Puerto Rico

Tuesday, 11/15 - Puerto Rico

It was raining when we went to deck 15 for breakfast. We had to try to run between the raindrops to get to the buffet. Of course that didn't work very well, so we got somewhat wet. And again when we went back to our cabin. But the rain didn't last long.

Our excursion today was the Mofongo and Mojito Experience. The group was large, so it got broken into 2 groups, and our group had to wait around for 15 minutes to let the first group get ahead of us. I was disappointed to learn it was a walking tour of the city, but I bravely set out with them, and was able to keep up for a while. Just as I (and John) were thinking we couldn't possibly keep up the pace much longer, we were led up to the 2nd floor of a 'cultural lounge', where we were seated around tables. Among talking about the history of their rum-making, they gave us appetizers and a mojito (which we hadn't liked on the ship, but these were good). Then they passed out big wooden mortars to everybody. Each had some cassava and a plantain chip in it. They gave us each a pestle and taught us how to grind the cassava and plantain chip into mush. Then they added a small ladle of chicken stew to the mush, and a fork to eat with. This was the mofongo, and it was quite tasty and very filling.

After lunch, they expected us to continue walking! I wanted a siesta. But I tried to keep up with the others. At one point we had to walk 2 blocks up a steep hill. I had to stop 3 times to catch my breath before I caught up to the others, who had stopped to wait for me.

Eventually, we came out on a hilltop near the bay, and we could see our ship sitting at the dock. It looked very far away. I was really dragging, but had no choice but to keep walking. The tour guide was worried about the time, so every time I caught up to the group, she immediately started off again. I didn't have a chance to catch my breath again. The closer we got to the ship, the further ahead the group got, and I didn't care. I didn't stop walking, even though my stomach got to feeling a little sick.

We finally made it to the dock, and John even had time to stop at the duty-free shop and buy a souvenir towel he had noticed earlier. I was wiped, and went to our cabin to lay down. After an hour, we went to deck 6 for cokes, then John went to deck 8 to read, while I returned to the cabin to lay down again.

About 5, we went to the main dining room for supper. Afterwards, we went to the mojito bar on deck 8 to try a couple flavored mojitos. We liked the spicy passion fruit mojito, but not so much the raspberry guava one, which seemed a little heavy on the alcohol.

Then we went to the theater for a comedy show. I thought there would be 2 comedians again, but there was only one. Back to our cabin for the night. I found I had walked 10,522 steps on this day. We went to bed at 8:30, but at 9:30, I got up to plug in my phone to recharge. At 10:00, I got up to take a tylenol, my legs were aching so much. Then up at 10:45 for another tylenol, and I could finally fall asleep.

Dr Who? Experience

After the World SF Convention in London, we took a train to Cardiff in Wales.

The map showed our hotel as a straight shot east of the closest rail station, about 2 or 3 blocks. In real life, the road made an S-curve, and the distance was 4-5 blocks. But we got checked in, and it was still early afternoon. This room had a desk and chair, drawers and a closet!

My husband does not sit quietly well. He decided we should walk ‘into town’ and visit the museum. It was pretty much a straight shot to get there, but distance was a little vague. Well, if I reached the utter end of my endurance, we would have to figure something out.

The center of Cardiff is one big shopping area, no cars allowed, and a wonderful mixture of new buildings among the really old ones. We went through that, and turned a block too soon, but it was simple to correct our aim and get to the museum... 45 minutes before it was scheduled to close!

They had a wonderful section on history of Earth that I had to race through, and I had almost reached the point where people began to evolve when I was told they would close in 5 minutes. Bummer! Now for the walk back.

When I’m getting tired, I count my steps. It simply distracts my mind and keeps a rhythm. When we finally reached the hotel, I pretty much collapsed into a chair in the restaurant for supper. I had made it!

We had tickets for the Dr Who Experience the next morning. Again, the distance was kind of vague (I thought it was about half a mile), and this time, the directions were vague, too. (It wasn’t shown on the map.) “Go into that shopping mall across the parking lot, and just before you get to the theater, turn left, exit the building, follow the path, and you can’t miss it. Happily, the ‘path’ was marked by signs with a Dalek to show us which way to go.

I won’t spoil the experience by telling you much about it. On the other hand, they will probably change it soon, for what we experienced was the Matt Smith doctor. But it did have Daleks, and the Doctor tried to convince them that we were not worth ‘extermination’ because we were obviously an inferior type of human known as ‘shoppers’.

After this entertainment, we were in the museum, where John took lots of pictures. We weren’t allowed to touch anything, but I had John taking close ups of buttons and lace bits, lapel styles... And then it dawned on us - there are no Dr Who costume police! As long as your costume is recognizabe, you are enthusiastically accepted!

Even so, we still analyzed the costumes on display, especially those not made of cloth, like the rubber suit that looked like it had octopus suckers all over it. We could see a small slit (maybe 9 inches) in the lower back, but was that the only opening? Further study revealed the feet were separate, as were the hands, and probably the head as well. I am not eager to wear an entire rubber suit - think sauna - but I am trying to learn to make such prosthetics, so I was happy to study these items.

We could not take a tour of the studio, as the sets were being revamped, getting ready for filming. So that left the souvenir store.

John had a particular shirt he wanted, but he couldn’t find it. Bummer. I found a shirt and a poster for me, and he settled for the sweater vest of Sylvester McCoy’s Doctor. We went to the snack bar for something to drink, then walked back to the hotel, where we had a quiet afternoon as he surfed the net, trying to find the shirt he’d wanted.

We also did not find any jelly babies in the Dr Who shop, although we had found them at Stonehenge and in London. Not finding them in the DW shop was a real bummer!

To me, Cardiff was better than London! Not as crowded, in other words. I enjoyed our brief stay there. At one time, I would have hated the idea of walking that far to see a museum, but this time, I saw it as a challenge, one I managed to survive. And I got the reward of seeing a fantastic display about the History of Earth that I could have spent at least half a day in, if given the chance. The Dr Who Experience was icing on the cake.

If it Walks Like a Duck...

I’ve been reading magazines like Archeology and Popular Science, trying to learn The State of Science So Far. Many of the articles in these magazines are fascinating and could serve as a spring board for stories.

One article was about a group who were designing robot legs that could walk like a human. The legs don’t exactly look human; there’s a couple kevlar straps (used as muscles) in the back that - when contracted - are outside the thigh, connected to the calf by a plastic flange. But the results move much more like a human leg than other robots have managed.

I was very excited a few years back to hear about Asimo, a child-sized humanoid robot that could walk. But I was disappointed when I actually saw it in motion. Slow motion, that is. Asimo would lean to the right a bit, pick its left foot up straight for about an inch, move the left foot forward a couple inches and put it down, repeat for the other side. And at all times, the foot remained parallel to the floor. It was a strange gait, rather painful to watch.

Besides a different system of ‘muscles’, the new method of robot walking also makes use of something like a human’s subconscious. A human learns to walk, and then leaves the actual giving of instructions to a corner of the mind. We don’t have to actively think, ‘Lean, lift by bending, swing foot forward, lower, adjust balance...’ The people making this new robot gait removed such calculations from the robot main processor and gave this skill to a separate processor.

This particular robot only has legs and feet right now, but I am beginning to anticipate a real android - a robot made to look (and act?) like a human. Data of STNG, the androids in the Alien movies would be examples, although I swear I remember old tv comedies about robots paired with a human to see how well they ‘blended in’. Could that happen soon in a neighborhood near you?

I was also amused to read in this article that one problem the team had to solve was that the hard plastic of the feet’s soles could not grip the floor. They debated about other materials to use for the soles until somebody put a pair of Keds on the robot.

If it walks like a human, it deserves the right footwear, don’t you think?