A somewhat desperate and vain attempt to quiet the naysayers in my head
Sunday, December 31, 2006
Happy New Year to All!
I have been a bad blogger and slacked the last week or so. I apologize. I have been working a lot of overtime and have not felt creative or witty.
So 2007 is upon us. With John Edwards declaring his campaign for president a few days ago, it seems the race for the office of president has started almost two years prior to the election. For the next two years, we are going to be overloaded with radio ads, television ads, e-mails from campaign groups, and on and on. I am not ready for this yet. I was in Belgium for the last election and stayed up all night there watching election returns (vowing the entire time that I would not stay up and go to bed). The 24 hour news media truly has destroyed any semblance of normalcy. In the never ending quest for news to broadcast, we are bombarded with reports about barricaded subjects in Iowa, traffic accidents in Illinois, snow in Colorado, tsunamis in SriLanka, lost hikers in Oregon, and fog in London. In earlier times, we did not have the constant push for information that we have today. I would not have known, nor likely have cared if three hikers were lost on Mount Hood in Oregon because this type of story is not pertinent to my life. In a day and age when Comedy Central provides most Americans with their news, we can all agree that the process is broken and badly needs to be fixed. If we could return to the principles of less is more and quality over quantity, we would be in a much better place.
I have not seen any movies lately that I have fallen in love with. I saw Babel when I was in Hawaii. It was a good flick, but very much in the style of AmoresPerros (a Mexican film by the same director). I am a huge Cate Blanchett fan, but I would disagree that she deserves an Oscar for her role in this film. She writhes around in pain a lot, but we never get to see much about who she is. It is definitely worth seeing, but you can wait for the DVD. The Dixie Chicks documentary Shut Up and Sing was pretty good, but it was edited so you kept jumping back and forth between the present and the past. I believe it would have been more effective to edit it in chronological order, but the documentary shows the great musicians the girls really are. If you like the Dixie Chicks as musicians, then you will like the documentary. If you are not a big fan, then there is not much for you to see that you have not already seen.
I am late for work, but I wanted to post before the New Year. I hope everyone has a safe and terrific New Year...from Fremont to Fargo, from Hong Kong to Hoboken, from Santiago to Seattle, the best for you and yours in the coming year.
Hello and Merry Christmas to you all! I have been a bad blogger this week and slacked off; please forgive. I did not want to post without some of my Hawaii photos and they were all at home on my desktop. By the time I would have synched my laptop and tried to work on the entry at work, it was way too much effort. Hopefully this post finds all of you where you hope to be for the holidays.
I arrived in Honolulu last Friday around noon. I left a rainy, foggy, cool SFO airport and boarded a somewhat familiar United Boeing 777-200 for Honolulu International Airport. We landed 5 hours later to a gorgeous and breezy day in paradise. I made my way to my hotel and then crashed for a bit. I went out Friday night and bumped into friends I have known for years. Hawaii is such a small place, no matter where you go, it always seems that you know someone.
On Saturday, I walked over to Ala Moana Shopping Center and did some Christmas shopping for friends and such. One of my old managers from CPK in San Mateo is the GM of the Ala Moana restaurant. I chatted with him for a few minutes and caught up on gossip about friends and the company. I headed back to Waikiki and headed out again for a fun night out. There was a platoon of soldiers just back from Iraq, so they were partying pretty hard. It was fun to meet up with some of America's Finest.
Sunday morning, I headed out on a hike around Diamond Head close to the area where I lived back in the 90s. It proved to be a gorgeous day as always and here are some of the photos I took along the way.
Waikiki from Queens Beach. Always a beautiful site.
Looking up at the side of Diamond Head Crater from Diamond Head Road.
The view from Diamond Head Road. I used to live just around the point from the peninsula you see in the photo.
The view of the Ala Wai Canal from the Diamond Head side of Waikiki. BEAUTIFUL.
Sunday night, I caught up with one of my cousins who has been in Honolulu for the past couple of years. She cocktails at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel and reminds me a lot of who I was at her age. Hawaii is a great place to discover who you are because you are so removed from what you grew up with. There is no question that the islands have played a huge part in who I am today. She and I tore up the town for a few short hours. She stumbled home and then to work by 10 AM, I barely made it back to my hotel room, woke up the next day with an extraordinary hangover, and am proud of the fact that I did not vomit. A feat I was not so successful at in Japan when I was 20, right Mike? :) I rarely drink, so when I do consume too much, it is not a pretty site.
I rented a car for the rest of the day and tooled around the island checking out what has changed since I last was there. I definitely miss living in Hawaii, it does have a certain attraction. At the same point, you are so far removed from everything that I would feel somewhat stifled being there full-time at this point. Maybe some day, maybe. The island breezes always beckon me. I flew home on the red-eye arriving in San Francisco Tuesday morning to the cold and the fog once again. It was nice to arrive home to my own bed though. I believe the older you get, the better home feels.
This week, I have been working non-stop. I am having dinner with friends tonight to celebrate Christmas, but am then working most of the next couple of weeks. I am headed to Colombia in February and would like to get the Christmas presents paid off before I head out again.
I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas wherever you are and that Santa lays off the coal and brings you what you want this year.
I am coming off a busy few days off. I made a good dent in my shopping, got the majority of my Christmas cards written and mailed, and managed to meet up with a good number of friends along the way.
I leave for Honolulu on Friday, so I have been distracted the last few days. I am looking forward to getting away before Christmas. I have not been to Hawaii since this time last year and I have been missing it - my friends, the weather, trade winds, flowers, sailors, older couples in horrible matching Aloha wear, Asian tourists in stilettos arms full of Gucci and Prada bags, Zippy's chili, opakapaka, li hing mui, girls named Pua, geckos, and people that say Da Kine to name a few things.
I have been putting off doing laundry the last few weeks, so I had a huge pile to get done tonight. I had dinner early on with D, her husband J, and her parents who are here from Italy. They are delightful, just like D. They do not speak much English, so I babbled in Spanish and hoped they could understand a word I said here and there. We are all having Christmas Eve dinner together, so it will be fun to see them again. After I left their place, I headed over to the airport and met my friend E who had arrived from NY for a short layover. He has a new love and we compared notes on our Mexican novios.
As I left the hotel and headed home to tackle my long overdue pile of laundry, the rain came pouring down. I love the rain, it is such a beautiful site to behold. It is not just light rain tonight, it is a good solid determined rain storm, the kind that takes your breath away as you observe it. I decided to compose a poem about the view from my window which overlooks the parking lot of the supermarket in my complex.
In the black shimmering night Rain drops fall diligently against the metal roof So many, virtually silent alone, but an orchestra when together in numbers. Tears to drops, drops to trickles, trickles to streams, streams to flows, compounding the impact the water shall make on its long journey back to the sea.
Incandescent lights stake out their claim, pushing back the darkness which knows no bounds. The clock reads 4:45, but still I do not rest. People slumber all around me, rocked gently to sleep by the sound of the rain. I sit and stare, comforted by the stillness, the beauty, and the majesty that is the hour before dawn.
Lufthansa made a huge announcement in the airline world today, ordering 20 747-800 aircraft worth 5.5 billion US dollars in total.
Lufthansa has traditionally gone with Airbus aircraft as the German government is one of the major stakeholders in the company. Airbus has spent the past five years producing the A380, a double decker aircraft that will be the largest passenger plane in the world. Several years ago, it looked like Airbus was going to surpass Boeing as the world's biggest airline manufacturer. This is no longer the case. Boeing developed the newer, smaller, fuel efficient 787 and the plane is a hit, producing hundreds of orders to date. Meanwhile, Airbus has had some major snafus with the A380 (wiring issues are the largest concern) and is struggling to produce the aircraft it has orders for. Delivery for most of their customers has been pushed back at least a year if not longer. For airlines that were counting on these planes to add seats on high density markets, they are now scrambling to come up with alternate plans. No U.S. passenger airline ordered the A380. The major customers have been Emirates, which operates out of Dubai, Singapore Airlines, and the European flagship carriers (Lufthansa, British Airways, Air France) have ordered 10-20 of these planes respectively. Both Fedex and UPS placed orders for the cargo version of the aircraft, but Fedex recently cancelled their order stating they could not wait for the A380 and ordered 777 freighters from Boeing. Airbus will likely only produce about 200-300 A380s total and looks to lose about 15 to 20 billion dollars over the long haul if not more.
Up to this point, only cargo orders had been placed for 747-800 aircraft. Lufthansa's passenger plane order represents a solid airline willing to be the first one to jump in the pool, so to speak. More airlines will now follow and Boeing, it seems, cannot make a wrong move these days.
So I survived the land of no cell phone coverage and made it back in one piece. It is always good to see my folks and I also got to see my sister and her family who recently relocated to upstate NY.
Southwest worked out pretty well this trip. Long flights on a 737, but my laptop and Netflix made the time pass pretty well. We were slightly delayed on the way home out of Vegas, but in general they do a good job and have yet to lose one of my bags. I must say, checking your suitcase does make things a heck of a lot easier. It is a pain to wait when you land for your bag, but you do not have to lug it all over airports and fight for overhead space.
My parents are both Aquarians and never seemed to tire of moving and traveling in their younger years. These days, they still insist on racing around to attend all of their grandchildren's hockey games or first communions, but they have curtailed their longer trips. We have a family joke that my mother married my father to get away from the town she grew up in. Ironically, she and my dad have now moved back to the same area that they ran away from most of their lives. It is funny to see them there.
I came back Saturday night and went out with some friends. I have been working a lot lately and have not been out on a weekend night in a long time. Nothing changes in the Castro; same people, same bars, same crowds.
This week, I have been trying to get my holiday plans going. I must admit, I am behind and need to get going on shopping, Christmas cards, decorating, and the like. Hope you're all having a great week. It is nice to be home in the Golden State.
