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..

I promised yesterday that I would write some more today and so here I am with my next message

We had a few birthday parties going on between my last two posts, one of Michelle herself, her birthday was on the 17th but we had a party for it on the 19th since the tenants in the back of our house would have a day off by then and they wanted to BBQ for us (her). Some other people got invited and in the end there was about 20-25 family members, friends and such on her birthday.

The food was really great, of course, I especially like the meat on a stick that they make haha. And of course we had cake and such, here are some pictures:

A bit later this week, last Sunday, we also went to a birthdayparty/retirement party of someone. I did not know this person but Michelle’s mother did and since she would have to go alone, we decided to join to keep her company.

This man became 55 year old and went on retirement out of the US army, where he was Grand Master Sergeant. I don’t know much about the army so I cannot tell you much about his rank but I do know that he had quite some stripes on his sleeves. I tried to make a picture out of hit with my phone, it isn’t super clear but oh well, at least you can get an idea:

There was a lot of red, white and blue as you can see. Of course they meant the colors of the United States flag but I thought it was funny to tell them that they were the same as the Dutch flag hehe. It was pretty busy also, they hired a big room in the ‘Filipino Community Center‘, and not for nothing as there were 35 tables with about 10 persons per table, so do your maths They also had a very nice buffet and I can tell you that I enjoyed myself hehe.

By the way, I made quite a weird/funny/stupid remark to that man when we arrived, nothing special though, but when I think about it, I think I have him a funny answer. Since I have this short shaved head of hear I often get the question if I am in the army, white+short hair is often army over here. I also received that question when I introduced myself to him, not weird when you think about that he was in the army himself: “are you in the army?”, on which I answered “”No, I am an immigrant”.. haha.

I do not know why but I think it is an odd answer to his question. Of course it is logic that I am not in the army when I am an immigrant but still, what does that have to do with the whole question or situation? Haha not much, we laughed quite a few times about it afterwards haha.

I can do that more often, by the way, say things which make no sense or make a mistake. Like recently, I was talking about the pocketmoney (and I almost wrote down salary) Larissa received when I was still living in the Netherlands… but instead of saying ‘Larissa’ or ‘my daughter’, I said ‘my sister’. Michelle was like huh, why do you give her pocketmoney? On which I thought that she was saying that it was not enough money (I didn’t see my mistake yet) and said “she also received that from my mom and my ex-girlfriend so it is quite a nice amount”, on which Michelle was really wondering why I gave my sister money and even more why my ex was giving her money? Hahahaha yep, we were quite awake at that time hahaha.

Right, next I will post a message about our cats who have received a surgery and about one of them who has something less fun going on at the moment.