Finally, a formal statement from our sponsor....

Cruise operator Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. reported sharply lower second-quarter earnings Monday, blaming higher fuel prices, and said it would cut 400 jobs.

Royal Caribbean earned $84.7 million, or 40 cents a share, in line with Wall Street expectations. In the same period a year ago it earned $128.7 million, or 60 cents a share.

Although demand for cruises remained high in the quarter, fuel prices soared 55 percent. As a result, the company said it would take several steps to cut costs by about $125 million including eliminating jobs.

"Too much of our profitability is being eroded by the increase in fuel prices," CEO Richard Fain said in a statement. "This is unacceptable and we are evaluating everything we do to find ways to do it more efficiently and effectively."

Royal Caribbean will eliminate approximately 400 shore-side positions. It also is getting rid of some non-core operations, such as "The Scholar Ship," an educational program for college students to study abroad at sea.

The company expects to incur approximately $15 million, or 7 cents a share, in charges in the third quarter related to restructuring.

Royal Caribbean said it expects third quarter earnings per share, including the restructuring charges, to be $1.65 to $1.70, nearly unchanged from earlier forecasts except for the direct increase in fuel costs.

Shares of the company closed at $22.70 and remained unchanged in after-hours trading.

In the news

Wow! End of a Voyage AND The Program???

The Chronicle of Higher Education

June 16, 2008

Scholar Ship Cancels Next Year's Voyages

After just a single academic year in operation, an innovative program that offered students a chance to pursue a degree while sailing the world has succumbed to financial pressures and ceased operation, at least for the coming year. The Scholar Ship, whose sponsors included Royal Caribbean Cruises and an international consortium of universities, has announced that the next cruise, which had been planned for September, will not take place.

Ron Zighelboim, the program’s founder and managing director, said the current economic climate had forced the cruise line to cut its financial support of the Scholar Ship. “Amid the stratospheric costs of oil and food, which are Royal Caribbean’s two biggest expenses, they are understandably tightening their belt,” he said. “The shame of it all is that it’s happened just as we were coming off our first year of operation, when we had operated two very successful voyages and felt that we were really hitting our stride.”

Some 400 students from 35 countries took part in the first two voyages, and 350 students had enrolled for the coming academic year. Mr. Zighelboim said that students who had signed up for cruises this fall and in early 2009 would be reimbursed. Some 100 employees, including 30 to 40 academic staff members, will also be affected by the cancellations.

Mr. Zighelboim was optimistic that the program would find backers to support future cruises, but said it was too late to salvage the cruises planned for the coming year. If enough money is found, there might be a chance of operating a cruise in September 2009, he said.

Students determined to study on the high seas are not necessarily forced ashore. Semester at Sea, a program that dates from the 1960s, has posted a notice on its Web site encouraging students who had planned on participating in Scholar Ship cruises to apply for the rival program. —Aisha Labi

April 18 - The end of the voyage has come....And another one in September?

The seas have been very rough and the sky is grey... Rain is falling and we all feel so sad...
here was very little partying last night. The students said this morning that it is the sea is signaling for us to get off the ship :)

Tonight we will have our closing ceremonies and I am sure we will see even more tears. The faculty is trying to keep their spirits up but I can feel that so many of us are torn between wanting to spend time with others while already making the shift to that tomorrow holds for each one of them...

I am off to New York City to see my kids and hopefully spend a week of vacation. My hope is that I will be bale to come back to this blog and update it with all the photos and writings I have not been able to post throughout the voyage. The big question will be -- will I feel like re-living the voyage so soon after "coming back to earth"?

We had a re-entry consultant come on board the ship to help us deal with the range of emotions and reactions we are and will be experiencing. Research shows that many people after an experience like ours have a difficult time adjusting. They have problems with wanting to tell their story while forgetting that their beloved ones have had also their own stories unfolding at the same time and may not have the inclination to be a passive listener to the "amazing times" the travelers had...

We shall see...

Meanwhile, I am smiling because I have been told I have been selected to go on The Scholar Ship's next voyage!!! Portugal, Panama, Ecuador, New Zealand, Australia, and China - here I come!!!!!!!!!!

Barcelona's Architecture - A Feast for The Eyes!

Girona - A journey to my ancestory through the Jewish quarters

Barcelona - Golf Lessons in The Middle of Town?

What does it take to convert a dying club in the middle of Barcelona into a thriving golf range for young professionals and families?

This is the kind of question our international business learning circle students were asked by a group of 3 founders who took over the club recently. We got to hit some balls while pondering what can be the right approach to bring a sport that has been associated with stodginess and "old money" into the lives of young Barcelona urbanites....

Needless to say, the students loved the challenge!

Barcelona - Pronovias Company: Creating Bridal Fantansies with State of the Art Technology

Barcelona - Tous Company: Luxury Jewlery and Accessories

Cultural Shows - We are on our way to Broadway!

Our students are amazing! Since we have started this voyage, we have been entertained by incredible cultural shows that they have put together to celebrate their respective countries' rich cultures - from Australian to Chinese, Indian to Canadian, Latin to American - we have show after show produced and performed by students that rival anything one can almost catch on Broadway! Using their creativity this way has proven to be a way for all of us to embrace each other's heritage to the point that now the cultural shows have students from OTHER cultures performing different cultures of their own and having a blast becoming someone different for a night...
So far I had the privilege of appearing on the Middle East show by reading together with our Egyptian-born psychologist such children's poems about peace. I also performed cowboy poetry on the American show with one of our other professors and a students. These are some of the fondest memories I will carry with me from this voyage...

Barcelona - OK - I know you are not going to believe this, BUT...

Yes, right by this old farm house somewhere outside of the Barcelona, the students in my undergraduate learning circle for international business were introduced to... (drum roll...)
the most secretive manufacturing plant of the world's MOST expensive SUPER CAR!
Only 12 cars are manufactured a year for a selective group of customers who are willing to pay..........$700,000 EUROS PER CAR!
The cars are hand made bit by bit from the most advanced materials in the world and are designed like fighter jets, yet perform as well as a Formula One race car while being able to drive in regular streets!
Introducing the TRAMONTANA super car. Named after a wind the blows in the mountains surrounding ths tiny village where this secret factory exists, the car looks like something from another planet. Yet the 20 or so odd people who work in this incredible company are so warm and unassuming that you will never believe they are responsible for such a marvel.
Needless to say, we felt very privileged to share their story and their dreams...
www.tramontanagroup.com

A Wedding on The Ship??? Oh my...

When the day arrived for Kirsten and Jovanni's wedding, we we thrilled. We almost did not get to experience this wonderful union after Jovanni broke his collar bone, and ended up having emergency surgery in Cape Town. We had so much fun planning the event, that I swear we were going to have the wedding even if he was on a stretcher:)

But everything worked out and the ceremony took place, as planned, on the deck with all the students and staff dressed up in their best cloths and the bride and groom wearing their colorful red, gold, purple, and green Indian and Chinese outfits matching the swaths of fabric used to decorate the ceremony area (we never miss a point to celebrate multi culturalism!)

The student band played music, the captain conducted the traditional ceremony, one of our professors read from the song of songs and our academic dean distributed red string for all of us to tie around out wrists as we all joined the couple spiritually as a community. And the Morrocan students led us all in a dance around the couple that got us all clapping and cheering as lound as we could!

Everywhere you looked you saw smiling faces and everyone talked about how fortunate we were to participate in such a festival of love! Kirsten and Jovanni read their vows in Italian (which proved again that this IS the language of love) and danced the night away to music played by no other but our crew's band.

And they even played a traditional "Mazel Tov" tune in my honor while the cake was being cut!

I can go on and on, but the pictures will tell a much better story... As soon as we get to Barcelona, I will share them with you!

Cape Verde - Music is Thy Love

Cape Verde was just a short re-fueling stop for us with the possibility of a quick swim in the ocean and a local fish meal. Yet it turned out to be another lesson in life around our world that will remain in our minds and hearts for a long time.

The island of St. Vincent has not seen a drop of rain since 1984. As a result, it magnificent mountains are totally barren. Against their brown backdrop, the local population has painted their house in bright pastel colors and developed a local craft specialty in colorfully painted fabrics perhaps to counter the stark scenery surrounding them. Some even said the place looks like the surface of the moon...

And to stimulate the senses more, the locals delight your ears with amazing music that is prevalent everywhere you go. (pictures to come when we reach Barcelona). Since we arrived on a Satruday, we were able in a couple of hours to witness teens beating drums on the beach, formal bands playing in little town hotels and a band of youg adults jamming in an Internet cafe. We were even lucky to hear some drumming on African drums in the open market as one of our staff asked the vendors if they will let us hear how their drums sound and ended up getting the vendor from Senegal to compete with a local vendor as to whose drumming was better!

As you can imagine, the local music store was one of the nicest of all other stores and is the destination of the European tourists who love to come here. Music also dominates the yearly carnival and a big music festival they hold in the summer. We were told that anyone at Cape Verde can play some form of a musical instrument or at least knows how to drum. Music, they say, is what they have to pass the days that amny times lack any other interesting activity.

The pace of the island was as slow as they come, and no one rushed to talk to us or offer us anything except for a few poor kids, who we were told are sometimes part of an organized thieves group. Mostly, though, we were left to wonder the empty streets and enjoy the warm and mild sunshine...

In my business classes we talked about Cape Verde's ambitions to become a destination for foreign investments. Here and there we saw signs of new resort communities being built for possibly foreigners who would like a second home here. Yet, it was difficult to ascertain whether the locals' dream will become a reality soon. As an alternative, we learned that this Island has the best tasting tuna anywhere and the other islands grow some wonderful coffee. Our guide summed it all by saying "We at St. Vincente do not grow anything except for lots of beautiful children..." Judging by his good looks, many of us females understood why...

Internet Café s – The Saga Continues….

I noticed that I have not had a chance to write about my ongoing quest for the ‘best’ Internet Café, so here it goes…

India: The café was hidden in the back of a shopping mall. Once you saw the sign, you had to go up a narrow flight of stairs to a space no bigger than a single small room that was divided among 6 computer surrounded by flimsy partitions. The place was packed due to the fact that it was Sunday and the very low cost of per-minute use (about $.5). From giggling girls chatting online with prospective groom overseas to job applicant filling out online application, and – of course – bewildered tourists who barely fit their bag and themselves into the make-shift cubicles, coming in seemed like bad timing… However, when approached by the guy-in-charge (holding an old notebook with a written log of the cubicles and the computer use), I told him I wanted to use my flash drive to upload stuff to the Internet. He gave me a dirty look, took away my flash drive and proceeded to plug it into a computer to run a scan on its contents (this was a first!). When he accidently click on doing a FULL system scan, the compute came to a screeching halt…So he pick up the flash drive and told me to move to another computer (not an easy task with the impossible small maneuvering space and so many bags everywhere) where he re-booted the computer to start the scan and walked away… Running out of time by now (I told my colleagues that it will ‘only take 30 minutes, so go on shopping,’ I used the opportunity when he had his back to me to move to yet another computer to try and get onto Blogger where I wanted to upload my pictures. Well, off course he had the last laugh! The minute I put in the URL address into the browser, the browser, moving at turtle speed, froze! Disgustingly I paid him $1 and dashed out of the place…
The next day I went shopping with a friend from our staff and as she was browsing and bargaining with the shop owner, I noticed his laptop sitting on the table. I politely inquired whether he has a ‘fast Internet connection’. He said “of course’ and turned back to my friend. Well, that was all I needed to hear! I approached him with the best smile I could muster and asked will he PLEASE let me check my email. Not wanting to stop his negotiations with my friend, he patiently let me get on the Internet and I logged into my Blog immediately and started uploading some of my pictures (I did not trust I could sit there long enough to also write a posting without him getting suspicious as to what the heck I was doing). Luckily my friend ended up purchasing some of his merchandise so my only ‘real’ Internet use in India last a blissful 20 minutes! Needless to say, when he looked up and what I was doing, hoping, I am sure, that I will myself make a purchase to justify ‘high jacking’ his computer, I smiled again and told him I will try to come back the next day since there were many things in his store I wanted to buy. I never went back…

Seychelles: I was so very much looking forward to the opportunity of coming to the islands and finding a cozy Internet café on the beach with great speeds so I could merrily write my blog, upload my pictures, and get a great tan – all at the same time. WRONG! By the time I finally let a group of students to the only Internet place we could find quickly, I ended up sitting across a computer at the local telecommunication company’s offices that was so SLOW, that all of us almost had tears in our eyes L Furthermore, Blogger was BLOCKED! So much for tanning and surfing the web simultaneously!

South Africa: OK, here was finally a country that had a good telecom infrastructure and we were docked near a mall! First thing fist – is there and Internet Café there? And the answer is………..YES! HOWEVER, with 9 computers in an open space to the mall area that were filled ALL THE TIME with other tourists and our wonderful students, sitting there for long stretches of time was not a great possibility. The only time I sat there, there was a Dutch lady speaking on the phone OUT LOUD to someone for 30 minutes while looking at something on the web! Time to find a different solution… My spy network of students that always try to inform me of good Internet access spots informed me that the beautiful hotel next to the dock has FREE Internet! Have I died and gone to heaven??? On the last day of our stay, I dressed nice and walked into the hotel lobby with my laptop. Looking around I noticed a few students trying to look like hotel guests working quietly on their laptop. I found a spot near the registration desk and off I went, FINALLY, being able to do my Blog at a normal speed…UNTIL…my computer ran out of battery and I found out that the type of electrical outlets they have in South Africa did not fit my converter! By that time the lobby filled out with our students some of whom were able to get a converter from the hotel staff. What’s a professor to do?? I tried sweet talking to the students, but they were all so immersed in their own Net browsing, that they barely look at me..ouch! Finally, I marched to the reception desk, asked for a convertor, took it and hastily found a corner near the bar with an electronic outlet that I could hide at…6 hours later, the hotel was swarming with our students all trying to catch some free web time before we had to get back on the ship and sail out of South Africa… The hotel staff looked at us with exasperated looks… I made sure to tell them that we will all turn to pumpkins at 4 PM if we do not leave the hotel and get back to the ship, and they smiled wearily… This is what I call a true Cape Town Hospitality!! By the time we all got back on the ship, we were all in agreement – WE LOVE CAPE TOWN!

Sobering Notes from Dr. Allen Whiteside - Director of Health Economic and HIV/AIDS Research Division, U of Durban

Dr. Whiteside has been working for 26 years for HIV/AIDS research in Africa. He came to the Scholar Ship to give the plenary lecture during our conference on the economic impact of HIV/AIDS that brought in experts from all over world to a symposium organized by our research institute.

he shared with us stats that we have maybe forgotten about -- the 33.5 million people living with HIV (with the highest prevalence shifting to Russia and Asia) and how this data is being incredibly misused. He believes that it will take at least another 8 to 10 years before we will really see the infection manifest itself! Swaziland has now the worse epidemic in the world and no resources to fight it. 50% of young women between the ages of 20 to 25 are infected, while 45% of men between the ages of 35 to 39 are.

He is mostly concerned because, in his own words, "we have never seen in the developing world where there is less than zero percent population growth! When life expectancy is less than 30 years old, where do we go from there?"

The economic impact of this projection is catastrophic, in his mind, and points to a systemic crisis that Africa and the parts of Asia and Eastern Europe are now facing. As the population will drop, the per capita income will go up, and now counties will have a hard time getting foreign aid...

Some disturbing thoughts he left us with:
1) Do we have a responsibility to the citizens of the workd?
2) Do we have responsibility for this epidemic?
3) Is this just a Darwinian event?

West Cape Wineries - Or A Lazy Day of Drinking...

I finished my sightseeing in Cape Town by taking a tour of the wine country. Needless to say, it was a tour full of guilty pleasure -- lots of wine tasting and even... Chocolate (there is no better combination than champaign and chocolate or even a nice deep red wine with chocolate, we discovered... especially when your chocolate has ingredients such as fresh ginger and even red pepper! )

The Dutch settlers were the ones that brought wine making to South Africa and to this date most of the "wine farms" (as they are being called here) are owned and operated by Afrikaners. However, a new generation of black and colored workers is now seen in all the wineries, as was the case with the ones we have visited. They have discovered the availability of training and jobs in this great industry and are slowly making their way into it. Of course, they are not owners yet, but clearly that time will come as well (all in all, our Zulu tour guide told us, the biggest problem in South Africa is land ownership since 87% of the land is owned by just 3 million people leaving black and colored folks with almost no way to acquire land. This is what has also given birth to the black and colored townships that dot the route between Cape Town and the wineries and are a very sore spot for everyone. Our guide claims that the government is going to try and build some temporary housing in front of the townships by 2010 when the World Cup will take place here, in an attempt to disguise the townships shacks from a view from the highways going in and out of town).

After tasting over 20 varieties of South African wines, our group was convinced of the wonderful quality of wine produced here and the care so evidently being taken in every one of the farms we have visited. They all looked like the belonged on a movie set!

Yet our Zulu guide reminded us that not too long ago, the black laborers on the wine farms were paid in wine bottles containing spoiled wine which many blacks believe was in the root of spreading infertility among the workers... Right now, during the summer harvest, you see a lot of blacks commuting to the farms from the townships to work in the vineyards, many of them happy for the temporary employment they provide.

We left the wine country in a mellow mood, having even visited a quaint and old French village in the midst of the sprawling farms. Right next to small bistros with French sounding menus, you were able to purchase African wooden sculptures of jungle animals. And down the road, we even stopped at a cheetah farm that raises baby Cheetahs as preservation of the species. Ah, Africa the magnificent!