Hawaii... Here We Come!

[James]

We're off to Kauai and Maui. Would appreciate some prayers and good thoughts for our safe flights. Will try and keep in touch with my wife's ipad 2.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MSIE 9.0; Windows NT 6.1; Trident/5.0; BOIE9;ENUSMSE)

[Antony]

Have a safe and nice trip to Hawaii.

Laurent and I were once thinking (dreaming rather) going to Hawaii for holiday. Apart from the schedule, I told Laurent to forget about Hawaii trip, and I don't think you can guess out the reason: to save my own face.

Antony is not white, and it is well known that US does not like non-white visitors in reality.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.6; en-US; rv:1.9.2.22) Gecko/20110902 AlexaToolbar/alxf-2.14 Firefox/3.6.22

[James]

Have a safe and nice trip to Hawaii.

Laurent and I were once thinking (dreaming rather) going to Hawaii for holiday. Apart from the schedule, I told Laurent to forget about Hawaii trip, and I don't think you can guess out the reason: to save my own face.

Antony is not white, and it is well known that US does not like non-white visitors in reality.

Ha! I'm typing on my wife's ipad2 so I'll be brief because I don't like typing on glass. Antony my friend, most people in Hawaii have skin color like your own rather than ours. We are the odd people out. LOL

Thanks for the good wishes. This will make our 6th visit here but this year we are going to island hop between Kauai and Maui. We'll be about two weeks and are hoping for some nice sunshine... so different than the Pacific NW coast where we live. I'm hoping to get some decent pics this time so I brought along my dslr. We shall see. We fly out early tomorrow a.m. So we're off to a restaurant to eat and then early to bed at this hotel.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (iPad; U; CPU OS 4_3_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/8J2 Safari/528.16

[Antony]

I was referring to visa, customs, and security check etc. But can be easily extended to customer service etc.

You will get used to tapping on the glass

Enjoy your time there.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.6; en-US; rv:1.9.2.22) Gecko/20110902 AlexaToolbar/alxf-2.14 Firefox/3.6.22

[Mandrake]

Have a great trip James, and have tons of fun! You've certainly got all the best thoughts I have to offer.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:7.0.1) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/7.0.1

[James]

Thanks so much, Mandrake. We had our two weeks in the sun and are home now. Funny thing... on day one I threw out my back. Oh... I downed lots of Ibuprofin to combat it (and of course the Mai Tai's and Pina Coladas helped too...LOL). It's so beautiful over there; really... like Paradise. BUT we're back home now and coming back to your own little reality is good too. I'm glad to have had the opportunity to vacation there and I'm equally glad to be back home. (and I'm glad for friends like you and others here at Silly Dog, even if we are virtual friends... it's still good).

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:7.0.1) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/7.0.1

[Antony]

Good to know that you had a great holiday in Howaii.

Laurent and I are currently having our cheap trip in Queensland. Gold Coast (theme parks), Brisbane, Cairns, and will fly to islands later.

Well, as for gadget wise, we brought my iPad 2 and my tiny 11-inch MacBook Air this time. It is a whole lot easier with MacBook Air, compared to Cocos Islands + Christmas Island last year, 15-inch MacBook Pro plus iPad (original) proved to be too heavy. Getting the smallest MacBook Air was proven to be a wise decision. I have been wondering how Don carries his 2.58 kg laptop on top of 5.2 kg batteries.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.7; rv:7.0.1) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/7.0.1

[James]

I hope the two of you are having (and will have) a great time, Antony.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:7.0.1) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/7.0.1

[Antony]

Yes, so far it has been great. Thank you. Just no beautiful snow like the ones in beautiful Boston.

We scheduled one morning dedicated for iPhone 4S keynote and all the related news. (iPad 2 and my cheap MacBook Air turn out to be extremely handy for such tusk.)

During the boring 2 hours in airport lounge for next flight, I learned the sad news of Steve Jobs from Puto's post. I have been checking my iPad 2 while Laurent drives me from one place to next.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (iPad; U; CPU OS 4_3_5 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8L1 Safari/6533.18.5

[James]

Sad news, indeed. Even though we do most of our computing on PCs, we do own an ipad2 and we recognize that Steve Jobs influenced the very things we are doing... from listening to our music to using the mouse. He was a visionary whose like we will probably not see again in our lifetime.

Anyway... have a great trip, Antony. Glad you have your Macbook Air and ipad with you.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:7.0.1) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/7.0.1

[Antony]

Not sure if I shall whine or not. Well, no beautiful snow (like in picturesque Quincy), no Nespresso coffee...

But, my brekky at somewhere near Cape York.

Only an iPhone 4 photo, not iPhone 4S. (Resized in Photoshop.)

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.7; rv:7.0.1) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/7.0.1

[James]

Very nice, Antony. Did you go into the water? Is it warm there? Where exactly are you now?

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:7.0.1) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/7.0.1

[Antony]

Thanks.

Unfortunately the area has crocodiles, swimming is not allowed. It was near the top of Australia (mainland). We are staying in Thursday Island. Hot, no beautiful snow.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.7; rv:7.0.1) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/7.0.1

[James]

Certainly a lovely scene. I'm assuming you drove there rather than flew... is that correct? If so, how long did it take?

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:7.0.1) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/7.0.1

[Antony]

Thank you James.

Sorry for the delay in responding, was thinking about getting the following image up earlier, but you know, there are important things such as getting an iPhone 4S.


This is a screenshot from iPhoto '11. The drop pins show where we were (with photos taken). I know I did a very un-Don thing: I tracked my own photos with GPS locations. The GPS locations are extremely handy.

We spent a few days in Gold Coast (theme parks), flew to Cairns (Great Barrier Reef), then flew to the top of Australia (some remote islands).

Cape York (previous photo) is the northern most point in Australia mainland. It was a beautiful holiday.

important message: Unlike Don, we don't own a BMW to drive far (despite the fact that Australia is small compared to the States). Antony is poor, he can't afford going to beautiful Boston for the beautiful snow.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.6; en-US; rv:1.9.2.23) Gecko/20110920 AlexaToolbar/alxf-2.14 Firefox/3.6.23