The Japanese emperor has been on a visit to Hawaii during the last few days, which we knew since it was all over the news. I didn’t think we would notice anything from it (besides the news, that is), but, all of the sudden, we were almost in front of a road closure, in the middel of the freeway.

Imagine yourself, you’re driving on a freeway with three lanes, in the middle of Honolulu, and all the sudden you notice police lights in front of you… right, could be as you can often see those lights over here, but all the sudden we were driving slower and slower, until we were standing still, about two or three cars behind the police cars. The first thoughts were that there was an accident, but soon we thought it was for the emperor. They close every road when there are high visitors, such as the Japanese emperor, all so they don’t have to be afraid to be stopped in traffic, with the risk of a terrorist attack.

So we thought it was nice to know that we were so close, but we probably would not notice a thing of it, other than the road closure. Until we noticed a couple of police cars, driving next to us, followed by a long and black limousine, complete with the American flag on the right and the Japanese flag on the leftside. That had to be the emperor and empress of Japan. Behind them were a lot of other cars, vans and such for the imperial household, and behind them a lot of other police cars.

When the motorcade passed us, we were allowed to drive also, even though it was behind a couple of police cars which were holding us awfully far away from the imperial couple. Since we were so far up front, it actually felt like we were part of the motorcade haha.

Oh well, we did not see the emperor and his wife in flesh and blood, which wouldn’t have been easy as they only had one public appearance during the last two days that they have been on the island and there were hundreds of people who went there, so I didn’t really felt like going. Oh well, it was fun that they drove so close next to us.

For a while I felt bad as I thought that we did not bring a video or photo camera, but it turned out that Michelle actually told me that she brought her camera but that I did not respond to her. I really didn’t notice her saying that, which is a shame, otherwise I could show some photo’s or a video, made by ourselves.

Oh well, don’t be sad. I can still give you something to show you a bit how the motorcade looked like as I have found a video of the freeway camera’s It is during the day, and we only saw them in the evening, but oh well, it is the same motorcade and it’s better than nothing. Here it is:

Michelle and I finally sorted out the last parts of the stuff in the nursery, as it used to be one of our two ’storagerooms’ (you might say rooms with lots of junk haha). Everything we wanted to keep went to the other room, so there was only some stuff left over in that room which will go to the junkyard this Friday.

Time to finally start on the nursery (I wanted to be finished by now, but oh well, everything here goes on island speed (like someone from my old job would say: “There will be another bus tomorrow”) haha). Today I removed all the plaster from the ceiling (I think it was plaster) as it was getting pretty old and ugly, I can tell you, it was quite a mess of all the dust that came down. I bought protective glasses out of precaution, together with a respirator (one of the better mouthcaps, not that thin stuff that doesn’t really close and still let everything go through) and, even though it felt pretty warm, I did not have any problem the dust and breathing or that something would fall into my eyes. I was happy I bought that stuff.

Of course I was pretty white afterward haha, here’s a photo that I took of my arm (no, not with that nice beautiful camera, I’m not that crazy haha):

But ok, what does the nursery look like, right now? Well, here it is:

Don’t you think it is a nice mess? Haha, nah, it’s not that bad.. those boxes are still there (they will go to the junkyard, this Friday) but all that plaster is gone by now, I already cleaned it all and took a shower

The ceiling is pretty clean now:

I wonder if we should plaster it again or if we should just paint it. Michelle’s mother thinks I should just paint it as it will be the easiest, but yeah, she also says I must be crazy for doing so much on that room haha. Oh well, it is for the baby, so.. Larissa also had a beautiful room and even though I would not be able to get the same great quality (I had lots of help from my mom and grandmother, they were really great with these things), I still want to try to make something nice out of it

I’ll keep you updated whenever we did something new to the room again =)

Like I wrote yesterday, I would post a new message with some pictures of a botanical garden and such… so here it is

The Saturday after my birthday, Michelle and I went to the Aloha Swap Meet, some sort of flea market near the Aloha Stadium. This is a market, which is held every weekend around the whole football stadium, with some pretty good deals. Think, for example about 8 t-shirts for only $20. Here are a few pictures of that market:

It wasn’t that busy anymore when we were there, mostly because it was already 1 PM when we arrived, and most people go earlier. Well, I can’t blame them, the want to have get it over with before the hottest part of the day, plus there’s a lot of booths that close at around 2 PM.

Here’s a picture of the stadium:

After we walked around the stadium, and felt pretty warm, we went towards the Dole Plantation, where they, besides pineapples, also have a botanical garden, and the world’s biggest maze.

It took us about 30 minutes to get through the maze (you need to find a few locations in the maze), not really too slow (you receive a small map, mostly because of the size, so you can make some speed), but the record is currently 8 minutes (this has to be someone who knew the way out of his head and ran quite fast haha). It took us a bit longer in 2007, mostly because we didn’t use the map the whole time back then haha. The total size of the maze is 3.15 acres (about 12,7 km2) and the total path length is 2.46 mile (almost 4 kilometers). Here are some photo’s, taken in the maze:

Like I also commented in the last of the above pictures (just click on them, so you can see it, haha) is that there is an open spot in the middle of the maze, which looks like a pineapple from the sky (you can also look here, to view this from the sky).

They have some signs outside the maze, and that’s especially fun to see because Hawaii has the most remote islands in the world. The Netherlands was not named, but when we have to take London, Munich and Paris into consideration, then it should be about 7,500 miles (about 12,000 kilometers).. quite some distance…

But ok, we also went to the Plantation Garden, like said, where you can find a lot of native plants, which also grow out in the open (some even grow in our garden haha), but now all of them together, so that’s makes it easier to find them Here’s some photo’s:

You can also find some creatures there, just look at the following photo’s (and look especially close to the last two, as it might be a bit hard to find because of the colors):

Fun, isn’t it? I know my mom would say something like ‘ew’ haha, oh well, not everyone is fond of them, but they’re harmless and look quite cute on these pictures.

And here another three, last, pictures of the Dole Plantation. The first is of the many pineapples they have, the second one is the view when you drive away from the Plantation, and the third is the main building of the Dole Plantation, which has a store and a foodcourt inside, where you can eat almost everything with pineapple:

We went further towards the North Shore after we left, so we could eat some Garlic Shrimp again at Giovanni’s Shrimp Shack. I tried, while Michelle was driving, to make some more photo’s, but it didn’t exactly work out to do it from a travelling car, at too little light. Two of them are nice to show, though:

It is the 4th of July this Saturday, or Independence Day, and it kind of depends what we will do, but if there’s fireworks, then I might try to take some photos, it’s supposed to be really beautiful.

And when you liked these photo’s, I might have some more nice photo’s for you soon as I want to go to Waimea Bay Park, where they have a waterfall and quite some nature. It kind of depends when we will go haha, but we will go for sure, promised

Here’s a new message from us, it has been a while so I figured we could write something again

I think I will start with Michelle and the baby as everything goes very well with them, we finally figured out a name for the baby, also thanks to my daughter Larissa, who was asked to make the final decision between a couple of names. Michelle can feel the baby kick quite a lot of times lately, but of course you’ll see that I am out of luck when I want to feel it, as the baby instantly stops when I put my hand on her belly.. Oh well, I’d like to think she doesn’t wants to hurt her daddy

We went out during last friday and saturday, mostly because of my birthday. Yep, I start to become an old ba***rd haha. Nah, it’s not that bad haha. Next to all the presents that I received from the Netherlands, I received a new digital slr camera from Michelle, including 2 zoomlenses, filters and some more stuff. It’s really a nice camera, which had to be tested, of course

Well, I can tell you that I have to learn a lot as it is no longer point-and-shoot, no, I can adjust all settings myself now, such as the whitebalance, lighting, arpeture, etc. etc. Of course you can adjust some settings on a normal digital camera, but not many people do this, but it is much more fun to do it with this camera haha.

Anyways, we went to the southcoast last friday, where some people were surfing. We went here mostly so I could see if I could zoom in some more with this camera (surfing usually happens on quite some distance from the coast). And I have to say it works pretty nice, here some pictures:

The first picture has been made smaller, mostly because it was shot in a big size. The second picture is the same as the first, but cropped and on, almost, normal size .

Above pictures are just to show how far you can zoom with this thing, the surfer in the picture was quite far from the coast. Below some more pictures, shot on the same spot:

Some photos are sadly a bit darker than I wanted them to be (also because of the clouds during the day), but oh well, we only just have this camera, we still have a lot to learn

Before we went to Waikiki for a dinner, we went to town when it started to become evening. I shot some more pictures there, mostly because I wanted to make a panorama picture and wanted to shoot some photos during the sunset. Here are a few of those pictures:

I know these are almost the same photos, but I wanted to show that the sky of Hawaï knows many colors, especially during sunset. There is only a few minutes during the above photos.Here are a few more photos:

And then we were sent away by the security.. we were there quite some time and they thought it was pretty suspicious that there were some people, shooting photos, from the roof of the parking garage. It was too bad, but oh we, we decided to go towards Waikiki for our dinner.

As for the panorama photo, here’s one (I made it smaller in size, the original was about 20 megabyte big):

It’s quite easy to make such a panorama photo, you just have to make sure that the camera is on a tripod, that you make enough photos to overlap everything (I believe there’s 34 photo’s in the above panorama), and that you use the right software. I use a free program, and I have to say it works like a charm. The program does everything for me, place the photo’s, align them, adjust the shades etc etc.

Right, we went to Waikiki after all this and we decided to drive through town afterwards, so we could find a certain building (I will place the photo of this building below). Just when we found this building, the police pulled me over (or I should say, I drove into a parkinglot and he then came on from behind). It turned out that I didn’t stop for a stopsign. He checked our papers and checked if I didn’t drank any alcohol (probably because we said that we had a dinner just before, and I have to say that it is not like the Netherlands where they use a breath analyzer, no, I had to follow a pen with my eyes while he aimed a flashlight on my eyes… I don’t know but I doubt this is a correct way to do it.. oh well, I didn’t drink anything so I didn’t had to worry). After a short lecture, he let me go without a ticket. I was pretty lucky with that. I have no idea why, but I think it might have been because of my birthday, that he had seen the birthdate on the driver license. According to Michelle it might also have been that it was because I didn’t cause any problems and just stayed nice, or because I was honest about my mistake… whatever it was, I like to stick with my birthday as for explanation

But oh well, the building we were looking for is the following:

Looks good, doesn’t it? (Yes, I know, I used a lens which made stars of the lights, I shouldn’t have done this but oh well haha.. it’s all in a learning process).

Can you believe this is just a mural, and not something like 3D?

This piece of art has been painted in 18 months (10 to 14 hours a day) by an artist named ‘John Pugh’. They wrote the following about it in the local paper:

“Pugh said the epic wave behind surfing pioneer Duke Kahanamoku is Queen Lili’uokalani herself, whose enduring legacy lives on through the children’s center named for her and in other ways. To get the wave just right, he hired a glass artist to make a model of a wave he could study throughout.

He said the children shown in the mural offer gifts that pay tribute to the queen. In a window to the right side is Prince Kuhio, who served in Congress and created the Hawaiian homes act to return more Hawaiians to the land.”

So, yeah, to prove that it is just a mural, here’s a photo from up close:

That this painting can really fool people shows from a part in the same article in the local paper, where they wrote about a crew of firemen who thought that the children in the mural were stuck and couldn’t come down any more. When they wanted to save them, they found out about their mistake haha.

Ok, tomorrow, or the day after, I will post a new message about last Saturday. We also went out on that day, and I made some photo’s in a botanical garden. But ok, that kind of depends on how busy I am (I am quite busy lately for some reason). And now to bed, it’s getting late..