Well, like I tweeted a bit earlier today, we received the refund for the new stroller. I think that’s very nice, it is solved in a nice way. I still have to tell you how the rest of the story went after the first part of this story (click!)

So, ok, we first had to go through the immigration part of Seattle-Tacoma Int. Airport. There was a nice line of people waiting, like always at immigrations. I was allowed to take the US Citizens line as I am the parent of a US citizen: Isabella, and that was nice because this line was a bit faster. The immigrations officer asked me a few simple questions, like how long we were abroad, what Isabella’s age was, and some other questions along that line. I had to give my fingerprints, and they took a picture of my face: the standard procedure, so to say. After this we could continue to downstairs, to the luggage claim.

While we were waiting on our suitcases (you always have to get these from the belt in the US, no matter if you have to continue after this flight or not), the nice lady from Delta came to me, to tell me where she was while I was waiting for the suitcases. I got the suitcases and wanted to go through the agriculture inspection with the lady from Delta (or should I say girl? She is about the same age as I am, or so I think haha) but I was stopped here since I had some foods with me, we had to get the bags through a scanner first. And what do you think, one of my suitcases was randomly selected for another inspection, the suitcase had to be opened.

After the inspection we were able to continue our trip to the luggage service desk. We (Isabella, the Delta lady and myself) took a train to a different part of the airport, where the service desk was. There they said the same thing as we already knew: the wheels were broken. They looked into the system for a bit and told me they couldn’t do much as Seattle was not my final destination, I had to claim my loss in Honolulu as that was my final destination. Right, so we did. They did give me an umbrella stroller for Isabella, so I didn’t had to carry Isabella all over the place They really helped me with that (believe me, it gets really tiring when you have to walk all over the place with her, especially when you are tired from a long trip).

After all this, the lady/girl (I’m still not sure what I should call her haha) from Delta brought me to the security check (I had to go through the security again as I had to leave the international part of the airport to get to the service desk) and she told me she would make sure that our broken stroller would be brought to the airplane to Hawaii.

During this security check, they checked my carry-on manually again (and only here they found the hand sanitizer bottle that they did not see in the Netherlands) but like expected, everything was found alright. So then it was time to go towards the gate for my flight to Honolulu.

Once we got to the gate, I thought I would be able to call my mother and Michelle through Skype… well, not exactly haha. Isabella started to cry since she became hungry. While I fed her, something started to smell quite bad and Isabella became very restless.. right, a dirty diaper. This meant I had to go to the toilets to change her. Once we got to the toilets, it turned out she did not only have a dirty diaper, no, everything was dirty. I had to clean her from head to toe and give her some new clothes.. hooray! Haha. I was glad I brought some spare clothes in my carry-ons.

Once I was done with all that, I went back to our gate and continued to feed Isabella. And when I was done with that, I was finally able to call my mother and Michelle, and tell them that I arrived safely several hours before all this. I can tell you: I was happy I had a 4 hour stopover, I really needed it.

Once I sat there for a bit, I had to go to the bathroom myself, and after the bathroom visit I looked at the arrival and departure screens and noted that my flight would leave from a different gate… oops, I did not see this earlier (and I should have checked it once I arrived at Seattle!).. fortunately I noticed this on time. I went to the other gate with Isabella and when I sat for about five minutes, I was able to board the plane.

My next flight was Alaska Airlines #859 to Honolulu. I knew there was a possibility that the third chair in our row would remain empty, but if it really would stay empty, I could only hope so.. often they add people on the last minute, people who were on standby for example. I was lucky: the chair remained empty and I had the whole row for Isabella and me. I can tell you this was a real welcome surprise, Isabella slept throughout the flight and I was also able to close my eyes for a few short naps

We arrived about 30 minutes ahead of schedule in Honolulu, and when we got to the baggage belts we finally saw Michelle again after three weeks. I can tell you, Michelle was very happy to see the both of us, and we were obviously also happy to see her again!

After we collected our luggage, we went to the Delta service desk in Honolulu, where a nice lady (this time it was a lady for sure, not a girl anymore haha) helped us. She had, however, some problems with her computer and she asked us to come back a day later so we could finish the claim, which we did. She told us we could just buy a new stroller and bring the receipt with us to get the amount for the stroller reimbursed. This was good news, we would get a refund for the whole amount if we had to believe her. I had some good hope after this!

The day after, on wednesday, we went (with a huge jetlag) back to the airport, together with the receipt for the new stroller, so we could finish the damage claim (by the way, they did not have the same stroller anymore, which was pretty sad as we had such a cute stroller). But they couldn’t find the first claim we made anymore.. ehmm. I instantly started to sweat it as I was unsure what would happen now.. for all I know they would say: too bad…

Fortunately it turned out to be not true. After a short wait, we learned that we would receive a check for the full amount, but that the check had to be signed by two different supervisors and these supervisors had a medical emergency at the same time somewhere else on the airfield. They told us that we could wait on them, but that we could also just come back (together with the proof of the claim) to wrap things up. It seemed the best to just come back the day after (today) to finish it all.

So this morning I went back to the airport again, where I received a nice check from Alaska Airlines for the full purchase amount of the stroller.

You might think it is a bit weird that Alaska Airlines reimbursed the costs for the stroller, but it turns out that the airline you flew last with (in the same booking), is the airline that will have to be responsible for any damages caused (which is probably why Seattle couldn’t help us, I think). Right, I know, it sounds all a bit weird, but that seems to be the rules. It doesn’t really matter to me, I am already happy things are solved.

I can only tell you that I am happy how things went. It is too bad the stroller got broken, but they solved in a very nice manner. Both Delta Airlines and Alaska Airlines have helped us really well on the moments we needed the help the most and that’s something that should be told

For now I can only tell you I am really tired, the jetlag is really getting to me.

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

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.

We could have been in a storm right now, possibly without any power and, in the worst case scenarie, even go without a roof above our heads. Fortunately it didn’t turn out to be that bad: we have seen for most of the day, both yesterday and today (still have), but it is going very slow, so I doubt we will get real problems from this rain. Rain like this is only a blessing right now as the country really needs the rain. If the rain would pour down very fast, then the land would have no time to actually soak the water up

The worst of Felicia did not come to us, but are we there yet? No, not really.. we still have about 3.5 months to go as the hurricane season is here until november. And, well, the Pacific ocean looks currently pretty restless:

You can find two possible depressions in the first image, the ones who have a circle around them. These have less than 30 percent chance to turn into a storm (however, Felicia also turned into a storm after being classified as less than 30 percent chance), and the red ‘L’ is a depression that might turn into a hurricane.. apparently he isn’t exactly organized so there is not a big chance (yet) that it will turn into a hurricane. By now, the other image does show a storm. They still speak about ‘ten-E’ in the image (which basically means the tenth depression in the Eastern Pacific, ten-east basically) but as said, it turned out to be a storm and it received an official name: Guillermo. As you can see in the image, there’s a big chance that it will reach Hawai’i in a week (that piece of land that you can see is Big Island). In what kind of category, or power, he will arrive, I have no idea, I think it is to early for it to actually say something more clear about that. He might even completely dissolve before it comes here.

But yeah, you can see that one storm is barely gone, and the next storms are already being made. If we will experience a real hurricane in Hawai’i, I have no idea but we will find out. We will at least make sure that we are well prepared, and that we have enough supplies.

By the way, there’s also some other news as Michelle bought a new car today. I will write a bit later (tomorrow or something) about this. For one, I don’t have any pictures to show you right now as MIchelle took the car to work right away (I would have done the same haha). The post about that will, like I just said, come a tomorrow or something

A hurricane was on its way to us, like I wrote a bit earlier this week. And like I also wrote, they expected that it would decrease in strength, before it would reach Hawai’i, and that happened indeed.

Felicia is currently classified as a tropical storm, which means that it has sustained winds of 39 to 79 mph (63 to 117.5 km/h), but the gusts might be a lot faster. The current windspeeds are around 50 mph (about 80 km/h), and this is pretty stable for the whole night and day already, so I think it might still cause some problems. They especially fear flash flooding on certain parts of the islands (no fear, we’re not in such an area).

There are even people at the moment, who expect, or better said: they don’t exclude, that the storm might increase in power again. This happened in the past a few times, and well, the water here is also warmer than where the storm currently is, and from what we can see on the weatherradars, it shows indeed that it has increased rain and such also with the storm.

Here are two more pictures, the first is of the expected trajectory of the storm, you can see that it really crosses the islands. The second one is a picture of a tropical storm, so you can get an impression of how a storm like that looks like… looks pretty fierce to me:

We will see what the storm will bring us, currently it is the expectation that it will reach our island on tuesday, and that it will still be a tropical storm by then. Whatever happens, we made sure to be pretty well prepared. If we lose power or other facilities, at least we will be able to survive for about a month on the stocks that we bought.

I am curious what happens later this year with the storms and hurricanes. When you look on StormPulse, for example, then you can see there are a few storms being formed east from Hawai’i, and it also looks pretty restless in the south of Hawai’i. We’ll see

Like I said in my previous post, it is possible that we will get another week to forget next week. This because of the hurricane ‘Felicia’.

Hurricane Felicia has, while I am writing this, reached category 3 and it is very possible that she goes to a category 4 hurricane, which is 1 category below the maximum. She currently reaches windspeeds of about 125 miles per hour, which is a bit more than 200 kilometer per hour. To be classified as a category 4 hurricane, she needs to increase another 6 miles per hour, so 131 mph (or 210 km/h) in total.

Felicia is still pretty far away, we can say, she is about 2000 miles away from our island, and about 1800 miles from the whole group of islands, but still, she is coming towards us with a speed of 39-57 miles per hour, and they expect to be less than 200 miles away from us on Monday morning..

Here;s a picture of where Felicia currently is, where she is going, and some other data:

Right, and there you are, in the middle of a big pool of water, and the nearest mainland about 2500 miles (over 4000 kilometer) away from us haha. You can go nowhere, and, well, you can feel yourself become very small all of the sudden haha.

Oh well, am I really worried? No, not really. Of course it is something you need to track, but to say that it really scares me, not really. See, hurricane Felicia will almost certainly hit us, but what will we notice from it? I think we will just get bad weather and not much more, this mostly because the hurricane Felicia is still far away, and by the time it is Monday, she will have lost a lot of her power again (that is, if you have to believe the predictions). And even then, it is still almost a week until she is close enough to hit us, who knows what will happen in the meantime. If there’s something that they cannot predict, then it is the weather.

Something I don’t really understand, though, is the government of Hawai’i. We’re currently in a hurricane season (this runs from the beginning of June to the end of November), all the signs of El Niño are here, which basically means that they can expect extra hurricane activity this year. Hawai’i is overdue for a hurricane as it gets hit now and then, and it did not happen for a long time already so it might mean that it is going to happen someday, looking at statistics that is. And what does the government want to do? They want to raid the ‘hurricane relief fund’, a fund that was started to help victims of hurricanes, so they can add it to the shortages of the state. No really, how stupid can you be? According to Murphy’s law, you will see that whenever they do this, a hurricane will hit is full.. and then you will get the question ‘who will pay for it all?’… well, I doubt it will be the insurance companies as they might have fled the island long before that happens, like I hear in all kinds of places, they will try everything so they don’t have to pay any money to the victims (which I can understand, the pricing of the houses is really high here).

Oh well.. we will see how far hurricane Felicia will come. It is still a risk, and we will take some precaution, such as having extra water and canned food, and such. You should actually have that always ready here, there’s a big, active, volcano nearby, there are small earthquakes all the time because of the seismic activity, tsunami’s also happen here, we’ve seen a tornado last year (and according to Michelle, there was another one a few weeks ago) and we also have the hurricanes haha.

Yeah, if you look at it like this, then it is a weird thing to call Hawai’i paradise

If you’re interested to follow this hurricane, here’s some sites you can do this:

- Stormpulse (click on Felicia).

- Tropical Pacific - Visible Loop

- National Hurricane Center

Update 08/05/09 05:30 PM: Felicia has just been upgraded to a category 4 storm, with windspeeds up to 140 mph (225 km/h).