right on bro!

Spent last week on Kauai island in Hawaii with my folks, my bro, and his girl. It was really cool. Notes:

• The first thing I noticed is that it is super bright and contrast-y compared to Southern California, probably because Kauai isn’t always covered with a perpetual cloud of smog.
• Visually, Kauai is too amazing to be described with words. I will probably bore you all with some “look at my vacation” photos when I get them developed, so if they actually came out well, you’ll be able to see for yourself.
• Caught a mahi mahi fish on a deep-sea charter.
• Went swimming for the first time in about eight years.
• Visited the Kauai Coffee Company, and had some of the most flavorful coffee I’ve ever had.
• Jammed around a plantation owned by Steve Case on an ATV for about four hours. Ate some sugarcane, didn’t taste like much really.
• Wasn’t so down with some of the local cuisine, which seemed like a mixture of Japanese and Chinese food (like, teriyaki chicken or fried mahi-mahi and shrimp, always with rice and macaroni salad). Some of it was pretty good though, including pancakes at the Oki Diner. We did go to a tourist luau, and the food there was good. I didn’t like poi though.

Managed to get through three books during the trip, mostly during air travel, so here are some Useless Book Reviews:

• CSI: Miami - Florida Getaway, by Max Allen Collins. Dude writes all of the CSI books, and they’re very enjoyable, shut-yer-brain-off books, if you happen to like both TV series. This one was no different.
• The Partly Cloudy Patriot, by Sarah Vowell. Yes, I took comfort in her work while passing time on an airplane. I love her NPR geek aesthetic.
• Hey, Nostradamus! by Douglas Coupland. I’ve liked all of Coupland’s fiction since Shampoo Planet. But I wasn’t too sure about this one when I read that the novel was centered around a Columbine-like high school shooting, except it was in Canada. However, it turns out that Coupland hasn’t lost his touch. The one thing that bugged me was that all of his characters were constantly writing - on paper, no less. You’d think that all modern communication today would be Word documents and email. Who uses a pen anymore to express themselves?

Well, back to the grind. Any new revelations? Yes, but I wouldn’t tell you. That would spoil the fun, wouldn’t it?