ffj's Early Retirement (round 2)

[ffj]

Let that algorithm know what you like haha. I'm fairly fearless when it comes to clicking on YouTube videos but that fucking algorithm will remind you for days if you made a bad choice. Proceed with caution...

[ffj]

I did something that I have never done before...I went on a cruise. My wife and I just celebrated a marriage milestone and I told her months ago to pick out the trip she wants and don't worry about the cost. So we went on a very expensive boat ride starting in Quebec City, Canada and ended up in Boston, Mass.

Some thoughts: After about day three of having every conceivable need met with a staff that was extremely pleasant, as far as I could tell they were all from Indonesia, Philippines, or possibly Malaysia, it became almost too much. All you had to do was exist and consume the food, drink, and entertainment provided. To counter-act some of the glutinous feeling I was experiencing I started skipping breakfast and walking at night around the ship ( three revolutions equaled 1 mile) which was actually kind of cool because nobody was out late at night and there was nothing but a handrail between you and the sea. This particular deck was also where they stored the lifeboats and I would take the time to examine the release mechanisms and control arms being the nerd that I am.



I probably will never do this again. At the end of the day, we (the entire boat population) were nothing more than a giant tourist mob that descended on these little towns at each stop and bought their trinkets. I struck up a conversation with a Canadian at one stop (at this point I refused to enter any more shops) for about an hour (he was really curious about US politics) while my wife shopped and there was a bagpiper playing in the background. As we were near Cape Breton I asked him if there were a lot of pipers here in the region and specifically this town and he said no, the guy below was just busking in front of the tourists. That answer kind of summed up the entire trip as far as having real experiences. I've been to Canada but I haven't really experienced Canada.



While we were gone Hurricane Helene wreaked a small amount of havoc on our place. A couple more trees down and limbs everywhere. Thankfully no damage to the house. Since I've been back I've been burning brush piles (these sticks and tree tops add up quickly!) and cleaning the woods up. On the up side, the cover crop of clover, spinach, and kale that I planted on the garden before we left is coming up nicely.



The moisture also flushed out a couple heads of oyster mushrooms which is kind of cool because these are remnants of my short-lived business living out in the wild!



Since I have gotten back I have worked every day either for someone else or myself and although tiring after becoming so soft on the boat it has felt rather nice doing something productive. I am built for work and I derive value from that attribute of mine. One of the crews I work with are all Amish-lite but they retained the work ethic for sure and I can assure you after working a day with them you will be tired. The other guy I work with is older and needs a break every two hours and he is such a contrast to the Amish who don't stop except for lunch. A recent project completed with my older partner:

[black_son_of_gray]

My parents went on a European river cruise and had a pretty similar takeaway: 1) They felt awkward about how incredibly nice and attentive and all-encompassing the staff/service was*. They couldn't help but notice that the staff was essentially all non-Europeans, and the cruisers were essentially all English-speaking white people with extra cash. So: all of the boat-time of the cruise was indeed a culture-shock, but not like they were hoping; 2) they (my mom in particular) felt like their boatmates (the other cruisers) had cliquish vibes; 3) they said they would probably never take another cruise again.

Reminds me a bit of the title to David Foster Wallace's essay about taking a luxury cruise: "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again."

*They are pretty stingy with money in their daily lives and would never spring for this kind of service a la carte. Basically, they went on the cruise because they found a heavy discount promotion.

[ertyu]

love the lighthouse picture

what would be the result of buying spores and just spreading them all over one's yard? will some of them catch

[ffj]

@bsog

This trip was not inexpensive and most of our boat mates were older and clearly had money. The crew was outstanding and while being pleasant was part of their job I don't think it was a difficult task for them to be so cheerful. Maybe they made enough money compared to what they could have back home that this was an easy job for them, I don't know. I do know that they worked on that boat around the clock as while all of the old folks were in bed I would go walking, and staff was everywhere cleaning that boat and leaving everything pristine for the next day.

While my wife and I aren't highly social, we did meet and dine with several other couples and everybody was very polite and made for easy conversation. Several remarked on how young my wife and I appeared, which is funny as we are in our fifties. Something I noticed is that quite a few people brought a friend-group with them usually other couples from wherever they came from and I can see the value in that strategy. That is probably where your mother felt the presence of cliques.

But yeah, I have no desire to do this again.

@ertyu

That picture is deceptive. That lighthouse is located in Halifax, Nova Scotia and we were bused there as part of an excursion package. When we arrived, there were two tour buses including ours dropping us off in Peggy's Cove. By the time we left an hour later, there were 12 buses and dozens of small vehicles. I had to walk a fair distance away, lay down and angle the phone as well as use the rocks to block in such a way to take that picture without showing the hundreds of people surrounding that lighthouse. There were so many instances I just didn't take a picture (obviously I love taking pictures) because the scenes were inundated with hordes of people.* Still a good picture but not a true tale.

Possibly on the mushroom spores. The reason I have mushrooms popping up is because I would throw all of my spent growing blocks in the woods. Just chock full of mycelium. All of the mushrooms I grew used wood as a food source so lots of woody organic matter would be key, such as my woodlot.

*my wife and I would joke that we have to be in hundreds of others photos as part of the crowd

[Henry]

I did something that I have never done before...I went on a cruise.

I'm having a hard time processing this.

[Laura Ingalls]

Your cruise critique matches with our experiences when we did a European river cruise. I minded the fawning less than the group morning tour. The narrative was usually good but the walking so slowly in a big group was sooo annoying.

We joked that we were the youngest people there that had paid for their own trip. We had some multigenerational groups.

The funniest part was the day it ended most people got up very early to go to the airport. We spent another week in Hungary and stayed in an Airbnb. We ate breakfast, left our bags in a secure spot, and returned early afternoons to get them. The crew insisted that they carry our bags to the taxi stand. When put them on our backs and walked to the tram stop.

[ertyu]

The fawning, esp of the european river cruises, is due to underpaid service workers hoping for tips. A group lives in a village outside my home town. They fly to austria/germany for the tourist season, earn all summer, then return to their home village for the off season, and there, 5-10 euro goes far.

[delay]

Thanks for sharing, beautiful pictures! When I worked random IT jobs in the harbor ships had a sort of caste system. The Filipino's do the basic work, cleaning and cooking. Then there are Indonesians who do the middle level work, and Europeans on top. Filipono's saw their family once every three years, Indonesians every year, and Europeans once every quarter. One Filipino I talked with had a nephew who did the father role for his kids. He was happy with the job. He said Europeans drank too much, the captain of his ship was drunk all the time.

Your Amish friends remind me of Polish workers. Where I see work as something that has to be endured for a few hours, they just go and go and go. I always wonder why the hardest workers come from the poorest countries. One would think a place where people work like that would be very wealthy.

[zbigi]

Your Amish friends remind me of Polish workers. Where I see work as something that has to be endured for a few hours, they just go and go and go. I always wonder why the hardest workers come from the poorest countries. One would think a place where people work like that would be very wealthy.

As a Polish guy, I only wish that was the case! If anything, it seems that the opposite is true - in most cases, hard work leads to just more hard work (Greeks work the most in EU and are of the poorest nations in it). The wealth comes from geography/natural resources, decent government (Poland didn't even have a government through entire XIX century, it was ruled by three neighboring powers, who were themselves backwards economically and didn't care to develop their Polish territories), lack of destructive wars, and mercantile/capitalist culture. It's also good to be a technological leader in some large and growing industries (as was Germany in XIX century, which allowed them to grow from a backward country to economical superpower). If you don't have the geography, it's good to have colonies instead.

[chenda]

Cheap labour takes away any incentive to mecanise and industrialise. One reason the industrial revolution began in Britain was due to the relatively high labour costs compared to other countries.

[Henry]

I for one can look past FFJ's complicity in an oppressive colonialist labor system and congratulate him on reaching a significant marriage milestone.

[ffj]

@all

The Amish are an interesting group, specifically the fact that they are not homogenous. You can't look at a family where the boys have suspenders and the girls are wearing bonnets and say "those are Amish". There are so many groups and orders that are continuously splintering from each other but yet to the unobserving eye look the same. They are not, and they are willing to uproot their family to go where their very specific beliefs are practiced or invented for that matter.

I call my buddy and his family Amish but the reality is that he and his wife are ex-Amish along with the kids. He has family members that have shunned him but to someone like me until I got to know him he looked the part. He is currently a member of a four church coalition that he helped found and doctrinally he believes almost exactly as he did as a full Amish member. But an Old Order Amish would look at him and his family as living incorrectly and basically going to hell. You have to understand that these people (collectively) argue over minutia such as whether belts or suspenders are acceptable.

But they all work hard as they celebrate that attribute as a virtue. And they never complain which is why they are so easy to work with even though the pace is sometimes ridiculous. I enjoy working with them as everybody is so competent and pleasant to be around. The boys leave school at 13 and start working so when that twenty year old kid shows up to replace your roof he already has done this hundreds of times and it shows. Not your typical kid.



And for the record I was very respectful of our non-white staff on the boat, haha. I understood exactly who was putting in the hours so I could have a pudding whenever my fat-ass wanted one. We had two people assigned to us, Made and Ekka, who were responsible for any need our entitled selves thought we needed. They cleaned our room twice a day, left us chocolates, and folded our towels into the shape of animals. They would greet us by our names and wish us a happy day or a nice meal or a good night. My only complaint of them is that they disappeared on the morning of the dis-embarkment as a courtesy. I told my wife how they were missing out on bigger tips by doing that after having been wonderful the whole week. Hopefully all of the other patrons took care of them as we tried. And fuck you Henry.

[ertyu]

we are all well called out, congratulations, ffj!

[Hristo Botev]

Congratulations on the wedding anniversary @ffj!

We've got a family cruise coming up at the end of the year that I'm not particularly looking forward to. I do not enjoy cruises, but I've been on more than I care to admit, especially since we had kids. DW's take is that your more traditional family vacation--like flying or driving someplace notable and then finding things to do to occupy yourselves for a week--just feels like work, and for DW that's probably true as it falls on her to do most of the planning/logistics of the trips. And with a cruise the only logistics involved are just getting your butts on board the ship before it casts off. So I get why she prefers them, and I try not to be a scrooge about the experience.

I wouldn't be surprised to find out if you actually met my in-laws when you were on your cruise--they are those stereotypical boomers who do multiple (like 4-6) "Viking" cruises a year, traveling the globe and "spending the grandkids' inheritance," and making sure to book their next cruise before they leave the ship to make sure they get a "discount."

[Henry]

Maybe I'm old fashioned, but the only reason you take your wife on a cruise is to throw her overboard. If that's not part of the plan, it just looks like hell on water.

[ffj]

@Hristo

Yeah, the cruise was for my wife. She even hired a travel planner so everything was taken care of down to rides from the airport to the hotel. I wisely never asked what these services were costing us but after putting up with me for 30 plus years I promised to not question or complain about anything on this trip even though everything about it was counter to my inner beliefs. That's not to say I didn't enjoy parts of it but for the price I think even she was wondering if it was worth it. I still don't know what we ultimately paid for this trip and I don't want to know.

Somebody told me that it could be cheaper to just cruise year around rather than put the old folks in a nursing home. I haven't looked at the numbers but judging from some of my fellow travelers I had to wonder, haha.

@Henry

It would have been easy and certain if you could escape the cameras. Staring down at that freezing North Atlantic water with nothing more than a four foot railing between you and certain death made even me grip the rail a bit harder than normal. Having worked emergency services all those years I played the odds of getting all of these old people in the life boats and deployed in time before the big boat sank. The odds were not in their favor let's just say. I wonder what the etiquette is when everybody is old over who gets a ride off the boat? Surely the youngest get to go first regardless of sex? Thoughts as I walked my nightly circles.

[Henry]

I wonder what the etiquette is when everybody is old over who gets a ride off the boat? Surely the youngest get to go first regardless of sex? Thoughts as I walked my nightly circles.

I see you as Gene Hackman in The Poseidon Adventure in that situation. You'll die trying to save everyone else. So maybe that's another reason not to take another cruise. You'll end up running things. I never have to worry about things like that. People don't flock to me in moments of crisis. You put old people in life boats and they'll die of exposure. Probably best to bring them up to the Lido desk and tell them help is on the way and let them drown in ignorance and shrimp cocktails while the strong and healthy take the life boats. I think that's the way to go. Kind of like how they handled Covid.

[7Wannabe5]

I think cruise as alternative for assisted living might actually be a good relatively inexpensive option for couples in which one spouse is still reasonably functional, but the other spouse is not. For example, there is one couple I often run into at the senior living complex where I currently reside who both appear to be in great shape; very fit, attractive, and maybe late 60s. In fact, they had both just completed some sort of charity walk-run-athon when I first met them. It wasn't until the second time that I met them that it became clear that the reason they were already in senior living was that the husband had early onset dementia. A cruise ship might offer just the right sort of amenities to make a situation like that more workable for the still functional spouse in a variety of situations in which the less functional spouse is either physically or mentally less than solo functional/competent.

[jacob]

I know there's a FIRE contingent who are very much into cruising as a lifehack. Unfortunately, I can't give any links since this conversation as far as I know is happening on facebook. Maybe someone else knows...

In terms of strategies, perma-cruising is a surprisingly cheap option (especially for those willing to hang around in ports and go "where-ever") but also not the cheapest way to live. For seniors, it really is a de-facto retirement/aging solution complete with its own community/support stuff/people checking in on you daily/and possible lots of sex too (it's there for those who can/want to find it) both for the crew and the residents. Not much different than the FL Villages, etc. It's basically a lifestyle choice.

For anyone who prefer to wander the decks in solitude, think about technical issues, and dine with the bridge crew, maybe consider cargo ship trips?

Basically, compare to other solutions in terms of dollars/day. Camping in a tent is $15-20. Staying at home is $30ish. US motel is $50ish. Cruising is $30-50ish. Cargo ship is $75ish.