Mitt Who?

Mitt Romney is in Poland, after visiting olympic London, Israel, etc. Why does he do this now before the November presidential elections? Free publicity back in the US, but also if he loses to Obama, Romney won't be receiving the same red carpet treatment from the host countries if he visited them later. Remember Obama had 200,000 people in Berlin cheering him when Obama was a presidential candidate demonstrating how he could walk on water on a pond in a park. Europeans must be getting irritated since their own political candidates challenging the incumbent prime minister, premier, etc. don't make it a point to visit Washington DC right before their elections. At any rate, Romney has everything to gain even if he does end up losing to Obama in November. His 2012 campaign would work out as a warm up lap for a more favorable presidential run in 2016 since Vice President Joe Biden nor any other notable Democrat aren't planning to run for president.

The Sound of Their Own Voice

I've never had the urge to 'tweet' or even 'text message', is there a difference(?) asides the 140 character limit in a tweet. To begin with, I lack the agility to hit the right alphabets on the miniature keypad on a pda. I'm not too bad typing on the larger computer keyboard. Terrible with the keys on a cell phone, though some people are able to touch type on their cell phones without looking. Dunno how they do that. If I had a choice, I would prefer emails to phone calls especially if there's a voice message that requires a return call and than the other party isn't home when you call or have their cell phone turned off, as opposed, to Email which is always ON. But between a tweet/text message versus a voice message, well, let's just say that I'd return a tweet/text message with a phone call instead of struggling to type a return tweet or a text message. You might be wondering what's the point or if there is a point to all of this? Well, let me explain. I was in Barnes & Nobles and this older guy was walking around in the aisles talking aloud on his cellphone oblivous to the presence of the rest of us quiet people in the makeshift audience and from the conversation I overheard it wasn't important or urgent talk just the usual generic nonsense. He probably didn't know how to tweet or text message. So there are situations where it would be more polite and appropriate to tweet/text message than conduct a phone conversation because a tweet/text message doesn't disturb and irritate nearby people.

Then there is this guy in the pic below, supreme commodore of the Ala Wai canal, aka, canoe practice coach for teenage girl paddlers. Da s.o.b. uses a megaphone to bark instructions.

One Among Many Bright Ideas

If you don't take these little halogen bulbs for desktop lamps with you to the store, you'd never get the right size. That's what I did. That's what I didn't. I didn't take the burnout halogen bulb with me to the store. The two pins on the bottom of the bulb are spaced a few millimeters apart on different wattage bulbs and they won't fit. It's not as simple for example as the bulb in the olympic torch. So I left the store empty handed knowing that it'll entail a second trip to the store later. Done it before too. However, as things would have it, while I was pulling the old halogen bulb out of the desktop lamp, the bulb lit up. So I guess it wasn't plugged in snug enough.

Scenic Drive, Sort Of

I saw this car in-gulfed with flames just outside the entrance to the tunnel on the Pali Highway, townbound. I say "in-gulfed" because while the interior was enfurled with orange flames, the outside of the car was perfectly visible and unharmed. The driver wasn't around either. But apparently the driver had pulled the car off to the right shoulder and the car wasn't impeding traffic. For all I know the driver might have been inside. The flames were that thick. I dunno. This is the part of the highway where there's a thousand feet scenic drop on the side and anybody standing or walking on the shoulder is hard to miss. At any rate, there was no signs of a collision with debris scattered all around and all that. Two cars infront of me, the driver pulls off to the left shoulder and stopped. The car immediately infront of me decides in the spirit of the moment to stop too, but in the middle of the highway to check things out. It's humanly impossible to render assistance in this situation hypothetically if the driver or passengers were unconscious inside the flaming vehicle. Fortunately at this portion of the two lane wide townbound highway, people decrease their speed. They're about to enter the tunnel and there's a change of direction curve before the entrance. The grade is also uphill so it's easier to slow in this particular situation to avoid the driver infront me stopped smack dab in the middle of the road. So I started beeping my horn because this is gonna cause a chain reaction crash real soon if we don't keep things moving along. About a hundred yards behind us there's an S-turn and people generally are speeding through that chicane. We were so close to the flaming car that you could feel the heat. I didn't think about it until later, but isn't there a possibility of the gas tank exploding? This was about 4pm in the afternoon. I didn't see it on tonight's news.

A Place in the Sun

There are few pleasures in the world that surpass nailing together plywood forms for concrete foundations all the while working in 85° weather under the blazing sun. If that sounds delirious perhaps there were a few solar bursts during the course of the work day that enhanced the over all euphoria back on Earth, as in, 85° but feels like 90°, also, I drink a gallon of water, but don't even pee once on the job. Than at home, another gallon of water. This time of year, there's always 2 pitchers of water ready in the frig. I wouldn't call it sun stroke but things do get overbaked.

Those 'Save Now' Stickers

As you can see for yourself, the cashier at Longs Drugs (CVS) neglected to remove the 50¢ stickers and of course I did not receive the manufacturer's discount off the Ziploc bags. I've already accumulated a huge collection of these unremoved instant saving stickers throughout the years to know better that you have to keep a watchful eye on the cashier at the checkout, but on this occasion I was preoccupied punching in my pin on the credit card machine. I assume cashiers are trained to spot instant saving stickers. But than, it's not their money. I even placed the Ziploc boxes side-by-side to each other on the conveyor belt with the stickers facing up to no avail to the eye of the beholder so to speak. Oddly, on the shelves that the boxes of plastic bags were stocked, not all the Ziploc boxes had instant saver stickers on them so I had to dig through the lot. And still, after all that effort, the stickers were not redeemed. I wonder whether enterprising shoppers remove the stickers on some of the Ziploc boxes on the shelves to use elsewhere or later. It's not if an alarm will sound. In reality, I already have enough Ziploc bags in the pantry, but they just happened to be on sale and when you run out and need to buy Ziploc bags they're on the expensive side. So I took the entire shopping bag, didn't buy too much stuff, and my receipt back to Longs Drugs and received back a dollar for the 2 stickers. As the stickers say, "Save Now!"

.... thee to a Summer's Day

Diamond Head Crater from Kapiolani Park

Only to Find that ....

I started off the holiday early yesterday by stopping in at an 24-hour grocery store at 2am in the morning only to find nothing special on sale in celebration of the 4th. Oh well, back to watching Wimbledon on tv from of all places from England on our Independence Day. They're 11 hours ahead of us in Hawaii. I like watching the French Open on tv better because the French are 12-hours ahead of Hawaii and you just switch a.m. (Hawaii) for p.m. (Paris). Anyways, the big controversy at Wimbledon revolves on when is it okay to close the roof on the Centre Court stadium. All the other minor stadiums at the Wimbledon complex are open courts with no retractable roofs which means if there's a heavy enough drizzle, the matches in progress  come to a halt at the digressions of the players. I believe that England has been experiencing its wettest eary-Summer on record. In that regards, a retractable roof would be something real handy. Yet the tournament officials want to preserve the tournament's tradition as an outdoor event and the officials just can't seem to get their act together and make up their mind on how bad the rain has to be before making the call and that's putting it as an understatement. More like Parliament.

It takes only 10-minutes to actually close the roof but another half-hour to fill the stadium with air conditioning, so 40-minutes. This is at Centre Court and  thus it involves marque matches. Unbeknownst to the numbskull officials, people are watching the matches live from all over the world. To me, if the forecast predicts even a hint of drizzle just close the $125 million roof ahead of schedule and be done with their indecision. If you have to open the roof while the match is underway, it takes only 10-minutes flat to re-open the roof, meanwhile the players still can play with the roof closed, on the other hand, grass courts are slippery even after a slight drizzle, and an open roof risk delays. This kind of mentality is probably why the British lost the Revolutionary War. Otherwise we wouldn't be celebrating the 4th as it is.

Last night, went to the beach to watch the fireworks display only to find that the aerial fireworks were shot up in the sky too close to the shore or not far enough offshore to be seen in full view from Waikiki beach. The fireworks are set off at Magic Island a mile-and-a-half as the the crow flies from Waikiki beach. From that point, the Waikiki shoreline curves inland, so about half of the fireworks' red glare and bombs bursting in air were hidden behind the hotels that you see in my blog's banner. I haven't watched the fireworks for two years so I have no idea when all this happened. I do remember that I could watch it from the stairwell of my apartment building and it was better a view from the stairwell than the beach tonight.

RimPac is currently underway off Hawaii waters. Some 25,000 sailors from different Pacific rim nations, plus England and France navies. Every year, every 2 years, or something like that. New Zealand isn't allowed to dock their 2 ships at Pearl Harbor. That's because New Zealand doesn't allow the US to dock our ships at New Zealand harbors because New Zealanders are anti-nukes. The thing about it is that while New Zealand indeed have to dock their 2 ships at Honolulu Harbor, it's on the downtown Honolulu side of the harbor, which works out well for the sailors on leave, instead of being docked at Pearl Harbor which is far and away from Honolulu and Waikiki which takes 2-hours to get back to base by bus and too far to walk. Whereas the New Zealand ships are docked in the middle of Honolulu.

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Some Pics of Today's Parade (6:00pm)