Crossing the equator

Passengers amd staff members who have not crossed the equator are referred to as pollywogs. Those , like myself, who have crossed it before are referred to as shellbacks. No one knows why this is, but I think that it has something to do with people´s insatiable appetite to humiliate one another!

First King Neptune and his queen boarded the ship and a trial was held for each pollywog. Every pollywog was found guilty of some kind of crime (like filling their buffet plates too high at dinner time or farting in the elevator) and sentenced to punishment. The condemned were then forced to kiss a big, ugly fish in front of the ship´s photographers.

Then they were ´slimed´ with rotting lettuce, spaghetti, eggs and other gunk from the kitchen. If they were lucky, they were then dumped into the pool. The unlucky ones were left to ´rot´on the deck in the hot sun with all that gunk covering them!