American Travel Story: Part 2

Previously:  I arrived in America, learnt Merry Christmas in Hawai'ian and was confused by street signs.

It became obvious very quickly that I made the right choice going to the indoor stuff yesterday.  Even though it was still raining most of the day, there were very few clouds and it was much lighter, almost a mist rather than actual rain.  Anyway, I started the day with breakfast at a lovely little place with a longboard over the bar, the food was really quite good too.

Pretty much the entire reason I chose to eat there.

After this I wandered down to Waikiki Beach and spent pretty much the entirety of the time it wasn't raining while I was in Hawai'i relaxing on the beach.  I was going to go for have a swim but I couldn't easily find a spot to lock up my valuables and as I passed many people with metal detectors coming the beach and a woman furiously digging in the sand and asking people on towels nearby if they had seen her room key I thought I might give it a miss.

After this I took the Waikiki Trolley to the aquarium which was small, but interesting and I once again availed myself of the audio tour because it was free and, like the one at the palace, was pretty interesting and together they got me on the path of considering 

A reef exhibit

       

       All the kids at the aquarium were thrilled to see Dory      Jellyfish posing for one of the better shots I took all trip

The highlight here was holding a hermit crab in my hand and feeling it scuttle across, a strange sensation that made me think of being gently prodded with small needles.  I also found the monk seals entertaining, one of them anyway, the other was doing it's best impression of an overweight tourist, lying by the water and scratching itself.

 Interactivity at its finest.

Also taking advantage of the good weather to sunbathe by the water.

I followed the visit to the aquarium by having lunch in a beachfront cafe where they served all meals with a hibiscus on the plate and again I just sat around and enjoyed the afternoon.

After lunch I once again boarded the Waikiki Trolley which took us along the coast past the Diamond Head Lighthouse which is  and a memorial commemorating Amelia Earhart's solo flight from O'ahu to the USA.


I got off the trolley in the crater of Diamond Head, along with a young family of four from Canberra, and the trolley driver informed us that it was vitally important that we were ready to go back to town in an hour because the last trolley would be leaving then.  The climb to the lookout on the summit was supposed to be particularly difficult but although it was a bit tiring it was no more so than any other brisk walk of a little over an hour.

The thing that shocked me the most about Diamond Head was the difference in vegetation inside the crater to what I'd seen elsewhere in O'ahu.  It was a wonderful walk and part of the path was through WWII defense installations.  It was one of the most beautiful areas I went to while in Hawai'i.

The steps leading to the defense tunnels.

                                      

                  Military defensive structure circa 1930s                              View from the top of Diamond Head looking East

And the view back towards Waikiki and Honolulu to the west of Diamond Head

When I got back to Waikiki it was almost sunset so I headed back towards the beach to properly enjoy it.  The torches along the beachfront were lit and then

This photo contains at least seven Hawai'ian stereotypes

Finally I had a traditional Hawai'ian meal, but to find this I had to head well out of the Waikiki area and up to  Ono Hawaiian Foods.  This meal consisted of poi, tomato, onion, pork, jerky and chili sauce and was fairly delicious, although I discovered that it is vitally important to not have too much poi at once because it is bland but can still easily overpower the other flavours and leave you with an entire mouthful of bland.

Looks tasty, yeah?

Apparently I'm not the only one who thought the food was pretty good.

I went back to the hotel for an early night as I'd been told to get up very early to go to Pearl Harbor the following day.

Culture shock for the day:  I was mistaken for an American twice today, first by a couple from New Jersey who assumed my accent was Hawai'ian and then by a Hawai'ian who thought I was from Montana.  I have decided therefore that all Hawai'ians and Montanans sound alike - surely that's politically correct and stuff yeah?

Next time: I find out the importance of getting up early and talk to a bus driver.

The Joy of Telemarketers

I just read this post over at A Quick Succession of Busy Nothings and it got me thinking about how I deal with my hate of telephones.  I am not a fan of talking to people I can't see, typing is fine but talking is harder.

Source, and no I don't have any idea what it says on that page.

The one thing that I always used to hate most was telemarketers, I swear something like 90% of the calls I get are trying to sell me a mortgage or an internet deal or overseas travel, usually from India.  They used to be incredibly frustrating but then I decided to make a game out of these calls, it has worked for me and now I share the rules with all of you so that you can find enjoyment in these otherwise terrible calls.

1. The game starts from the moment you realise it is a telemarketer on the other end of the phone, once it has started it continues until the call ends.
2. For every minute the call lasts, you get 1 point.
3. For every time you make a telemarketer repeat him or herself twice or more you get an additional point.
4. If you are connected through to the telemarketer's manager double the points per minute from now on (this is exponential, if you get transferred twice you get 4 points per minute, three times you get 8 points).
5. For every piece of personal information you give to the telemarketer you lose 10 points.
6. If the telemarketer raises his or her voice at you, you get a bonus 20 points.
7. If the telemakreter swears or insults you, you get a bonus 20 points.
8. If you get angry with the telemarketer, you lose 20 points.
9. If you swear or insult the telemarketer, you lose 20 points.
10. Making the telemarketer talk to someone else in the household tags you out with an extra 30 points, you don't score any extra minutes after this.
11. A bonus 100 points if the telemarketer says the following phrase "Don't you not know your own English or what?" but the phrase must be exact.
12. Double your score if the telemarketer hangs up without saying goodbye, this still applies if you've tagged out.
13. Halve your score if you hang up on the telemarketer, this still applies if you've tagged out.

My personal best score is 380 because although I gave away my full name and the type of computer I use, I kept the telemarketer on the phone for an hour before he transferred me to his boss who I kept on the phone for a further half an hour (I was somewhat bored), the original telemarketer got angry with me twice and both telemarketer and boss called me stupid and they hung up without saying goodbye.

Have fun playing and if you come up with more rules be sure to let me know!

American Travel Story: Part 1

This story begins on the second of January this year (technically it begins about halfway through last year, but I doubt you all want to read about filling in paperwork and attending weekend lectures for several months).  The second of January was the day I got onto an aeroplane for the first time since I was two years old.

This plane trip was new and exciting despite about 90 percent of my internal organs attempting to exit my body through the soles of my feet on takeoff.  I had emergency exit seat and was informed "people will kill for these" which struck me as somewhat ironic as people in those seats agree to help save others.

The flight took me to Brisbane airport, which was less exciting, although it did have some reasonably interesting sand sculptures so that was cool.

It's like I was already in Hawai'i

After going through customs for the first time ever and being told that at my age I should have a good understanding of how customs works I was on another plane.  This plane took me away from Australia and toward the international date line and time travel.  I let out my inner nerd and played the Doctor Who theme as I went back roughly 25 hours.  I also had some fairly good luck on this plane trip as I had an empty seat next to me, which the passenger behind me felt compelled to explain was clearly beginners luck and it was all downhill from there, thanks for the Mr Ray-of-Sunshine.

My first view of another country

I arrived in Hawai'i and cleared customs and everything with no fuss whatsoever.  Turns out telling staff that you're a first time flier as you hand over your passport means they are immediately apologetic for previous rudeness (that I hadn't noticed anyway, but I appreciate it all the same) and just want to be as helpful as possible.

I took this picture then saw the sign prohibiting pictures until after customs

One of the things I enjoy doing when travelling within Australia is walking around towns and cities and just enjoying the feeling of the place.  I thought I'd give it a go in Honolulu and I spent an hour just wandering around the Capitol District and the surrounding area.  During this I discovered that Honolulu Hale (which translates as Honolulu House and is the mayoral and local council chambers for Honolulu) which had a rather impressive Christmas display both inside the building and in the surrounding gardens.

Translation: Merry Christmas

After that I headed down to 'Iolani Palace which is famous for being the only state royal residence on American soil.  I took the audio tour which had lots of really interesting information, most of which I forgot by the end of the day, but also included gems such as an audio reenactment of the crowd cheering as the king and queen entered the throne room and physical descriptions of the first two telephones Hawai'i located in the king's study on the top floor and in the basement, which were there to be looked at.

Royal coat of arms on the front gates 

              

                           The throne room                                        The main staircase and my fashionable footwear

Across the street from the palace is Ali'iolani Hale and the statue of Kamehameha I who united
the Hawai'ian islands under his rule and then wrote a national anthem for his new kingdom.  Personally I reckon that's a fairly epic legacy to leave behind.

Next I headed over to the Hawai'i State Art Museum where I looked at lots of art relating to Hawai'i and learned about the Percent for Art law which legislates that 1% of the cost of all state buildings must be put aside for the acquisition and commission of artworks to “beautify and humanise the built environment” which, if you can get past the rather dull language, is rather a nice sentiment.  I was going to include a couple of images of the art that really impressed me, but as I'm not sure about copyright and the like I'm going to play it safe.

At some point during the day I had lunch at the Foot Street Market which, except that it had been recommended to me and there were locals eating there, I almost expected to give me food poisoning.  But no, the food was not only edible but quite tasty.  Then I walked around the city some more, all the way to the Ala Moana Center.

     

A four story open-air shopping mall with no decent cafes, how do you survive the Christmas crowds?

This is the largest open air shopping mall in the world, for those Melbournians among you, it has almost thirty thousand more square metres of retail space but almost 200 fewer shops than Chadstone.  I bought an aloha shirt because what else does one do when one finds themselves in a landmark shopping mall in Hawai'i?

I'm not entirely sure it is tacky enough to properly identify me as a tourist

By this point it was getting late and I hadn't slept at all well on the plane so I headed back to my room and tried in vain to get the internet to work before heading to bed.

Culture shock for the day:  Street signs here say yield instead of give way which makes me think of broadswords.

What they mean.  Source

What I imagine.  Source

Next time: I learn about coral, I climb a volcano and my photography doesn't improve.

Fingers Crossed

So two months ago I went to America with the intention of blogging about it.  No sooner did I get there than I started having some fairly serious internet trouble and my computer died.  When I finally had the right conditions I decided to put off posting much about the trip until I got home where I was sure of not having issues, only to be have the internet back home decide to act up.

The internet finally got itself working again just before the weekend but I got fairly bogged down in uni work, a trend that doesn't look like it is going to change in the near future, but I've decided to definitely focus on the blog - at least to break up the study.

I will begin posting about my trip tomorrow, hoping beyond hope that this apparent curse is done with me.  If you don't hear from my for a month or so you can safely assume that I've been struck by lightning or had my computer spontaneously combust in an attempt by the universe at large to prevent my posting about the trip.

Also, because I was supposed to be on a cultural exchange I made sure to record some kind of culture shock each day, sometimes they are funny and sometimes they are naive, but always are they born from genuine ignorance and not intended to be discriminatory in any way.

Access Denied

The company that provides me with internet, which shall not be named here, is having technical problems.  This means I may not be posting again until I have proper internet access again.

I will, however, be posting the first installment of my trip to America when the internet is playing nice with others again.

Stream of consciousness

So yesterday I posted about science and managed to forget to mention the fantastic view in the sky on Monday night that helped inspire the post.  I didn't manage to snap a decent photo of it myself, but it was something like this:

Source

The moon is reasonably easy to pick in the picture, but the small bright dot in the bottom right is less so.  That is Jupiter.  On Monday, blessed with clear skies, this was roughly the view I had before Jupiter moved behind the moon.

This I enjoyed for two reasons, the first is that it allowed me to pull out a word that I don't get to use anywhere near enough - syzygy, meaning an alignment of three celestial objects (and also the only word in English that includes three 'y's).  The second is simply the sheer beauty and awesome magnitude that is demonstrated.

That got me thinking about whether the terms 'beauty' and 'magnitude' have any inherent meaning about the moon and Jupiter, or even to syzygy, and realised that it was (as the cliche goes) all in the eye of the beholder.

The thing I read the following day, about 3.8 million years of success leading to me also got me thinking, and thus came the blog post.  I've said before that I'm writing these stream of consciousness style and although I am going back to fix spelling and grammar and to change wording slightly for clarity, I have been trying not to start these posts with an idea of what is going to be there at the end.

This meant that when I got to the end of yesterday's post I was faced with a conundrum, I had wanted to mention the syzygy (in no small part because of the word itself) of the Earth, moon and Jupiter, but I'd managed to get to the end of the post without doing it.  Even though I liked the post and felt that it tied up effectively at the end I was sorely tempted to change it to include some reference to this.

I eventually decided not to because the whole point of stream of consciousness is that this might happen and something better may come from it, and that I should deal with it.  Also because it gave me a prompt for another post today.

Science, the good and the bad

Science can sometimes make you feel really good about yourself and, you know, everything - ever.  Then at other times it really wants to kick you when you're down.

Today I read something online that said "You are the result of 3.8 million years of evolutionary success.  Act like it."  Which is fairly inspiring when you feel a bit down - 2.8 million years of success resulted in me!

A while ago I had a less uplifting experience when it was pointed out to me that every moment I ever spent thinking about how impossibly unique I am and how amazing it is I am able to have those thoughts at all is a moment I'll never have again and everything I could possibly achieve becomes less likely to occur with each passing moment.

Then there are times when science is just hilarious, like when scientists decided to study the centre of the galaxy and discovered it tastes like raspberries.

I was thinking about these and realised that while what science studies will exist whether we study it or not, it is the people involved in science that truly give it its awesome, terrifying and hilarious aspects.  The wonder is in the observation and understanding not the observed.  And the power to influence how a particular fact or discovery is received rests with people too.

It is something that I'm noticing more and more, everyone has a spin they want to put on things and that can be good or bad.  A lot of the time people don't even realise the effect it might have.

Hopefully this response to a petition for building a death star will have a positive impact on you, just think of the trouble Paul Shawcross went to to make this funny and engaging to the people who signed the petition and to make sure it had as many references to the films as possible.  You know that people are going to get a kick out of reading this and the authors will never get to see it, but they crafted it with obvious enjoyment and reverence anyway.

I wish more people could be like that more of the time.  Myself included.