Yesterday, December 11th, we set sail with Joan and Phil for a 10 day cruise to Aruba, Curacao, Panama and Costa Rica on the Holland America ship Zaandam. For those who’ve never cruised, it’s hard to imagine how complete the facilities are on these types of ships. From food to entertainment to medical to spiritual and yes, even death, they cover just about any situation that might arise and truly are floating cities. About the only thing they don’t have are gangs and freeway traffic.
A rather interesting thing about Holland America is that all the ships in their fleet are know as the “dam” ships. This is because each ships name ends with dam… ours, as already mentioned, being the Zaandam. So, when in port, a clerk in a store could ask you which dam ship you’re on and they wouldn’t be getting sassy with you.
Holland America, as you can probably guess, is a Dutch company. And another thing that you might not know about cruise ships is that a lot of the employees come from the ships country of origin or possessions or former possessions. Indonesia used to be a possession of Holland and a lot of the employees on the Zaandam are from there. Now unfortunately, some Indonesian names, like some names from other parts of the world, have meanings in English that are different from what they might mean in their native language. Two such examples are the names of our room steward, Dadi, and one of the stewards at our dinner table, Nanah. Both are pronounced exactly like they look.
I got to thinking about the above bits of information and couldn’t resist the urge to use them in a blog. So, after much thinking, about the best I could come up with is what I came up with for the title of this blog. It’s a way of asking a grandmother on a Holland America cruise ship who her father is. Now, if her father is on the ship, then the question isn’t sassy. If he isn’t on the ship, then I guess it could be.
Yes, I know, it’s an awfully long way to go for a pun. Sorry.
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