Unkateeve in Singapore

Long ago, when my niece Eileen was a toddler, her attempt to say “Uncle Steve” came out as “Unkateeve” -- it was cute, and the name Unkateeve occasionally has popped up over the years, long long after Eileen got my name right.

Eileen has been in Singapore for three years, teaching animation art at the University. I hadn’t seen her in years, and suddenly the ms Amsterdam was approaching Singapore.

On Oct 22 I met her at the terminal, with a plastic Viking helmet on my head, complete with horns, and a Thailand umbrella as a little gift. The two items together were pretty incongruent, and made for a pretty goofy photograph, especially when you throw in a New York Mets T-shirt. So cosmopolitan I am.

But there was purpose here -- the umbrella was a gift (why do I keep typing umbreela?) -- and the Viking helmet was the centerpiece of my Halloween costume-to-be. With an artsy lady like Eileen as a consultant, I thought Singapore would be a good place to add stuff to the costume.

We got a pretty decent piece of velour-like cloth that could serve as an upper-body garment, with a tiger stripe pattern. It didn’t occur to either of us that there are no tigers in Scandinavia and the tiger stripes were yet another incongruent thing.

We were in a time crunch, and had to give up on the wig/beard search, surprisingly two different costume shops were unable to sell me these items. So we went to a “Microbrewery” in downtown Singapore, where you can look thru the window and see the huge metal vats that brew the beer. They had a special where you sample a dozen different styles of beer. This plus catch-up family chitchat made for a fine afternoon, but Unkateeve was back on the ship by 4:00PM, having enjoyed a terrific tour of Singapore. Thank you Eileen.

Singapore is the halfway point of the grand Asia-Australia tour. And 300 people disembarked at Singpore, having purchased “only” the first half of the voyage. They were not completely replaced, I hear only 70 new people got on. Possibly because the second half of the voyage has 20 sea days out of 33 sea days, and the first half had only 15 sea days out of 32 days.

So now there will be less ports to occupy people’s time with. The staff will be hard-pressed to dream up interesting “stuff to do” -- especially for the great majority that purchased the whole 65-day voyage.

In the piano lounge I’ve hosted numerous contests, “Name That Tune - 60s tunes” -- “Name That Tune - tune titles beginning with letter S” - “Name That Tune - one-word titles” - “Name That Tune - generic” , Elvis Hour, Sinatra Hour, Open Mic, and “Fill in the Missing Lyric” -- my twist on the hit TV show. All the contests result in trinket prizes, among them Holland America coffee mugs, Holland America key chains, Holland America luggage tags. But people compete quite seriously, and can get pretty contentious about the point system. Bob Barker I ain’t, but think I can increase my value around here by thinking up more “events”.

Right after Singapore the ship crosses the equator, continues through the tropics and makes its way to the south side of Australia ("...is the baddest part of town...and if you go down there ya better best beware...")

Oops, excuse me, couldn't help that. Anyway -- the ship will reach about 40-45 degrees south latitude, the opposite of the 40-45 degrees north latitude on Long Island. So in early November it'll be well into spring down there.