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Saturday, August 02, 2003Keep on singin', monIrena's naked drillete comment inspired me enough to write an entire novel, but instead i'll settle with this next entry. However, thanks to samantha (you'll see her comments in previous entries) i can now inclue a couple things i'd previously forgotten. Firstly, on the third day (sunday, the day at sea), samantha and i discovered a secret room (i kid you not, this room was in such a place that you had to "know where it was to get there"....monkey!!!!). and even once inside the room it is pretty unremarkable, being that it is filled with several overstuffed blue chairs scattered randomly throughout the room, and a couple windows overlooking the side of the ship. However, the one object of interest to me was the baby grand piano that was shoved over in the corner of the room. I sat down and started playing, and it was perfectly in tune, so samantha and i spent some time just screwing around with the piano. We were about to leave when an old hispanic man of about 65 walked in, and proceeded to sit down on the bench. He took out a small piece of crumpled notebook paper, smoothed it out, gave it a brief looking over and just started playing. I've never heard anything quite like it before. The music was clearly impovised...he broke down a chord with his left hand and made up the melody with his right. But the way he put it together made it sound like the piano was literally singing. After a couple songs i spoke up and asked him if he minded if we listened, and where he'd learned to play. Turns out he spoke only a little english, but from what i gather he could not read any music at all, he had simply learned by ear. How he played was that he picked a song in his head, and just started playing it out with his hands. The crumpled piece of paper were songs that he got in his head throughout the day, such as a Sinatra or a classical cuban piece. Needless to say, samantha and i thoroughly enjoyed the music and came back several times throughout the week to hear him play.And with that: Day Four!! Day four (Tuesday) we awoke to find ourselves in tropical jamaica. I went on a snorkeling excursion, and we got to the destination by yacht. This boat was really nice (not compared to the cruise ship, but duh!), and the crew was really lively bringing drinks to everyone and such. The snorkeling was really great-so much spectacular marine life, we were plenty occupied the entire time with just swimming around with all the vibrant fish. Soon it was time to load back up, and we headed 'round the bend to these HUGE waterfalls that emptied into the ocean. We docked there, met up with a guide, and climed up this indescibably beautiful ballet of cascading water. Ok, over dramatic-but you got the point, right? Fine, here's a pic: When we got back to the dock my mom and brother headed back to the ship, but my dad and i went around and looked at the shops a little. I tried some mango rum that was absolutely excellent, and i saw this really cool one-man-band playing at this corner: Right, i got back to the ship, skipped the fancy dinner, went to Johnny Rockets, went to the dance, went to sleep. As i am doing now. G'night.
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