One of the last things I did on my vacation is something I haven’t done since I lived in Japan: I made a big pot of curry.
Curry is one of those dishes that evokes a plethora of sentimental memories and can awaken experiences from long ago. I can feel the humid heat of Nara under my T-shirt, and taste the hot green tea accompanying it. I can see the perfect triangular slices of watermelon, an ice cold treat that waits on plates in the center of a communal table patiently waiting to be enjoyed after the curry. This is but one of those memories.
While enjoying doing the things that I do on my time off, I not only remember, but if I am successful at relaxing, I forget.
This vacation has imparted a beneficial sort of amnesia on me, allowing me to forget work almost completely. I forgot the things that stress me out, the things that make me frustruated, and the things that make me tired. I also forgot the things that I look forward to doing, dependable co-workers, and to some extent, work friends. This is not to say these things are not important to me. I am still mindful of my work culture and environment, it’s just that everything is pushed to the way-back of my mind into storage.
I’ve been enjoying a vacation from my vacation, something that I’ve always wanted to do but have, up until this point, not been able to experience. The transition between vacation and work is often abrupt, jarring, and to some extent a traumatic experience. I’ve been able to hang out, go outdoors, stock up on groceries, cook, read, watch TV, catch up on correspondence, and generally digest my vacation. Like a well crafted culinary treat, this break left a pleasant lingering flavor that I was able to truly savor until the very end.
I have no regrets for this vacation, and thanks to the latter part of my time off I will have curry to enjoy well into my work week.
It’s funny that ladyboys are so ubiquitous in Thai culture that they appear in commercials!
On another subject, this is a project for Justin and Nam:
Start practicing to make Max the best bento in the World.
I didn’t spot it right away. As I was looking at the mural on the southernmost bakery in the United States, I found a gecko hiding in the lau lau.
Only when I got really close to it, did the gecko move away from the middle of the painting, bringing its vivid colors and patterns into full view, against the beige background. Those flashy patterns really do break up the full form of the body on the top picture.
On an unrelated note, I no longer catch geckos because the last one I caught peed on my hand. I think it was trying to tell me that it didn’t like being captured, so now I only take pictures.
My brother, on the other hand, likes to eat them.
On a bright Saturday, late in the morning, Steve and I decided to hike up the volcanic cone that we could see from his house, located just next to Waikiki. We packed stuff that would unwittingly come in handy later that day: a flashlight, water bottles, camera, a hat, a first aid kit, and a permanent marker among other things.
The shot below shows the view that we came upon, after overhearing some man talking to a friend about calling 911. It sounded like he was talking about someone that was elsewhere (he mentioned that they were located at least 30 minutes away from help), so we continued on, and took a short rest here:
While starting back on the trail, the old man came up to us asking if we spoke Japanese, because there was a girl near the top of the mountain that couldn’t speak English and was in critical condition. I told him that I could, and after a short briefing he sent us up before him on a sprint to the summit.
It took about ten minutes of passing people through narrow tunnels bored through the mountain and narrow switchbacks to reach the girl. The old man had told us that she was unconscious, and when we got there, a physician informed us that they had given her candy because they thought she was going into diabetic shock.
When we arrived, she was regaining consciousness, and I was told that she had hit her head. I asked the girl what her name was and where she was, and she was able to answer both questions. A physician who was also there asked me to interpret questions that the paramedics would need when they arrived:
Does she have diabetes?
After being back for 2 years, I have had little opportunity to practice, so my Japanese was a bit rusty. Luckily, it seemed to come back to me, but I had no idea how to say “diabetes”. Instead, I had to ask “Does she experience problems if she eats too much or not enough sugar?”.
Did she hit her head?
Initially the answer was “yes” from the boyfriend. The answer on this changed later on, as the boyfriend thought she hit her head, but the girl didn’t, and didn’t have any visible marks, swelling, or discoloration on her head.
Can she wiggle her toes?
She was able to.
Does she feel dizzy?
She did at first, but after drinking some water and resting in the cool tunnel, she was able to regain her strength.
Is she pregnant?
No, she was not.
Does she have any pre-existing medical conditions that we should know about?
No.
Is she taking medication?
No.
I had to ask her these questions three times: once with the physician (who decided to leave her with us after he assessed her condition as stable), once with the firefighters who met us later on, and once at the ambulance at the base of the mountain. Her symptoms indicated that she was suffering from heat exhaustion, and her condition gradually improved in the shade.
After she said that she could make it down the hill with her boyfriend, Steve and I helped her down the trail, and met a team of firefighers a third of the way down. Once again, I asked these questions, and they made it clear that they wanted to airlift her out. It was my job to explain what was going to happen and why, but more importantly to reassure the couple.
It turns out that getting airlifted out of Diamond Head is free, and that there are 2 delivery systems. One rig uses a gurney-like platform where the person being rescued lays down. The other one, the Bill Pugh, is the one that you can see in the pictures.
The girl was afraid of riding in the rig, so we told her that a firefighter would be riding with her, and that she could decline treatment when we got the the ambulance. After ten minutes, the chopper showed up, dropped off their rescue team on a tiny pinnacle, and swung around to pick her up:
A firefighter accompanied her on her ride down to the bottom of the mountain to an ambulance awaiting their arrival. When we got there, I asked the questions a third time, and stuck around until they had finished their business. After declining treatment, the girl and her boyfriend thanked everyone and we decided not to climb Diamond Head a second time. We had come so close to the top and didn’t quite reach the summit, but at that point it didn’t seem as interesting.
We met the old man shortly after. Royce, it turned out, used to be a local firefighter, and he just had happened to be hiking the trail, and called in the rescue. Of all the people he passed on the trail, I was the only one who could interpret.
Usually, when I go on a short hike, I don’t carry so much stuff with me, but on that day, we used them all, except for the First-Aid pack (ironic, huh?). We let her use our water to cool off, used the flashlight to assess her condition in the tunnel, Steve lent her a hat to keep her cool, and the marker to write down her medical condition to pass to the EMTs at the bottom of the hill. Things just seemed to work out well for the couple, it seemed.
As we were leaving, we saw them waiting at the bus stop, and stopped to give them a ride back to their hotel. They were from Wakayama, it turned out, on a Hawaiian vacation. In the air conditioned car, they were a lot more relaxed, and asked to take a picture with us:
It seems that things like this happen when I go traveling, and when I hang out with Steve. I have good luck meeting the right people, being in an interesting place at the right time, and just having fun or profound experiences. Maybe it’s a sign that I should do both of these things more frequently…
A crust of coagulated blood shielding formerly open cuts and abrasions and tissue sore from light trauma and exertion remind me that this vacation wasn’t some dream, and that I was just in Hawaii. The residual minor aches and pains are something that I enjoy, a reminder of scrambling and crawling over lava rock and coarse sand while hiking, tidepooling, and playing in the waves.
I don’t get scrapes, scabs, and bruises as frequently as I used to when I was a kid. Maybe that’s why I enjoy them: they remind me of when free time was a certainty, and most of the fun times I had were spent in the outdoors.
One and a half weeks in Hawaii seemed much longer than that, which was unexpected. From the moment the plane took off from San Francisco, time immediately slipped into a relaxed pace, packed full to the brim from the time we got up until we went to sleep. It could have been a month or two ago that I was last in Monterey, and I wouldn’t be surprised.
Good food, spending most of the day in the water, catching up with friends, getting tanned, exploring new places, soaking up the local culture, more good food, adventure, and almost four gigs of photos taken along the way: this is a synopsis of how the trip was spent.
There is so much stuff I could write about, but for now, I will spend a bit of time digesting my time in Hawaii.
It’s been a year and five months since I’ve had a substantial amount of time off from work, and it feels like it. Usually, I put a lot of thought and effort into my job, but it seems like the pace and load of my duties and responsibilities started to really gain steam, finally coming to rest five hours ago. It feels good to be able to leave all of that stuff behind, at least for a couple of weeks.
In two days from now, I will be in Hawaii. That plan seems so abstract right now, like a faded poster hanging in an ancient travel agency, complete with palm trees, surfboards, and tikis framing a faded blue wave crashing against the washed out white sand.
I plan to spend a lot of time in the water, to take a lot of pictures, to go exploring, to go hiking, to meet cool and unusual people, to appreciate the culinary versatility of Spam, to breath slowly and deeply, to enjoy a drink whenever offered, to poke around in the jungle, to crack open a coconut, to drink pineapple juice out of a fountain, to unwittingly start picking up pidgin, to get rid of my farmer’s tan, to go everywhere in flip flops and short-sleeved shirts, to wake up rested and refreshed, to experience excitement and not too much pain or injury, to jump over or off of objects and document the results, to seek out strange, beautiful, and horrifying organisms, to get lost and then find my way again, to forget what day it is, to fall asleep on the beach in the afternoon under the shade of a few palm trees, to hear and make some good stories, to run into friends randomly, to read a good book during the times I’m waiting for something, to stop frequently along the way to take in the beautiful sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and textures, and to add more things to this list.
For me, this vacation will really start the second that the rear landing wheels leave the runway pavement. Only then will I know that, barring some freak emergency, I have left my work life behind where it belongs. I imagine, in this situation, that I know how a crab, who has outgrown its rigid carapace and sheds it to grow larger, feels.
My mind is currently fogged from fatigue, and I have to say, in this state I am really enjoying the anticipation of going on vacation. Ah, good stuff.
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