Mexico naval base (HAL ship in the attached pic). She is docked/berthed so no tendering required. It's a petty decent hike from No. 3 to the new terminal at No. 1 however, in the past they have had electric shuttle carts take mobility impaired folks to No.1 where the taxis can be found. NCL's Norwegian Joy is due in PV in less tan two hours - at Noon - so wil probably get the prime spot at Muelle No. 1

Kazu; not sure what your friends and you have planned for Puerto Vallarta, but if you are game for a local lunch experience - not many tourists know about this place - consider having lunch at Pipi's Restaurante. They are located in Viejo (old) PV at 804 Calle Guadalupe Sanchez. You will need to take a cab outside the cruise terminal to get there and back - make sure you agree on the price before you get in!. The restaurant staff will call you one after - tell the cabbie on the ride back you want to go to the "Terminal Maritima por el barco or cruzero" (maritime terminal for the ship / cruise ship) We've gone to Pipi's for lunch at least four times in PV the last three years. There will be a gent that will come to your table to make fresh guacamole and there is usually a 3-4 person band floating around who will be more than happy to play/sing Mexican traditional songs like "Cielito Lindo" at your table (both with a tip at your discretion of course) Just a tip if y'all are so inclined https://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g150793-d1032796-Reviews-Pipi_s-Puerto_Vallarta.html

Merry Christmas Kazu! Enjoy the day on the K-dam in Mazatlan!

Happy Birthday Gerry! Enjoy the day with the family and stay warm on the frozen tundra!

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL!

Me thinks he got sick and/or injured and therefore unable to perform. Those are usually the reasons they're a no-show for a or more than one performance(s)

He's been around 😉 See you then! Merry Christmas!

Thanks a bunch for that info and Merry Christmas to you and yours!

Didn't know they have turned the former Queen's Lounge on Zuidy into the Rolling Stone Rock Room with band. Wondering if the same occurred on the other three Vista sisters. Are the BB King's All-Stars still playing in there also, switching off with the rock band, or are they gone?