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:

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 wrote a little bit about it yesterday, next to my passport renewal, we also did a few other things. One of those things was feeding the fish in the harbor of Honolulu.

Today I worked a bit on the video’s that we made yesterday. The video’s of the Pali Highway will be coming a bit later tonight, they’re currently converting to a better format for Youtube, so you need to wait a bit on that (that is, if everything will be ok… if not, then you will have to wait a bit longer haha), but for now I can give you the video of us feeding the fish in the harbor of Honolulu. It is a short video, but I think it is still nice to see, you don’t see fish like this in every harbor

Yesterday I wrote that we made a video of Queen Mary 2’s departure, I put it on Youtube on the following location: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GX5GGsX5Z6c

The video’s playback is at double speed which I did because it might become quite a boring video otherwise.. It all doesn’t go that quick haha.

The soundsignal which you hear on the beginning of the video is the original signal of the Queen Mary 2 which she made just before she left.. I can tell you that it is a wonder that we’re not deaf yet, so loud! The rest of the video is without the original sound but with backgroundmusic.

Last Friday I read in the papers that today, on sunday, at around 6 AM, the Queen Mary 2 would arrive in Honolulu. I once saw the Queen Mary 2 on National Geographic and I knew it was a very nice ship, so I thought we had to head towards Aloha Tower today where she would be docked in the area until 5 PM.

And so we did.

We arrived around 4.15 PM, so we had enough time to make a few pictures before it would leave. Unfortunately our luck didn’t take that long as it started to rain but thankfully it was just short as it you can see it here more often so we didn’t get too wet. The sky, at the other hand, was very scary, I expected pretty big shower but, as with a miracle, it didn’t rain until the ship left. And even then it wasn’t all that bad, it was a short one again and that was it again… I think the rain fell mostly at the other side of the mountains, as it usually does.

Of course we have some pictures, mostly made by Michelle.. I was more busy making a video of their leave. I will upload a youtube video a bit later

And again I felt a bit artistic:

We saw that the ropes were loosened, the Queen Mary 2 gave some sound signals and the ship slowly backed away from the docks thanks to the strong bow engines. She then slowly went backwards and at the same time it turned 180 degrees around her axes (and no, not vertical, of course haha).

After the Queen Mary 2 was in the right direction, she slowly sailed towards open sea. I have to say that it was a pretty impressive sight. The Queen Mary 2 is the longest cruiseship in the world (not the biggest, by the way, there are even bigger ships but those are higher instead of longer) and I think it was really remarkable that this ship had no problem turning around in such a small water. Ok, there was probably a pilot on board of the ship (which normally happens when a ship of such a size is in the harbor, the pilots know their harbors really well and, for example, know exactly where it is deep enough) but I mean without the help of tugs and such.

After the Queen Mary 2 was even further away, we went towards Aloha Tower to eat a bit. I thought it was really something special to see a ship this size.

Here are three more pictures that we took today near Aloha Tower.. they don’t have anything to do with water or ships, they’re just nice pictures I think (especially the last two since my sister (she is a blonde, so forgif her haha, just kidding sis ) asked me if they also have that kind of buildings here:

I know, I know… I promised to post the pictures of the other two (Christmas)parade’s but we were so busy lately with all kinds of things that I didn’t had any time any more (or I just forgot about it on the other days lol) to post those pictures..

excuses, excuses..

Right, here are the pictures of the boat parade:

And that was the parade.. nah, just kidding hehe.. We took these pictures while we were waiting for the boats… here are the real pictures

I will post the pictures of the other parade soon.. I hope

I already said it in my previous message, that I would post some more pictures of some decorated houses but from a different part of the island, and here they are:

These are, again, not all pictures but, yeah, it might really become too much and it has to stay fun to watch it all

We also drove through town again to record some of the decorations with our new video camera, I still have to compile, edit, cut, paste and such so we haven’t got those video’s online yet but Michelle took some pictures, here are a few of them:

I hope that the pictures will not become too boring as I will have at least two more series of pictures for you, one of a normal parade and one of a boat parade.. I won’t post these now so don’t worry, they will come next time

Or like they say in Hawaiian: Mele Kalikimaka me ka Hau’oli Makahiki Hou!

It is almost Christmas Eve and tomorrow it will be Christmas. It feels a bit weird to have Christmas on Hawaii. We went out a lot during the last few days (that’s one of the reasons why I did not write so much lately) and even though I see Christmas lights and other decorations, hear Christmas music and know that it is Christmas, it still doesn’t give me the feeling that it is actually Christmas.

I think that I am not really used to it yet that it is almost always summer here (with the exception of the stormy weather like I told about earlier). Everyone still wears short sleeves, it is a bit cooler (still around 77-81 degrees Fahrenheit) than in the summer but yah, it doesn’t give a real Christmas feeling haha.

I do like to drive around at night, there are so many houses lighted and there are a couple who make it a whole spectacle, really enjoyable to watch that all. We also saw a few parades, I will write about them a bit later (we are about to have our Christmas dinner (barbeque!! hahaha, I love it but again it is something that you can only do in a nice tropical temperature). Here are, however, a few pictures of some very nice houses that we’ve seen here:

This is from two times that we went out, and I’ve only put the nicest, funniest, most lighted ones online. We made so many photo’s and I do not want to place them all online as it would cost a lot of time and it would be boring for you too if you want to see them all.

Also, you can see the same building on more than one picture, like the 3rd, 4th and 5th picture.. but what to think about photo 7 on to 11? That is just one place… quite big, I know.. we made a short video of that place so you can see it with your own eyes: Click here for the video.

We also went to another part of the island on a different day where they also had a lot of nice decorations and lights but this will be posted later (it is almost time for dinner!! haha).

I was also thinking about going to the other part of the island butttt… I think I won’t. The president-elect Barack Obama is on the island right now and he is one of the villages on that side and, well, I am not looking forward in an extended check or to end up in a street that might be blocked.. so we wait with that until he is gone again (should be in about a week I think, he would only stay for about 10 days).

Right, first food, later more

I said yesterday that we saw snow in town and I promised to write a bit more about it, so here goes.

Yesterday we went towards Ala Moana Center (a big mall) in the afternoon to get some food and to do some shopping (I got myself a new Aloha shirt and pants, unfortunately we didn’t find anything for Michelle). And a bit after 5 PM we went to the center of Ala Moana Center (lol) where, at 6 PM, would start a musical called ‘The Christmas Gift of Aloha’.

I was unsure what to expect of it, at first I didn’t even know it was a musical haha, but oh well, it didn’t matter, I enjoyed it a lot, it was really nicely done. The duration of the show was about 30 minutes.

The story is about a newly trained Christmas elf named ‘Merry’, who fell out of Santa’s sleigh above Hawaii and fell right into a ‘Menehune’ village (Menehune are the mythological Hawaiian elves). He was dismayed since he did not find any snow, reindeers or something else which reminded him even a bit about Christmas.

But with the help of Mele Menehune he founds out that Christmas really lives on Hawaii and he discovers the miracles of a Christmas on Hawaii.

He is introduced with the workshop of the Menehune, who have a workshop just like Santa has one on the North Pole. This means good luck for him because he lost all the presents for the kids when he fell out of the sleigh and the Menehune tell him that he can use the Menehune presents so that all kids get a present after all. Merry also learns that the presents are in the Candy Cane Train and as soon as he sees this train, he wants to drive it.. he is told to be careful but unfortunately, he didn’t listen and the train crashes and demolishes all presents.

The Menehune children give him their own toys and this is one of the reason how he learns that Christmas is so much more than just receiving toys.

Santa also arrives on Hawaii a bit later and then a few miracles happen.. Toys come to life and it even starts to snow on Hawaii.

Now you might think ‘yeah but that aint real snow’.. well, I don’t know.. I noticed that it was a lot cooler when the snow fell down…

When the snow fell, I had to pink a tear away.. The spirit of Aloha was probably there for real and there were probably some real wonders. Or was it because I missed the Netherlands for a bit? Who knows, it might have been both.

Here are some more pictures of the ending:

We went for a drive through town after this show, so we could take some pictures of lighted houses, I will make a post about that on a later time.

Also, if you are interested in what kind of music they played in this show, please click here.

The Honolulu City Lights takes place from December 6, 2008 until January 1st, 2009, and this basically means that the area in the city centre (in the area of Honolulu Hale, the city hall) will be lighted with all kinds of Christmas lights. You can also find a variety of status and images and yesterday there was also a parade.

We went yesterday and took a few pictures, let’s start at the beginning. I will try not to give too much comments, there are lot’s of pictures and the description can also be found when you hover your mouse over the images (and it is also written below the pictures when you click on them).

Ok, the first pictures we took while it was still daylight:

We kind of expected that it would be busy for the parade, and it actually became really busy (apologies for the vague picture, I moved a little bit when I took it):

It became a bit more dark now and after some songs by the mayor (yep, he sang two Christmas songs and it was quite ok also) and some words of welcome, the lights of the Christmas tree went on in front of the city hall:

And Honolulu City Lights started with that.. You will be able to find something to do almost every day around city hall until Christmas, there will be, for example, a toy collection with the help of an actual batalion of stormtroopers (we’ll also go that hehe) and yesterday there was also a parade during the opening.

The picturs that follow next are a bit vague sometimes, this is mainly because these are all pictures of moving things and they were all taken by night and as soon as there is movement during night, you will find that back on the photo’s unfortunately. We also skip some photo’s as it will be too much to put everything online (the total parade took about an hour so you know what it can be haha):

I also made a video of the parade (and that’s something I kind of regret, I have a sore arm and got muscle pain all over my body haha) but I have to edit that video first because it is, like said, over an hour of material and that kind of is a bit too much to put online just raw. So that one will follow later.

So after the parade we could either just go straight home, get some food first and watch a bit of the concert, or go inside city hall where the city workers made all kinds of things. We chose to do the opposite (hahaha) and went into city hall first where we found many things such as rare wreaths, gingerbread houses and all kinds of other things (again: I won’t post all the images as it will be too much):

And then we came outside where we took some more photo’s of the lights and after some food we went back towards home. Here are the last pictures:

And that was all for now I hope it was not too much photo’s or that you got a bit bored by it.. We will post more photo’s later on as we are also planning to drive around and look at all the decorated houses.