As soon as I walked on the boat, I was transported into Resort World. It was quite cool. I found the café that is described below which is right past the swimming pool, Jacuzzi, and 250 lawn chair-lay-out-things on the top deck. I was one of the first 50 to get to the top part of the ship. They were offering these beautiful “Fun Ship” drinks that were quite stout with several beverages of choice including rum.
In my first trip to Mexico in Summer 2008, I was hit on all the time, and they would say things like, “Mami! Come marry me! I love you! You beautiful chica!” Now. Back to the boat. Each worker has a name tag with their name (obviously) and their country of origin. So this one very bubbly worker with the skin color that would match at least 12 different nationalities, comes up and says, “Hey Mami!! Come buy a drink!” Problem #1 with this is that he offered me a drink when I don’t look 21 (I usually get between 15-19 years). Problem #2 is that he used a very Mexican idiom/title for a woman “Mami” and was from the Philippines. Not necessarily a “conflict of interest”, but definitely a “conflict of country”.
In preparing for this trip, I thought about things that I was expecting on the ship. I knew there would be food, but I was expecting Six Flags food since we were traveling across an ocean and they would surely have trouble planning high-quality meals on a boat! So when I arrived, I went to their cafeteria which had food similar to Winslow—Murray’s infamous cafeteria: chicken fingers, burgers, hot dogs, asian ready-made stir fry, etc. Nothing fantastic—well—the nachos were/are a religious experience. Today makes Day 3 that I’ve had a plate-ful of salsa, sour cream, chili-meat-stuff, and fresh tortilla chips. When dinner rolled around, I expected much of the same, but to my surprise, we were whisked away into a high-class dining experience fit for queens/kings/royalty.
My first clue that this was not going to be normal food was the napkin. It was on the plate. I looked at it and thought—“Well that needs to be put in my lap”. Little did I know that it was the waiter’s job to put it in my lap—Imagine that! I remembered today. Then the waiter, Jaco (pronounced YA-ko) from South Africa, handed each of us a menu detailing the meal options for the evening. Day 1 appetizer was a sort of fruit salad. The first thing I realized is that non-Applebees cuisine means smaller portion sizes and high priority on beautificality of the plate. There were a total of 10 pieces of fruit, but it took 20 minutes to eat it because one didn’t want to inhale it and miss the experience. It even had celery next to the grapes! Also, dissimilar to Applebees, the appetizer is really a non-entrée plate of food. As a cheap college student I could have easily eaten off the appetizer plate and been satiated for the evening at Applebees. Affluent appetizers is meant to tease the tongue.
For my entrée, I enjoyed a medium-well steak with rich-people macaroni and cheese and creamed peas. I don’t know what the sauce for the steak was, but I wanted to drink it with a straw. Dessert was more fruit—2 pieces of watermelon, 2 cantaloupe, 2 pineapples, 2 honeydews, 4 slivers of strawberry, 4 pieces of kiwi, 6 grapes, and 1 mint leaf.
I’ve been thinking about what the transition will be from rich-people food to normal American food, self-served on a tray, fed to the masses, reheated the next day if not completely consumed, fit for the average Joe college student at Murray. Alas…I’m sure the food services people of Mr. Fritz’ office will abhor a request to place my napkin in my lap before handing me a menu at the Winslow Cafeteria. I think I will just have to bite the bullet, suck it up, and order yet another semester’s worth of chicken pot pie, seasonal vegetables, and a roll—wait, no roll please.
Til Tomorrow…
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