Recently I watched a program on the world’s biggest cruise ship – Oasis of the Seas. This cruise ship is the biggest in the world and is kind of like a telly tubby version of a gated suburb.
With 5,000 passengers and thousands of crew, the documentary focussed on all the things that passengers might need for 7 days afloat. So I’m talking 26 restaurants, beer and 10,000 rolls of toilet paper.
There’s something bizarre about this ship – and I use that word loosely. It’s more like a drifting condominium having an Amway convention.
In a way it’s nice that human beings have put their considerable brainpower into recreating Central Park on board a ship. In another way, we could be exploring outer space now with that amount of money instead of cruising back and forth from Fort Lauderdale.
The documentary showed all the things we needed to know about life on the world’s biggest cruise liner. So we saw the Captain’s tattoo (a blue butterfly), a man who said he was head chef running fast down corridors, lots of fat people, staff with concerned looks when passengers didn’t return from their shore excursion (leave ’em there I say – which is why I probably don’t have a future in hospitality), someone with lots of hair called Julie (not me) and more fat people.
The doco was kind of like a reverse Survivor – I badly wanted to change channel but I just couldn’t take my eyes off it. Maybe it’s not the best use of moolah the world has ever seen, but what the hell, it sure beats going to war or building more gated suburbs.
Julie's Rant 