No, this isn’t a piece from the Birdy Dark Lord on how to get a free cruise. So it’s not too late for you to quit reading now.

My friend’s boss took him on a company cruise with Star Cruise and since it’s 4 to a room his boss asked him to take someone along. So I get to be the freeloader on a cruise to nowhere. And I get a cabin with a view of the sea, on the starboard side of Deck 8 of the Superstar Virgo. 🙂

The previous cruise to nowhere I went on the Superstar Gemini was a terrible ordeal so I wasn’t exactly looking forward to this. But I’ve got time to kill and I’ve never gotten on the Superstar Virgo before. (And no, it wasn’t the Gemini or Star Cruise is bad, just that the last time the company I was with bunk us in cabins below deck without even a window with a view of the sea. And no TV too. I guess it was a really cheapo package and also the Gemini is a smaller ship than Virgo.)

Well, this time round, there weren’t much people on the ship. Our guess-timate is that it’s only 30% occupied. So, 2 of us get to share a room of four and we got a lot more space and it was quite good. There’s also a TV in the cabin and on one of the channels, they have it on auto-repeat teaching you how to gamble. I get to learn how to play roulette there but of course I got no money to dump in the casino.

A bonus is that, Joi Choi [蔡淳佳] is also on the ship too and I get to listen to her performance at a measely $20. If I recalled correctly, before she went full-time she used to work at this folk song thingie down at Apollo Center. I think she’s got a good voice and she sings damned well. She just need a lot more luck and opportunity. F@#k the craps from Sun Yanzi and Ho Yeow Sun, man.(This is MY blog and I’ll say whatever I wanna say, geddit?)

The pictures taken at dawn was when I was doing a morning jog on the top deck of the ship. Damn, I couldn’t sleep so I might just as well. And no, I didn’t manage to get Joi to 陪我看日出 – accompany me watch sunrise – on the ship. (Damn! What a waste! Her boyfriend must be a very lucky man.)

For the benefit of those who have never been on a cruise before, the Virgo took us up probably about 1/3 of the way up the Straits of Malacca and back. For the geographical-moron, the Straits of Malacca is the tiny strip of sea between Peninsula Malaysia and Sumatra where a lot of China and Japan’s imported oil pass through. It is one of the busiest straits in the world. There wasn’t a time when I don’t see a ship around me. But of course, the Straits of Singapore is even busier. At anyone time I can count at least 5 or 6 ships in the direction I am facing. That I’m glad for, it’s our economical lifeline. (And if you have no idea what is the Peninsula Malaysia and Sumatra, please do the human race a favor by killing yourself and removing your inferior genes from the genepool, alright?)

All meals are provided as part of the package. You just need to go to the restaurant with your card – which also serves as the key to your cabin – at the appointed times. You get 6 meals a day, including 2 tea sessions and supper – for the gamblers who are going to stay all night in the casino.

Some of the pictures are blurry because they are taken with the camera phone and it appears it didn’t like moving images very much. So, if some of the pictures really can’t make it when enlarged, tell Sony Ericsson about their W550i. And one damned problem with phone cams, is that if the background is too bright, you get a picture which is damned dark. So I deleted all of those to cover up my terrible skills in photography.

Oh, BTW, deck 7 is the gather point should there be an emergency on the ship. And an emergency means the kind along the magnitude of the Titanic. Above which, I get to see the ship doing reverse parking when it came back to the Cruise Centre. Real wonderful stuff.