Checking out downtown Honolulu April 14, 2008

Today I decided to check out downtown Honolulu.

First I climbed Aloha Tower:

and saw the view of Honolulu Harbor (on the left) downtown Honolulu (center) and Waikiki (to the right in the distance). Click on the picture to make it larger, if you want.

I then sampled some Hawaiian coffee from the Bad Ass Coffee Company before heading next door to the Hawaii Maritime Center, which is in the boathouse used by Hawaii’s King Kalakaua. I learned about Polynesian and Hawaiian canoes and navigation, Captain Cook, the sandalwood trade, whaling, luxury boats that brought early tourists to Hawaii, and the trans-Pacific sailboat race. I also learned that Hawaii is the most geographically isolated island chain in the world. I really am in the middle of nowhere! The exhibits were pretty good, and the audio tour complimented it well (even though it was on tape-walkman). They had a lot of various types of sailing canoes, as well as a humpback whale skeleton.

Next I wandered downtown, and checked out Chinatown, eating some Dim Sum.

Then I headed over to Iolani Palace, the only royal residence in the United States. Iolani palace had electricity and telephones before the White House – pretty impressive for the most geographically isolated island chain in the world. The palace was the residence of King Kalakaua from 1882 until his death in 1891. When he died, his sister, Queen Liliuokalani, became the ruler of Hawaii. She was overthrown by Americans and imprisoned in the palace for 8 months.

The Palace wasn’t open for tours today, but I got to see it from the outside and check out the grounds, which included several varieties of beautiful trees, including some banyan trees.

Then I saw the outside of Ali’iolani Hale, which housed the Hawaiian kingdom’s legislature and supreme court, and the statue of King Kamehameha.

That was it for today’s Honolulu adventure!

I finally went surfing! April 13, 2008

Saturday morning I got up bright and early for an 8:30AM surf lesson at Waikiki. It was great – by the end I was catching waves that were 3-4 feet from the trough to the top (with coaching, but without getting a push) and riding them for hundreds of feet. That was super fun, and I’m definitely going to do it again. – as soon as I’m not sore anymore!

I took the lesson from Faith Surf School, which is a family-run operation. The couple that runs it have 5 kids 10-16 years old, and all of them are sponsored surfers. My lesson was from the mom, Tammy. I think it was a really great lesson, with a lot of focus on safety and on learning to do things the right way. Plus I really liked Tammy! I highly recommend them.

The lesson consisted of about 15 minutes of on-land instruction, 15 minutes of getting boards and carrying them to the beach and 2 hours in the water. There were a lot of good waves, and 2 hours in the water was the limit of what my out-of-shape body could handle. Today (the morning after) I am super sore! All the muscles in my upper body are sore from paddling, and I have board rash on both knees and the tops of my toes. My ribs feel kind of bruised too – between them and my knees I couldn’t sleep on my stomach last night. But it was worth it.

Trash woes in Hawaii April 12, 2008

Given that Oahu has limited space (being and island and all) and nearly 900,000 residents, 100,000 military personnel, and over 100,000 tourists on any given day, you would think that Honolulu would try to minimize the waste going to landfills. Somehow, that doesn’t seem to be a concern, and given that I’ve been conditioned to living in urban areas that try to minimize waste to landfills, I’ve been feeling very guilty about the stuff I’ve been putting in the trash.

First, it is extremely hard to recycle. There is no city-sponsored recycling, so people and businesses have to pay a private company to pick up their recyclables or bring them to a community recycling center if they choose to do so, while trash pickup is free, which seems to completely discourage recycling. There is a deposit on plastic and glass bottles, so some people have set up recycling boxes to raise money for their favorite school or club, but other than that, I haven’t seen a single recycling bin. At the house where I’m renting the room, glass, plastic, cans, and paper all go in the trash, and that seems to be the norm. I couldn’t even recycle a glass bottle at Starbucks!

Second, no one seems to care about giving people unnecessary non-biodegradable disposables. At work we generally get take-out food for lunch, and a lot of it comes in unnecessarily bulky packaging. We got ramen noodle soup for lunch yesterday, and they give you the noodles and vegetables in a separate container from the broth, so you get two large styrofoam containers instead of one, but once you get to where you’re eating, you combine them into one bowl. Why do there need to be two bowls? The worst example of all was at the UH baseball game on Thursday. They gave me my hotdog and french fries (each in their own packages) on a 11″x17″ styrofoam tray. I checked – it wasn’t a corn-based biodegradable version. It was thick and stiff polystyrene foam, in a quanitity I haven’t seen since McDonalds was keeping the hot side hot and the cold side cold in the 80’s. I think they would stone you to death in San Francisco for serving food on trays like that. And I don’t think anyone who stoned you to death would be sent to jail by a jury of their peers. Seriously? A styrofoam tray? Why?

I checked the Hawaii Department of Environmental Services website, and they are starting to roll out curbside recycling this fall, and it should be available throughout the greater Honolulu area by May 2010. Maybe they’ll eventually outlaw polystyrene trays too…

I also learned that most of Oahu’s waste is converted to energy at H-POWER: Honolulu Program of Waste Energy Recovery. After separating out most of the metals, they incinerate the trash, reducing the volume by 90% and providing 7% of Oahu’s energy. Hawaii currently doesn’t ship any of its trash away from the islands. It still would be better to reduce waste, recycle, and compost, but at least they’re not just throwing all the trash in a landfill, or shipping it halfway across the world.

I made it to happy hour! April 11, 2008

No, I didn’t make it to the weekly San Francisco Happy Hour, but a couple of guys from work and I grabbed a few bottles of beer and went to the beach below Diamond Head to watch the sunset. We were drinking beer out of brown paper bags. Sweet.

After our “happy hour,” we went to the University of Hawaii baseball game – they won! Go Rainbows! Yes, their mascot is a rainbow. But as an alumni of two schools whose mascot is the color red (Big Red and Cardinal) I can’t really poke fun. They have Gordon Biersch garlic fries at the UH baseball games, just like at the Giants games… except (after getting my hopes way up) they were nowhere near as good. Oh well. It was a fun night anyway.

The “happy hour” on the beach was actually my second waterfront happy hour this week – on Tuesday a guy from work who is a member of the Outrigger Canoe Club took a couple of us to the half price happy hour there. It is a members-only kind of place – sort of like a yacht club, but for outrigger canoes. It’s a great spot for happy hour – waterfront drinking and dining at the Diamond Head end of Waikiki. Jake, my co-worker and the club member who was hosting, has promised to take me out on his outrigger canoe, anchor it, and freedive spearfish from it! I’m pretty excited to try that!

Last night Olga and Victor took me out to dinner at Nobu – high end Japanese fusion. It was all very good, but the Black Cod Saikyo Miso has to be one of the most rich and delicious pieces of fish I’ve ever had. Apparently they marinate it mirin, miso paste, and sugar for 3 days before they bake it. It was so luscious that it could have been dessert. Wow.

I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the rain will hold off for Saturday morning – I booked an 8:30AM surfing lesson. It’s a 2 1/2 hour lesson, with 2 hours in the water, so hopefully I will manage to catch a wave by myself before the lesson is over! I will keep you posted on that!

Work is going well – apparently the trade show our team was at early this week went as well as it possibly could have – everyone was impressed by the live demo and several key companies seem to be convinced that our technology is the real deal! The people who traveled got back from the trade show yesterday, and the work is already piling up today – there may not be any happy hours next week.

Weekend update April 7, 2008

This weekend I got a little time to relax and find my way around. On Friday I got the company car (now with all the required paperwork) to use, and my first few driving adventures have been successful, despite the windy roads with Hawaiian names. Go Chevy Cavalier!

Friday night I had dinner at Roy’s with Olga and Victor, some friends of theirs who are in Hawaii on vacation, and the kids. I’d actually never eaten at a Roy’s before, and really enjoyed my macadamia nut encrusted swordfish and the chocolate souffle.

Saturday I joined Olga and the kids visiting their friends at their time share in Ko Olina. It’s a 5-star resort with 4 man-made ocean lagoons that make for great ocean swimming, no matter what the surf is doing outside the rock walls. Ko Olina is on the sunniest side of the island, which was good, since it was raining in Honolulu again yesterday. I didn’t get to snorkel in the lagoons, but I had fun playing with the kids in the pool and on the beach. On the way back we stopped in Waimalu and I got to sample food from some local-favorite holes-in-the-wall: Crispy gau gee from Waimalu Chop Suey and malasadas from Leonard’s. Crispy gau gee are like fried wontons, but bigger and pillow-shaped, and with a lot more meat inside – apparently you can only get then in Hawaii Chinese restaurants. Malasadas are a Portuguese version of a doughnut – they remind me of Rhode Island’s doughboys, but in a more manageable size. They’re a little smaller than an American doughnut, and they don’t have a hole in the middle. Apparently Portuguese laborers from the Azores came to Hawaii in the late 1800’s to work on the plantations, and they brought malasadas with them. Yum. Crispy gau gees and malasadas do not make a very healthy dinner, though…

Today I did some errands – found the Best Buy, grocery store, pharmacy, etc. I also finally met my roommate! She seems very fun and outgoing, and very warm and friendly. I think she’s in her early 60’s, and she’s done a lot of stuff – flight attendant, advertising, interior designing, etc. We had lunch together, and had a great chat. I like her very-laid-back 14-year-old black lab too!

Panoramic View from the House April 4, 2008

Here’s a panoramic view from the house this morning. It’s kind of cloudy this morning. I’ll try to get one with clear blue skies at some point.

Panoramic View from Hana’s House

The skyscrapers to the left are Waikiki, and the skyscrapers to the right are downtown Honolulu. They are separated by the crater known as the Punchbowl, which has Hawaii’s national cemetery inside – it’s supposed to be a beautiful park.

I made it! April 3, 2008

I’m here! My flight was pretty uneventful, but it was completely full due to Aloha Airlines going out of business last week. I heard this morning that ATA also ceased operations, so I might be stranded in the middle of the Pacific Ocean for a while.

The house is at least as nice as it looked in the pictures – I think the view is even better. I’ll post a panoramic photo at some point. It’s very open-air; I told Scott that I feel like I’m camping, but with a comfortable bed, down comforter, and pillows. It is in a very lush area and I hear birds all the time. I woke up this morning to the sound of rain falling on plants and trees (I guess that’s how it stays so lush). I still haven’t met my housemate – she is at her home “in the country” – a waterfront property on the windward (east) side of the island. I’ll meet her when she returns on Sunday or Monday.

My first (half) day at work was good! They met me at the airport, gave me a lei, and had a Hawaiian food lunch waiting for me at the office. I was there for about 4 hours before leaving to come to the house. Now I know everyone who works at the company!

I’m Moving to Hawaii! March 31, 2008

I’m really excited to start my new job in Hawaii!
While I wasn’t looking to leave San Francisco, a very unique opportunity presented itself, and that opportunity requires me to temporarily relocate to Honolulu. I’ll be working at a Hawaii-based startup company that was started by my PhD thesis co-advisor and some of her colleagues a few months ago. The company is working to make a product out of the technology that I worked on for 6 years during my PhD project and she has worked on for a total of 10 years. Since I’ve invested so much time and effort in this technology already, I’m really excited to be a part of making it into a useful product that can help people! Also, because I have so much experience in this technology, I get to have significantly more strategic input and I get to have more of a leadership role than I could at another company at this point in my career. After a long period of deliberation, Scott and I decided the potential benefits from me taking this opportunity outweigh the sacrifice that we have to make, despite the inherent risk involved in working at a startup company.

I fly to Hawaii on Wednesday morning, April 2, and I’ll start work as soon as I land. For now I’ll be sharing a beautiful house in the hills above Honolulu with the woman who owns the house. The house is beautifully decorated, has a lot of outdoor space, and has beautiful views of Honolulu, Waikiki, the ocean, and the mountains – check out some pictures here. I’m not sure when my first trip back to San Francisco is, but I expect to be working from the Bay Area for about a week a month, and I’ll update this blog to let you know when I’ll be in which location. You can still reach me at the same cell phone number, e-mail address, and IM as you have in the past – I’ll just be 3 time zones further West when I’m in HI. Scott will continue to be based in San Francisco – we’re moving to a new apartment in the city in mid-April.

I’ll be updating this blog to let you all know how my life is going in Hawaii – working at the startup, learning to surf, hiking, snorkeling, diving, and exploring a new city (assuming I’m not spending all my time working at the startup). Check back often for updates! Let me know if your travels bring you to Hawaii!