The Citizen, 2012-03-01, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, MARCH 1, 2012. PAGE 5.
How about a sea cruise, she says to
me. I can’t believe you said that, I say
to her.
She knows how I feel about cruises. We’ve
weathered enough of them – the Caribbean,
Panama, north to Alaska. I think we’ve
conclusively established that I am not prime
cruise material.
Sea cruises press a variety of no-no buttons
for me. I try to avoid enterprises that involve
casinos, tuxedos, Bingo, 24-hours-a-day
dining opportunities or beverages bedecked
with miniature umbrellas.
Such undertakings lead to heartburn,
impromptu conga lines, the notion that
lampshades make irresistible headwear and
the occasional slap in the chops.
Then there’s the hazard of strolling
Gypsy violinists sawing Lady of Spain into
your ear while you sit at a dinner table
surrounded by extras from a production
of Cabaret – obsessive-compulsives,
blowhards, drama queens, pedantic
oenophiles and – yeah, cruises are not a good
fit for me.
Why a cruise, I ask her. Why not a dogfight
with Michael Vick? A pub crawl in Somalia? A
jolly bout of gout?
She doesn’t respond to my ripostes, merely
slips a brochure into my lap. It’s entitled
Cruises to Classical Civilizations.
Oh.
My.
Gods.
Dozens of them, actually – Greek, Roman,
Mycenaean, Minoan. This cruise starts in
Athens then hopscotches up the Dalmatian
coast dropping anchor at places I’ve only
dreamed of (Corfu, Dubrovnik, the Kornati
Islands) – and landfalls I can’t even pronounce
(Monemvasia, Nauplia, Katakolon). It
terminates in the canal-laced, fairy-tale city of
Venice. Over 14 days passengers visit such
bucket list destinations as Olympus, the
Acropolis and the Palace of Diocletian. Don’t
know your Essenes from a hole in the ground?
No sweat. Experts are on board delivering
lectures about the history of the places you’re
seeing each day.
But a cruise is still a cruise, right? Umpteen
thousand passengers milling around with their
charge cards hanging out; platoons of Uriah
Heepish flunkies in white jackets, each with a
Mick Jagger leer and an open palm.
Wrong. The Aegean Odyssey, the brochure
tells me, is petite, even intimate, as cruise
ships go. Tipping is flatly verboten, you dine
wearing what’s comfortable and with whoever
you please among your 350 fellow passengers.
Three hundred and fifty? I’ve been on cruise
ships that carried that many wine stewards.
The ship lacks night club shows, but features
a well-stocked library. You can’t find a bingo
hall but there is an outdoor pool, a spa and a
fully-equipped gym.
Or you can go ashore and tread in the
footsteps of the ancients (shore excursions are
included in the package price). For hopelessly
hot-wired passengers there is a small internet
room. On the other hand there’s also a yoga
class each morning on an open deck under the
Mediterranean sky.
It sounds too good to be true.
I’m going for it.
What sold me was a letter from a Canadian
client quoted in the brochure. “No bingo, no
casino, no photographer, no chorus line and no
Baked Alaska! Need I say more?”
Not as far as I’m concerned. How do you say
‘All aboard” in Greek?
Comments: email arblack43@shaw.ca
Arthur
Black
Other Views
A sea cruise? O.K., just this once
With my colleague Denny taking on
centuries-old religious regulations
on ‘shacking up’ I thought perhaps I
could use this space to lighten the mood a bit
this week.
Over the weekend I travelled to take in a
comedy show with my friends. One of our all-
time favourites, Gilbert Gottfried was doing a
short string of shows at Yuk Yuks in Toronto.
The show was loud, crude and not for the
weak-stomached, but then again very often
neither is this column.
However, while being seated for the show, I
encountered an awkward social interaction to
which I am no stranger: the huffing and puffing
and complaining that comes along with my
taking a seat.
Indeed, I was sitting in front of a young
couple, a man and a woman, and neither of
them likely broke the 5’8” mark. So here is all
6’3” of me, and my two friends who both hover
around the 6’0” mark sitting in front of them in
what must have looked like bouncers guarding
the door to a club.
I understand that it can be frustrating and I
have always done everything I can to improve
the view of those behind me at these events,
but where does it end? If I’m at a general
admission event, where people are standing
and may move wherever they please, why do
they stay if they can’t see? They’d rather stay
and complain than take a bit of a walk to find a
slightly better vantage point.
However, at seated events, what is it exactly
that I’m supposed to do? My height is not
something I can change and it’s not something
that I chose for myself.
Listening to the conversations of others as
people continued to stream into their seats, I
didn’t hear people lamenting that ‘oh great, a
woman is sitting in front of me’ or ‘you’ve got
to be kidding me, a black guy sitting right in
front of me’. It just doesn’t happen. That kind
of treatment is reserved for the tall and the tall
only.
And believe me, I feel the pain of the short
among you. Jess is barely over 5’0” tall, so
wherever she and I go, I make sure to find a
way to make it work so she can see what’s
happening. We seem to be able to execute this
feat, I’m not sure why it’s so tough for others.
Rest assured, I have also been in this spot.
Sure, I’m 6’3” so it doesn’t happen often, but
there have been events where I have found
myself behind someone who should be
travelling with the Toronto Raptors and not in
front of me at a concert, but I certainly don’t
bitch and moan about it all night, I lean around
him a bit, or I move.
Surprisingly enough, without a degree in
astrophysics or neuroscience, I figured out
what to do. I certainly didn’t make him feel
like he was doing something wrong by simply
sitting in the seat he purchased a ticket for with
his hard-earned money.
Anyway, when all the little people of the
world (you know, those folks under 6’0”) look
up at me and say that being my height must be
awesome, I say that ‘yes, it is awesome’
however, when you’re at the top, people are
always going to try to tear you down.
So if the couple behind me, who seemed nice
enough, continued to complain throughout the
night, I couldn’t hear it over Gottfried’s
screaming, so I guess in the end everyone won.
I can’t fit in most cars, I have a hard time
shopping at normal stores and finding shirts
and pants that fit, I hit my head on a lot of stuff,
I’m constantly being asked grab stuff down
from high shelves, so please, for the love of
God, just let me enjoy the show.
Down in front
In The Citizen last month we ran our annual
financial pages chock full of suggestions
about how to save money, how to make
your money last and how to plan for the future.
In those pages an article spoke about the
benefits of living with a significant other as
a means of sharing expenses and reducing
costs.
Last week we saw the other side of it; Pastor
Ernest Dow of the Living Water Christian
Fellowship, in the From The Minister’s
Study section of The Citizen spoke of the
pitfalls of “shacking up”.
Well it isn’t often you’ll find me saying this,
but this isn’t an argument I enjoy having.
History is rife with examples of people
taking on the church and not doing so well in
the end but this is something I believe needs to
be said: Cohabitation before marriage is a
reasonable and rational practice that I would
encourage everyone to do.
Some people may think that I should preface
the next sentence with something like “I have
a confession to make” but that isn’t right.
Making a confession means, literally, to admit
to a crime or something I’m embarrassed
about.
I’m not embarrassed about the fact that my
girlfriend and I have lived together for two
years now, and have been in a relationship for
nearly six years before that.
Why? Well because I believe that the notion
of not living together before marriage is out-
dated and, to be honest, unreasonable.
Loving someone and living with someone
are two drastically different situations.
You can love someone indefinitely if you
don’t have to face the little annoyances that
living with them creates.
I’ll preface this entire section by saying none
of the specific situations reflect upon my
household.
You never know about someone’s habits
until you live with them and become
comfortable with them.
You’ll never know if they might leave things
around the house you’d rather not see.
You’ll never know if they practise things that
annoy you.
You’ll never know if they enjoy a much
colder home than you do.
In essence, you can know every inch of their
psyche and personality but have next to no
knowledge of the practices that they consider
everyday activities until you live together and
are comfortable enough to be yourself.
I’m going to generalize here, but I think it’s
safe to say it’s a fair assumption.
When a guy is courting a prospective partner
they will hide what they consider to be their
worst habits and practices.
For me, there are quite a few quirks I would
probably not lead with. I, for example, only do
laundry once a week. It may drive someone
insane to have laundry pile up for a week, but
that is my practice and, if you didn’t live with
me, you probably wouldn’t know that.
I also have a bad habit of forgetting to clean
the sink after shaving.
These are the kinds of things you need to
know about if you live with me, they are also
the kinds of things you wouldn’t know about
until you live with me.
This all comes down to one basic premise;
how can you say you’ll spend the rest of your
life with someone until you’ve gotten a taste of
it?
That’s the equivalent of looking at a new
food, having no idea of the ingredients or
pallete, and saying “I’ll have the large order of
that.”
You need to test things before you commit.
Heck, even cell phone companies, some of
the worst people in the world for forcing a
commitment (although I will have to admit I
have never been to an actual shotgun wedding,
that may tie, if not beat the cellular companies)
have caveats in their contracts allowing people
to get out if they find their new phone or
service is sub-par.
With marriage there is no 60-day guarantee,
there is no return policy and there is no way to
get the thousands of dollars back a typical
wedding costs.
I have some fairly funny friends and I’ve
heard a certain joke tossed around a few times.
While it may be accurate (and funny, in my
opinion), I think it needs to be adjusted.
The joke asks what the number one cause of
divorce is. The answer is marriage.
One certainly can’t argue that, without
marriage, there wouldn’t be divorce.
My opinion, however, is that marriage in
itself is great if you’ve done all the research.
Marriage as outlined in Dow’s piece is the
only contract in the world you sign into
without being able to really do the research or
have a test drive.
Would you buy a car without driving a
similar model first? Would you buy an oven
without doing your research? Hopefully not.
So why are we expected to commit the rest
of our lives to someone without knowing if it’s
going to work out?
Ashleigh and I decided, some time ago, that
it made more financial sense to live together
and put our savings towards a house than it did
to have some celebration of marital vows that,
if statistics can be believed, have
slightly worse than a 50/50 chance of
succeeding.
We decided that marriage would be
something that would come in due time if we
were able to live with one of the biggest causes
for problems between couples: financial
obligation (in the terms of a mortgage).
That is one of those things that people don’t
know about until they live together.
How can you possibly marry someone when
the biggest financial discussion you have is a
cap for Christmas presents or who is picking
up the bill?
I respect the people who get married and
then move in because it’s a chance I would not
take. Throwing several thousand dollars
towards a wedding and then tens of thousands
of dollars at a house seems to be the inverse of
what logic would dictate, but, if they can make
it work, good on them.
For me, my money will always be on the
couples that live together first.
I’ve seen friends find out they weren’t suited
for each other when they got an apartment
together, saving themselves time and money as
well as their families.
If you ask me, cohabitation before a
wedding could lead to a 0 per cent divorce
rate.
Shawn
Loughlin
Shawn’s Sense
Denny
Scott
Denny’s Den
An argument I don’t like making