Whale ho! Actually, nobody said that on the boat this morning, but we did see little pieces of several whales. This is a time of year that migrating whales are right off Waikiki. We got up abominably early this morning 6:40, before the sun was up) so we could get on the whale boat that left at 8:45. Of course, we totally overestimated the time it would take us to get to the Aloha tower, and ended up having a lot of time to wander around once we got there. One of the more interesting things at Pier 8, where our giant boat was) is that the harbor is so clean there are reef fish swimming around the bottom of the boat in the harbor. I’m talking about the kind of fish you go swimming at Hanauma Bay to see. Once we got on the boat, it was pretty interesting. They said we were likely to see some whales and calves and we actually did. Usually they were pretty far away from the boat, but then they’d move the boat and kind of hang around where they’d seen the whales,
who of course instantly went into hiding. I did get one video. I don’t know how to shorten a video, so fair warning, there’s only whales on about the first half of the whale video. The pier is near the Aloha Tower, which was once the main symbol of Hawaii and Honolulu. Now I think it’s a dollar sign. Anyway, the Aloha Tower used to be the middle of a building that had immigration and customs and other buildings you’d see around a port. But the developer who repaired and rebuilt the tower “at no cost to the taxpayer,” apparently tore down the other buildings and built a shopping center around it. We walked through the shopping center and it seemed pretty sad – like it might have had a lot of expensive shops before the recession. But we did get to go up on the Aloha Tower which has a 360 view of Honolulu, and which was the tallest building in Honolulu in 1929. At ten stories, it is pretty much dwarfed by everything around it.
Our late afternoon excursion was to go to the University where political media expert Kathleen Hall Jamieson was giving a lecture on how to find hidden meanings in presidential messages. I was excited to go, because I used to visit the East West Center the summer I went to school at UH, and I also just wanted to see where I stayed, etc. I did remember where the dorms were, and where the East West Center was. The dorms appear to have been condemned. I remember that they were kind of old 45 years ago. Now they appear to back up to a sports stadium, which I don’t remember, and the walk from the bus to the dorms goes past a law school which I also don’t remember, but the music building was where I remembered it. The East West Center is now about five or six buildings, and has a beautiful Japanese garden behind it, plus quite a fabulous collection of art scattered throughout the buildings.
I can remember all that, but even though I looked at the clipping of our speaker at least 10 times before we went, I couldn’t remember her name without looking it up again. They had a number of the movers and shakers, or at least the big donors there, and it was interesting to see how the natives dress up. The men, by and large, wear aloha shirts and long pants. Women, however, wore all sorts of different things. Some were there in shorts and flip flops, the ones who were dressed up tended to have pretty interesting and sort of artsy dresses, and the asians were more dressed up than the haoles.
The speech was really interesting, and she is clearly an Obama supporter, as was the crowd – mostly, I suppose, because he’s the homie here. She is the founder (I think) of the website www.factchecker.org which examines truth in political advertising. After the speech they had a nice reception, which we called dinner, as did most of the people there, I’m pretty sure, judging by the height they piled their plates up to When we got back to the hotel, we stopped by the International market to get our daily fix of Dole Whip. My favorite group, a husband and wife duo, were playing their steel drums. In other words, we had a really interesting day – even if we didn’t go to the beach, which I think may be illegal – at the very least it’s immoral.
Tomorrow we plan to go to the north shore. We’ve rented a car, but it now appears that Thursday is the day they’re going to have the 30 foot waves. So we rented a car for Thursday as well, and if we wake up and it’s raining tomorrow, we’ll cancel tomorrow’s car rental. We were planning on going to Kailua one day, but time is running out. I discovered you can get there on the bus in about an hour! For a dollar.
Our late afternoon excursion was to go to the University where political media expert Kathleen Hall Jamieson was giving a lecture on how to find hidden meanings in presidential messages. I was excited to go, because I used to visit the East West Center the summer I went to school at UH, and I also just wanted to see where I stayed, etc. I did remember where the dorms were, and where the East West Center was. The dorms appear to have been condemned. I remember that they were kind of old 45 years ago. Now they appear to back up to a sports stadium, which I don’t remember, and the walk from the bus to the dorms goes past a law school which I also don’t remember, but the music building was where I remembered it. The East West Center is now about five or six buildings, and has a beautiful Japanese garden behind it, plus quite a fabulous collection of art scattered throughout the buildings. 
I can remember all that, but even though I looked at the clipping of our speaker at least 10 times before we went, I couldn’t remember her name without looking it up again. They had a number of the movers and shakers, or at least the big donors there, and it was interesting to see how the natives dress up. The men, by and large, wear aloha shirts and long pants. Women, however, wore all sorts of different things. Some were there in shorts and flip flops, the ones who were dressed up tended to have pretty interesting and sort of artsy dresses, and the asians were more dressed up than the haoles. 
The speech was really interesting, and she is clearly an Obama supporter, as was the crowd – mostly, I suppose, because he’s the homie here. She is the founder (I think) of the website www.factchecker.org which examines truth in political advertising. After the speech they had a nice reception, which we called dinner, as did most of the people there, I’m pretty sure, judging by the height they piled their plates up to When we got back to the hotel, we stopped by the International market to get our daily fix of Dole Whip. My favorite group, a husband and wife duo, were playing their steel drums. In other words, we had a really interesting day – even if we didn’t go to the beach, which I think may be illegal – at the very least it’s immoral. 
Tomorrow we plan to go to the north shore. We’ve rented a car, but it now appears that Thursday is the day they’re going to have the 30 foot waves. So we rented a car for Thursday as well, and if we wake up and it’s raining tomorrow, we’ll cancel tomorrow’s car rental. We were planning on going to Kailua one day, but time is running out. I discovered you can get there on the bus in about an hour! For a dollar.
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