Journal lingqi's Journal: Sept 27th, 2004 1
September 27th, 2004 (9:24pm)
I havn't wrote anything for so long. One reason is that I was in Hawaii for the majority of last week.
The itinerary was not a particularly usual one. My flight to Hawaii departed Tokyo on Sept 17th at 6pm or so toward San Jose, arriving there at 10am the same day. Four hours later a regional jet would wisk me to LAX (Los Angeles), where a transfer would take me to Honolulu, arriving at 7:30pm, STILL the same day. Basically, after about 24 hours of travel, I arrive at my destination after some 8,000 miles, and the actual time only elapses about two hours...
On Friday, I still had work for half a day and I took off from the office around noon. This would give me just about enough time to make it to the airport. about three and half hours later, I arrived at Narita Airport and greeting me was the Airport as busy as I have ever seen it. hordes of people pourd out from the underground train terminal and oozed into the airport entrance, and dispersing but always re-coagulating around the checkin counters and security checkpoints. The security checkpoint had lines fifty meters long on either side.
That said, it was still fairly painless to go through. Albeit some waiting was in order, it was faster than I have anticipated. I guess with the coincidental holidays appearing in the same week, most everyone is taking this opportunity to go on a vacation and the airport was ready to handle this surge of travellers as well.
Not much happened between then and my arrival at Honolulu. The reason I went to San Jose was to pick up some cheques from my company (i.e. US branch office). One thing I think foreign expats must keep in mind is that cheques have a expiration date of 6 monthes. This is the cause of great inconvenience and I really begin to like the japanese system of bank transfers. Inasmuch as the fact that a fee is involved in the said tranfer, it is never very much and one have to consider that checkbooks also cost money and have a much higher tendency of getting lost and not being brought and all that.
The flight between San Jose and Los Angeles was on a tiny jet the size of a large sofa. It could only fit three seats at each row, and those were even seemingly reduced-size version. I have never flown on such small airplane before (yes I do realize there are airlines based solely on cessnas), and it was a shock to me how space-starved they can get.
Fast forward a few hours, and the plane (this time a venerable Boeing 737) touched down in Honolulu.
Honolulu airport did not have the "tropical island" feeling of Saipan. It was also quite big. One unique feature of it is that between terminals, there are many open-space corridors. I suppose the weather is predictable enough that they can do such a thing. The air was mildly warm and humid; but nothing like the suffocating thick wetness that Saipan shoved in my face. The sky was black; a new moon, just a thin arc like a big grin cracking open in the sky, hung motionless behind the loose, hurried clouds.
The biggest impression I got from Hawaii is, actually, its _horrible_ traffic jams. It might be because the accomodation was located in Waikikki, but despite being near 10pm, the traffic was slow and viscous. This was to turn out to be a theme on this vacation. How did such a small island develop so much traffic problems? Just exactly where do all these cars come from?
The Hotel was called Hotel Prince Waikikki or something. It overlooked a harbor and was very close to one of the large beach / park of Waikikki. It was also within walking distance to Ala Mona Shopping center. As much as I am not much of a shopping person (or at least i think that of myself), it was comforting to be near the vicinity of a mall after a long deprivation from it.
The primary objective for this trip was diving. A total of 6 dives were planned, which was to double my lifetime tank count to 12. Two was to be in O'ahu and four more (same day, no less) was in Hawai'i. With the traffic, arrival at hotel was already very late. The dive was to start quite early the next morning so not much got done that night. Well, there was apparently enough time for eating at Tony Roma's world famous ribs. That's something else that one develops a craving for after a lengthy deprivation thereof. For some reason I never went to the one in Roppongi.
The dive shop was on the north side of the island, in a quaint little town. The road there weaved through expansive fields with mountains in the distance on both side, and forward one can see the gleaming pacific, quiet and blue under a canopy of scattered clouds. I am sincerely impressed by this aspect of Hawaii. It is the mix of almost everything in the world: mountans and ocean and plains and volcanos and beaches and cliffs, all minaturized and arranged beatifully for maximum effect of presentation.
The first two dives was just a tad bit under my expectations. One thing about Hawaii, the thing that must not be underestimated, is that when somebody tells you "Hawaii do not have so much fish," he really means that there are not so many fishes. Compared to the Pacific rim where you can't reach out and not have some fish scatter out of the way to avoid being touched, the water in Hawaii (O'ahu, anyway) is crystal clear but few fishes are in sight. The few that are around swims nonchalantly in this huge cavity, occassionally diverting toward the coral reef to peck away some food. This is the rural suburbs of the ocean and the Pacific rim the business district of a metropolis.
The dives did have their moments though. The first amazing thing about the waters is that the corals form structures unlike anything I have seen. caves and arches and protrutions and cavities abound, and I float above and below and through them, weightless. Seen from below, blue light seeps through some holes on the canopy above, pattern shifting with the gentle mesmerizing undulations of the wave.
The other awsome thing was that I saw an octopus in its natural environment. Octopus are quite shy creatures. They hide in the crevices and look out with their alert eyes. The dive guide, hoping to show us the octopus, he keep sticking his finger inside the little hole, and every few seconds a tentacle would come out and wrap around his arm, and realizing that there is no effect, suddenly retract back into the hole again.
Finally, the octopus decided that it had enough with the harassment. It dashed out from hole where it was hiding and flew away with such incredible speed and disappeared in a nearby wall of coral, leaving two blotches of ink in its wake between the group of us. The ink is black but in a sense, not "ink" as I have imagined since I was little. The ink left was tenacious, mucus-like, floating and slowly dispersing, nay, disolving, into the water. It is even tangible and is more likely than not edible as well. While originially I thought the purpose of the ink is to render a large area invisible while the octopus escapes, in the end it was probably much more like a diversion tactic as employed by sea cucumbers.
-- let's continue some other time --
Good to see your back (Score:2)
And to think I'm stuck here in the desert while your off diving in Hawaii! It's glad to hear that you got home safe, keep up the good work.