All along I’ve been thinking we’ve got five sea days until reaching New Zealand, but today when our Cruise Director announced four instead Ted had to remind me that we’re losing not an hour overnight tonight but an entire DAY! We go to sleep on January 23rd and wake up on January 25th.

The international date line functions as the line of demarcation separating two consecutive calendar dates in the 24 hours that create the global time zones. (Time zones are generally aligned with lines of longitude, with each time zone typically centered around a meridian of longitude that is a multiple of 15 degrees, which corresponds to one hour of time difference due to Earth’s rotation; however, the boundaries of time zones can be irregular due to political considerations and geographical features, meaning they don’t always perfectly follow longitude lines.)

When we cross the date line, we’ll become time travellers!! Cross to the west (as we’re doing) and it’s one day later; cross back and we’d go “back in time”.

Today featured smooth seas, sunny skies, and a haircut in the salon. Because my hair is short, and I don’t need it washed and “styled”, I get booked as a men’s haircut at $39USD, which comes out of our generous world cruise shipboard credit, as does any tip I add. Folks always wonder about tipping the salon staff, but we learned on our earlier cruises that they are not Viking staff but outside contractors who do not share in our prepaid cruise gratuities. Stephan, the delightful young hairdresser from Mauritius, did a terrific job, and I’ll be back in about 6 weeks for a repeat.

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Other than sitting on deck one, watching an enthusiastic group of Baggo players, and getting started on a new novel while sipping my excellent latte (thank you, Cristian!), it was a quiet day until Patrick Goodness’ (CD Matt hilariously refers to him as Patrick “Oh my Goodness”!) lecture on cannibalism. Since cannibalism was an activity mentioned on Rarotonga yesterday, the topic was especially timely, and Patrick’s lectures are always fascinating.

“Nothing to do” can mean wonderful chance encounters with really interesting people. I have crossed paths with Patricia, one of the housekeeping/custodian “ninjas”, several times, but never done much more than say hello and smile. Why “ninjas”? Because their jobs are done almost invisibly. They are the public area restroom cleaners, the late-night re-organizers of furniture, replacers of throw pillows, repositioners of décor items, wipers of banisters, dusters of surfaces and metal grills, washers of windows…. all the things on the ship that consistently sparkle and shine are due to them. Patricia’s purview is deck one’s bathrooms and atrium area.

Patricia has a particularly engaging smile, and seemed genuinely surprised to be thanked by a passenger for her work, but I know that a clean ship – and most especially clean bathrooms – are essential to keeping everyone healthy. I also know that cleaning bathrooms is rarely anyone’s favourite task, or their career goal, so today I was bold enough to ask her how she came to be working on a cruise ship doing that very thing. She told me about the circumstances of her life and that there were no opportunities in her country to lift her family out of a cycle of mere existence. With her mother taking care of her children while Patricia is at sea, working on Viking has been a life-changing opportunity for her, and for her family back home.

Meeting people like Patricia is perspective and life-changing for me.

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We continue to have staff tell us that, in their experiences after working for various cruise lines, Viking is a cut above in treating their crews well – whether in terms of food, accommodation, crew activities, wellness benefits, or promotion opportunities from within. It’s a big reason why we save up to afford to travel with this cruise line.

There have been several “gem lectures” on this cruise. I was wary of attending, since I assumed they’d be sales pitches like we’ve seen on Holland America. Far from it. These are curated presentations grouped under the theme “Myth, Legends, and Realities”. The combination of geological and historical information was thorough and entertaining. I’m now looking forward to the next two: jade when we near Southeast Asia, and pink diamonds while we’re sailing around Africa.

As for Patrick’s lecture on cannibalism… just wow (again). It was informative, thought-provoking, gross at times, but also injected with humour. He left us thinking about how we define “civilized”, and the ways in which various cultures “ingest” – literally – the qualities of their ancestors, and sometimes their enemies. Since he always finds a way to incorporate comparative religions into his lectures, one of his final challenges was to have us think about the ritual of Christian communion, which is consuming “the body and blood of Christ”. Does the Catholic belief in transubstantiation (the doctrine that states that the bread and wine used in communion are transformed into the actual body and blood of Jesus Christ) make Catholicism a form of cannibalism? Patrick described it as “food for thought”.

We ate al fresco again, watching a glorious sunset, and then enjoyed Viking vocalist Barry Jones’ solo cabaret in the Star Theatre.

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We ended a lovely sea day in the Explorers Lounge listening to Paolo’s acoustic guitar set.