Shoes

As I was saying in yesterday's post, I arranged for the work boots that I purchased from Amazon to be dropped off at the nearest FedEx holding station. It's easier for me to pick up the package myself than rely on the FedEx delivery person. Steel toe. Water-proof. I'm off to the wedding in London. Are you also watching the royal wedding yourself live on tv? Is there anything else on tv. They pre-empted the late evening news to broadcast the event. From what I've watched so far on tv (10:52 HST), the royal wedding won't disappoint. Talk about pomp and pageantry. Undisputedly, "the British have a well-oiled machine," in that department. And a backdrop of Buckingham Palace and all them regal buildings does hurt. I wasn't even planning to watch the royal wedding after being bombarded non-stop all week long with pre-wedding media blitz, but I'm staying tuned.

New Work Boots, Almost

I ordered new work boots online from Amazon on Sunday, the 24th, and the boots were delivered today, Wednesday, the 27th. Fast, huh. I decided to shell out an extra $9 for the next faster delivery option above free delivery. Oh, I almost forgot to mention a minor detail, I was informed of the delivery by FedEx through Email, and also that I wasn't at home during the delivery attempt, but oddly the delivery person didn't leave a message on my phone, so how in tarnation would I be aware that the FedEx delivery person was downstairs attempting an attempted delivery if they simply neglect to ring me up on the apartment building phone. My ring-up number on the apartment building's phone is the same number as my cellphone, so I would have, at least, a "missed call," on my cellphone's history page, even if the phone was off where ever on the island I happened to be even ruling out other phenomenon. There is no record of a FedEx call whatsoever. Perhaps, the delivery person came all the way to the lobby door but got cold feet crossing the threshold. This kind delivery screw-ups fall under "final mile" blunders. You can get merchandise delivered to your city from an online retailer located thousands of miles from your address, but the final mile, why that might take a while. Thusly, I arranged to pick-up the boots myself at the nearest FedEx holding station, or whatever those points are called. Mines is on Kapiolani Blvd., the next building to Walgreens in the Heald College building just across the street from Nordstroms at Ala Moana. The drop off station is suppose to Email me when my work boots are available for pick-up.

Earth Day

Happy Aloha Friday. That said, I don't know how people will be able to survive on this planet 50 years from now. You may not agree with my statement. And, in that you're not alone, for everybody else that I've said the same thing to, reacted like I was some kind of official purveyor of doom. However, if you factor in the world's population 50 years from now, plus the pollution, household garbage, lack of fuel source, lack of fresh water, insufficient food supply, and the list goes on, life on earth as we know it today won't be possible 50 years into the future, or possibly less than 50 years from now. Be happy that your existence on the planet is today. Yes there'll be medical discoveries that'll snuff out diseases that plague today's human race, and faster airplanes that'll take you thousands of miles in a matter of minutes, but otherwise, life necessities will be scarce. Incidentally, I just got working on that Lowe's site which opened today with a fanfare of traffic galore. I was under the impression the Lowe's site was the most contaminated site on the island, but actually it's "in the entire nation." Talk about Earth Day.

Part II

In the previous post I showed pics of some concrete forms that I was working on. These show what the concrete foundations were for. It's dark because we worked late. 14-hours, once. I actually started at 4am this morning and stepping on gravel all day long can be uncomfortable and makes you tired, so I bid you g'night.

Weather's Nice

I did some concrete form work today. Carpentry is not always wearing a tool pouch and a tuxedo renovating mansions, as you can see for yourself. But the exercise is priceless. I put in 11-hours today, and probably that way for rest of the week.

This Monday Night's Hawaii Five-O

After 2 straight weeks of reruns, this is all we get for a new episode of Hawaii Five-0? If you watched tonight's Five-O, I'm simply telling you what you already know for yourself. Or perhaps you saw it differently. Tonight's guest star, or the 5th Star, as Hawaii Five-O's producer puts it, was the Iron Chef, but the scene shot at the Iron Chef's Waikiki restaurant location wasn't of anything noteworthy, except for Danno horseplaying with the fish in the kitchen that the restaurant had ordered from the morning catch, which I thought was assinine childish. Asides that, after the first commercial break, tonight's episode was so heavy on the soap opera all the way to the very last scene that earlier episodes pale in comparisons in its use of the same M.O.

Otherwise the Gov't Will Shut Down ....

Like who really cared. After all the hoopla, the federal government didn't end up shutting down. Or, "Shut down was averted to the relief of the nation." On the other hand, it amounts to a huge disappointment for the federal workers who have to report to work on Monday. The last time the government shut down due to lack of funding, non-essential federal employees received their paychecks retroactively. Not a late paycheck. Because for the duration of the temporary furlough, they weren't physically there at the work place, but were paid irregardless to compensate them for the inconvenience. What a country. At any rate, the sure solution to our trillion dollar deficit is to enact an obesity tax, or a Fat Tax. As we speak, 65 percent of Americans are obese, albeit, the notion of a Fat Tax is ironic in the sense that the federal government stubbornly refuses to trim the fat from the body of it's own spending bills, but that's besides the point.




If you haven't heard, the latest polls show that Donald Trump has tied Mitt Romney for likable Republican candidates for president. In all probability, Trump's public campaign to prove Obama wasn't born in the US is responsible for the boost in ratings which doesn't speak well about the respondents of the polls in the degree that they're so hard up to replace Obama with a Republican president with the possible exception of the cult appeal shown for Sarah Palin in the wake of the Obama presidential victory even with Palin's equal lack of making any sense of her own mission. Trump mass appeal has been his trademark bluntness. He's been characterized as, "He says things that we think." Well, that's more due to the inherent advantage of being a billionaire. A billionaire is a billionaire is a billionaire. How many billionaires was that. The point is that it doesn't matter whether you have a paltry one billion dollars in the bank, or 70 billions and own the bank. You're still in the same billionaire's club. And you're more inclined to speak your mind whenever it suits your whims. However, when Trump demands that Obama show him his original birth certificate, or what was it, certificate of live birth, kinda confusing, just whom does Trump pretend to represent from which he derives the power of lunacy? In reality, a clear majority of 70 percent of Americans feel that Obama is a bona fide American citizen all the while Trump is trying to give the impression that he represents the nation.

7.1 Quake Hits off Japan

Japan's 7.1 magnitude earthquake this morning reminded me of something a blogger who I follow wrote last month. She and her family recently lived in Japan for a few years before moving to Qatar at the beginning of this year.

People close to me know that my greatest fear was to experience a large earthquake in Japan. For the first year we were there, it was my routine every night before I went to sleep to go through my personal earthquake drill. I needed to know the location of my keys, shoes, and coat. I went through the plan of where we would go if we had to leave our house in a hurry, and just how I would wake the kids in the event we had to flee in the night. Then my final prayer before I slept would be for protection.

Yesterday's News

Yesterday, I was watching the early morning local newscast (KITV), and I really don't know how long they've been doing it, but the morning hosts intermittently interrupted their regular programming to interview national celebrities in real time from different parts around the nation much like how the national tv shows do. The interludes were quite entertaining in light that the bulk of the early morning news is usually recycling yesterday's news stories. Their first celebrity was "Stone Cold" Steve Austin, the WWF wrestling champion. Stone Cold was promoting his reality tv show, but overall came across as a likable guy, which was a reprieve from having to endure listening to the female anchor's penchant, I won't mention names, of beginning every single sentence with an introductory laugh, and ending every single sentence with a closing laugh. After a while, her gig gets irritating, and I'd be replete not to mention, some local tv reporters do it better than others. It's like the song that gets stuck in your head but on a bad note.

Later, Donald Trump, was on the same broadcast. If you haven't heard, Trump's is busy advocating that President Obama wasn't born in the US and is thereof not American enough to be president. I think he meant president of the USA not the Trump empire. I don't quite understand the political strategy behind Trump resurrecting this claim, but Trump only comes off sounding as lolo as the Birthers before him whom never got anywhere with the same gimmick. If Obama was not born in the USA, than Obama would be essentially an illegal immigrant having never going through the process of been naturalized. And this is the same Trump that wants to run for president. Why the jackass be better of running as Sarah Palin's vice-president. It all strikes me as out of character from what I've watched of Trump. For example, Trump publicly stated that the Iraqi War was a needless war which very few fellow Repubs would have even allowed to enter their thoughts. Where went the credibility?

Much to my chagrin, the 2011 national basketball championship pre-empted this week's Hawaii Five-O episode.

Yesterday also marked the official opening of the World Trade Center's twin towers almost some four decades ago.

Southwest Airlines Mishap

The lesson in Friday's Southwest Airlines incident is that it's absolutely critical that passengers put on their oxygen masks before doing anything else whatsoever. For example, instinctively putting the child's oxygen mask on first. In the emergency, a passenger tried to assist an elderly man who had fainted in the aisle only to end up fainting himself. Both hadn't put on their oxygen masks. By all accounts you don't have too much time to act either. When the cabin looses air pressure suddenly, air whooshes out of your lungs. The ambient air pressure outside your lungs is so much lower at high altitudes than the air in your lungs, that the air in your lungs becomes instantly high-pressurized. A passenger's pen exploded due to the same pressure differential. Secondly, to restore cabin pressure, or diminish the negative effects of low pressure, the pilot will immediately dive bomb the airplane to a lower elevation. Understandably, the emergency decent might be misconstrued as a crash trajectory especially since the pilot is too busy under the circumstances to get on the plane's intercom and brief the passengers of the safety maneuver.

If You're Just Dying to Know .... It's, Mercury.

I don't know how much the Mercury mission cost NASA to the nearest billion, but I surmise the project was more inspired out of a spirit of, it's the journey not the destination, because obviously Mercury's landscape doesn't offer much in scenery on arrival. Apparently, Planet Mercury resembles Earth's moon. That we now know with 100% certainty courtesy of the fine folks at NASA. However underneath Mercury surface there might be gold glittering by the heapful and we all could use gold back on Earth. Or a mineral so potent that a bullet size portion of potent material would pack as much wallop as an intercontinental missile armed with multiple nuclear warheads.

Snooki gets $32K to talk ’GTL’ on Rutgers campus

Fyi, "GTL" translates into — gym, tanning, laundry. Why does Snooki command so lucrative a talking fee .... because Snooki is a cultural icon. Of course, so is Sarah Palin. What a ....