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The preceding blog entry “inspired” me to dig out my old Hi-8 video tapes and put together a little web video of our Alaskan adventure in June 2001. After a lifetime of still photography, I was just starting to get into video at this point…so, sorry about some of the shakes, but hope you enjoy:

Back in the late 80s, a bunch of us marketing guys from Hawaii qualified for a TV advertising incentive prize that my wife, Sally Ann, and I thoroughly enjoyed: We flew to Miami, Florida, then spent seven days and six nights on a new Carnival ship cruising the Western Caribbean with ports of call at Cozumel, Mexico [beautiful, clear water]; Georgetown, Grand Cayman [beautiful sugar-sand beaches and clear-water snorkeling]; and Ocho Rios, Jamaica-mon [the Gray's River Falls State Park is unforgettable] — plus the opportunity to look around Miami a little bit, go airboating in the Everglades [very noisy — something you don't realize from CSI Miami and other movies; but fun and fascinating to see all the fish, turtles and gators] and even drive down to the upper Keys. The trip was great…and whetted our appetite to take another cruise some day.

Over the next few years as we thought about it, cruising the Inside Passage from Washington to Alaska seemed to be on everybody’s list as one of the best. We were definitely interested since neither of us had ever been to Alaska; and when (now retired) Professor Dale Hammond suggested we consider the “poor man’s cruise” to Alaska, it sounded like “high adventure” — a hallmark Sally and I often try for in our family vacations: (more…)

You know that saying, when it comes to food, that fresh is best? It’s really true…or at least it certainly was in the case of several fresh-food stories I’d like to share — one about peanut butter, of all things, and the others about fish. Pay particular attention to the last one: (more…)

During the annual commencement ceremonies on May 28 in the BYU-Hawaii Cannon Activities Center, 232 seniors became “now and forever graduates of Kahuku High”:

[Show as slideshow]

[View with PicLens]

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After a church meeting today, a friend who has been teaching early-morning Laie North Stake Seminary told me how he still got up early this past week, even though class is over for the school year, and went for a walk on Hukilau Beach — one of the great treasures of our community. He said it was very beautiful and peaceful as the sun came up . . . which reminded me of an experience I had several years ago on the same beach one glorious, golden morning: (more…)

I just got through deleting a bunch of “spam” from this blog. Like a lot of people in Hawaii, I actually like Spam®, the Hormel Foods Corporation canned pork product [note, with due respect, from this point forward I'm not referring to the canned meat]. . . and I’m not sure how the term “spamming” came to be associated with emails and blogging — but I definitely don’t like it.

For example, in the past few months that I’ve been doing my modest little Nani Laie Blog, I’ve received a little over 300 legitimate responses — but almost 5,000 “spam” submissions; and this quantity is nothing compared to the tidal wave of spam unscrupulous people send to some web sites. Fortunately, I have an excellent spam filter on this site that catches over 99 percent of those humbug submissions…which you never see, but I still have to go review and delete them.

For those of you who may not know what I’m talking about at this point, or realize what a nuisance this is for honest bloggers, let me explain a few things: (more…)

The senior men’s preliminary round in the Polynesian Cultural Center’s 17th annual World Fireknife Championship on May 14, 2009 saw a smaller field of entrants, but a tougher level of competition as the skilled “warriors” once again put their skills with the flaming knives in front of a panel of judges and an wildly appreciative audience.

After all the flames were all extinguished and the drums silenced, the judges selected nine of the senior men (age 18-and-up) to advance to the semifinals. They are:

Jeurell Lavata’i, American Samoa
Dana Teai, Tahiti
Pati Levasa, Samoa (via Hong Kong)
Brandon “Fue” Maneafaiga, Waianae
Joseph Cadousteau, Tahiti
Mikaele Oloa, Waialua, Oahu
Lopeti Tu’ua, Lahaina, Maui
Viavia “VJ” Tiumalu Jr., Orlando, Florida
Chesrveigh “Jessie” Usiel, Guam

See a sampling of my pictures that will be posted on the Polynesian Cultural Center’s Samoan World Fireknife Championship web site, http://www.polynesia.com/fireknife/fire.html . . . and at http://www.polynesia.com/blog (more…)

My wife, Sally, and I wanted to go to a certain restaurant yesterday, and because it was the closest one to where we were in Honolulu, we ended up on Kuhio Avenue (a block mauka of the beach) in Waikiki and  right across the street from one of my old cab stands. That’s right, I was a cabby briefly in the late 1960s while I was a student at CCH — the Church College of Hawaii [renamed BYU–Hawaii in 1974].

In fact, a number of my classmates were…largely because it was a cash-and-carry business: At the end of a self-imposed shift we walked away with the money in our pockets. In addition, we could make quite a bit more than the $1.50 an hour minimum wage that prevailed in those days (or the $5 a night most of the Polynesian Cultural Center dancers got for performing in the night show), and we had some interesting experiences. Here are a few of mine: (more…)

Kahuku Elementary School — where my wife, Sally, teaches second grade — held their May Day program on May 8 in the BYU–Hawaii Cannon Activities Center…and I thought you might enjoy a sampling of my pictures: (more…)

Back in the mid-60s when I was a Mormon missionary in Samoa, we often had to be flexible when it came to repairing things. For example, in an earlier blog entry, I shared the story of how barbed wire might be used to jump a car battery. Now, I’d like to tell two more tales of creative mechanics — both from Samoa’s “big island” of Savaii: (more…)