Isabella and I have been in a car accident this afternoon, but to tell you right away: Isabella and I, and the other involved people also, are unharmed.

It happened this afternoon with Michelle’s car. Michelle took my car to her job, and I would gas her car up as that one was getting pretty dry. And on our way to the gas station, it happened.

On a T-crossing (is that the right name in English?) I wanted to go straight, while the lady coming from the opposite direction wanted to turn left. She stopped, drove a bit further and stopped again, which gave me the impression that she had seen me and that I could go on (mind you: there are no odd signs or anything on that road, so I had the right of way) until she, all of the sudden, continue to drive and I couldn’t avoid her anymore. I braked with all my power, threw the steering wheel to the right, but I was unlucky, the car didn’t want to stop on time and we hit each other.

I made a quick drawing in MS paint (I have nothing else on this netbook right now) of how things went:

I drove the blue car, and the women in the other car drove in the gray/silver car.

Michelle’s car has a pretty bad looking damage:

As far as I could see, the other party is the one who was wrong, and her insurance should probably have to make up for the costs on Michelle’s car. The woman also admitted that she had some problems with her eye (she went to the doctor for that, she said, but it was still causing her problems), and that she didn’t see me because of that. Either way, it is not exactly fun.

Right, I will go to the ‘after-hours clinic’ in the hospital with Isabella to do a check on the both of us. I don’t think anything is wrong, Isabella smiled and laughed after the accident and didn’t appear to be in any pain and I don’t think anything is wrong with me either (except for some muscle pain in my right arm), but they advised me to go anyways, just to be sure. I’ll let you know what their findings were

Like I promised in my tweets yesterday, I would upload some pictures of our visit to Maui. However, when I was watching the pictures and videos today, I noticed that we didn’t had that much pictures, and they’re actually mostly whale pictures and not much of our visit to Maui itself.. and as for the videos, they are also a bit disappointing as we didn’t even have enough to edit it to a normal video.

I can explain, though, we wanted to film some on board but I was mostly busy with my photo camera, and Michelle had her hands full on the baby, who woke up while we were on the ship and got hungry. And, well, the number of pictures we made of Maui are a bit disappointing because we left both cameras in the back of our car the whole time, instead of the front so we could easily make some pictures.

I guess we will have to go to Maui again soon to make some more pictures and videos.. we might do it multiple days, so we can do a bit more than just watch whales from a ship.

Anyways, I should make a short report of our trip to Maui. Like I said before, i was especially curious of how Isabella would behave in the airplane. She usually is a very sweet and quiet girl, but yeah, how would she behave when the air pressure will be different and when she gets her ears popping? Well, it all went a lot better than I expected. She was ok with everything and I don’t think she was impressed by it all, even though I had my own ears popping quite a few times haha (I have it worse on these short flights anyways, it’s like they climb at a faster rate with those small planes). The turbulence during the landing in Maui was also no problem to her, she went to sleep because of the rocking haha. No, I doubt I would have worry for when we make the long trip to the Netherlands.

Going through security with Isabella was also pretty easy. I read a lot up front to see how it would be, and I also read quite some horror stories, but we didn’t experience any of that, everything went extremely fast and easy.. it was almost like I traveled alone.

Once we got to Maui, we first picked up our rental car, went to Walmart for some bottles of pre-made milk for Isabella, and then we ate some food at Sam Sato, a local restaurant, as Michelle love their dry noodles.

After that we drove from Kahului to Lahaina, on the west side of Maui, and we noticed that the land there was so extremely dry. I already read about it a couple of weeks ago in the paper that some areas didn’t get enough rain, but I never expected it to be this bad. It really looked like a desert at some spots.

Once we got to Lahaina, we weren’t sure if we wanted to make a boat trip to watch whales. They announced that we might see high waves, as high as 25-30 feet, around the isles, and well, you don’t want to be on a small boat with that kind of waves haha. But fortunately it looked like the water was really calm, the sun came through and all of the sudden we noticed a whale jumping up from the water, a bit like the one in the following picture:

No, unfortunately this isn’t made by me, we didn’t see any other whale jumping up like that unfortunately. Michelle just noticed this picture and her reaction was “Hey, we didn’t see them like that during our boat trip, we have to go back, we only saw lazy whales” haha. We will do that for sure, it was really fun to do.

We bought some tickets for the boat trip and boarded shortly after. We have seen quite a few whales, and even though it was not like the one above, it was still very much worth to do it. It was really beautiful to see it all. But ok, I know some people want to see the pictures instead of me talking, so here I’ll keep quiet for now so you can see the pictures. Some comments are below the pictures as usual

Right, I think this should do it for now. I promise to have more different shots the next time we are in Maui (and we might have some underwater shots, we wanted to make a submerged tour but we didn’t had enough time for that now).

On the first pictures of the humpbacks you can see a mother with her calf, and on the last photo’s you can see a female with a male between us and the female. He probably did this to protect her from us because, well, imagine yourself that our ship would want to mate with her, that’s something he obviously didn’t want haha.

After we returned ashore, we drove towards Kihei, where we wanted to get some Shave Ice, but Isabella became a bit cranky, she was tired and didn’t sleep much, she got hungry and she needed a clean diaper.. well, I would be cranky too in her case haha. So we parked at a beach park and stayed there for a bit while we relaxed and watched the sun going down on sea.

Once Isabella was ready, and we got hungry, we went back to Kahului where we wanted to eat at Koho. And what do you think, once we finally sat at our table, Isabella started to cry pretty hard… I didn’t know where to look, it was so busy and then your baby starts to cry.. pffff… thankfully she was quiet once Michelle held her and she could see the ceiling fans (she loves those, especially when they’re on haha), and then we could still enjoy our food, which was very good in my opinion.

After Koho we bought some donuts at Krispy Kreme, who make really delicious donuts. And after that we went towards the airport of Kahului so we could fly back to Honolulu.

By the way, I really noticed how easy it is to become prejudice thanks to the terrorist threats and such, we had a pretty odd person on board of our plane (we saw him already at the check-in) that raised some questions with me (and with the flight attendants as well as I could hear (we sat on the front row in the first class, so you hear everything they say)) and there were a few more people who didn’t make me completely feel at ease.. it is a prejudice, and probably nothing special, so it is kind of sad when you think about it, but yeah, thanks to all those negative stories in the news, you sometimes think twice. I really notice you look more around these days during flying.

Oh well, the flight back went pretty smooth. We sat pretty comfortable in the first class, and Isabella had fun as well I think. There was no turbulence when we arrived (which is pretty nice because those planes are very small) and the flight was also over in no-time, we were hardly airborne for 30 minutes haha.

Right, like said, next time we will have more different pictures, and probably also a video

Yes, you’re reading correctly: pirates in Hawaii. It is, however, less bad than it sounds

Earlier today (Jan 18) it was announced that the new Disney movie “Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides”, the fourth Pirates of the Caribbean movie, will be filmed in Hawaii this summer. They will film on both Oahu (our island) and Kauai. The movie will be released in the summer of 2011.

I wonder though, how long do they want to keep the “of the Caribbean” up if they start to film here? The Caribbean are located in the Atlantic ocean, Hawaii is located at the other side of the world in the Pacific ocean.. It looks to me that they would be better off calling the movie “Pirates of the Pacific” haha. Then again, it is “stranger tides”, and the Hawaiian tides are, of course, not the Caribbean..

Oh well, the Pirates of the Caribbean movies are nice movies to watch in my opinion, I wonder if we will recognize some areas in the movie, and if we will notice anything of the filming itself.

I also read today that the previous movie, “At World’s End”, was also filmed here for a small part, on Maui and Molokai. So basically they already went wrong here haha.

Hawaii is doing a nice job in the movie industry, new movies and series are recorded here very frequently, they just finished a few (amongst which “Hereafter” of Clint Eastwood with Matt Damon), and there will be other ones coming as well (like, for example, “The Descendents”, a movie from Alexander Payne with George Clooney, that just began the pre-production here). I have to say that I often like it that I see known places in movies, especially when you live there.. you then get that “Hey, I know that” thing.

Hmm.. maybe I should get an eye patch and a wooden leg for Isabella somewhere, and see if I can get her as an extra pirate in Pirates of the Caribbean haha!

It should have been cooler for a while now here on Oahu, but thanks to the Kona winds (Kona is a place on South-West part of Big Island, and the winds come from that direction) it was much more warm and dry than it should have been during the last weeks, or months actually. The wind often brought us ‘vog’, which is a volcanic form of smog, which brings us even more warmth (this is because there is an active volcano on Big Island). For a longer time we had temperatures up to 86F (30C), and in the evening it often did not drop much more than 72-75F (22-25C) (if it dropped that much already, and let me add: on our part of Oahu, it is much warmer and dryer here than the other side of the island).

But ok, it is a lot cooler since yesterday. The tradewinds are back, they come from exactly the opposite direction (the North-East), and they bring some cooler air with them. And that is exactly what we see today and yesterday. It hasn’t been over 75F (25C) today, and during the night it even went under 68F (20C).

I said it before, compared to how the weather currently is in the Netherlands (or on the mainland US for that matter), we still have very nice weather, but if you’ve been here for a while, got used to the warmth, and cannot close the windows inside the house, then it can feel pretty cold so in the evening.

By the way, it was also very cold on the Northern side of this island a couple of days ago. It was (ok, it was not on sea level, but over 1000 feet high) only 56F (13.5C).. I opened the window of my car for a bit, well, I can tell you that I will have fun when I am in the Netherlands again, I will be sooo cold haha.

It looks like winter finally arrived in Hawai’i. I wonder for how long hahaha.

Also some another small news update on the real estate market, we decided to wait a bit with selling, and buying, until I get back from the Netherlands again in a few months. Michelle doesn’t feel so comfortable making decisions without me, which I can imagine. So it is all on hold for now

Brrr.. it’s cold!

Today is the first time since the summer that I wear long pants because I felt it was a bit cold. The temperature of today? Well, don’t be scared, it was about 80 degrees (26 Celsius) haha! Oh well, it is not so much the temperature which made it colder, but mostly the rain which did that as it has been a pretty rainy day.

Last night I really felt cold though. Well, for the folks back in the Netherlands this probably sounds a bit ridiculous as it was about 74 degrees Fahrenheit (about 23 in Celsius). You might think, what a nice temperature, and I would have agreed with you if it was not for me living here for over six months in 90 degrees or even higher. I have, in other words, gotten used to the warmth. And the fact that I have had a shortage of sleep lately, mostly thanks to our little girl, has probably also something to do with me getting cold a bit faster. And what to think about all the windows and doors that are always open? As soon as there is a breeze, we feel it inside our home. And then there is the form of heat, as soon as it gets over 80 degrees in the Netherlands, then it feels way warmer than it does over here as they have a much warmer (humid) heat.

Oh well, it is not so bad that it gets a bit colder now the ‘winter’ is coming as we are now able to have Isabella more in the livingroom. We didn’t really wanted to do this as it was just too hot for her.

Speaking of Isabella, we went to the lactation today again, and everything was really good. Isabella has been weighed again and her weight was now 6 lbs and 14.5 oz (or 3133 grams). She is perfectly on schedule because if she was born on her normal due date, then she would now be a week old. They also told us today that we did not had to wake her every three hours anymore, but the we could just do it on demand. And Michelle does not have to pump and give extra milk from a bottle after she gave the breast, she can now do it by breastmilk alone. So today a few more milestones have been reached by our little girl

Time is flying, today I am in Hawai’i for exactly a year. On October 2nd, 2008, around 8.15 in the evening, I landed on the airport of Honolulu. Did I miss the Netherlands the last year? Yeah, from time to time I did but fortunately it wasn’t as bad as I expected it to be. I used to have a serious case of homesickness whenever I stayed away from home for a bit, sometimes even so bad that I could become really really sick of it. But this year, far away from the Netherlands, it all wasn’t so bad, I don’t think I was really homesick. Nevertheless I do look forward to see my family in the Netherlands again, haha.

And here is the follow up of my previous post, now with the photos and a video of the show of the Thunderbirds, the premium demonstration squadron of the US Air Force.

The pictures of the open house at Hickam can be found here: http://www.joosten808.com/2009/09/20/wings-over-the-pacific-2009-at-hickam-afb/

Right, this is a different post from what we’ve seen the last time, no baby post this time haha. Michelle and I went to “Wings Over the Pacific”, the open house on Hickam AFB in Hawai’i, last Saturday.

During this open house, there were many planes that you normally only see on tv or in movies, it was allowed with many planes to enter them, and even sit in the cockpit. The Thunderbirds, the premier demonstration squadron of the US Air Force, was also there and they did a really nice show.

The day was really great, but I will try not to tell too much in this post, I’ll just keep it to the photos. In this post you will find the photos of the open house itself, the photo’s and video of the Thunderbirds can be found here: http://www.joosten808.com/2009/09/21/the-thunderbirds-on-wings-over-the-pacific-2009/

If you don’t know Servco Auto Leeward, then I can tell you that this is the car dealer where Michelle bought her Toyota Matrix S last wednesday. Servco Auto Leeward is a dealer of Toyota, Suzuki and Chevrolet in Waipahu, Hawaii, and is part of Servco Auto Centers, a group dealers which is spread all over Hawai’i. They used to be called ‘Waipahu Auto’.

Normally I would not easily write a post about bad service, but in this case I will make an exception for Servco Auto Leeward because both Michelle and I think that we received some bad service here, especially when you think about it that we spend thousands of dollars last week. And it wouldn’t be so bad, if someone just apologized to us for the bad service at Servco Auto Leeward during the last few days, but that did not even happen. I hope that, with a bit of luck, I can prevent some people from making the same mistake as we did.

So what happened? Well, as I wrote in my previous post about Michelle’s new Toyota Matrix S, the dealer, Servco Auto Leeward in Waipahu, would tint the windows, and they would install a car alarm. So they called us last Friday for an appointment, and they asked us if we could bring the car on Monday morning so they could do the window tinting and install the car alarm on that day into the Toyota Matrix S.

However, because I also had to bring our BMW X5 to some bodyshop (because of some minor damage earlier), and because Michelle had to work that day, we told them that this would be a bad timing for us. Tuesday wouldn’t be a good idea either for Servco Auto Leeward, so we decided that we would bring the car on Sunday already. It had to be done around 2 pm in the afternoon.. why this had to be at 2 pm remains unknown to us, they’re open until 6 pm. Oh well, we did as they asked us to do.

We didn’t hear anything from Servco Auto Leeward in Waipahu on Monday, so we decided on tuesday, around noon, to call ourselves as we thought it was taking a bit longer than expected (I will tell you a bit below why we thought this). They told us that nothing had been done yet at that moment, and that they did not know when the car would be done, they would call us. This is something they told Michelle, so I called directly back again to ask some questions about it, because why did we had to bring our car on Monday already if they wouldn’t do anything? The man to whom I spoke at that moment told me that the car was scheduled for that afternoon and that it should be done at around 5 pm. About an hour later we received a call that we could pick up the car at around six pm. The feeling of service started to become quite low at that time, as you can imagine.

Right, at around 6.15 pm, we arrived at Servco Auto Leeward in Waipahu, and we received the keys to the Toyota Matrix S again. When we were inside the car, we started to inspect a few things as we wanted to know if the tint was done nicely and that kind of things…

Well, I can tell you, there were bubbles everywhere. There are a couple of small bubbles but also some pretty big ones. When we asked about this, they told us that it should be looking ok in a few days. Ok, that’s possible, but when we had a few small (really small) bubbles at the BMW after tinting, they told us the same. But after a week they were still there, and they had to redo it again. And while that was only minor, this is pretty big, so I will be surprised if we don’t have to go back.

So we went back again to the car, a bit unsatisfied with the answer but willing to wait a couple of days. When we came to our car again, we noticed that one of the panels of the interior was not closed by the one who, we think, installed the alarm into the Toyota Matrix S at Servco Auto Leeward in Waipahu. So we could go back inside again because I couldn’t get the panel back on again, and I didn’t want to have the risk of damaging the car already, I rather have them do it.

When we showed them the open panel, they (some salesmen of Servco Auto Leeward) tried to reattach the panel to the car again, but they were not able to manage this either. They then told us that it would be best that we left the car another day, so they could show it to those responsible and that they could reattach the panel again. We went back home again, very unsatisfied about the service at that moment (you might expect that they would fix something like that right away) and without the Toyota Matrix S.

This morning, however, there was the well known ‘last straw’. We received a call from someone at Servco Auto Leeward, and he told us dead serious that he could not see/find the panel and that we had to call him back (he spoke into our voicemail). I called him at around 10 am this morning and told him where the panel was (I bet he just looked at one panel, because it was very easily visible). At that time I really didn’t feel like arguing about it again, so I just left it at that. He told me that it would probably be done somewhere today but did not know when. I don’t know why he didn’t just say “We’ll fix it right away”, which is something you might expect. Anyways, after a while we received another call from Servco Auto Leeward, telling us the car was ready for pickup.

Finally.

And is it all ok now? I doubt it… there are still some big bubbles in the tint of the windows (it is some form of film) and I highly doubt these will be gone in a few days (actually tomorrow already, like they said). We will wait until the weekend, but then we might have to call Servco Auto Leeward again. I expected it will happen.

The reason, by the way, why we thought they took their sweet time, was because when we left our BMW X5 at the dealership for tinting and all that, it all went a lot quicker. They did it in a few hours, and it looked a lot better than at Servco Auto Leeward in Waipahu. I’ve also seen the installation of a car alarm a couple of times, and this goes a lot faster also, it does not take days.

No, when you have an appointment for something, then you can also expect them to make the car on the same day as they tell you they will do. If they don’t do this, by whatever reason, they should at least call you to inform you about it. And when something is not done right, they should’ve just fixed it right away if that was possible (and I just know it was possible in our case). It really feels like ‘asskissing during sale, but not giving in after the deal has been closed’. The service feels bad for us, and it is the last time we will spent our money there, or that we will redirect someone to Servco Auto Leeward (this is something Michelle’s mother used to do, they sold a lot of cars there thanks to her, but this wont happen either anymore).

Today something funny happened, though: Michelle had to wait outside for a bit at Servco Auto Leeward, while I was inside, and a potential customer asked Michelle how the sale and service went. Michelle told them the story and before I was outside again, the potential customer had left the terrain. So this joke might already have cost them a customer. Sorry, but it seems to me this is their own fault for it all.

You know what is the worst thing of it all? That they did not once apologized to us. I think that this bothers me most of all. That no-one tried to undo the mistakes right away and apologized for it. This is not something a customer, who pays a lot of money, should be treated. If they want me to speak good about them again, they really have to try hard.

So, if you’re thinking about buying a car at Servco Auto Leeward in Waipahu, Hawai’i, I can only say: don’t do it. The sale goes nice and all, but the service, as we experienced it, is just bad. I would not recommend it.

Let’s start with not so good news: Last Friday on Saturday night, one of our cats, ‘Stain‘, has been ran over by a car.

I tried to call Stain around 11pm so she could get inside. However, I didn’t see any movement and after a bit looking around and calling, I went back inside. At around 2am, when I wanted to go to bed, I went outside again to call Stain. I called a few times, but nothing, I looked into the direction of the street and noticed a dead cat on the street. A dead cat on the street is a common sight in Hawai’i as we have lot’s of stray cats, and they often speed in our street, but this time I expected it to be Stain for some reason. I called Michelle and told her that I just noticed a dead cat on the street, and that I thought it might be Stain. I walked downstairs after that, and on towards the streetside. And, indeed, it was our Stain. Michelle came down and, a bit stressed, and when she too noticed that it was Stain, she started to cry pretty hard.

Because we had four cats, and because Michelle is pregnant, we decided a while ago to get rid of two cats. It takes a lot of effort to own four cats and, when the baby is born, you need to keep an eye on them all at all times. So it is a bit much when you have to do this with four cats, so we decided a while ago to shrink our household a bit (there were a few more reasons, but this was the main reason). We decided to keep both Bender and Stain, and to get rid of both Neko and Flamey.

Bender is a cat that basically needs to be left alone, she doesn’t like human beings much (because of a mistreatment when she was a kitten) and she has a bit of a manual to handle her. We asked about it at the Humane Society and she would not have been able to be adopted but would have been killed. This is something we didn’t wanted, so we decided to keep her (on the condition that, as soon as she even as much as threaten our baby (let alone really scratch her), she would be leaving the house).

As for Stain, we decided to keep her as she is half a street cat. She used to be a stray cat when she was younger, before she came to Michelle, and you could never held her inside. She always wanted to go out and came, during dinner and for the night, always back. Because she was not often inside, we decided to keep her as well.

Neko is one of the children of Stain and she is a very playful, sometimes naughty, cat. Sometimes we thought she was half a dog: whenever we threw a ball, she would fetch it and bring it back so we could throw it again. She was very playful and that is why we just knew that she would be adopted pretty fast. She was friendly enough and so we gave her away for adoption, as we knew for sure that she would end up in a good place.

And then there was Flamey, the sister of Neko and a daughter of Stain also. She is a real house cat, really sweet and with a very nice fur. My mother heard we wanted to get rid of a few cats and told us that she would like to take over this cat as she really liked this cat also. So she will end up in a good home as well

And, well, that’s how we went back from four cats, back to one. Well, ok, two for now, but later this year only one. I can tell you, it did get pretty quiet inside.

Personally I am also really sad that Stain is not around anymore. She was my favorite cat, and a very exceptional animal. She looked big, she had a hip surgery earlier this year and became, as a miracle, better than ever. The vet himself also said that it was a remarkable animal, the power and strength that she showed. She was not easily afraid, she was tough, and even though she would easily be the boss of the pack, she was really sweet to everyone of us, you could do anything with her. She really was an animal with character, I will really miss her.

Here are a few pictures of Stain:

This post should have been about Michelle’s new car, or at least a post in which I showed a few pictures of her new car. I will do this later today/tomorrow. As for the Storm Guillermo, he will miss us on a distance of about 400-500 miles, so that’s a nice distance. It is still a hurricane at the moment (he has reached category 3 before) but they expect him to lose strength quickly. Oh well, I think that the only we will notice from the hurricane, is an increase in humidity.