Greetings from the South Pacific, where it is currently February 24. I say this with a bit of uncertainty, because we have had an interesting morning. It all revolves around the international dateline, which is not, as you might sensibly suppose, a straight line. A picture, they say, is worth a thousand words, so take a gander at the one above before reading any further.
We all learned in school that the international dateline is an artificial line in an intentionally remote area of the Pacific Ocean where one day ends and the next day begins. So far so good. What most of us, myself included, did not know is that nations can bend it at their will, much the way we delineate time zones in the United States. So imagine my surprise this morning when I got up and checked Google Maps to see how near we were to our next port of call in French Polynesia, and to discover that we had quietly, and without ceremony, slipped over the international dateline and into tomorrow.
How could this have happened? We had been told, and had no reason to doubt, that we would cross the dateline a few days from now, somewhere between Tahiti and New Zealand. A quick glance at the map confirmed that that’s quite a bit west of our current position. Ah, but here’s where politics comes in, as I referenced above.
It seems that the good people of Kiribati, a tiny nation of thirty or so small islands spread out over 1.3 million square miles, had the good sense to decide that things would be simpler if all of their 119,000 citizens lived in the same day, so they simply drew the international dateline far to the east to bring all of their islands into the same day. Again, see the photo above.
And here’s where it gets, well, strange. Because we were merely passing through the Kiribati bend in the zone, in and out over a few hours, the result was that for us it became tomorrow, before dropping back to what for us was now yesterday, which of course became today. Have that one at hand the next time someone tells you that time travel isn’t possible.
If you’re still reading, on whatever day it is where you are, I have one other item of interest to relate. For the past four days, while we have been at sea journeying from Hawaii to French Polynesia, we have had a marvelous guest lecturer on board. Tom Vassos is a Professor of Astronomy at the University of Toronto, and his four enrichment lectures on the cosmos have been dynamic, educational, and just plain fun. I was fortunate enough to attend all four, and can testify that the attendance grew each day as word got around the ship that Tom’s sessions were a lot of fun.
A couple days ago the topic was comets, meteors and meteorites, and he brought a couple meteorites from his personal collection. One was from Kenya, date uncertain, and the other came from a blast in Russia in 1947. I’m not sure how much he paid for the Kenyan meteorite, but the Russian rock cost him $10,000, so you know how much he loves this stuff.
And I have to say that the meteorites were interesting. As he related, most meteorites are in museums in glass cases, and visitors can gawk at them, but touching them is verboten. Tom, on the other hand, brings his with him and lets his lecture attendees handle them and pass them around. I got to hold both of them, and they were surprisingly heavy, especially the Russian one, because both were mostly made up of iron. In fact, their iron content was so high that he had stuck magnets on them, which were in no danger of falling off.
The final lecture today, before a big crowd in the main theater, was on the question of life on other planets and throughout the universe. Of course the bottom line as of today is that we don’t know, but Tom did a fantastic job of walking us through the pros and cons, with some interesting details about Mars, Europa (a moon of Jupiter), and Enceladus (a tiny moon of Saturn), the latter two of which have subterranean oceans.
There was another lecture today on the French artist Paul Gauguin, who did much of his painting in Tahiti, where we will be tomorrow and Monday. Royal Caribbean has done a terrific job of bringing guest lecturers on board to do enrichment sessions on sea days, and I have enjoyed them immensely. I’m also doing some self enrichment by doing a lot of reading. My current book, which I actually read years ago when it was first released, is “In a Sunburned Country,” by Bill Bryson. We’ll be in Australia in less than two weeks, so I thought now was the perfect time to dig into it again. I’m listening to it this time, which is a pleasure, as it’s read by the author in a most entertaining fashion. I recommend it highly.
That’s it for today. Tomorrow we’ll be in Mo’orea, and Tahiti on Monday, before heading for New Zealand. And one last note on the dateline, time travel thing. It appears that we will have no March 1. I don’t know exactly where it is going, but our ship will apparently pass directly from February 29 to March 2 when we cross the international dateline between Tahiti and New Zealand. We’ve been told there will be a ceremony on board to mark our crossing, of course unless it is scheduled for March 1, when it too would pass into oblivion. If I don’t vanish as well I will continue to report on our travels, so stay tuned.
Me with Astronomy Professor Tom Vassos. He’s as colorful as his lectures.
One of Professor Vassos’s entertaining slides.
The Kenyan and Russian meteorites. The smaller, Russian one was surprisingly heavy. If you look closely at the Kenyan meteorite you can see a couple small magnets.
We also had a lecturer aboard who gave some excellent talks about art in Tahiti, including an entire session on Paul Gauguin, who painted some of his most famous works there.
My current audiobook. I recommend it highly.
Bonus photo. More silliness at our equator crossing ceremony. King Neptune and his entourage meted out justice to crew members who were crossing the equator for the first time.
Bonus photo number two, a double rainbow. You never know what you’ll see when you cast your eyes out at the wide Pacific Ocean.
Final bonus photo. I love to sit out on the stern and watch our wake.
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