peterliu47 In Real Life
I married my lovely bride Kathy Becklin 20 years ago today at a picturesque winery in the Santa Cruz Mountains of Northern California, now called Savannah Chanelle Vineyards (was Congress Springs back then.) I can’t believe that much time has gone by. So much has happened. I couldn’t imagine life without her.
Happy Anniversary, Honey!
Mango season is in full swing. Along with pineapple, this is probably one of those things we take for granted here that the rest of the country envies us for, and this time of year, the trees drop fruit like crazy. Lucky us, we just happen to have one in our yard.
It starts as a trickle — one every few days or so, then a few more as the season goes on. I just went out into the yard and found another one on the ground, the third one today, after three from last night and at least another two during the day yesterday. And the season is still going strong. It’ll get ridiculous pretty soon. A couple of days ago, Kathy tweeted “Mangos are winning… can’t use them fast enough.”
I’ve come up with all kinds of creative uses for them in everything I make, from fish, to chicken, to pork, beef, sauces, salsa, stir fry, you name it. Nothing like really fresh mango with your meal. The Food Network helps to keep me afloat in ideas, but there’s only so much you can do when they keep piling up on the counter. Kathy’s even dragged out our ice cream maker from hibernation and made a ton of sorbet. We made martinis with them the other day. We offer to give them away to friends, but everybody in the entire state is drowning in them so no one really wants ours.
If you happen to be in our yard and see any on the ground, help yourself. Better you than the bugs. We probably still have a pile inside.
Aloha…
I’m in the process of compartmentalizing my photography business onto its own site — peterliuphoto.com — and repurposing kaiscapes.com for other pursuits. Add it to your bookmarks. More on the “other pursuits” later. Watch this space. You recall I’ve been staring at my navel a lot and working on tangents that involve the photography and art. Well, things are ch-ch-changing.
Email stays the same for now… send some, will ya!
Aloha…
The power came back on about an hour ago, Moosh has reappeared, Widgit is begging for treats and we have an Internet connection, so I guess things are back to normal for us after this morning’s earthquake. Not to worry!
However, the Big Island seems to have been hit hard and Oahu still seems to be having power problems. Hopefully, things will return to normal for them soon as well.
Aloha…
Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay… so I haven’t written anything in a long time. Truth is, I haven’t had much to say. Life goes on, we’re slowly settling into our new home on the island, blah, blah, blah.
Kathy’s studying real estate and getting ready to take the test, and is also enjoying a Hawaiian language and culture course, so she has plenty to tell me about the islands when she gets home on Tuesdays nights.
As for me, I’m still evaluating the situation regarding my photography and the business thereof, and trying to decide whether to keep proceeding down that road or look for an alternative that doesn’t require eroding my values, let alone the passion. The whole idea is to have a career I can actually enjoy down the road, as opposed to the last one I had, which I ended up abhorring. So, I’m taking a step back and trying a few tangents to see how they fit.
Meantime, we decided to take a week and dive with Dive Makai in Kona (for the sixth year in a row) to celebrate our 15th anniversary. Dive Makai is under new ownership, but we still love diving with them, and Kona still has the best diving in Hawaii, in our opinion. Yes, yes, but… but… but… Molokini, Lanai, Waianae, Kauai, blah, blah — whatever you say — Kona is still the best in the islands. I don’t do a lot of serious underwater photography these days, but I’m always glad to have the camera along on these dives. It’s absolutely worth the luggage hassles.
Aloha…
After putting it off for months, I finally got around to swapping my California drivers license for a Hawai’i one yesterday. Seems like a simple thing, but you know how it is — you have to flip through the book for a while, looking for things you don’t know, even though you’ve been driving in this country for years, then waste time putting up with DMV (although as DMV goes, the one in Kihei is out of the way and less busy than the main one in Kahului). It seemed like such a hassle, and I hadn’t made time for it, but with the sale of our California home, I decided I really should have some form of ID that had our address on it.
That truly was my last tie to our former residence, and giving it up signified that we really live here now. This makes me officially kama’aina, or a resident of Hawai’i (literally translated “child of the land”) and entitles me to all the kama’aina discounts on the island, such that they are. Being in a state almost totally dependent on the tourism industry, the local folks like to be able to distinguish the residents from the malihini, or foreigner.
Feels strange in a way, I don’t really feel like a local yet. As much as we’ve visited the islands over the years, I’m still learning the place as a resident. Hopefully, this brings me a step closer.
Aloha…
It’s Day 10 and I’m actually able to work in my office today. The den is in good shape and we’re wired for sound both there and in the living room so we just need to dock our iPods and away we go. We can actually eat on our dining table, and after 4 days of creative cramming, we actually have something in the kitchen other than an extra-large pan and my 8-inch chef’s knife. The computers are up and stable all over the house, the monitors are color calibrated and the printers and scanners all work.
Now comes the hours and hours of moving more than a terabyte of data back to where it should be after months of being on temporary hard drives. It’s almost overwhelming. I’ve been living without all these creature comforts for months. We’re so busy we don’t notice the days passing, but each morning we wake up to something that feels more like a home.
Aloha…
At long last, our aloha kitties have arrived safe and sound! From the looks of it, their journey was probably more traumatic for us than it was for them, all things considered. You can imagine any number of horrible scenarios that have been haunting us all day long (those who know me know that I trust the air travel process not at all — clocked too many hours in airports and airplanes through the years… they work hard to re-earn my distrust, one flight at a time). They came through just fine though, despite the luggage gorillas and brain dead ground agents.
Widgit wandered out of her carrier and started exploring right away. She happily accepted her aloha treats, then proceeded to wander all over the house, eventually coming back to ask for food. Then after three rounds with her nose in the bowl, I took it away for fear that she’d eat too much too fast and throw it all up. (She’s done that before.) The bowl will reappear later tonight.
I think she’s going to fit right in with the aloha lifestyle.
Moosh in the meantime, cowered in the back of her carrier mewing pathetically for a while, then ventured (more like slinked) out, found the bed and went right under it. She’s still there as I write this.
As Kathy said in her blog, their 120-day house arrest has been the reason we’ve had to hold up everything else. Now it’s over, and in the space of a week, the movers are coming, Kathy is flying here and the house is going on the market — just like that.
I guess we can really get this show on the road finally. Whew!
Btw, I’d recommend petmovers.com — after all, we did have a good outcome — but I hesitate because I think that’s in large part because Kathy and I were catching and managing details at both ends of the journey. The value add they provide is they know about all the necessary forms and when to submit what, plus how to get around all the airline stuff, and they have someone who knows the process the animals need to go through in Honolulu cold. The officials know her too, so that helps. These were the issues we worried about messing up if we were to try to move them on our own. Both Kathy and I had to dig for details from our coordinator every step of the way though, and we never really had the warm fuzzies we were supposed to have about our warm fuzzy ones, especially today. Just not detail-oriented enough for us, given the money we paid, good outcome aside.
Aloha…
