The Month That Was - December 2019

I looked back on some of my posts from ten years ago to see what had changed. A couple things were identical. I still have the same day job and I still write and get frustrated with my progress. Other than that my life is quite a bit different. Ten years ago was the height of my travelling phase. I was literally going somewhere every month and discovering new things and writing extensively about them. My circle of friends was both larger and more intimate. My personal life involved regular contact with folks who now I rarely contact outside of facebook. I had yet to buy my current house which kind of dominates my checkbook now. My parents were still alive. Judging from my posts, I saw nothing special in the changing of the decade, and I was unaffected by the imminent demise of my forties. Yet it really was the end of an era of sorts. Am I sitting at the cusp of another era now? I'll let you know in ten years.

Aside: I started blogging over 20 years ago, but those posts have been lost to the ages. Just as well, I seem to recall an inordinate amount of snark. I suspect much at that time centered around the release of my first book Apple Pie, by that dirtbag publisher whose name I will not put in print, in December 1999. ("It was twenty years ago today...") The changes in my life since then would be astounding to catalog.

For now, I will maintain the same New Year's Resolutions I have for quite some time now:

1. Enhance the lives of the people I care about.
2. Fight sloth (the Deadly Sin, not the adorable forest creature).

If I succeed in these, everything else should fall into place. At least, that's the plan.

[Travel] At Sea with Steamboat Willie
[Books] What I've Been Reading
[Rant] Progress, or Not

[Travel] At Sea with Steamboat Willie

I found myself on a Disney cruise in the Caribbean. But first a cruise memory.

I have only been on one other cruise in my life (Celebrity) and I came away from that with mixed feelings. I could appreciate the convenience and value, but also acknowledged the limitations: The tightly controlled dining experiences -- mostly geared towards all-you-can-eat buffets, crowding (if not overcrowding) in the popular areas such as the pools, and most importantly, limited time and opportunities in port. You see by this time I was experience in Caribbean travel and was disappointed by how little you could appreciate the islands in a 9am - 5pm stop. Cruising was about being on the boat.

Disney changed my tune a bit on this front for a few reasons. First, the food was a cut above. Even the buffet (I usually hate buffets) had decent quality and variety. Second, the service was Disney, and everything that people say about Disney's service quality is true. Lastly, it wasn't that crowded. There were a ton of kids everywhere, yes, but there are also very nice adult only areas -- including a pool, spa, restaurant, and a couple of bars. These were never crowded because 90% of the adults on the boat had kids and could only use them when they could slip away. It's kind of a cool lifehack: go on a kid oriented cruise because the adult areas won't be crowded.

Of course being kid oriented is also a liability. There is no casino on Disney boats. The only thing close to gambling is bingo. Playing bingo they give you a couple of paper cards to play by hand but that's just to occupy your hands, since you typically purchase cards in multiples of ten you do most of your play with virtual cards stored in a little handheld machine that plays them for you. It tells you when you have bingo. It's almost comical, but folks get really enthusiastic over it. Needless to say, it's not really my speed.

Another thing you can't do on a disney cruise is by a drink package. With most cruises your food and soft drinks are included in the price, but hooch is extra. Since there is typically a lot of drinking on a cruise, most lines offer single price package you can by that covers all you can drink. As you can imagine, this will elevate the level of drunkenness on a boat, which is unacceptable to Disney. Hooch is ala carte, but not unreasonably expensive.

The ports on this voyage were Cozumel, Mexico and Georgetown, Grand Cayman. Cozumel is a place I have no particular affection for. It's entire economy revolves around the cruise ships and the port has a density of bars and crap shops like a neutron star. Hawkers everywhere offering everything -- one called out to me "You need a car? Tequila? Girls?" Last time I was here I arranged an excursion to the mainland to see the Tulum ruins. Sadly we weren't in port long enough for me to do that again and I didn't feel like dropping a ton of cash to arrange a beach visit at some resort or snorkel for an hour, so instead I went into Senor Frogs and used their free wi-fi to catch up on email. (Did I mention wi-fi was very expensive on the boat? Something on the order of .25 cents per MB, although there were package purchases that made it slightly cheaper.)

Georgetown was a somewhat better experience. I have previously spent some time in Grand Cayman before. I really wanted to get to a place called Rum Point -- a truly relaxed and laid back beach well away from the hubbub. Sadly, the official excursion was booked, so my plan was to hop off at the dock and hook up with a tour operator there. But the only tours you could arrange at the dock were bus tours of the island. So I hunted for a car rental agency but everyone said I the best place was one of the hotels on Seven Mile Beach (the main tourist spot). I inquired about a cab to Rum Point and was quoted $100 each way, and I had better make arrangements ahead of time to get back, because there are no cab's waiting around for rides at the other side.

So I sighed deeply and grabbed a cab up to Seven Mile Beach where I would have two options: a) rent a car to get to Rum Point, which at this point would have ended up being about 1 hour visit, or b) hook up with one of the major hotels for a day pass to use their services and beach chairs and just relax on one of the most beautiful beaches in the world. For the lack of hassle, I chose B. I chose poorly. I stopped in a couple of the resorts, big names like Wyndham and Marriott and none of them would sell me a day pass. This was very weird to me as I thought almost all but the most exclusive resort properties do this, especially in a place like Grand Cayman with all the day-trippers coming off the boats. Feh.

So I wandered a way up the beach and eventually stumbled on a beach bar called Calico Jacks and stopped for a beer and some horrible fried appetizer. Well since I was running out of time, I asked how much for a lounge chair on the beach? $15 for a chair and umbrella or I could get a chair only in the shade of a lovely tree for a five-spot. Done and done. I went for a long swim in the transparent 80-degree gulf then slept for an hour on so in the shade.

I do like Grand Cayman (as opposed to Cozumel). I liked it better last time I was there when I had multiple days to explore. Still, lesson learned: Do Not Leave Your Shore Excursions to Chance. There's just not enough cushion for error.

Back on the boat I fell easily back into the rhythm of things. The tasty food, the spa time, the pool time, some light entertainment in the evenings. Honestly, the over-abundance of children was not an issue at all. I took to having an evening walk to the basketball court to shoot hoops under the stars after everyone was asleep. It's the little things that count.

I still think I prefer a few days at a location rather than a day-visit to a fully commercialized port, but I'm good with cruising and would do it again, including -- perhaps especially -- Disney, surprisingly enough. The hip and fashionable would sneer at both cruising and Disney, but I can see the attraction and wouldn't hesitate to join in now and then.

[Books] What I've Been Reading

Three escapes and one potential trap.

Maigret's Childhood Friend, by Georges Simoneon -- Delightfully prototypical Maigret. I continue to be enamored of Simoneon's marvelous economy of language and how he manages to engross without contrivance, just well-drawn characters, linear plotting, dogged police work. I will continue to pick off Maigret's for a while I think.

The Dreadful Lemon Sky, by John D. MacDonald -- There was a time, decades ago, when I worked my way through these Travis McGee books. I came to stop at one point because I found them hopelessly lurid and violent and generally dark-toned. Not sure what encouraged me to go back and read one besides curiosity, but it confirmed my impression. MacDonald writes well, but these modern-day, white-knight, noir-ish, hyper-macho books wear thin quickly. I can see the lineage passed down to something like the Doc Ford series from Randy Wayne White, but White has a much better sense of humor and Doc Ford is not dark-hearted. Probably a close modern day match would be Jack Reacher -- another series in which I'm in no hurry to indulge. Good for what it is.

No Hero, by John P. Marquand -- Marquand was a fairly renowned mainstream fictionalist. Winner of the Pulitzer, and so forth. His side gig was writing an espionage/intrigue series featuring a Japanese spymaster called Mr. Moto (eventually turned into a movie series featuring Peter Lorre). The plot is fairly standard -- down on his luck rogue stumbles into a spy-game that causes him to sort himself out and also gets the girl. The writing is direct and clear. The real treat here is the insight into the sentimentalities of the times. Written pre-WWII, when the political machinations in the Pacific between Japan, U.S., China, and Russia were still in flux and no one was really certain how it was all going to shake out. A fun book and very cool lens into the past.

Spring Snow, by Yukio Mishima -- definitely not escapist. Mishima was arguably the premier Japanese writer of the 20th century and led quite a life. He was shortlisted for the Nobel, hobnobbed with various elite personalities, eventually he attempted a coup and committed seppuku upon its failure. A half-century after his death he is now something of a cult figure in certain circles of what is inexactly called the alt-right -- primarily for his devotion to an aesthetic combination of classical beauty and nobility and masculine strength. Spring Snow is the first of a tetralogy referred to as The Sea of Fertility. It is said to be an essential summary of the evolution of Japanese culture into modernity. I have only just started it. It is slow. The emotional motives of the characters are pursued in intricate detail. There are flourishes of description and scene setting that, while nicely written, seem a bit overindulgent. In short, Mishima is not a writer whose style I am attracted to. Still there is a bit of intrigue building so we'll see how far I get. I do get the sense that there is much worth telling in this book.

[Rant] Progress or Not

Scott Sumner takes a shot at one of my favorite topics: Is Progress Real? I think he gets it wrong.

His argument, which I hope I am summarizing correctly, is that people who say I would never exchange the world of today for the world of yesterday are missing the point. There is a concept called the Hedonic Treadmill, which prevents us from feeling the positive effects of any progress. In other words, we keep resetting our expectations with each new benefit we achieve so we never actually benefit from improvements.

I should be more precise. Sumner is not saying there is no progress, he is saying we don't realize any net benefits from it because of the Hedonic Treadmill (I think). This is trivially correct but essentially wrong. It is true that at any given point in history you can take a timeslice of the population and not seem any indication of a greater sense of well-being, but I don't think that's what's important. All that is telling you is the phases of life remain in place. Teenagers are still disaffected. Young adults still strive and struggle. Older adults still fret over loss and regrets. If your measure of Progress is that these feelings lessen, I don't hold out much hope for you.

But over an individual life, the view can be very different. Stating that you would never want to go back to the old days is highly relevant in that context; probably the most relevant piece of data. And I strongly suspect that most mature people who objectively looked at their arc of the world over the course of their lives would agree that things are better than they used to be. To be sure, things have been lost. Folks my age often lament the loss of freedom in childhood and the increased coarseness of the world. Those are very real losses, but as I have mentioned before, as an insecure, introverted kid, I would have traded all that for one day's access to the Internet. For a longer term example, when I was 32 my gall bladder gave out on me. I spent a day in the hospital during which doctors my four small slits in my abdomen and went into my guts with a scope and pulled it out. Two days later I was back at work. Had it been 25 years earlier I would have six inch scare across my gut and have been laid up for 6 weeks recovering. Had it been 70 years earlier and I'd have been dead at 32.

The fact of the Hedonic Treadmill means I don't live closer to a state of bliss from moment to moment, but any extended reflection will verify the objective fact of progress that the Hedonic Treadmill masks. I maintain my belief that progress is real and it occurs, but it can be a ten-steps-forward-nine-steps-back affair. Which is why you need a full dose of life to see it.