Report #9 Sept 27 - Land Ho!!

An unidentified Aleutian Island slips by my window.

 

Sept 27 - At Sea.  Another day at sea, the 7^th consecutive 25-hour day. I forgot to mention that I've added Qi Gong (pronounced Chee Gong) to my daily schedule at 2PM.  Previously all I knew of Qi Gong is that Tai Chi instructors use it to warm you up and reinforce proper breath control.  Actually, with acupuncture, herbs and meditation it's a branch of Chinese medicine.  Sort of a self-massage, acupressure discipline.  I remembered my first Tai Chi instructor talking about it and when I saw it on the schedule, I decided to try it.  It's actually fun so I've continued.

 

Eastern Medicine Note:  As most of you know I'm not much of a New Age person.  I think most of the newer additions to Eastern beliefs are just so much hot air.  However I do believe that in the long run we will find that everything in the universe is electromagnetical so it is not beyond the reach of logic that our bodies do have electric impulses that control everything from the Krebs cycle to brain activity.  If that's true it is reasonable to believe that if you can affect those impulses you can have an effect on bodily functions.  It's not really religious, it's science.  Things that used to be considered waves, light for example, are now known to be particles, photons.  We like to say that they have the properties of both waves and particles but that's only because we first thought of them as waves.  As science discoverers smaller and smaller particles they are hard to study as they have very short lives and can only be captured by very complex devices.  At that point the Observer Paradox really kicks in and we can't even be sure that the evidence we see of these extremely short-lived particles is truly what they are because as we capture them or make them visible we may in fact be changing their properties.  Some of these particles have many properties that can only be known one at a time.  Not only is the science complicated, just holding the concepts in your mind is complicated.  My simplistic explanation falls very short of the full truth but it does give a flavor of the issues.

 

The short version of all that is that Eastern medicine, while it was mostly incorporated into their religious belief systems, is actually quite independent of religion at its base and  underlying scientific roots that we don't fully understand.  It is not at all inconsistent with Christianity.  At least that's my opinion.

 

When I went down to my room to change for dinner, passing right by my window was one of the Aleutian Islands.  I'll have to figure out which one later, it was not a very big one.  Of course, I had to get out on deck to get a picture.  Winds are about 60 mph and it's definitely not warm.

 

This evening's performer was concert pianist Tomono Kawamura.  Born in Japan and now living in England where she moved to study at the Royal Academy for the Arts.  She was excellent.

 

Another hour back tonight so it's official, one solid week of 25-hour days.