10 days to embarkation. Still at work today and with staff colleagues asking how I feel about the holiday. Was I excited? Petrified, I tell them. That is not what they wanted to hear.
Am still going round and round in circles waiting for the 3 months' supply of repeat prescriptions for both of us to be available on time. Yesterday still nothing was ready. Apparently today my prescription list was approved, but Albina's still requires a doctor's signature. I urged the clinic to hurry.
It transpires that Williams Pharmacy did not send out a report to the clinic on our jabs for the tropical diseases. I asked them to give Albina a report on these inoculations. She can pop in there after her visit to her new dentist, as he is just round the corner to them.
I have contacted the entertainment manager for the Borealis, Sammy Firbanks, through the Fred Olsen guest service email, about my suggestion to give a little talk about Jukes Verne, his book, his times and a comparison between his very realistic fictional route and ours. The vessels and the train companies he described were real. He merely added fictional figures to populate his real world of trains, and boats, and elephants. Bradshaws guide was his Google at the time. I have prepared a detailed list comparing the two routes. There are major digressions caused by Phileas Fogg's railway journeys across Europe, India and America. Our route differs by sailing all the way and using the Panama Canal, which had not yet been built, or even dreamed of, in 1872. However the route from Brindisi to San Francisco is basically the same as in the book. Phileas Fogg covered that distance in 59 days. We will do it in 46 days, Interestingly he gets to Brindisi by rail 4 days quicker than us, but we both arrive in Bombay/Mumbai on roughly the same 19th day. We get to San Francisco 9 days earlier than him. Needless to say Sammy Firbanks has not yet responded to my offer. Unfortunately, I do not have his/her direct email address.
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