Oahu: Dolphins

Having arranged for a shark encounter for Tigana, Mary cast around for an equivalent experience for Kasia. (Four year olds were not allowed on shark encounter, and she wouldn't have been able to snorkel anyway.) Thus, the dolphin encounter at Sea Life Park, an hour bus ride from Waikiki. I wasn't sure how Kasia would react, but she positively glowed for the whole time. It was pretty cool! And we learned that dolphins shed their skin seven times a day, to keep their skin hydrated and free from parasites etc. Consequently, their skins are incredibly soft -- "like butter", Mary says.

Honolulu

Spent the day at the beach with another family attending the conference (The Basils). As former residences of Honolulu, they were able to recommend the best resturants, and we shared a superb Thai supper at one of their favorites.

I liked the bike racks available on Honolulu streets -- Kasia is climbing this one. (Note that I was using a new camera and hadn't figured out how to set the date stamp properly. Not sure why it thought it was August.)

And still had trouble with concept of hotel lobby without walls...birds flying through overhead...

Oahu: Penguins

For weeks prior to the trip, Mary had promised Tigana and Kasia the opportunity to see the Penguins in Hawaii, in reference to the movie Surf’s Up, at which I would invariably protest that there were no penguins in Hawaii, that they lived in Antarctica, and that their mom was pulling their leg. Mom would then argue back with the usual, “who you going to believe, me or Dad?” shtick, to the bemused amusement of all involved. At Turtle Bay, Mary presented the kids with two toy penguins to further confuse the issue, implying that these were the promised penguins.


Of course, the setup was based on Mary’s Internet research that the Hilton Hawaiian Village had a colony of penguins within its grounds. Thus, we conspired to find out where the penguins were located and to maneuver the kids to the compound at feeding time. It worked great (see photo of Tigana’s reaction.)

Turns out that only two species of penguins actually live at the south pole, and the others live in South Africa and South American and so on, though they are not of course native to Hawaii.

Oahu: Sharks

Tigana has long been fascinated by sharks, buying and reading every book available on the topic. Her interest in shark conservation was greatly heightened by seeing Shark Water, a documentary she highly recommends to anyone who will listen. So when Mary realized that there was an opportunity to see sharks in Hawaii, she arranged for Tigana to go on a shark encounter. Tigana and mom took a boat out to a spot in international waters at 6AM (when waters are supposedly calmest and sightings the best, but a voyage Mary describes as rollercoaster-like) where the boat lowered a shark cage and everyone doned snorkels and climbed in. Then the guys on the boat throw out fish for bait, and approximately 60 sandbar and galapagos sharks showed up, swimming right up to and banging into the shark cage.

Mary and Tigana going into shark cage somewhere off the northern coast of Oahu.

Tigana in shark cage as shark swims by.

A few of the 60 or so sharks that swarmed round the cage.

Waikiki

Transferred from Turtle Bay Resort to Waikiki. Repacking turned out to be problematic, as I tried to cram everything hurriedly back into our suitcases we had spent weeks scientifically packing before the trip, plus all the extra stuff we bought here (inexpensive beach towels, beach mats, etc., all of which seemed to be quite bulky). Ended up buying a cheap extra suitcase at WalMart, since we will have to check our baggage on the way back again anyway. Found our way to the Waikiki with only minor detours (suspected we might be off course when armed guards waved us down and asked us for ID before proceeding – but they seemed familiar with the concept of idiot tourists, and got us headed in the right direction again without too much hassle.)


Once settled in on the 34th floor of one of the towers of the Hilton Hawaiian village, we went down to the beach. I was greatly surprised that the beach wasn’t more crowded. I had always assumed that hotel beachfront at these resorts were a cheek by jowl kind of set up, but that wasn’t the case at all. There were certainly people about, but it was a lot easier finding a nice spot for ourselves here than on, say, the beach at Park Lake just outside of Lethbridge, and believe me, the ocean at Waikiki is a hell of a lot more impressive than our local lake.

Turtle Bay Resort, Oahu

After a day at Polynesian Cultural Center, took the day off for just swimming on the beach. Here Kasia tries out swimming with Mom. Tigana also tried snorkeling for the first time, and using a boogie board.

Tigana and I watched the sunset on the beach while a short distance away, a group of tourists were an annoying distraction with their flash cameras. At first I thought they were stupidly trying to use their flash to illuminate the entire beach as the sun set, but as we watched more closely we realized that they were in fact taking pictures of each other on sitting on a bench. Tigana and I were astounded that they shot picture after picture of each other against the blank wall of the hotel. The resulting pictures could have been from anywhere -- a bench and a blank white wall -- while facing the other direction was picture postcard Hawaii. What are we missing here? You travel halfway around the world to NOT take your picture on the beach? Very very odd.

 

 

 

 

 

Kids met Santa at a surfer
beach in North Oahu...the local community had just won a long campaign to preserve the shore district from further development and were celebrating with a Santa parade.

Oahu: Kasia

Giving Kasia her own digital camera for her birthday, just prior to the trip, has proved another brilliant move on Mary’s part. Not only has having her own tiny camera meant that she has not demanded to borrow ours – with all the missed shots, fingers over lenses, and ‘where did you put the camera?” issues that would entail --it has provided us with key insights into Kasia’s experience of the trip. We get that scenery and museums and the like may not hold the same appeal for a four year old as for the rest of us, but it wasn’t until I saw her pictures that I fully realized that a Kasia-eye view of Hawaii is very different. Here we seen Kasia’s view of our scenic car trip to North Ohun and our walking tour through the Polonesnian Cultural Center. Suddenly, we see why these may not be as engaging for her!
a Kasia-eye view of Oahu


Still, Kasia has held up amazingly well, partly because Mary has built in enough breaks so that we don’t burn the kids or ourselves out, and partly because Kasia seems to love it here. She has repeatedly asked why we can’t move here. When I asked her why, she answered “Because it is always summer here.” Can’t argue with that!

Polynesian Cultural Center, Oahu

We arrived at the center shortly after it opened, found our way to the right line up for our pre-booked tour. We were expecting the tour guide to escort us around on a 45-minute or hour-long overview of the facility, and then let us take in particular exhibits at our leisure as our inclinations and the kid’s patience allowed. But it turned out our small tour group (less then ten people per group) stayed together for the next six hours! The guide made sure we reached each exhibit at the precise moment the demonstrations for that exhibit were scheduled, got us seated in the best seats, and on several occasions, got us involved up on stage. At the conclusion of the six-hour tour, we were deposited at an excellent dinning room for– supper and then a two-hour show. It was a pretty sweet deal.

I was constantly impressed by the scale of the facility, it’s very high staffing ratios, and the overall quality. Every exhibit seemed to involve at least half a dozen dancers or warriors or drummers or whatever, and often much larger casts, and every “island” had its own shops, interpreters etc.

The shows were often very good, my favorite being the Samoan, a one-man show by the muscular gentleman shown here who was very funny as well as informative. He demonstrated how islanders made fire (in about 4 seconds compared to the “two weeks” or “never managed it” typical of North Americans in the Survivor series) and how to crack open and milk a coconut; a younger assistant demonstrated how to retrieve a coconut from the tree. All accompanied by a very funny running dialog. Great stuff!

I did, after six hours or so, grow a bit bored with yet another set of island dancers. Although not wishing to denigrate the importance of dancing in Polynesian cultures, there is more to a culture than dancing and drumming, and I would have liked to have seen more information on other aspects of the culture. There were, to be fair, some printed displays here and there that I was unable to access as the tour moved to the next exhibit, and one or two of the interpreters did mention other aspects in passing, but the visual appeal of the dances make them just too easy to emphasize. It’s what the Decore Report labeled ‘the dancing minority trick’ in its analysis of Alberta Social Studies materials, complaining that showing a minority member in traditional clothing and dancing is the easiest visual to add to a textbook, but it has the unfortunate cumulative effect of convincing Grade 6 students that all minorities are defined by weird clothes and dances, and when you come right down to it, why bother preserving those. The subtler and more profound cultural differences concerning, say, the nature of time, the different conceptions of ‘family’ or ‘honor’ or ‘property’ tend to get short shift in such treatments.

 

That one cravat notwithstanding, the day was a huge success. To our great surprise, it maintained even four-year-old Kasia’s interest throughout, her only falling asleep briefly during the evening dance extravaganza, but even there, coming awake again for the astounding and (slapstick funny) fire knife dances. We were on site for almost 11 straight hours, and thoroughly enjoyed every moment.


Highlights included the Marquise display at which I got to participate in a mock wild boar hunt to prove my worthiness to marry Mary; the tribal dances of the Aotearoa (New Zealand); and the very lavish Broadway scale evening show (I counted at least 60 performers on stage at any one time).




So, I’d have to say, I would highly recommend the Ambassador package to anyone able to travel to north Oahu.

Oahu: Turtle Bay Resort

4 AM and we get up and carefully examine Kasia. No new pox! We get to go!

We then have a short flight to Vancouver, a not too awful rush to collect luggage, negotiate American immigration and customs, and catch our 8 AM flight to Honolulu. The scheduling was a bit tight, but Mary had researched the turn around extensively -- the percentage of on-time arrivals, the average time through customs, etc., and determined that rushing a bit here was the better option of that or waiting around the Vancouver airport for an additional four hours trying to entertain a four year old. The flight to Honolulu was uneventful, if long (longer for Mary who had to wrangle the kids -- I offered to switch off with her, but Kasia insists on being with Mom, and the seats are three and one, so, the best I can do is try to entertain Tigana from across the isle). The plane hit some air pockets which caused the adults to gasp a few times, but Kasia and Tigana are going, "whee!" and "Again! Do it again!" so not exactly traumatic.

We arrive at Honolulu in the pouring, and I am surprised to find that it is raining inside parts of the airport because although there is a ceiling, there are often no walls. I have a difficult time taking in the concept of a climate where walls are redundant, and wonder momentarily how they deal with it in the winter, and then I remember that this is is winter. The other thing that strikes me at once is the number of individuals in uniform. Of course, Hawaii is an important naval and air force base (actually, a whole bunch of bases, judging by the road maps) but I did get the sense that American society is much more highly militarized in comparison to our own.

We rented a car and drove to the north shore of Oahu, and the third thing we noticed is how polite the drivers were on the roads -- as nice as drivers in Halifax. People would let you in, or give you the wave if you let them in. You don't always even get that in Calgary any more.

We stopped at a little beach on the north shore in the rain to give the kids their first run through the sand, and to watch these enormous breakers crash into the shore. The surfing championships were being held that week along that shore because this is the season for the most impressive waves. Then back into the car and on our way to the Turtle Bay Resort (with lunch en route at my first ever Jack-in-the-box restaurant.)

The resort was great, we got a great room with an ocean view, and took the kids down to the beach. Turtle Bay, particularly in the rain, reminded me strongly of Tofino, only, you know -- warm. We had an early and excellent super at the adjoining Ola restaurant where I had the house specialty (a salom dish) with sea asparagus which I had never heard of before but which is amazingly good. Mary also notes that they made the best Mai Tai ever. The kids surprised us by behaving extremely well throughout supper, especially considering the jet lag, how excited they were, and how long and tiring a day it had been. So, after supper, it was off to bed for all.

Hawaii Conference and Vacation

Having had a paper accepted at the Cross Cultural Research Conference in Hawaii, and it being our 10th anniversary December 16th, we decided to add a few extra days onto our business trip to enjoy a vacation. As Mary started planning, she suggested drawing a clear line between business and pleasure by moving to a second island for the vacation portion of our trip. Unfortunately, her original plan for us to take the Superferry to another island fell through because the Superferry was suspended pending environmental impact studies, so Mary started casting about for alternative transport. What she found in the end was a deal on a inter-island cruise, which offered the advantages of a single "hotel" while visiting all the islands rather than having to choose one.

Mary then spent every free moment planning our trip down to the smallest detail. I was astounded at how much information was available online, including live blogs from passengers currently taking the same cruise, to an excellent blog by one of the junior waiters, to web cam images of the actual cabin we would be in; reviews in-depth of very excursion available on every island; and more restaurant reviews than Alberta has restaurants. Preoccupied with NaNoWriMo, and frankly useless at this sort of planning anyway, I left everything to Mary. I realize that this was a totally unfair burden to place on her, especially given all the other pressures on her from work and family just now, but she is just so amazing at this stuff that it is the only logical division of labour. Any time I've attempted to arrange anything, I always forget a hundred details -- like booking passage for the kids or making sure our connecting flight doesn't leave an hour before our initial flight is due to land. Stuff like that. So ten year's experience has dictated that Mary does the planning, and I try to contribute in other ways...

Such as holding her hand and remaining optimistic as everything begins to unravel. After two months of planning, we arrived at Kasia's preschool a couple of days before we are due to depart on our vacation of a lifetime to find a notice on the door that there had been chicken pox in the school. I turn Kasia around and whisk her home for the day, but it is too late: We find two clear pox marks on her chest. Off to the doctor's the next morning to have Kasia checked out.

Mary, convinced that we will have to cancel the whole trip, or at least the first half, awaits the doctor's verdict. Fortunately, we have had Kasia innoculated against chicken pox (given the very terrible experience Tigana had with the disease six years earlier) so the doctor's view is that although Kasia does have the chicken pox, that it is a very mild case, and that it has probably already run its course, such that Kasia is no longer contagious. The test, he tells us, is whether there are any additional pox that show up today, in which case she is still contagious and travel is off, or whether she remains with just the two crusted over existing pox, in which case we should consider ourselves free to travel.

Mary is convinced that we should start rebooking everything, but I have faith that the gods would not have set us up that way (too cruel to Mary, who really, really needs this vacation) and insist on our driving up to Calgary where we stay at the Delta airport hotel awaiting our 6AM flight. It is a long, nervous night.

Handbook of Arts in Qualitative Research

The Handbook of Arts in Qualitative Research: Perspectives, Methodologies, Examples and Issues (Sage Publications, 2007, $130, ISBN 971412905312) is out at long last. I contributed Chapter 26 on blogs. Nice to see it in print.

Santa

Tigana and Kasia with Santa, Dec 1, 2007

Day 30

Well, I finished today at 56,501 words. Unfortunately, due to timezone error, the wordcounter stopped counting my words at 11PM instead of midnight, so my chart is a little under the actual total, though that's okay. The official number is still good!

And I'm almost exactly half-way through the novel, the heroes have finally solved the first of three major mysteries, and I have stopped at a good point to pick the story up again when next I have time.

A very positive experience. But now time for me to go to bed.

Day 29

I won! Okay, along with thousands of others, so it is not a competitive win, but WooHoo!

Now, I just have to keep plugging away until I finish the actual novel. I seem to be about half way through the outline, which sounds about right: first draft is likely 100,000, then up from there as I add bit more description etc, then down as I cut redundant scenes etc. -- first novels pretty much have to be under 100,000 to sell. I'll spend today and tomorrow still writing, having budgeted November to this task, but then I will have to go back to real life. Specifically I promised to spend the first couple of days of December cleaning house, then there is a long vacation with family, then the new year and a ton of research work waiting. But I will try to squeeze in some novelling time too. I do not wish to lose momentum on this novel, and I have at least 12 more in the files awaiting similar treatment. Well, time will tell.

Big thank you to Line Noise for comments and encouragement throughout the process (I've based about half the character of Crane on him as a result); to M.D. Benoit for giving me the final push to go for NaNoWriMo this year; and above all to my wife for putting up with it while I abandoned other responsibilities to take this on.

My wife has mentioned several times this month that she can't remember seeing me so engaged and happy before. And I'm a guy who loves his day job... Still, Dave Duncan was exactly my age when he quit his day job to write, and he's now up to, what, 42 published novels? Makes a person think!

Day 28

At 49,742 when I called it quits tonight...just over 250 words to go and two days, so feeling pretty confident I'll make the minimum quota.

Quit because it was bedtime, and one important lesson I have confirmed through this exercise is the importance of stopping mid-idea.

In the past, I would make the mistake of working for as long as the words were pouring out, fearful that if I turned off the faucett when it was running, it might be a long time before I could get it turned back on. So I'd keep working as long as it kept coming. correspondingly, if I'd get to a tough patch, I would take a break, rather than continue to spin my wheels until despondancy set in. But the inevitable result of this combination would be that whenever I went to start on the next day's work, I come back to a problem area. I'd have finished up whatever was working for me, and had either to start the next section from scratch -- so I'd spend hours staring at the blank page wondering how to begin and what to put next -- or be stuck facing the same problem that had defeated me the night before. Demoralization, procastination and angst were therefore the constants of this process.

In contrast, I have learned (it may have been Candas Jane Dorsey who first suggested this to me, but can't be sure) that if you stop at some arbitrary deadline (dinner time, bedtime, kids story time, etc.) in the middle of a sentence you really really want to finish, that it's driving you crazy you didn't get a chance to put down before you forget it, then what happens is that when you do eventually get back to the page, you start by furiously writing down all that pent up stuff you didn't have a chance to get out last time. So you hit the page running, as it were. So in contrast with the procastination that plagued my thesis and dissertations, I found more recent writing (and particularly the current experience with NaNoWriMo) one of hardly being able to wait to get back to it. Instead of constantly facing problems when I start each day, I start the day with momemtum working for me rather than against me. It is sooo simple a principle!

As a result, I really only had one day with a very minor writer's block. hardly even worth mentioning. A very great contrast to my previous experiences!