Not much to do here anymore. Went shopping a bit, saw a neat comic store where I found a book I couldn't find back home in any shop. I was about to buy a few more books in the series when el padre came in and started bb'ing (background bitching). XD Right in front of the store owner.

Going to look at the night market tonight in Vancouver. Spent most of yesterday (Day 15) sleeping.

Also read Michael Crichton's Next and starting on The Andromeda Strain. 

Will be back home tomorrow! Yay.

Went back to Richmond today. It was raining. Was a nice change to have cool weather, after all the hot humidness in Florida. I swear, the minute you walk out of any A/C’ed area there, the hot humidness will hit you like a wave, and you spend the rest of the day feeling unclean and stickies. >.< And no matter how many times you shower, the stickiness does not go away.

The 4x fruit juice Fruittips kinda taste gross—hard and crusted with sugar. And they charge like $6 for it. It is difficult to find any of the original Fruittips these days. Also discovered the chocolate peach gummies put out by Meiji taste AWESOMMMMEEEESS!!!! Oh, I found out some places in the States have other Stride gum...like "Always Mandarin" flavored gum:

I suspect today will be mostly rest, since no one really slept, and we had to rush everywhere yesterday (almost missed the flight to Houston b/c el padre had the brain wave to stuff a metal knife and a bottle of wine in my carry-on backpack, lol, and the security clearance officer rummaged through my bag for like half an hour --_--).

Don’t know what else there is to see in Vancouver area, but meh. Some rest would be nice, after reaching the tail-end of this exhausting vacation.

Yes, this IS going to contain Adult Content. In terms of me using expletives, which I’m sure abound in cartoon networks and other media, anyway. No, this will not be a quaint little entry with vacation photos and quips about each mundane happening.

What a shitty start for a shitty day. Next time, I go on a vacation, I refuse to go with los padres, (if) I have a choice. Which it is highly unlikely I will. Not only did I have to wake up at 5:30 (yes, AM), I also had to deal with them running around and being irritated b/c they didn’t do all their packing the night before, like I had said they should. Apparently, my opinion is never valued, but when one of los padres steals the idea and uses it as their own, it is revered. WTF. (On my part, I packed all my things last night while they were busy gorging themselves at the midnight buffet.)

And here I was trying to be nice, to pick up the cruise photos from the photo department of the ship. The guy *told* people he would be in at 6, but the girl walking the floor said he wouldn’t be in until 6:30. Wow. Which in total, left me 10 minutes for breakfast. I got to the breakfast area, and there were los padres, chowing down like no tomorrow, filling themselves, while all this time I’d been starving. I’d just sat down with my tray when they got up and said, “PEOPLE ARE PACKING, LIKE OMGGG, LET’S GO!!!! O_____O”

So I said, “o_O So go pack. *shrug*”

They were like, “You no pack? Fine! Then you can DISAPPEAR!!” And they hurried off.

Wow. Being told that I can disappear. Lovely. The next time they EVER need my help, I will do exactly that.

After choking down the rest of my cup of yogurt, I went back to the cabin and grabbed my things. They started barking orders at me, like, “GIVE ME MY PASSPORT!” or “HAND ME MY SIGN-IN CARD!”

Obviously, the words “please” and “thank you” are not words in their vocabulary. I hate being ordered around like I’m some kind of coolie. Just because they’re in a position of authority doesn’t mean it’s their prerogative to abuse their power.

When they finished packing all their things, they took off down the hall with their light belongings, after cramming my bag full of their BS, just because “my bag can hold sooooo much!!” It was hard to catch up, since I had to carry my backpack (which they also loaded with their crap), a huge and heavy carry bag, and my enormous heavy green bag which can “hold soooo much!” They would look back occasionally and say, “Hurry UP! Why you so slow?! Everyone already moving out there! Hurry UPPPP, you slow jeen gwut tow!” (I have no clue what that translates to—pitiful bone head? @_@?)

Finally we got to the gangway thing where ppl get off the ship, and got in line. My hands were hurting something fierce and turning red, since there were no shoulder straps on the bags, and the handles were these hard rough rope things that cut into my hands. So I put them on the floor and pushed them along the ground with my foot. A harder kick launches the bag more distance across the floor so you don’t have to nudge it with your foot so much. Apparently, one of the people checking in bags decided to quip, “My, YOU look happy today,” quite loudly. This was after los padres had told me that I could disappear again. Considering I wasn’t exactly smiling (I usually don’t keep an idiot smile on my face 24/7 ANYWAY), I suppose I must have looked mad. Right after the “My YOU look happy today” comment”, everyone around me started laughing. EVERYONE. And when black women laugh, you can hear the entire atrium of the ship echo. Many black women thought this was somehow most hilarious. One of them hollered, “Oh, he happy, he just ain’t showin’ it!” Which started them all laughing more.

Note 1: This spurred los padres to laugh along with the rest, and then say loudly, “See??! Everyone laughing at you!!! HAHAHA! How shameful!! You brought this on yourself. Look how embarrassing you make yourself!!! HAHAHAHA. They don’t laugh at us, they laugh at YOU. HAHAHA. You are so jeen gak! HAHAHAA!” (“pitiful something”?)

Note 2: It surprised me how many people on the ship think I’m a guy. Everywhere I went, people called me, “he”, “that guy”, “Sir”, “excuse me, SIR”, sir this, sir that. WTF. I AM NOT A MEMBER OF THE MALE SPECIES. FUCK. OFF.  It’s like the moment I decide to wear a T-shirt and athletic shorts, I automatically am assumed to be male. Do I have to wear slutty clothes or thick gobs of cheap makeup for ppl to realize I’m a girl? My goodness. --_--v Three days of this continual “sir” shit was enough to drive me off the edge. Waiters even thought they had to help me put the napkin on my lap, since “boys don’t know table manners”. O___O OMG. ARGH. Ftr, I haven’t snapped at a single person who’s mistaken me for a boy. There would be too many of them, and they’re not worth my time. It also doesn’t help when los padres quip that it is no big deal. Obviously it’s not them who are being mistaken for the opposite sex.

We all got to the U.S. Border and Customs area where there was a long lineup. I was silently standing there, contemplating the shitty start to this day, and felt like crying. I managed to disguise it by pretending I was just sweaty, and wiping off the sweat. Los padres saw that I was tear-leaking, and said, “Hah! So shameful. Look at you. So jeen. Think on your actions. Filthy child. We better off adopting than having you. At least we not have child that people laugh at on cruise. We never take you on cruise again. You embarrass us.”

Psh. So what? It’s not like I ASKED to go on this fucking cruise. They give me shit I don’t really care for and expect me to owe them the world. I’ve decided that I don’t really have to deal with them for a vacation, and their background bitching about everything I do.

Oh, and today’s trip: rushed and rushed to get to Orlando (stopped at the Sawgrass Mills mall at Ft. Lauderdale to look at stuff. Neat mall.) to catch the flight to Houston and then to Seattle. Did I mention that Florida has a toll booth practically every little distance you drive? And that they charge exorbitant prices? You could go through a turnpike and be down $13 US in one minute. Like, holy cruds. O_O Slept on the bench thing at Seattle, which was near impossible, because of these iron bars that dig into your back and shoulder and head. I think I managed to deal with it by stuffing clothes on top of the bars. >.< Back to B.C. soon.

Missed breakfast again. I never seem to be able to get up for the 7:30-9:30 breakfast ever. >.<

Noticed that the ship seems to spew fecal matter into the Atlantic Ocean every 3 minutes. There I was, enjoying the blueness of the waves, and all of a sudden, I would see this huge mat of floating brown matter on the waves, that didn’t look like algae. And a stench would pervade the peaceful air.

Watched some of the performances and shows they had on the Lido Deck (which is where the swimming pool and open air performances are). They had an ice-sculpture carving thing, where this guy carved an awesome unicorn head from a block of ice in 13 minutes. O__O

There was also the Chewbacca Contest (aka Men’s Hairy Chest Competition)…

One guy did not even HAVE chest hair. I felt ripped off. I think he just wanted to take his shirt off.

The second guy tried to slide down the banister of the stage. He tripped off, and landed on a young girl. I should add that he was a very *big* guy, if you get my drift. The girl looked quite terrified that she was almost killed by flying debris.

Among some of the other contestants were this one really old dude with masses of white chest hair (and masses of tummy rolls) *shiver*, and one black dude that looked like he taped a shag rug to his chest and stomach. And some other dude with a high pitched voice that only had some chest hair, and this really huge gut. *shivers* These were the finalists, btw. The judges were these women chosen at random, who had to touch and feel all this hair and judge whether there was enough, and the caliber of it. (HAIR CALIBUR *big breath* Suh-REEEEEEE!!!!) Oh, and the old dude won. I guess those masses of white chest hair were too much for the judges to resist somehow. O_O;;; Ftr, there were guys NOT in the contest that had more chest hair (and other hair, for the matter), than this.

Dinner was some kinda smoked salmon mini roll, Caesar salad, tiger prawn cocktail, braised short ribs, and apple pie with vanilla ice cream. --_--v

There was one of those music shows later on, called “Fiesta Latina”. It wasn’t as good as the 80s show the night before—mostly just loud and meant to be high energy, but the impression I got was that the show was somewhat inferior and they were just hiding it with louder music and more “noise”.