Trip 6: CANADIAN HOLIDAY in May 2008 …. in NORTHERN ALASKA: Post 3

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Note: I would like  to share with  you  through  these few words, photographs and hyperlinked websites, a 3 Dimensional  experience as though you were  actually there with  us. Click on any photograph and it should enlarge to a different size ….. at least half screen or size full screen. It will be clearer in detail than the photo on the post. It will be as if you were  really there looking at the actual  scene. You are an arm chair traveller with us.

If you would also like  to see the post in a larger or smaller size, I suggest you follow this procedure: If you right-handed, with your left hand, press  down continuously  on the Control Function Key  with your left hand and with your right hand, move  the   little  cursor wheel either forwards or backwards to make the text in the post larger or smaller.

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…. Northern Alaska in the ship …. the Veendam ….

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….. Ken and Harriet have just boarded the Veendam  for cruising to Alaska for a week ….

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…. A liner similar to the Veendam moored up in Skagway, Alaska …

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…. a  hall before  you go  into  one the main lounges ….  see the photo below …

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….. One the main lounges …..

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This is our Bedroom on the 5th Floor ….. it isn’t called a Bedroom. It called a State Room = 516. At night, you would be left a notice by your room that if you would like breakfast in your State Room, what time would you like it and what breakfast selection would you have from this list? In the morning at your set time, a man in his catering uniform would wheel a tray of your special breakfast selection to your room, knock on your door and when you had opened, he would hand – carry in a tray of your selection to your table. He would come back and pick all the trays along the hall when you left them outside on hall floor beside your door.

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The Interior Of The Ship: The ship had eleven floors on it. You would go up by lift to the general Ship Restaurant and to the covered Swimming Pool and outdoor Eating Room on the 11th Floor. The two photos below show one of the many halls and the general Ship Restaurant which was duplicated on the other side of the ship. It was very stable as the ship travelled up the Alaskan Inside Passage …..

  • The Veendam on the 11th Deck ….. you come up by lift to the General Ship Restaurant and to the covered Swimming Pool and outdoor Eating Room which looks over the water …..….. .see the photographs here

 

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  • Bob Silverman …… the man above in the red coat. We got to know Bob and his wife Elaine on the ship in a close way over the whole week we were on the ship. He appears in my photos above section: The Veendam Ken’s Birthday Dinner (May)

I cannot organise things very well or drive due to my severe brain injury twelve years ago (December 1995 – 2008). Read ‘A life changing situation’  on this website.

I used to do this very capably in my former business. I ran a small business in upmarket landscape design and construction for wealthy clients around Brisbane for twenty years. It was called ‘New Earth Systems P/L’. I was an Outer Gardener concerned about Outer Sustainability. This Outer Sustainability was fragile and easily eroded, dependent on my performance and people’s acceptance of my work. Two specific posts of my past gardens are these:

I thought of a landscape as a three-dimensional piece of space that people walked through. This space changed with time as it grew and changed with the time of day: shadows vs. sun patterns, boulders, colour, plants, trees, earth-forms, solid structures and water. These were the ingredients in a subtle flow of landscape design and construction. Rather an intangible product to sell and run a business with!! Out of this stage I built a structure for my life: my marriage with Harriet, business and our house plus we had a family of two children.

Now I cannot do these things. I am in a new season of life where other people are very important. One thing I do now is that I now facilitate The  Brain Injury Community  around the world ….. there are hundreds of fellow survivors all linked by the website as given here.  The Brain Injury Community is about HOPE and RESTORATION.

HOPE and RESTORATION: that by following the fundamentals of the Sustainable Life, you will again be a valued member of the community again. Such a life has the ability to be continually and maintained everyday. From my personal belief and experience there three important components in recovering from a brain injury and maintaining an ongoing life. These are: Structure, Social Network and Spirituality. Each of these components act like legs on a tripod which sit on large rock near the ocean. When the storms and waves of life come (as in brain injury), if the legs are strong, the waves will go over you but you will sit firmly on the rock of life. If one of the legs is weak, the tripod of your life will fall over in what you could call an Unsustainable Life.

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See  the next post:

OUR CANADIAN HOLIDAY in May 2008 …. To Juneau in Alaska: Post 4