vacation no more

so. i'm home. i guess i really won't step foot in snow! here's my story in 20 steps:

1. get to the airport slighty after 8am, for our flight at 10am. our flight was with alaska airlines, flying to boise, idaho with a 25 minute layover before flying to bozeman airport in montana.

2. board airplane at a little before 10am. pretty small plane, two seats on each side, and plane actually had propellers like those old-school planes. a little scary.

3. sit on plane for ~45 minutes. captain tells the passengers that they need to shut off all power/engine to the plane to reset since their computers aren't working properly.

4. sit in an extremely stuffy plane for 20 minutes while they shut all power off to the plane.

5. finally tell us that we need to deplane, the restart of the plane was not successful and they'd have to fly in a part from portland.

6. we were obviously going to miss our connecting flight and there were no other flights to bozeman. all other possible routes to bozeman out of sj, sfo, oak, and through other cities were completely booked. no flights from boise to bozeman on saturdays.

7. about to cancel everything, but a very nice alaska airlines employee spent like an hour trying to get us to our destination. we ended up with rooms in doubletree hotel in boise for tonight, a flight from boise to idaho falls saturday morning, and a driver to pick us up from idaho falls instead. and $150 in food vouchers. (not including the $24/person in food vouchers we had gotten for sj airport throughout the day. unfortunately, we were in terminal C, so we had $24 to spend at our choice of: burger king, togos, and mr. jalapeno) we cancelled our hotel in yellowstone for tonight, extended our trip by a day, and reschedule all our satuday activities for monday.

8. part arrives at around 2:30, maintenance works on the plane.

9. 4pm, when we were supposed to board, get another announcement that plane still isn't working

10. 4:30pm, get an annoucnement that the plane won't work. need to fly another plane in from portland, which will arrive at 8pm, and we would depart at 8:30pm.

11. WHY DIDN'T THEY DO THIS IN THE FIRST PLACE?!

12. sit around... for TWELVE HOURS with every other passenger on our flight (full flight). some passengers had actually come from LA, with a layover in SJ, so had been up and travelling since earlier than 5am.

13. plane from portland arrives. board plane a little before 8:30pm.

14. sit on plane again for another ~30 minutes. finally get an annoucement from the crew saying that they didn't know they were flying to boise, they got rerouted, they're working on paperwork. they also need to add more fuel to the plane because the weather conditions are getting worse and they may not be able to land right away. and there's a chance they may not be able to land in boise, but may have to land in some other surrounding airport.

15. huge, huge collective groans from all passengers because of all the hell they've been put through today.

16. sit on plane for another 15 minutes. my mom starts to feel really sick. two passengers get off flight. we eventually follow suit and end up getting off.

17. collect our baggage, cancel everything. hotel, flights, vacation, all of it. get refunded on tickets. need to go through alaska customer care to have them reimburse us for all cancellation fees. i checked, the plane finally departed at 9:45pm. that's 11 hours and 45 minutes later than scheduled. and the super irritating part is that NONE of it was due to weather, it was all completely alaska airline's fault. this is definitely the worst travel experience i've ever had. weather is not controllable, but this totally was.

18. i spent two hours on a plane, only to arrive nowhere. got home about 20 minutes ago, 14 hours later.

19. and now i have 10 days of vacation with nothing planned.

20. someone please play with me!

let it snow

i never thought i'd be setting foot in snow again, especially three weeks before my next knee surgery, but i'm off to yellowstone tomorrow morning with my family. although i tried hard to convince my dad to go to japan (that would have been awesome, my dad went to HS & college in japan, my oldest bro spent several years in japan, and a lot of my dad's side of the family is in japan, so they know the area well and speak japanese fluently) he instead booked a family trip to yellowstone (not enough time for a trip to japan). wish me luck with my arch-nemesis! hope i come back with two ACLs. (don't worry, not skiing!)

But the angel said to them, "Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord." -Luke 2:10-11

Happy birthday to Jesus, and Merry Christmas to everyone!

Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying,
"Glory to God in the highest,
and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests." -Luke 2:13-14

Glory to God in the highest!

45

guess what that number means.

and i've been freed from being a pervert! no longer blocked from blogger at work.

and happy birthday yesterday to this goober who also likes to say "pooper scoopers."

well, 1/2 of our comcast now works. internet is back up, but our cable box still doesn't work. :( click here to read my latest post.

sick x2

how is it possible that less than a week after i recover from my original sickness, i get sick again? this is especially odd considering i hadn't gotten sick (besides regular old allergies) in over two years. it's the same thing all over again, but not quite the symptoms i usually have from a normal cold (have a lot more congestion and more uncontrollable hacking). well, i'm glad that i got none of the hawaii people sick (hopefully not?), which is amazing considering we shared all kinds of foods, plates, forks, cups, etc the whole week.

by the way, i love heroes! too bad all shows (at least the ones i watch) are on break until jan or feb. but that gives you plenty of time to catch up - all heroes episodes are on nbc's website. hiro is my favorite character - what a crack up. and if you think claire the cheerleader looks familiar, she was the little girl (coach's daughter) in remember the titans. the one who wouldn't play with barbies.

i don't know what i'm going to do when 24 is back on - 24 and heroes are on at the same time. darn.

okay... time to go to bed & pray my nyquil kicks in soon...

pat on the back

guess what i did on friday...

thanks to o & jono, i finally watched star wars!!! and even better, i watched episodes 4, 5, and 6 all in one sitting! and even better, i only fell asleep for part of the ending in episode 4, and well, um, most of the ewok/fighting scenes in episode 6. congratulate me!

who knew ewoks had names, but according to bob, the name of my favorite ewok is wicket warwick. so cute... all short & tubby. but this was my first time watching all three (i think i watched episode 4 once back in the avalon days, but fell asleep for 4/5 of it.)

and finally, here is our complete lost tour. our pics vs. the screen shots from lost.

kate robbing bank scene:

screenshot from show

plane crash

screenshots from show

mr. eko's nigerian air strip

screenshot from show

shrimp shack where sawyer killed "sawyer"


screenshot from show

waterfall where kate finds the suitcase with the plane in it


screenshot from show


the Lost set & beach



screenshots from show

okay... that's it. we saw a lot more in the Lost set, but we obviously got no shots of them unless we wanted the guard to call the police on us. we may have gotten some video/pics of the set when we flew above them with the hang glider... we'll see. we saw some other places, but didn't get shots of them. (the canal where jin & sun met - we drove by that everyday. the gas station in sawyer's con flashback, eko's church (we may have gotten a shot or video of that in our hang gliding videos/pics) & we walked by several spots where they've previously filmed without even knowing they filmed there.) seriously, just travel anywhere around north shore of oahu, and you're bound to come across a bunch of places.

okay... no more pics for a while. i think my blog is pictured-out.

and congrats to sanj & gabe on their new baby! wow. sanj. a mom! :)

back from paradise

we're back! this will probably be a long recap, so beware!

things we learned on this trip:
-Hawaiian names are really hard to pronounce. we had plenty of laughs in the car listening to people attempting to pronounce them.
-we are cheap asians. our hotel had free valet parking - all other hotels don't even have free self-park. we were too cheap to tip $1 to the guy, so we tried to self-park ourselves. let's just say we embarrassed ourselves and valet parked every time after that.
-God must have been teaching us how to be flexible, because there were tons of things that did not go as planned, and we constantly had to switch around our schedule.

highlights:
-hang gliding. my guide book had suggested to try powered hang gliding (think a hang glider holding up a dune buggie with a propeller & engine) instead of regular hang gliding, so we did. this was the biggest highlight for me, and a great way to end the trip. it was awesome, just like flying like a bird. we got a video and a few pics between all of us, so when those are available, i'll post them. also got to fly over several LOST filming locations.
-which is a perfect lead-in to visiting various Lost sets & locations. call us geeky, but it was really cool! we actually found one of their actual sets - the set on the beach where all the individual tents are, and the outdoors food pantry with all the dharma cans, etc. they weren't filming that day, but they always have one person standing guard there, and so we were not allowed to take pictures. i got one from far away, which i'll post below. it was seriously this little set in the middle of this totally deserted empty beach. we also saw the bank that kate robbed (in a flashback), the waterfall where she found her suitcase on the island, and eko's brother's church. the hang gliding hangar was actually where they filmed the scene where eko & his brother were on the nigerian airstrip where his brother got shot. the pilots told us that they actually would time their filming around the take off & landings of the planes & hang gliders that shared that runway. it was also right across the street from the beach where they filmed the original crash scene, and they actually stored all the plane props & bits on an empty lot right by the hangar, so we got to see that too. pretty cool.
-finding a random beach on north shore and floating in the ocean, playing in huge waves for hours. the water is sooooo warm. all of us ate it pretty badly at least once, if not five or more times. the waves were huge and if we didn't swim into it in time, it would slam us onto the sand and the undercurrent would suck us back in. but it was still so much fun.
-all the FOOD. it was the one thing that did not fail us, and we got to eat at every restaurant we planned. YUM!

lowlights:
only one for me. being sick the entire trip. i didn't get a full night's sleep a single night there, even after taking nyquil. and now i have come home with mucus so thick in my chest that i can barely talk.

anyway... on to pictures! as a warning, i'm going to post a lot of pics... chris has also taken all of our pics and uploaded them onto his smugmug, so you can see everyone's there. they are kind of out of order, though. i have also uploaded my pics on my smugmug as well.

by the way, if you're wondering why mike isn't in most of these pics, it's because we got into a big fight with him and left him on the side of the road to fend for himself for the week. okay, fine. he spent more than half the trip getting certified for scuba, so he wasn't with us for a lot of our outings. and many thanks to bob who drove the entire trip (after returning the rental, we discovered we drove 510 miles!) and jeff for navigating everywhere & cooking us scrumptious breakfast every morning.

scenery pics:

views from our suite/balcony






living room of our suite

from pali lookout


random other scenic pictures











beach pics:

swimming in the ocean


this one couple took both their dogs out to the ocean. the dogs seemed to love it, even the little one




chris, bob, and jeff attempting to beat the wave


jeff & chris trying to get out of the ocean before the undercurrent of this huge wave sucked them back in.


bob trying to beat a HUGE wave behind him that probably would have knocked him over. see him run for his life.


this is to show how huge the waves were. this is a tall, buff man, standing. see how high the waves are above his head!



food pics:

friday late lunch - duke's




saturday lunch: ono hawaiian foods, this small hole-in-the-wall restaurant




saturday dinner, based on suggestion from arex. makino chaya, an all-you-can-eat buffet, with certain items that you order off the menu (which was also all-you-can-eat)











sunday lunch: romy's shrimp shack - didn't even have the name on the shack, we found it by looking at surrounding addresses. but it's one of the few shrimp places that actually grow & harvest their own shrimp. delicious.







we pulled over at some random fruit stand on north shore & bought some papaya.




sunday dinner: ezogiku ramen, a chain. it was okay. ramen was a little greasy, but it was in this wonderful location, a little asian strip-mall of restaurants. and we discovered a great grocery store from this - don quijote, which sold stuff much cheaper than the foodlands around.




monday morning: leonard's bakery for some yummy portugese doughnuts, malasadas.






we tried to go to rainbow-drive-in for lunch, but discovered it was closed for remodeling! they temporarily opened an express location elsewhere, but since we were right next to waiola, we decided to have a pre-lunch first. the shaved ice here is so fine that it tasted creamy when you put it into your mouth. this shaved ice was more asian-style (rather than sno-cone style) which i preferred.




we finally found rainbow drive-in express. another hole-in-the-wall local eatery - delicious plate lunches.




monday dinner: yanagi sushi. i randomly found this on yahoo, which got great user ratings. we had originally planned to go to a luau, but decided to axe the luau all-together, so this was a last minute decision. but a GREAT decision. food here was supberb. highly recommend it.




guess what the pinkish stuff is in the small bowl in the front center. poke here (back dish in the pic) was amazing.




tuesday lunch: kua'aina - fish sandwiches. very very fresh.




another mid-afternoon stop, this time at the other famous shaved-ice place, matsumoto's on north shore. this is more like the traiditional sno-cone. we got some pretty fancy flavors, including guava, lychee, mango, etc.




tuesday dinner: alan wong's. pricey, but a good meal to end the trip. most of us got the five-course tasting menu, and sandy got da bag, lamb, and the chocolate sampler.


our appetizer, nori-wrapped tempura ahi, and a chilled tomato soup with a foie gras & cheese sandwich


da bag


ginger-crusted onaga


butter-poached kona lobster on a shrimp & tofu cake


sandy's dish: macadamia nut-coconut crusted lamb chops


twice-cooked shortrib, grilled kalbi style


dessert duo: chocolate crunch & coconut tapioca with passionfruit sorbet


the chocolate sampler dessert





random others:

at pali lookout - the trail was closed, but someone told us that we could go anyway.


this was the beach where we thought the surfing competition was on. we slept instead, and then later watched a bunch of people boogie board (this is where the video in the previous post came from)


iolani palace from the outside, since it was closed


at pearl harbor


so... we were all supposed to salute. mike, um, almost heiled hitler.


so we tried take two. this time mike decided to be a fob.
















this is where the road ended on the west coast. after the white bumps is this really narrow dirt path.


getting a group shot by a friendly lady who had done the same thing as us.


in my flight suit - ready to go hang gliding right when the sun rose (they had two gliders, so in each one was the pilot & one of us. jeff & i got the first shift, at 6:45 am. gorgeous way to see a sunrise!)


jeff getting ready






sandy & chris took the second shift


bob & mike with the last shift. mike originally wasn't going to go up, but we came back so exuberant about our flight that he decided to go up at the last minute.





LOST pics:

i can't find the pics inside the bank that kate robbed, so i'll post that one later. this was on the way to the lost set. we were seriously on this little tiny residential street that had this little hidden path between two houses down to the beach.


the beach was totally deserted, but we saw this orange fence from far away and decided to check it out. good thing we did! this was after we checked out the set, which was the closest shot i could get of the set since the guard guy watched us the entire time. it's a pretty tiny set, but still so cool to see.


this is the same picture above, zoomed in. you can see on the edge is sawyer's little shack/hut thing.


the guard took this pic for us. he was on the other side of the orange fence, in the set.




this is actually a pretty touristy site, but is also where kate found the suitecase with her plane in it. you could actually swim here - sandy, jeff, and chris went in. i got this shot after all the tourists left the water since we got there near closing time.


yes, my "s" is backwards.


this was cool - seeing some of the props. this was next to our hang gliding hangar.








this was the shrimp shack where sawyer killed who he thought was the real sawyer before he found out he was set up & used.


phew! that was a lot of pics. and there are over a thousand more at chris' smugmug! yeah, we took a lot of pics. again, all of my pics are on my smugmug.

happy thanksgiving to everyone!