Okay, it has been a busy two days. Today was spent returning the rental car begining at 6:20 am. It took 20 minutes to drive to the airport, and 90 minutes or so to make it back to campus by 8:05 am. The rest of the day was busy with double classes, a quick lunch on campus, and then back to my room tonite to do work on a couple of projects as well as solving a small avalanche of email that has cropped up with a project from back home. Right now, at about 8pm my time, I have scrounged together dinner from groceries I had in my fridge: Hawaiian turkey salad (mayo, chunk turkey, scallions, raisins and pineapple), a banana, some canned pineapple and a diet coke. Dinner of champions!
As for yesterday, it was a bit of a fiasco that finally turned into a win. We left early: Lisa, Graham and myself to head to the Polynesian Centre on the north shore of the island. We drove over the mountain to Kane'ohe Bay via the Pali Highway through the mountains in the center of the island. We then drove up the Kamehameha Highway along the coast. At one point we stopped at the harbor at He'eia where we took pictures of the Black Pearl, the ship from the Pirates of the Caribbean films. They are filming PotC 4 here in Hawaii and the crew were prepping the ship. We didn't see anyone famous, but that ship was cool enough. While my camera only has it as distance, and I'll try to blow it up, Lisa had her camera with her and her zoom took decent pictures. When she gets back to the states, since she left her camera cord at home, she will send me pics and I will post them here. That turned out to be the high point of the morning.
After a very scenic drive to the Polynesian Cultural Center, it turned out that despite my guidebook, it was closed on Sundays. So we continued around the island, past Banzai Beach (where the huge waves are in the winter) back to the North Shore, and then back to Honolulu via Schofield Barracks. By this point Lisa was getting cranky, Graham was tired, and I wanted to do some sightseeing, but I caved to Lisa's demand to go to the beach. I drove her to Waikiki and then drove all the way back across Honolulu to Pearl Harbor. I finally reached PH around 1:30 pm. I got the last remaining ticket for the 2 pm boat to the Arizona Memorial, as well as buying a ticket to see the USS Missouri, where the peace treaty was signed with Japan in 1945. It was a good afternoon touring the memorial and the big battleship left the way it was after its 1980s refit and its service in the 1st Gulf War. Missile launchers, phalanx CIWS, and Harpoon launchers, along with the original 5" and 16" naval guns, were the only weaponry on the ship. All the 20mm, 40mm and machine guns were removed, including most of their gun mounts. As you can see from some of the pictures, early 1990s computers were still left in their offices, and one of the tour guides told me that they basically had the ship turned over to them in 1992, and while the computers were wiped, they were not removed. In fact, most of the weapons (except the missile launchers and Harpoon launchers) might even still be made active with some minor work. How safe they would be was a different matter.
I came back to campus around 5:00, tired, sweaty and exhausted. Lisa and Graham got dinner down in Waikiki and I did some work in the room. Around 8 we went to the grocery story for the last time (where I got a sandwich for dinner and the fixings for today's dinner) and then came back, watched some tv, did some work, and called it a night around 11.
Tomorrow we have the morning free, but I have to work on my project for Thursday/Friday's presentation. Then we have a lunch program, then are free around 1:30. I will probably head off to the Royal Palace in the afternoon, then back in time for the movie at 6:30. The rest of the week is a double lecture on Wednesday, lecture on Thursday morning, presentations Thursday afternoon and Friday morning, then a final dinner on Friday night.
Saturday morning I have to check out by 10, but I can't check in until 2 pm in my new residence for next week. Lisa and Graham are headed to a hotel in Waikiki for their last night in town, then they are leaving for the states on Sunday. I am sure I will repeat myself over the next few days, but it doesn't hurt, I think.
Anyway, I am going to post some pictures, probably in three chunks: pirate ship pictures, the Arizona memorial, and then the Mighty Mo.
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