The Luminara departed the Port of Saigon, and is heading for the Port of Danang.  Tomorrow will be an at-sea day. Lunch was at Mistral.  Basically, Antipasto Misto, Truffle Fries and Sausage Pizza, with white and red wines, plus beer. Did not do much shipwise, for it was beginning to get a bit rough at sea.  Dinner at Haesu Bit began with a sake pouring and Pho.  Also, tuna and hamachi sashimi. Decided to watch TV in our stateroom tonight because it was too dangerous to walk around, and expected to get worse.  My lowest number of steps/day since I got my pedometer.  Only 901 steps. Just finished reading the 2024  Eruption , by Michael Crichton and James Patterson.   I reviewed this novel last year. .  Took me a long time because I finally got around to it this summer, and, through my iPhone, only read a few pages when I was waiting around for something.  Took me many months to complete. I am now reading two books: A soft-back, ...

There is a La Mancha in Spain, but there is no real Man of La Mancha. This all began with Miguel de Cervantes. Was born in Spain in 1547  (?, maybe ) and passed away in 1616 at the age of 68. Considered to be the greatest Spanish writer, best known for what is said to be the first modern novel,  Don Quixote , perhaps even the best book of all time.  As translated by Edith Grossman, widely regarded as one of funniest and most tragic  books ever written. Cervantes spent most of his life in relative poverty and obscurity. At the age of 22, moved to Rome, where he worked for the household of a cardinal. Enlisted in the Spanish Navy infantry a year later, 1570, and got severely wounded, losing use of his left arm and hand. There are no portraits of him, but this one to the right is generally used. In 1575 was captured by Barbary pirates, and ransomed to Madrid five years later. First significant novel, published in 1585, was  La Galatea . Don Quixote  was publis...

I'll start with an old, but new, topic.  This past Sunday I posted on   eternal life .  Well,   Time   reported on   The Man Who Thinks He Can Live Forever.   Absolutely fascinating article about Bryan Johnson ( here below with Kate Tolo, the chief marketing officer for his company, Blueprin t), and to quote: Johnson, 46, is a centimillionaire tech entrepreneur who has spent most of the last three years in pursuit of a singular goal: don’t die. During that time, he’s spent more than $4 million developing a life-extension system called Blueprint, in which he outsources every decision involving his body to a team of doctors, who use data to develop a strict health regimen to reduce what Johnson calls his “biological age.” That system includes downing 111 pills every day, wearing a baseball cap that shoots red light into his scalp, collecting his own stool samples, and sleeping with a tiny jet pack attached to his penis to monitor his nighttime erections....