Fun in the sun.

Last week I "finished" another section of classes. Only a few more now, then a round of tests (all day tests that is) and then it should be home free.....all theoretically of course. My instructor told us today that we are in the homestretch now, which is quite comforting actually. I know I'm weird.

Last week was Eat the Streets again, I had some good food. The theme was "Latin", which I do have to say, Hawaiian style food and Latin, don't really go all that well together. I did have some interesting food though. I only took pictures of two things I got though. I had a burrito-pizza with their "mild" green chili. I wouldn't really say that their green chili was "mild", it had a pretty good kick to it. 

The second thing I got was actually quite amazing and I was very surprised by it. I got a Hawaiian Enchilada with Kalua pork inside. Surprising, it was very healthy and not very heavy on anything. Then again, I got it from a food truck that was about healthy eating. I think that was the best deal that I got ($6) for that. I also tried blue crab and lobster stew, lobster ravioli with pesto sauce, goat tacos, chimney cake, and spicy macaroni and cheese. (I think that is all, I might have forgotten something....) It was good times with friends though and it wasn't as crowded as last month. 

I also had Ultimate games on Saturday. I showed up a bit lat this week since I was down in town with my roommates. We went to go sign our lease for our place and we went out to eat lunch after. The place we went to is JJ Dolan's, and the pizza there was pretty good and all. Overall it was a good time with the roomies. Went and played Ultimate and then afterwards went to a coworkers Halloween party at his house. It was somewhat crazy, but not too crazy. I guess last year the cops were called, this year though the cops weren't called (well at least when I was there).

Sunday, I went to church and then went to the Windward side to a beach on the marine base, Pyramid Rock Beach. It was actually a pretty fun time with friends and then also meeting roommates of my friend Rick. The beach was a good time. The lifeguards had closed the water for a while due to rough surf and bad conditions, so we buried Sean in the sand (he actually wanted to be buried). We then tossed around a frisbee till ocean was opened back up to us. After that, all bets were off since we were boogie boarding, surfing (just Rick), and body surfing. There was also a monk seal on the beach (which you have to stay away from if they are on the beach). The waves were still pretty rough though even after they opened the water back up. We had a good time though. We took a picture (sans Rick) before I left. Mega is on the far right, Sean with the hat, Bryan in the background, and Ashley on the right. I should have stayed longer, but I had already committed to going to a movie with some other friends in town. I saw 50/50 with them. Not bad of a movie actually.

As promised, these are some pictures of food from Shokudo Japanese Restaurant and Bar. The top is the Lobster Dynamite Roll and the bottom is Honey Toast. 

Can you believe October is almost gone?

This year has just flown bye. Where has it gone? So we are almost at the end of October. I guess next week technically is the last week, but who is going to remember Halloween? 

Last week I had the opportunity to shadow my boss. Well, my bosses boss boss. The head of Nuclear power at Pearl. It was a great experience. It was great to know that there is a senior manager at the shipyard that actually cares for the betterment of the shipyard and the long term stability of the shipyard. It's not all about hiring just the locals and all or just not hiring at all. He at least sees the need to continue to hire new "blood" into the shipyard since there is going to be a high retirement turnover coming up in the next few years. Not only did he care about the people aspect, but also the environment and the community basis as well. Overall, I had a great time shadowing him, and I got breakfast and lunch out of the ordeal. Pretty nice bonus I think. 

Friday, I went out with friends again to Shokudo Japanese Restaurant and Bar and then somehow got talked into going to Apartment 3 afterwards (a lounge). The dinner was a great time. There were 13 of us total that went and we just have an overall great time. The food is really good there and decently priced. If you like Japanese food, I would suggest it. Apartment 3 was....interesting. It wasn't that busy actually which was surprising. It was a good atmosphere and good times with friends. There was only 7 of us that went there after dinner. 

Saturday I had a nice relaxing day. I haven't had one of those in a long time either. It was such a blessing. Just being lazy and all. USC beat Notre Dame and then also UH won their homecoming game. I watched a bit of the UCS/ND game, but zero of the UH game. 

Sunday, I had ultimate league and we played savage. It sucked, best thing was that we only had to play 2 games instead of 3 games. We technically only had 5-6 players so we were had to borrow some players. Playing savage though is pretty horrible since you have no substitutes, but I guess you get to play more so that was a plus. I also got to hang out on the sidelines with some friends afterwards when some teams had to play a third game (makeup game from one of the weeks before). 

I will try to remember to put some pictures of the food from Friday, but I don't guarantee anything. 

Relaxing weekend

I have to admit, I'm going to be lazy this week since I don't really want to spend time writing a lot or really thinking in general. Last week was I guess normal. I went and gave blood on Friday, so that meant I got to leave after working 5 hours and get paid for the last 3 hours. Yes, pretty sweet deal I think that I get paid to go give blood. I do have to say that I think fall is slowly coming to Hawaii. The weather is getting a big cooler at night and it is starting to rain more. That's the only way I can tell that fall is here in Hawaii.

I went to dinner with friends at Spicy Ahi and BBQ Friday night. The food was actually pretty good and we had a good time. The bad thing was that we had to wait a while for a table because one of group members had to stay and watch the UH game (they lost by one point). We then went to Aiea bowl afterwards and went bowling. I had one of my worst games and the the second game was pretty good and I didn't have any alcohol like my friends. Some of my friends had some drinks and yeah they got a bit wild, nothing too bad though. It was a late night though, staying up till 1am.

Saturday, I played Ultimate. We lost two games, but won the third game. My friend Donald hurt his knee though and it seems that he might be out for a while, maybe the rest of the league, which would really suck for us and for him. My friend Rick also happened to volunteer me to take a guy and his bike down into town to UH university. Well, he didn't do it on purpose, he is just really nice and all. He felt bad though that he volunteered me. I actually didn't mind too much. I didn't have much to do the rest of the night and all. The guy that I took home, his name was Alex and he is an Urban Planner master's degree candidate at UH. Pretty interesting. He hasn't played much ultimate so we could relate on the fact that the "regulars" tend to leave us "new" people out.

Sunday, went to church, then went to study for a while at work, finally coming back and hanging out with my roommates watching Walking with the Dead. It was pretty much a laid back Sunday. I was waiting to see if my friend Rick was doing something, but he never called and all. I found out today that he went kayaking with his new roommate, but it's alright. Having a laid back Sunday was very nice. Walking with the Dead, interesting TV show that is on AMC. Although, I think the show is on the stupid side and somewhat predictable. The ending of the episode was sad though, the young kid got shot when he was going to try to pet a deer with a full rack on his head. I don't think the producers know how deer do not allow people to get too close to them. Back to the end of the episode, the deer gets show and the bullet hits the kid. Like I said, it was a sad ending.

I have also decided to talk to the people at church about relearning how to run the sound board or to see at least why they don't want me to learn. Basically find the politics behind the situation, despite how much I hate politics. I guess I will have to play some. Also, prayer still for Rick and my other friends to be open to the Gospel.

Columbus Day weekend

I don't know when it happened, but it seems that Columbus day has been renamed "Columbus Discovers Day" or "Discovers Day". I think it is to appease more people or something like that. Anyways, I get to have a three day weekend, so I should be glad about that. I think also this was the first holiday in a while that I was not working and I was actually on island. I do have to say it was great to just relax.

I guess I should start with Friday, I went to out with friends to eat at a french restaurant down on the edge of Chinatown. I guess it also spaced us that it was also First Friday down there in Chinatown. In other words, there was a lot of traffic, a lot of people, and a lot of drinking going on at the bars down there in that area of town.

So the restaurant was called Du Vin. Pretty nice restaurant and good atmosphere. I was even surprised with five people, we didn't even have to wait for a table. They had one all set up for us, which again, I was surprised by. I had the roast pork chops, which I do have to say was cooked quite excellent. We also shared for the table, baked brie and escargot. Yes, most of you probably haven't had escargot, but really it is great. I also ate some mussels for the first time, not bad actually. For dessert I had their goat cheese cheesecake. Sorry about the not so great focused picture, it was bad lighting and all. It was delicious though. I would definitely go back to that restaurant again.

We also went to watch Real Steel (movie about a robot) after dinner. I do have to say that the movie wasn't that bad. Somewhat predictable and not great on the plot, but not a horrible movie overall. After the movie, on my way back home, I got the wonderful, fortunate opportunity to go through a DUI check. The police were definitely writing up people that night. Probably due to the first Friday celebration. The cop I talked to apologized for the inconvenience of the traffic and the slow going. I think that made my night right there. 

Saturday, I played Ultimate in the league. It so happened that only our first game counted this weekend since most people were in Denver for regionals. Most of the people were like "oh man, poor people in Denver right now, it's so cold". I was like "I wish I was there right now!". I heard that I missed the first snow and all. Dang it. The second and third games was just pickup games, I played in one, then left early to have dinner with friends. I had two options.....eating with coworkers in the department or eating with friends that I started work with last year. I decided to eat with the latter. It was great, I had so much food though. We ate at Gyu-Kaku, a Japanese BBQ style restaurant and had lots and lots of food. After we went to go see Ides of March. I didn't like the movie very much. It was a slow movie, more of how politics work and the workings behind politics. I did get a very good picture of what George Clooney thinks about politics and his political stances are though. 

Sunday, I went to church and then decided to go hiking with my friend Rick and his friend Ashley on the Windward side of the island. We went hiking on the Olomana trail which starts over by the Royal Hawaiian Golf course. 

The hike wasn't that bad actually. A combination of rainforest, desert, alpine, and just windy at the top. It was great actually. The picture below is a part that reminded me of Colorado. I don't know why there was random pine trees on the trail, but there was. Also in the picture is Rick and Ashley. 

This was a part way up on the trail. You got to look out on the Windward side of the island and just see how green it is. It's pretty much green all the time on that side of the island. Lucky them getting all that rain all the time. Lots of rain, but I haven't seen many mosquitoes, thank goodness. 

So there are actually three peaks to the "mountain" range. The picture below shows the third peak from first peak (not the actual summit though). 

 So I made it to the top of the first peak and took some pictures. You can see the second peak down on the left (that green bump above the guys heads) and then the third peak out in the distance. It was quite windy up there, also quite nice to cool off. It made for a great air conditioner. Although, if you weren't used to the cold, it would make you too cold. I took some panaroma pictures as well. One with Rick in it is of the coast and the second was the side looking more towards the "mountain range" that separates the Windward side with the rest of the island. You can definitely see the green and how nice it is on that side of the island.

I think my only regret on the hike was that I didn't get to talk to Rick about religious things and of Faith and God. There will be more times though for sure. I just need to find the time to do it. I think he is open to it. I just need to keep on praying that he would be open to the Spirit. After we walked, ran, climbed down the peaks, we rewarded ourselves by going to Lanikai Juice, a great little place over in Kailua. We also got there right before it got crowded. I had the bowl with bananas and granola, Ashley had the one with the bananas and pineapple (the one with the spoon), and Rick had the final one. They were also very delicious and I would definitely go there again if I was on that side of the island. 

Lastly on this very long post, Monday. I just went and relaxed on the beach for most of the day with some friends. We also ran into a predator friend that had washed up on the beach (unfortunately he was dead). Other than that, the day was pretty uneventful. I would say that the baby shark was about 3.5-4 feet long. 

Fun times

Well, I had the great opportunity to hang out with friends this weekend, enjoy the outdoors and just enjoy and be very productive. So work is going alright, I am staying late everyday so that I can study and hopefully keep caught up with things. Electrical systems isn't really my thing at all, but I'm pushing through it. I just need to work on concentrating and using my time more effectively.

Now to the fun things, Friday evening I went to Eat the Streets down in town. It's a once a month event (last friday of the month) where there are a bunch of lunch truck type food available to try and eat. There actually was a great selection of food and I can't wait to go back for more at the end of this month. I think the most interesting thing that I saw was a Malasada burger. Yes, pretty interesting to say the least. It is hard to say what the best thing that I had though. Between the lychee pulled pork, or the ahi poki, ahh so many choices. It was great though since I went with a group of friends and we pretty much shared food, so I got to try more than one thing with the amount spent. Saturday, we decided to hike Koko Head. It was originally was going to be at 0700, but somehow we changed it to being a sunrise hike. Well I did make it up before the sunrise! It was a great hike and good times with friends. So just a few pictures....I know I have been slacking so I thought I would just fill this one with some pictures.

 

So I guess I should say who is who in the pictures, well the guy in the orange is my friend Rick, white shirt, Daniel, yellow shirt, Lauren, and grey shirt, Cate. I would have to say, it is great hanging out with everyone. I would like to say that if you could all pray for them it would be great. I had a good conversation with Rick on our way down from the hike, so it would be great if we could continue talking about God and the Bible if possible. After the hike, we went to breakfast at Koa Pancake House, which was pretty great and filling. We then headed off to the beach at Sandy's. We got pretty beat up though at Sandy's since the waves pretty much break on the shoreline. My friend Rick also hurt his shoulder so if you could pray that his shoulder would heal, that would be nice as well.

It was the second weekend of Ultimate. My hip has been hurting me so that was not very fun running on a hurt hip the entire time. We one game, but the lost the other two, although they were pretty close and we only had a few subs on our team. I also feel like my team captain isn't a very good captain at all. He doesn't lead by good example at all I feel.

Lastly, we had a guest speaker at church this Sunday. He was from Colorado, Fort Collins actually. It was a pretty good talk and a great message in how to share the gospel nice and easy and to see if you are growing in God as well. Five letters for each part. First, Growing in God. How do you know if you are growing in God.

1. Reading the Bible
2. Spending time in Prayer
3. Spending time in Worship
4. Fellowshipping with other believers
5. Witness to others

You need all of them, not just one to grow effectively. Now for the second part of sharing the Gospel. 

1. Heaven, that is a real place. 
2. Everyone has sinned and we need a savior
3. God sent His Son to be that Savior
4. Christ is that savior, the one that died for us and paid the price so that we could be saved
5. Faith in what you believe

His last illustration was that you can't have one or the other separately. We have to have both to have a strong growing relationship with God. You have one, it produces the other, and it will just strengthen the other. It is a working relationship in the end.