{"id":33,"date":"2007-03-19T10:07:44","date_gmt":"2007-03-19T18:07:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.alexsong.com\/sasblog\/?p=33"},"modified":"2007-03-19T10:08:27","modified_gmt":"2007-03-19T18:08:27","slug":"mauritius-recap-sea-olympics-talent-show-and-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alexsong.com\/sasblog\/?p=33","title":{"rendered":"Mauritius recap, Sea Olympics, talent show, and more"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Note: This is a combination of various blog entries I just copied + pasted into one document, because the onboard ship internet is just not happening. As always, my thoughts jump all over the place.<\/p>\n<p>Mauritius &#8211; it was a definite &#8216;Weezer &#8211; Island In The Sun&#8217; type of place. I hit up two beaches (Tamarind Bay and ?), experienced the local Chinese and Indian cuisines, ate at two pizza places (one being our taxi driver&#8217;s and Katie H&#8217;s favorite pizza place &#8211; Pizza Hut), shopped, participated in taking over an entire club with&nbsp;other SASers, explored a sugar&nbsp;factory,&nbsp;and&nbsp;just chilled with some new friends.<\/p>\n<p>Not really sure what else to say. We&#8217;re all growing increasingly frustrated at the internet connection as it as started to seriously suck after our departure from Mauritius. Most of us have pictures to upload, and a lot of us are still trying to plan independent trips in India, China, and Japan. And then, for reasons still beyond my level of&nbsp;comprehension, others are deciding to waste hours of internet time on March Madness.<\/p>\n<p>The Sea Olympics were today &#8211; for those not in the know, it&#8217;s a day off from classes devoted to various competitive activities (lip syncing, poker, basketball, etc). The ship itself is divided into various groups called &#8220;seas&#8221;, mine being the Aegean Sea. The ranking of the seas determines the order in which we disembark when we return to San Diego &#8211; my sea ranked 1st and I get to be one of the first ones off the boat&#8230;.whoop.&nbsp;I represented the sea in the Texas Hold Em tournament and was doing all right&#8230;but lost&nbsp;it all in a gutsy (stupid, in retrospect) play. It&#8217;s all good.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s quite difficult to keep clothes clean on this voyage. I&#8217;ve already dirtied some shorts I purchased in Mauritius just by sitting in the water taxis, and the ship&#8217;s laundry service was ineffective at cleaning them. Also, miscellaneous buttons are coming off my pants when I do submit them to the laundry service&#8230;gah. India should be really fun.<\/p>\n<p>Also, guys, I need suggestions for stuff to do in Japan. I&#8217;ve decided to take it on independently (for non-SASers, that means I&#8217;ve elected to explore the country without the use of the overpriced and rushed SAS-planned excursions) and don&#8217;t know where to begin. I&#8217;ve got a preliminary list of ideas:<\/p>\n<p>baseball game<br \/>sumo wrestling<br \/>Cirque du Soleil<br \/>sushi bars<br \/>karaoke bars<br \/>castles\/temples\/shrines<br \/>anything related to Toyota\/Scion\/tuner vehicles<br \/>hot spring spas<br \/>arcades\/Pachinko<\/p>\n<p>Any thoughts of any of the above, or know if anything else I should do in the 5 days I&#8217;m in the land of the rising sun?<\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;ve already hit the halfway point of the voyage, yikes.<\/p>\n<p>Also, it&#8217;s Mustache March onboard the ship, and I&#8217;m happy to announce my whiskers have just gotten long enough to touch the inside of my lip. I started this voyage with the intention of not shaving or cutting my hair, as I work full-time back home and wouldn&#8217;t be able to get away with doing so. I also had the intention of coloring my hair yet again (I was electric blue\/green for a few months in high school), but I&#8217;ve been unable to locate bleach\/dye kits.<\/p>\n<p>Fun facts &#8211; out of all of the people on the ship:<br \/>1 went to my high school<br \/>1 is a student at my current school<br \/>1 went to my elementary school (4th and 5th grades)<br \/>Quite a few&nbsp;live within 10 minutes from me. Small world.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m sitting at the talent show right now, and The Voice is the funniest\/creepiest guy. I&#8217;ll let my fellow shipmate bloggers tell you why.<\/p>\n<p>Alright, let&#8217;s see if this&#8217;ll post.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Note: This is a combination of various blog entries I just copied + pasted into one document, because the onboard ship internet is just not happening. As always, my thoughts jump all over the place. Mauritius &#8211; it was a definite &#8216;Weezer &#8211; Island In The Sun&#8217; type of place. I hit up two beaches [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-port-recaps","category-thoughts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alexsong.com\/sasblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alexsong.com\/sasblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alexsong.com\/sasblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alexsong.com\/sasblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alexsong.com\/sasblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.alexsong.com\/sasblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alexsong.com\/sasblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alexsong.com\/sasblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alexsong.com\/sasblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}