Kauai

My birthday today, so feeling a bit old.

Mary gave me the morning off again as a birthday present, so I spent the morning writing while Mary took the kids to the beach. Writing on a balcony in Hawaii could quickly become addictive, and I started telling Mary she really should apply to the University of Hawaii -- and I'd just take early retirement and write.

We spent the afternoon aboard ship again at the pool, and I again had an afternoon of mixed terror and pride as Kasia taught herself how to swim.

Ate at Little Italy again with kids for my birthday dinner, and this time we had excellent service from Anthony the waiter (who was everything our previous waiter had not been). Then the kids wanted Kids Crew, leaving Mary and I to wander the deck, a nice birthday activity. We took in the singer, W. T. Greer, in the Pink Champaign Lounge, and he was so good Mary eventually fetched Tigana out of Kids Crew to hear him. Tigana was duly impressed when she requested a song (God Bless the child) and he was able to sing it without benefit of actually having the words or music to hand.

Cruise: towel animals

Like baloon animals, only made out of towels. The steward would leave these for us on the beds when he came to turn down the beds each evening. Unfortunately, the pictures of the early towel creatures were among those that I lost fooling with the camera settings. But here are a couple that I was able to retake.


Towel Elephant




Towel cool dog.

Cruise: Kona

Kona is a tender port, which means there is no dock,and you have to go ashore aboard the cruise ship's tenders –actually three of the powered lifeboats, each of which holds 60 people or so. Once again, our elevated status as residents of a suite meant that we got to skip the line-ups and board the tenders whenever, rather than wait for an assigned section. Ah the joys of being rich -- or at any rate, living like we were rich.


rear view of a tender mounted on the cruise ship as a lifeboat

We spent the morning shopping in the local artisan market, buying various knick knacks, etc., and wandering around the town.

The highlight was eating snow cones (I use the Canadian expression somewhat loosely, since they are in no way equivalent) at Scandicanian Shaved Ice. The 'small' size was the size of Kasia's head; the medium that Mary and I shared was roughly the size of a basketball. Each ball of shaved ice comes with three flavourings (from a choice of about 30 exotic flavours) and Kasia asked for 'rainbow' so the lady layered red, yellow and blue flavorings to produce a five color rainbow (e.g., blue + yellow = green); we ordered ours with chocolate Macademia nut ice cream in the center. These are unlike anything we have ever had before, and an obvious must have in any warm climate. Mary and I told the owner that they ought to franchise their invention (the ice machine etc) and she told us that they had made arrangements to franchise but the franchise organizers had insisted on their being in business at least one whole year before they went public -- so that they could have a 'year plan' laid out for the franchisees and to demonstrate that the theory actually worked, etc. Time's up in March, so if anyone is looking for a failsafe summer franchise....

Unfortunately, I accidently erased all the photos of the shaved ice, the tenders (I had some great close ups of the interior, operating instructions etc that I intended to work into my novel) and the local sights when I had some free time to experiment with the camera settings. Tigana was a tiny bit exasperated with me. "Dad, even I know you down load all the pictures before fiddling with the settings on a new camera, and I'm nine! Duh!" well, what can I say? But it was a very relaxed and enjoyable day.

Cruise: Maui: day two

breakfast on the balcony


We have breakfast in out on our balcony most mornings, brought by the butler. Well, we have to find something for the butler to do. And it cuts down the number of meals in restaurants we have to have with the kids. At age four, one restaurant meal a day is about the limit of Kasia's good behavior. So we have a good breakfast, some kind of snack around 1 or 2; then supper.

I have generally enjoyed the ship’s food, though I am lead to understand by more experienced cruisers that the food is not up to the usual standard, especially in the premium dinning rooms which require reservations and additional cover charges. I found they tended to fall down on some of the tiny details that distinguish five star restaurants. For example, I was twice handed menus where grease stains obscured portions of the page, which one wouldn’t expect in anything above a roadside diner; and the Italian restaurant provided quite poor service, screwing up the order (forgetting some items, bringing appetizers with the main course, bringing kids food after the adults; kids’ drinks appearing just in time for desert, etc.). Mary found the food in the premium dinning rooms a bit predictable, lacking complexity of five star dining.
the infamous espresso machine

Similarly, there are very minor problems with the suite. The chief annoyance for Mary is that her upgraded espresso machine doesn’t actually work – the first day it ground the beans and dispensed a fresh cup, but has refused to work ever since. A regular drip peculator that actually worked would have been better. I noticed that there was supposed to be a glass door between the toilet and the washbasin, though it’s absence is not a major issue since we just close the door to the bathroom.


Anyway, after breakfast, Kasia went to Kid's Crew, and Mary and Tigana went shopping in Maui, while I took the morning off staying on board to process pictures, blog, and so on.
Kid's Crew facility

Having spent the previous week with just us, Kasia has missed Montessori school and interaction with her peers and so has begged more time in KidsClub on board the cruise ship. Mary, ever the stragetic planner, anticipated this reaction and planned our trip to end on the cruise precisely so the kids would let us get a few evenings to ourselves. The 2 to 5 year old club seems to do a lot of very simple stuff that really engages the kids, such as dressing up as clowns (“circus night”) or superheros (“superhero night”) and then parading through the ship in costume. (The same procedure seems to work well with the 21-30 crowd who are similarly marched through the ship by their wranglers wearing Hawaiian shirts and shouting “pub crawl”.) When I had to pull Kasia out of KidsClub “bluesclues mystery morning” yesterday for our Whale Watching Cruise, she was quite put out.



In the afternoon, Tigana entered one of the cruise director's contests and won a medal for "best splash", beating a 150lb kid. There followed several hours of swimming, and in the evening Mary and I fed the kids, dropped them off (at their insistence) at Kid's Crew again, and ate a satisfactory dinner at the Lazy J steakhouse, another of the ships upcharge restaurants. This time the service was excellent, the steaks so-so -- but then, we're from Alberta, so it is hard to meet our standards for steak.

Ship's pool


The kids love swimming in the pools, a mixed blessing from my non-swimmer’s viewpoint. Kasia has taken to throwing herself off the edge and swimming lengths, a process somewhat complicated by the fact that she can’t actually swim. But she has made impressive progress in the last two weeks towards actual swimming, diving fearlessly to touch the bottom of the pool, then surfacing on her own for air, then going under to splash forward a couple of feet, then up for air, etc. until she has traversed the pool. She just needs occasionally to grasp some handy fixture (usually my conveniently placed arm) to pull herself up when she has miscalculated and needs to come up for air immediately, and I’m just not certain that she has realized that she can’t always count on something being there if Mary or I are not in the pool with her. I have endeavored not to allow her to see my constant state of terror during these activities, however, as I have no wish for her to inherit my paralyzing fear of water. But maybe a little common sense anxiety would be better than her fearless overconfidence?

in one of the ship's 4 hot tubs


Part of Kasia's problem, the Basils suggested, is that her earlier experiences with reflex anoxic seizures has taught her that if you stop breathing it is okay because you just start up again a couple of minutes later. That this does not actually apply under water may not have quite penetrated. I also worry when Kasia tries to throw herself off the side of the pool into the freezing water before I can get to the pool, since one of the triggers for RAS is sudden cold water on the face. (Though Kasia has been seizure-free for a couple of years now....but it's not the sort of thing you want to risk in a pool.)

Cruise: Maui: Whale Watching

Took Prince Kuhio Maui-Molokai whale watching tour. The tour shuttles arrived at the dock at the precise moment scheduled, and the rest of the trip was equally efficient. The crew appeared genuinely interested in both whales and our safety; the onboard concession was dirt cheap and so good Kasia ate two hotdog combos, an unheard of intake at a single sitting, and that after a good sized breakfast.

The tour started with an orientation by the company’s naturalist, Katie, who was superb! I learned more about humpbacks in that 15 minutes than from any PBS special, and somehow seeing the whale’s tail spread out before you in person has a lot more impact than seeing something on TV.


There were also two volunteers from the Whale Sanctuary on board to assist the naturalist, and they did a great job of floating around the boat answering questions as they occurred to us, as Katie provided intermittent commentary over the speaker system. Both of the volunteers were drawn to Tigana’s fanaticism regarding shark conservation, and consequently spent a disproportionate amount of the trip talking to my girls. (Most of the others on the boat seemed less interested in availing themselves of this resource, and entirely focused on getting pictures of the whales.)


We did see several whales, though I wasn’t able to get pictures. I saw the first whale’s tail climb out of the water, splash down, and then –sorry if this sounds a bit mystical – could feel the whale turn and swim by the boat, while everyone else looked off in the wrong direction. I kept wanting to watch where I “felt’ the whale’s presence, but the captain steered off in the opposite direction, until the whale was out of range – but I could feel here out there. It was very strange. That was followed by a couple of other really good sightings of whale pairs. A very successful outing, in my view.

The trip was slightly nerve wracking for me, though, as I was in charge of Kasia for the first half of the trip, and she kept insistinig on wandering around the ship leaning agains the much too short -- in my father’s-eye-view – railing. When the whales actually showed up, they caught her interest, and then she cuddled up to one of the sanctuary volunteers and fell asleep on her lap.

Cruise: Hilo: Anniversary

December 16th was our 10th Anniversary, so we dumped the kids in the "kid's Crew" babysitting for the evening, and had a quiet dinner for just the two of us. We chose La Bistro, one of the premier restaurants on the ship that require an upcharge, but although the food was decent --especially the French onion soup -- it could not compare with the meal at La Mer a few nights earlier. Or Roy's. Or the Thai restaurant. Okay, not really fair comparisons since we had chosen the Honolulu restaurants based on the Basil's recommendations and they were all top restaurants in their categories, but one expects cruise ships to be top too. I'd rate La Bistro as equivalent to what you'd find in a Westin Hotel, so good, but missing some of the finer details --e.g., crème brulee was not the correct temperature and therefore right consistency. But nevertheless, a nice romantic dinner, especially given that we were on a cruise in Hawaii.

Cruise: Hilo: Volcano National Park

Mary had booked a tour of Volcano National Park for our Hilo stop as a treat for me -- visiting a volcano has been a lifelong ambition of mine. She booked the tour through Roberts rather than the more expensive version through the Cruise line. Unfortunately, Roberts loaded about 8 other tour buses first, so our tour left 45 minutes late. Since the driver was still required to have everyone back at the ship on time, our time at each stop was very attenuated -- e.g., only 20 minutes at the Volcano museum which was just long enough to line up for the bathrooms, but not long enough to see any of the actual exhibits. It was extremely frustrating for a museum-loving guy like me. Similarly, the stop en route at the Manua Loa Macadamia nut factory was a bit of a bust because the factory was closed on Sundays, and there was not sufficient time allotted to take the self-tour (windows into the factory with video commentary in 6 languages), just time to shop in the gift shop for ice cream. Another minor annoyance is that during the drive back to the ship the driver decided to sing off-color Don Ho songs -- since half the bus consisted of young kids, I'm not sure the sexual innuendo was the best choice.

But those complaints not withstanding, the highlight of the tour was a walk through a lava tube and the visit to the crater. Pretty damn amazing!

	Rain Forest on way to volcano
	Mary and the kids walking through a lava tube -- sorry about the blurring, but it was too dark to take a good shot without a tripod.
	The volcano landscape looked like we were on another planet
	I found the existence of these plants in this very harsh environment a kind of affirmation of the tenacity of life.

Cruise: The Ship

I was surprised by (a) how big the cruise ship was, and by (b) how much stuff was crammed into the ship. In addition to the many restaurants, there was a chapel, a cultural center (with displays on Hawaiian history), a large library, a games room, an Internet room (prohibitively expensive though: 75 cents a minute for very slow access -- I did not avail myself of it, in spite of serious withdrawal symptoms); a large central atrium with grand staircase and glass elevators, and so on.



Caddilac dinner

Cultural Center

games room

Library

Another view of the library

The Grand Staircase

The ship deck at night

Cruise: The Suite

We started the day with our second breakfast at Eggs 'N things, again luckily arriving just before the big line ups.

The Cross-Cultural Research Conference was over by noon, and we were off to the cruise portion of our trip. Woohoo!

Now, as mentioned previously, the whole idea of adding a cruise to our trip came up when Mary tried to book the Superferry to one of the other islands, the idea being that we would work at Wiakiki, and then keep our vacation portion psychologically separate by going to a completely different island. But the Superferry had been forced to cease operations while environmental impact studies were undertaken, so looking around for alternatives, Mary found a bargin curise offer. Well, we rather liked the idea of checking into one additional hotel, and then having it move from island to island while we slept so we could get a really good sampling of Hawaii. And Mary had always wanted to go on a cruise, so I agreed that that would be a very suitable way for us to spend our 10th anniversary.

[Between you and me, this was a huge relief because it is my understanding that the male is supposed to do the anniversary planning, and I am completely hopeless at this sort of thing. I had bought the Dummies Guide to Cruises about a year before thinking that that might be a nice surprise gift for our anniversary (shamelessly stealing the idea from a colleague) and was thinking about the Disney cruise, but in hiding the book from Mary, had completely lost it and the idea until about October, at which point Mary already had Hawaii pretty much worked out. Given my previous track record on significant birthdays and anniversaries, had the Hawaiian option not presented itself, I’m guessing we would have pretty much have ended up with the Family Deal at our local Tim Horton’s. Oh, wait, Tim Horton’s doesn’t have a family deal. Well, something. Um, our anniversary is December 16th for sure, though, right?]

So Mary discussed various heavily researched options with me and we agreed to go for the additional expense of an outside room with a window as opposed to a porthole or an inside cabin with no view, given various bloggers’/reviewer’s comments about claustrophobia and so on. Mary chose the queen sized bed with two fold down bunk bed option to accommodate all of us.

And then….having booked the room, the travel agent phoned with an upsell: Would we be interested in an upgrade from our current cabin to a larger one with a balcony for $X. Mary explained that upsells were a standard procedure in the cruise business, and that it was common for people to sit by the phone hoping for a call offering an upgrade to the next level or occasionally a couple of levels, for half or less of the usual differential. Well, suspicious though I generally am of bait and switch marketing, it sounded like a significant improvement, and what the hell, it was our 10th anniversary and we had promised not to buy other anniversary gifts or significant Christmas gifts this year, so I told her to go for it.

Main room, showing hideabed, seating, big screen TV, corner of Queen bed (588 square feet)


It was only when the phrase “your butler” entered the conversation that we began to appreciate just how good a deal we had gotten. They had bumped us up not the usual one or two levels, but twelve (from Category N on deck 4 to Category AD on deck 10). The only level higher than the one we were now in is the “owner’s suite”, and it isn’t available for four people, so this was as high as it was possible for us to go. And way beyond what we would have been prepared to pay, 10th anniversary or no.


kids on main bed; birthday decorations are for my birthday which fell on the trip, as did our 10th anniversary
When Mary showed me the comparison on the ship's website, I couldn’t believe it. Well, I couldn’t believe I had agreed to the original room when she showed me the picture (click on "virtual tour" for "category N" bottom of the page), because I hadn’t appreciated that “queen bed” translated as “no actual floor space left” or that “fold down bed” meant “fold down over top of the queen bed” so your face is two feet from bottom of kid’s bunk. That original cabin looked very much tinnier in the photo than I had visualized when Mary said it. But as for the room we got!


'study/work' area


Our balcony which was actually larger than our originally booked cabin (188 square feet to 144) (And as previously mentioned, ignore date stamp on photos-- I was using a new camera and hadn't yet figured out how to change the date or turn stamp off.)



Walk-in closet/luggage area

Corner of the bathroom; basically big as any hotel bathroom with full bath/shower, separate toilet stall (not shown).
For a virtual tour click on category AD "Penthouse suite" -- the room shown differed from ours only in being reversed left to right and having a regular coffee machine instead of our (supposed) upgraded expresso machine.


Along with the upgraded suite came upgraded status... as residents of the suite, we automatically got our own boarding times, so when we showed up at the ship, we bypassed the huge line-up to board, and went directly to a special counter where, after being efficiently processed, we were introduced to our butler.... Pretty sweet! We also got to book reservations for any night in any of the upgraded resturants, in comparison to normal folks who could only book two nights ahead...so we were able to get everything we wanted when we wanted without issue. And so on. Nice to see how the other half (well, half of one percent) live.

Oahu: Honolulu: Laundry

In preparation for our move to the cruise ship, I dropped all our dirty laundry off at the Laundromat a couple of blocks away and paid a minor service charge (about what the Hilton charges for cleaning a single shirt) for them to do the washing for me while I went back to the conference. After the conference, I collected the laundry --now wrapped in a see-through plastic package (so customers could tell which was theirs) about a cubic meter in size -- and returned to the hotel.

Standing at the elevators of the Tapa tower, I observed two young executive types walk into the lobby. As one turned to go one way, the other started to join me at the elevators. "Where are you going," asked the first fellow, "we're over here" indicating a lesser tower. Somewhat sheepishly, he replied that "They've bumped me up to Gold Executive for some reason. I'm here now."

The other executive looked seriously taken aback. "What? Well, what floor are you on then?"

"The 35th." (That's the top floor.)

"Oh, we're on the top floor now are we?" responds the other exec, half mocking, but perhaps just the tiniest bit threatened to find his colleague being treated differently. "Getting all high and mighty are we? Middle of the tower not good enough for us any more, hey? The new golden boy are we?" and so on until the elevator came to whisk us away. Mostly it seemed good hearted ribbing, but....

So there's just the two of us in the elevator, me on the 34th and the executive going to 35. Slightly embarrassed by the exchange prior to boarding the elevator, he tries to make conversation with me. "Doing some laundry then?" he asks, innocently enough.

'Yeah," I say in a mock-bitter voice, "down on the 34th floor we have to do our own laundry, not like you Gold Executive types up on the 35th floor!"

The elevator doors snick open, and I step out and as the doors close, I hear this faint "I have to do my own laundry! I think. don't I?"

Okay, it was a bit mean, but when god hands you a set up like that, you just have to go with it.

Oahu: Waikiki: Doctors on Call

Breakfast was at Eggs 'N Things, a highly recommended restaurant a few blocks from the Hilton; we would certainly add our endorsement. And we were lucky, arriving just before the big rush, so we hardly had to wait. The portions were huge, more than I can eat (rarely the case for me), and the choice of half a dozen different fruit syrups made the kids happy with their pancakes.

Tigana (and her friend Lisa Basil) went off for a surfing lesson, one of the highlights of the trip for Tigana. I don't have photos because my little digital pocket camera could not possibly pick them out on the ocean, but Lisa's dad tells me he got some good shots with his telescopic lens, so I'll add those here when I get them.

And then I sent Mary to the pharmacy for my medicine, only to discover my over the counter drugs were prescription in the US. So, I suddenly needed to see a doctor.

As this was after the conference, the Hilton's on-site clinic had already closed (4:30) so I asked where I could find the nearest clinic, and the night manager gave me the number for Doctors on Call.

This was a very slick operation. I phoned the number and the receptionist asked where I was staying and directed me to a bus stop on the Hilton grounds. Ten minutes later, a Doctors on Call van pulls up and drives me off to the clinic. Once there, I have to wait about an hour in an over-air-conditioned waiting room, but that's pretty much par for the course anywhere. The paperwork was very straightforward and I noticed them processing people in English and Japanese with equal ease. When the doctor saw me, it took him about 60 seconds to confirm that I needed my prescription, and before I could even ask where the nearest pharmacy was, they had already dispensed the drugs, processed my credit card, and had me back in the van and on my way back to the Hilton. I was pretty impressed. Every city needs one of these! If you have ever wandered around trying to find an after hours clinic in a strange city, you'll appreciate how brilliant it is having them come get you.

One side benefit of the round trip to the clinic was that I got to see a lot more of Honolulu after dark. We were mainly driving on the main thoroughfares, so I got a good sense of Honolulu night life, at least at street level, and my first impression was very positive. People seemed to feel safe walking around after dark, the lights were bright and inviting, and everybody seemed to be enjoying the party, as it were. Considering this was the middle of winter, I could get used to the casual short sleeve evening stroll. With the kids on this trip, that is about as much of Honolulu night life I was going to get to see.

Mary, meanwhile, had to manage the our kids plus the Basil's two kids, this being our turn to cover for the Basils as they ate out. Mary organized a pizza party for the four kids, then took them to watch the fireworks which I believe are a routine Friday evening event at the Hilton Hawaiian Village Resort. I got back in time to help tuck everyone into bed.

Cross Cultural Research Conference (continued)

Given the previous blog entry, it should be no surprise that my favorite paper from today’s sessions was George R. Franke and R. Glenn Richley, Jr. (both University of Alabama) paper, “Mind the gap: The risks of bi-country comparisons in cross-cultural studies.” The basic thrust of the paper was that the very popular bicultural comparison format violates various principles of sampling and that at least 25% of the published papers using this technique were necessarily wrong. (Not that they could identify which were the wrong papers, just that given the nature of the techniques involved, statistically a quarter of the papers would have the reported relationship backwards.) Their analysis suggested that for even strong correlations, one needed a sample of at least 22 countries to ensure a reasonable statistical probability that one had depicted the relationship correctly.

But even here I still had the objection that they were using “country” as a proxy for culture, which may be acceptable for homogeneous cultures such as Japan, but very problematic for Canada – does a member of the Cree first nations respond the same way as a francophone Quebecer and a Mormon from Cardston, Albertan? Somehow, I doubt it! And given the very slobby sampling techniques often used (“I wrote to 22 of my colleagues on other campuses and asked them to survey one of their classes”) I am having a lot of trouble accepting the legitimacy of most of these quantitative studies. Scientific my ass! And yet the quantitative bozos that dominate management research have the nerve to question the validity of qualitative methods? what a sham!



Above: Tigana and Kasia in Christmas sleigh on Hilton grounds, one of innumerable Christmas decorations that make little sense in Hawaii's climate...

Cross Cultural Research Conference

Working day: We presented our paper at the conference, attended various other sessions. I found the presentations mixed: some were quite good, others kind of weenie. One I found kind of annoying analyzed articles on acculturation, but limited the study to three journals each in business and psychology, concluding that the majority of studies were quantitative rather than qualitative. There didn’t appear to be any rationale for the selection of the sample journals, and others in the room objected that even within business, how different journals approached acculturation could be radically different. I pointed out that sociology and anthropology might have something to say on the topic, and that those journals were more likely to have qualitative than quantitative methodologies. There just didn’t seem to be a point to such a limited analysis, which was too obviously a course assignment recycled for resume credit. I could even see the grad student doing it as a first experience at presenting at a conference, a legitimate use of conference time, in my view; but I found it pretty hard to take that the prof had added her name to this class assignment. If you’re a tenured prof and this is the best you can do, it’s a sad day.

In contrast, another grad student did a conceptual presentation, which she clearly identified as preliminary and informal, a kind of surrogate candidacy experience in which she was looking for feedback from outside the small circle of her own profs to see if she was headed in a fruitful direction. I thought her ideas insightful and likely to have very far-reaching implications, and we provided what suggestions and encouragement we could. In this case, the combination of her very current lit review and the introduction of her own ideas meant we were hearing from the very cutting edge in the field, and our time amply rewarded, in spite of the preliminary nature of the research.

The problem, then, is trying to distinguish between the time wasters and the relevant. Of course the peer review process is supposed to do that, but somebody signed off on that first paper, and I’ve been at other conferences without a grad student to be seen, as if no one below a PhD candidate had anything to offer.

And speaking of idiot reviewers, I was kind of offended at the reviewers’ comments on our paper questioning whether our comparison of English and French Canada was truly a cross-culture paper because it wasn’t “international”. So here we are at the Cross-Cultural Research Conference, and the American ethnocentrism is so dense that they assume every nation on earth is a cultural melting pot in the American tradition. Paper after paper provided “bicultural” comparisons between two countries: US and Japan, Spain and Germany or etc. Well, I’m okay with any comparison between say “Japan” and “Korea” because those are pretty homogeneous populations. But between Canada and anybody else, I’m going to want to know about your sampling technique, because a 100 francophone respondents from Quebec are going to be saying something quite different from a 100 Anglophones from Southern Alberta! And what was laughable about many of these bicultural studies is the samples were entirely accidental convenience samples: the 60 students in the grad class the research taught on their home campus in the US and on their exchange semester in Germany. Yeah, the 50 students in an MBA class are pretty typical of all Germans, eh? I accept that the MBA sample is a reasonable proxy for managers for research on business, though I strongly suspect that the textbook learning of the MBA gets modified as they gain actual experience which is likely to result in different responses, but if the study focuses on some strictly managerial issue, I could go with it. But I constantly saw people suggesting results far beyond what the sample size or its representativeness could justify.

Unusually good conference lunch (well, it is at the Hilton) and engaging conversation with a Russian graduate student studying in US on a basketball scholarship. They did come close to poisoning Mary, but I was able to recognize the shellfish in the sauce before Mary took a bite, and they very efficiently substituted a chicken dish from the neighboring conference for her. Of course, as these things always go for Mary, the chicken was in a wonderful mushroom sauce, mushrooms being her other food sensitivity, but hey, they tried.

For supper, we went to Roy's (with the Basils -- we split a baby-sitter and dumped the kids for the evening). I tried raw Ahi (tuna) for the first time. I couldn't believe that this intensely delicious food was any relation to the white stuff that comes out of cans. And I can't believe that I was willingly (read 'greedily') eating up raw fish. That is so not part of my self-image. I've told people for years that I hate fish (except for salmon), but I now see that this prejudice was formed growing up on the prairies in the 1950s, before air freight allowed for anything even approximating the phrase "fresh fish". Eating week-old fish or frozen fish sticks does not come close to eating Ahi caught the same morning and marinated in Roy's special spices. I could get very used to eating at Roy's.

Oahu: Le Mer

Wednesday evening we registered at the Cross-cultural Research Conference (at the Hilton where we were staying), and then Mary and I went out to supper at La Mer, a five star French restaurant recommended by the Basils (who were also kind enough to look after our kids for the evening so we could go). It was a superb meal in a superb setting with outstanding service. The second floor view out over the ocean reminded me of something out of a Bogart movie -- very Tahitian/Casablanca kind of feel. Mary and I tried dishes outside our usual comfort zone on the grounds that if you were going to try something new, it should be the five star version. (Mary and I both have horror stories of thinking we didn't like particular cuisines because our initial exposure was through a substandard example, e.g., I used to think I didn't like Thai, and Mary used to think she didn't like East Indian, etc.) Consequently, Mary ordered the goose, and I had salmon roe for the first time...

Low point of the day was Mary realizing that she had lost her driver's licence and credit cards. Lost, not stolen, since no one had attempted to use them when Mary phoned the credit card company, and she fortunately still had her passport, or we would have had real trouble over the next week getting through security at the cruise ship and getting home.

Oahu: Sea Life Park (continued)

In addition to the Dolphin encounter, we spent a couple of hours watching the dolphin show, touring the exhibits, and the highlight for me (second to watching Kasia with the dolphins, of course) was another interactive encounter, this time with Stingrays. Kasia and I joined Mary and Tigana wading into the stingray pool, but only Mary and Tigana snorkelled. But having the stingrays swim past and nudge me on their way to lunch was pretty darn cool.

Here, Tigana watches a turtle in the reef tank.