Big Island Vacation

Ans & I enjoyed a week on the Big Island with my family. After a long month of constant work and no play, my family surprised us with a much needed vacation/ reunion to the Big Island. This photo strikes me because my niece is angelically highlighted by sunlight...fun times!

I also learned something at the volcano. My mom said her ancestors live in the lave tube. I kid you not. She says crazy stuff like that all the time. Ans gets a kick out of it. We tried to get her talking about it on film, but she got camera shy.


Here's the group shot at the Volcano:...I don't know why I look larger than everyone else...no one in the photo looks related to anyone else...
Here's the video of us trying to get Adam to sit for the group shot:

This is us in the mini van...no family vacation is complete without the mini van. This van was much better than last time when mom had to sit on the floor and there were cockroaches everywhere. Our very first family vacation was almost 10 years ago to this day. It was historic...let's just say it was from La Jolla to Big Sur and it was the longest ride of my life and no one was allowed to sleep...that's all I can say. I was surprised Ans stuck around after that but things worked out :)

We of course stopped at Hapuna Beach for some boogie boarding and sand building:
We were also treated to a night at the Hilton Waikoloa. I like this hotel because its just fun. Its made for families. You have three options to get to your hotel room 1) walk (but who wants to do that but you actually usually end up walking because the stupid tram takes so long) 2- ride the tram and 3) ride a boat. I kid you not. You can ride a boat to your hotel room. Well it takes you to your hotel building but there's three buildings and its a fun ride. There's always a flock of Myna birds in the trees making a ruckus too. The dolphins are fun to look at. they like to swim up close to you and look you right in the eye. I don't think they're in greatest of shapes though.

This is Ans sliding down the biggest slide at the Waikoloa Hotel. I like how he has his "Extreme" Face going on...
And if you can see in this little picture you'll see the legs of my momma as she exits the slide sideways .
This little picture might be the best part of the trip. My mom, if you've ever met my mom, is a little Japanese lady and when she speaks to you, you end up looking like a deer in headlights. I understand her most of the time but its difficult for most people. She's about 4ft tall. At most. She also doesn't swim. At all. I spent a good deal of time growing up just trying to get her to float...something just isn't working. As soon as she was in the pool, my brother in law was there to swoop her up & out onto dry land. I'm so proud of mom for going down the slide! She was scared but when she saw little Adam go down she was determined. Plus I ended up having to push her down when she at the last minute tried to back out of it much to the amusement of the other slide riders who didn't know what she was shouting at me.

After her big adventure down the slide, mom found herself a hot tub:


Hopefully we'll be able to go back again soon!

Red Moon!

I've never seen one. I've never had my shit together enough that I knew exactly the date and time of a lunar eclipse. So it was quite a big deal that Ans & I were able to watch the whole total lunar eclipse tonight. I was slightly bummed I missed the initial start of it after days of waiting but you have to appreciate what you got, right? So i had like an hour of sitting out on the hammock watching our shadows move across the moon's surface. It was sublime- a perfect way to spend the evening. Plus there's something about the hammock that puts Ans out cold. He just has to sit in it for like 2 min and he falls asleep. I had to wake him up every time the clouds cleared enough to shout out the eclipse's progress, but that was fun in itself.

Hurricane Flossie

Update:
All Big Island Public schools will be closed on Tuesday for Hurricane Flossie.
All Big Island Wal-Marts are now open for 24 hours.

The Big Island is expected to get hit the hardest by Flossie. It has been downgraded to a Category 3. Hurricane experts were counting on the cooler waters in the pacific to significantly weaken Flossie, but she has so far been indifferent to the weather.

HURRICANE FLOSSIE LOCAL STATEMENT...CORRECTED
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE HONOLULU HI
544 AM HST MON AUG 13 2007

...DANGEROUS HURRICANE FLOSSIE APPROACHING THE BIG ISLAND OF
HAWAII...

...AREAS AFFECTED...
THIS STATEMENT RECOMMENDS SPECIFIC ACTIONS TO BE TAKEN BY PERSONS
THE BIG ISLAND OF HAWAII.

...WATCHES/WARNINGS...
A HURRICANE WATCH IS IN EFFECT FOR THE BIG ISLAND OF HAWAII. A
HURRICANE WATCH MEANS HURRICANE CONDITIONS ARE POSSIBLE WITHIN 36
HOURS.

In case you were wondering...

Here is an educational clip from Japan showing the various methods you can use to disperse bad smells. I love the fact that they used yellow to highlight the gas and the semi tight sound is classic.



The conclusion is that you should never walk in front of your fart. The best and fastest method of detaching yourself from the smell is to quickly move off the side like a crab simultaneously tapping your bum hole. This method is called "The Indian" in Japanese. I'm not making this up! This is even better than the F CUP cookie.

Nice

Look what I found! F Cup Cookies from Japan! So this might be old news to some folks but I just discovered them. These cookies are for breast enhancement...i'm not kidding. It's for real. It's from my people. Q-Taro, the makers of this insightful morsel of cultural obsession says (the links aren't work appropriate- there's some freaky breast action on the Pueraria site):

F Cup Cookies make breast implants obsolete. Making your breasts bigger is now as simple as eating 2 cookies a day. They come in packs of 4 for ¥290, each cookie containing 50mg of that miracle breast enlarging herb Pueraria Mirifica. How many cookies you'll have to eat to get size F Cup is unknown


You have to wonder if this is also an Ass Cookie...

Which Fight Club character are you?

I agree with Allcarbon....who's the a-hole generating all these stupid quizzes? For shits & giggles i tried this one because at one point I was a fan of the movie Fight Club. Now as old age approaches I can't even remember what the movie was about...something about human lard and soap...and some crazy guy who kept punching himself in the face... I guess I should be happy i'm not that guy, but I'm not too sure if being this chick is any better...


You scored as Marla Singer, You're Marla Singer. You're upset with your life or you're just in poverty. You believe you have cancer, but you won't go to the doctor due to insurance even though you have 2 lumps on your breast. But if that doesn't kiss you, you're going to overdose and die... okay, HAVE A NICE DAY!

Marla Singer		100%
Big Bob		80%
Jack		75%
The Mechanic		50%
A Space Monkey		50%
Tyler Durden		40%

created with QuizFarm.com

Franu Phobia # 9

Holy hell. This could happen to me. I know it. I swear I had a McDonalds nugget one time that was extra soft and squishy and had a red blood stain in it. I'm gagging just thinking about it.




Although I have to say it doesn't quite look like a McDonalds' nugget...must be KFC trying to do a cover up. Since when does the double arches serve chicken wings?! I bet that poor, poor, deep fried chicken head is going to end up on eBay.

for Franu phobia # 10 go here.

Cat, i'm a kitty cat

Okay, so I noticed that my last two posts were about things that I love. So continuing along that line of thought here's the Kitty Cat Dance.



The cat is saying "purrrvoctive posing" and "I say sexy things to myself when i'm daaancing". Genius.

If you want to know, the cat's name is Kayla and she's on myspace (ihatemyspace).

This cracks me up

Stuff like this cracks me up. See how simple the design is? I love living here! It's just three monkeys. Two sentences. I love it. Just like I love this Japaneses video.

I love these people

I missed a night out at the gardens tonight...working on taxes. I wish i could have seen these guys, they are hands down, two of my favorite people here on the island.


That's my penis, by the way. I brought it back from Hong Kong on a recent trip and I gave it to E (on left) and it was considered lost within a few hours. S (on right) was raking the yard a few days later and uncovered it. He didn't know that it was E's. He immediately saw how awesome it was and picked the little guy up and clean it. Why he's in pink lingerie is another story.

I'm a chien

I'm working at my laptop right now, listening to the Pixies, and my nephew is shouting at me to "change this crap". I'm so disappointed. Disappointed enough to attempt to blog this event. All he wants to listen to is the Black Eyed Peas (avec Fergie). What is the youth of today coming to? I can accept that he won't listen to even 10 seconds of Tom Waits, but he really needs to get his shit together and start loving Debaser.
I mean like right. now.

I do like to think i've done _some_good. He just asked to hear some RJD2.

Wear your geeeeeeeeeeeem sweater!

You got to love the gem sweater video...if not for the crazy sweaters then for Leslie's awesome lyrics

" With these shoulder pads I have the strength
To destroy villages homes and crops "




Does anyone else think her mouth is a perfect rectangle when she says "geeeeeeeeeeemmmmmmmmm"?

Mooninites, not Bombs

Check out this slideshow of the Mooninites in Boston- it will rock your face http://www.flickr.com/photos/vanderlin/sets/72157594512553078/show/

I thought there was a penalty for people calling in false bomb threats...
here is a little bit of an episode from ATHF featuring the Mooninites

Oh Long Johnson

"It would be funny if it wasn't so sad"

So my sister told me this story & I couldn't really understand it until I read the article. Apparently a 29 year dude was shaving himself and putting on makeup to make him look like a 12 year old boy. His disguise fooled a 61 year old guy and his friend who was like 43 and the two older men used the "12 year old" as their boy toy.

The older guy (the 61 year old) then tried to enroll the 29 year old (disguised as a 12 year old) dude in school. Of course the school realized that he wasn't 12 and alerted the police. Turns out they're all messed up. The older perverts became "very upset when the detectives told them they had been having a sexual relationship with a 29-year-old man and not a pre-teen boy,"

It's messed up, right?

"This is the weirdest case I've seen in 18 years," sheriff's spokeswoman Susan Quayle said. "If it wasn't so sad it would be funny."

And now for something fun

This is one of the Hoff's music videos...a remake of "Hooked on a feeling". Keep an eye out for what looks to be dachshunds, angels, Masai, & David Hasselhoff biting a fish.

Cool new things in Hong Kong

Ok, so some of these things might not be NEW new, but they were new to me when I went to Hong Kong. It has been about 10 years since I've been back and a lot has changed, but at the same time, its the same old Hong Kong. Here are some things that are new:

Protective doors for the MTR platform-They have doors now on the MTR platform so you can't fall in the tracks or kill yourself. They have also stopped saying "Please mind the platform gap" and have now changed it to "please mind the doors" since there are now two sets of doors to mind. There is a sticker on the ground though that still says "Please mind the platform gap".
They have retrofitted the buses so passengers can yell at the driver if he drives too fast. There is now a speedometer in the front of the bus so you can monitor the driver's speed.
They have infrared sensors for crosswalk buttons. You don't have to press a button now, but you just wave your hand over the sensor (not available at all crosswalks). They demolished the original Star Ferry piers and have made new ones. The ships are the same though and it now costs HK$1.70 to ride on the bottom of the boat.

They have implemented a new system to pay for transportation called the Octopus. This is very cool. You buy an octopus card and you can use it to pay for buses, trams, MTR rides, and even regular stuff like food. But that's not what's cool about the Octopus. The cool thing is, is that you don't even have to remove the octopus from your bag or wallet. You can just leave it in your purse and wave it over the octopus reader that is placed everywhere. So when you ride the MTR, instead of using the little cards and feeding it through the machine, you just place your bag over a reader and walk through. And when you ride a bus, you just wave your bag over the reader that's by the bus door and walk in. You don't have to open your purse or wallet and worry about losing your card.

The police have new uniforms. Sorry no pictures of that.

They have hand sanitizers everywhere now. Like in elevators and in coffee shops. Speaking of coffee shops, Starbucks is now in Hong Kong. They're even in the MTR.There's a new Peak building (at the Peak). It's huge and filled with even more shopping. Here's Anson in front of the new Peak Building. The old Galleria is still there, along with the spouting fountain (closed during winter). Here are some pictures of things you might recognize & remember:

No #4 floors in buildings (or 13 or 14s)


Park n' Shop stores:
The heaters in the bathrooms:

The Star Ferry:
More photos here:

From Hong Kong pic...

Popo & Goong Goong's 60th Wedding Anniversary

This year was Anson's grandparents' 60th wedding anniversary. We got to go to the party in Hong Kong. It was really wonderful seeing all of Anson's family, especially his grandparents and his aunties and uncles. We had a wonderful time at the party and everyone looked so beautiful & healthy! It isn't every day you get to go to someone's 60th wedding anniversary. It truly was a special event.

60th anniversary

Anson hates peacocks

One of the best things about the Hilo Zoo is that they let the peacocks roam free. We were lucky to find a male trying to show off to some females. But he wouldn't face me for a picture. I had to run circles around him, hoping that he would pause & I could get a good picture. Ans was not at all interested. Look at his facial expression in the background:
But in the end I did get a front picture of the peacock: