How Did I Get Dock Time?

You should know that Mr. Computer (Dennis) did a stupid thing. If you read my technical details page, you'll see that we were told that the floppy disks in the Internet cafe in Kobe didn't work. The disks would only go in half way. A crude sign said "floppy disks not working."

We went back to that Internet cafe on the last day, during the final hours in Kobe, and the disks were said to now be working again. But I still could not stick the floppy disk in more than half way, and yelled out "Excuse me, this disk drive still doesn't work." As dozens of Semester at Sea students' heads turned in my direction, the attendant motioned with his hand to turn the disk so that the label faced the right instead of the left. I was trying to put the disk in the wrong way!

My excuse was that the floppy drives were vertical rather than horizontal, and the TOP was on the side opposite that which I expected.

This was a particularly embarrassing day, as I stayed too long in the cybercafe and got back to the ship 9 minutes after the "on ship time" (which was still nearly 2 hours before we were actually taking off). My penalty was "dock time," where I had to stay on board in Hong Kong two hours past the time everyone else was cleared.


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