See what I mean about Vanessa being a gym kind of person? I went to the “fitness corner” (it really is in a corner…) with Vanessa. There was a proper pull-up bar for me, and while I was doing my own pull-ups, Vanessa copied. No need for coaxing or any prompting. She just pulled up on some other bar that she could reach. Alright, she isn’t pulling yet, but she can hang from the bar and swing quite well.

I’m learning to do pull-ups again. Yes. Finally, I’m trying to do it the over-graft method. The way that Vanessa was very naturally grasping the bar on her own without any instruction from me. But it’s not easy to switch, particularly after having been pulling the under-graft method all the time and still not being very good about it. The theory is that the over-graft method has more muscles to use, so it should be easier. I suppose that’s provided the muscles have been developed to begin with. So, well, they aren’t yet. It’s going to be IPPT time soon. I hope the over-graft will work out in time.

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Vanessa had her last dance class today. At least for now. We’re not continuing her class because she doesn’t seem very keen about it. In fact, most of the time, she simply doesn’t follow the class at all, except for the one or two activities which involve something that she likes. Running, and jumping, for example. Stomping her feet with her tap shoes too. But even then, she makes up her own variations of the routines. It’s a difficult time accompanying her for the class when she doesn’t want to listen.

But Vanessa is quite okay about going to the dance class. She doesn’t protest about going to dance class, unlike how she did about going to child care at the start of this year. I suppose it’s still an outing. She gets time to play with me. She gets to order iced milo, Yakun soft-boiled egg, ham and cheese sandwich, XXL fried chicken, etc. Oh and the last week, M&M chocolates from a dispenser. Maybe, the dance class is just too serious for her. The other kids generally seem to be quite serious about the class too.

Seeing her fondness in running and jumping, I think she might be a gym kind of person. But right now, she’s not terribly confident with playground contraptions. Shallow slides are okay, but the other day at a more complicated playground, she avoided anything that was just slightly challenging. I suppose it’s a good thing to be cautious. At least she wouldn’t be attempting dangerous stunts when we’re not looking.

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After twelve days in Honolulu, it’s time for us to return home. Our flight is at 8am in the morning, which means we’ve to get to the airport pretty early that morning, and that means getting up and starting the day even earlier to get to the airport on time. Traveling with kids means everything takes a lot more than time than adults alone would have taken. What more, with the “enhanced security” measures being introduced after the NW253 bomb scare, we were a little apprehensive about additional delays that might occur at the airport.

I still had to return our rental car. It was too early in the morning to return to the regular rental office. The after-hours return location was at a hotel near the airport. It’s fortunate that I researched the route to get to the hotel myself, because I got played out by the GPS navigation. What happened was that the GPS navigation directed me to a lower level of a two-tier road. That means no clear view of the sky, so there was no GPS signal, and without GPS signal, the navigation stopped working. I suppose it isn’t really the fault of the GPS navigation system… this was in fact the way to get to the hotel drop off. But it was so early in the morning, the streets are not as well lit as in Singapore, it was difficult to make out the street names. Nevertheless, I found the hotel without too much hassle.

Check-in took a really long time. I think checking-in in several smaller groups will probably work out faster than doing it in a single large group.

We did encounter something interesting on our flight segment from Tokyo Narita Airport to Singapore. We were upgraded to Business Class! Actually, I’m not sure if it was truly a class upgrade, because they never told us it was (wouldn’t they want you to know if they upgraded your seat?), and the boarding ticket did not reflect the business class either. But the seats we had was clearly of a business class configuration. Yet, there were curtains separating us from the real business class in front of our section, but no curtains between us and the real economy class behind. It’s sort of like the business class seats had been re-designated as economy.

The seats were so comfortable that all the kids slept practically all the way home to Singapore. Including most of the adults, and at least for most of the way too. Except for me. It’s the first time I’m flying in a business class seat that I kept awake to watch the in-flight movies. Finally, the movies were on-demand, something that I had not enjoyed on any of the other JAL flights.

We arrived back in Singapore early on New Year’s Day. Midnight of 1 Jan 2010 was on the plane. I was kind of expecting some sort of New Year’s Day special on the flight, but we didn’t even get so much as a simple greeting.

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Today’s the last full day we have in Honolulu, because we leave for our flight back to Singapore early tomorrow morning. We decided to all have lunch together at a nearby Chinese restaurant called Happy Days. Easy to find, thanks to GPS navigation again. We had dim sum and ordered a few other dishes. I found myself liking the chilli particularly. Then I realized that I haven’t had any chilli since stepping foot in the US. I don’t know if the chilli at Happy Days was really that good, or that I was simply missing the taste of chilli.

The food at Happy Days was quite good anyway, with chilli or not. It was far better than the disappointing Panda Express I had earlier at Kahala Mall. We ate our fill and had to pack some remainder to go.

After lunch, we decided to make a stop for some last minute shopping. Apart from the Premium Outlets, we were told that Ross also had good clothing bargains. So that’s where we headed for, the Ross store at Keahole Street. It’s not a very biggish place, but it’s a no frills store, no fancy displays, no mannequins. All the merchandize were compactly racked. Clothes were not sorted by brand sections, but by type and size. E.g. men’s jeans, then by size. So you have a mixture of all sort of jeans brands together. It makes sense, I suppose, because they don’t really have all sizes for any particular type. So, just focus your shopping around the sizes that fit you.

The prices at Ross were competitive for some types of clothing, but not for everything. I found, for example, the Addidas apparels not differently priced from those at the Premium Outlets. But CK tees at US$7.49 and Levi’s jeans at US$19 were a steal.

If I were to ever come to the US again, I should probably make it a point to drop by a Ross store.

I also dropped by a storage company to buy some boxes. We need extra packing space to bring back all our shopping. There’s no way we could pack them back into the luggages we came here with, despite various consumables having been expended. In fact, when we spent the rest of the evening and night packing, we were almost unable to fit everything in. Although we had an extra box to spare, we tried to make do with just one of the storage boxes we bought (18″ x 18″ x 16″ size), and it was bursting at its seams.

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Our previous drive eastward on the Kalanianaole Highway brought us past Hanauma Bay, but it was closed (every Tuesday). Today, we made a trip just to see this place. Unfortunately, the car park was full, and we weren’t let in. In the end, we stopped at another nearby sightseeing point, and walked to Hanauma Bay. The place is awfully crowded. You have to pay to get to the beach. There is a public bus route whose main purpose is to serve beach users, so it doesn’t operate on Tuesdays (when Hanauma Bay closes). I couldn’t understand all the fuss over Hanauma Bay. But when you get there, you will appreciate it.

The entrance to Hanauma Bay from the highway is at the top of the cliffs. The views from up there is beautiful. From the top, you can look down to the beach (in the photo), and it looks really magnificent too. You can see how clear the waters are, and the corals show through pretty well. It’s no wonder that so many people are queuing to get down there (or were they queuing for something else…?).

I made a trip down to Kahala Mall in the afternoon with Vanessa. We were just going to browse around, and pick up some chocolates and other stuffs to bring back to Singapore to give to friends. I had to make a stop at the Apple Store just to look around. Vanessa went into the store as well, of course, and I found out how quickly she became an Apple fan. There was an iMac at the far end set on a low table that she can reach. It was running some kids program on it. She was so attracted to it that she couldn’t care that I wanted to move on elsewhere. In the end, I had to carry her out of the store, and she was protesting all the way out!

Then, when we were out, she kept wanting to go back. We shopped around other parts of the mall, then eventually I had to backtrack to our starting point (I have to get back to our car after all). To get back to our starting point, I had to pass near the Apple Store again. Vanessa told me she wanted to go to the “white shop”. Yup, the Apple Store was referred to as the “white shop”. She’s really attracted to the Apple Store, and I suppose, the iMac in there. So now we have two Apple fans in this family.

Which reminds me, when I’m back home, I should have a new MacBook Pro waiting for me. That means the existing MacBook will be permanently at home, and perhaps Vanessa will get to use it at some point. Her first computer is going to be an Apple. Just like my first computer was an Apple (albeit a clone one…).

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We did a few things today: Visit to Diamond Head Crater, the Waikiki Aquarium, and then shopping at the Waikele Premium Outlets. We didn’t actually plan to go up Diamond Head Crater initially, but since we were going to be driving past it, we thought why not just stop for a few moments. It does cost $5 per car to go in, according to a sign post at the bottom on the trail doing up. It turned out that the car park at the top was full, so we couldn’t go in anyway. We turned back and stopped somewhere along the way to look around and take some photos.

We were high enough to get pretty good views of the city below. I don’t know exactly what we might get to see had we actually paid the $5, parked the car, and explored the crater. But it was good where we were without having to pay anything. ($5 isn’t much anyway.)

Next stop was the Waikiki Aquarium. It’s really small and unimpressive if you compare it to something like the Underwater World we have at Sentosa. But like the many other things we did, I guess this is for the kids. There are a few outdoor exhibits, the largest being the Hawaiin monk seals. Most of the exhibits are indoors. They had giant clams here, so huge that I couldn’t recognize them as clams initially. The jellyfish were pretty too. But many of them had their super long tentacles all tangled up. I wonder if they know how to undo the mess on their own, or if anyone (i.e. the aquarium staff) helps to untangle them.

I’m wondering if the Sea Life Park Hawaii might have been a more interesting visit, but we were told the Waikiki Aquarium was better. Perhaps it depends on that you want to see or do.

In the afternoon, we headed over to the Waikele Premium Outlets. This is probably the main adult activity for me. For those of you who haven’t been to the US to shop, this is where you get all the branded goods at discounted prices. I’ve learnt that sometimes the prices aren’t a whole lot cheaper than those you get in the regular downtown shopping malls, but there are other items that are really cheap. At any rate, they are a whole lot better than in Singapore. Take Levi’s jeans for example. The same pair that lists at over S$200 here, and which probably gets discounted to S$130 or so during Great Singapore Sales or other promotions, goes for something like US$25. Really cool. I bought some Levi’s tees at 2 for US$20, so that’s just S$14 per tee. The Wife got plenty of clothes for the kids. The kid’s clothes at Carter’s start at US$3.99. It’s a pity we didn’t have more time to browse though all the shops there.

I think, new clothes for the coming CNY should be quite settled.

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We went to the northern part of Oahu today. When you have a rented car, you try to make full use of it. It was the Dole Plantation that we originally wanted to visit, but when we realized it was pretty close to the North Shore, we thought we’ll just go up there to visit as well. There wasn’t time for us the explore the entire North Shore. We just wanted to hit Haleiwa, have lunch, then turn back to the Dole Plantation.

Driving today is heavily guided by GPS navigation on my N97, because there’s quite a bit of distance to cover and I’m on my own today (no other car to follow around). I must say the GPS navigation is really useful.

Haleiwa is at the western tip of where Oahu’s north shore is considered to start. It’s an oldish looking town that’s pretty crowded and busy, but yet at the same time quiet. The old buildings dotting the town is really picturesque. We had lunch at a place whose name I forgot, but it ’s next to the Aloha General Store. The fish in their Fish and Chips wasn’t nice. But their seafood platter was pretty good: calamari, breaded prawns and crabmeat ball (and perhaps other things, but these are the ones that I remember because they were good).

The Aloha General Store had signs promoting their supposedly famed shaved ice. I was asking myself what’s the fuss over shaved ice. Isn’t that Ice Kachang? I had to go in to find out. I would have wanted to try it had I not been too full for lunch. I spied on the shaved ice, and saw that it really was like ice kachang. Syrup was poured over the shaved ice, and you have the option of ice cream under the shaved ice. I suppose there’s none of the usual ice kachang stuffs we have in their shaved ice.

It’s shocking to me just how popular the shaved ice is in Haleiwa. People actually form long queues along the road into some of the stores. We should setup an ice kachang store in Haleiwa and let the folks there try something that’s even more fascinating.

The Dole Plantation is a big pineapple plantation. I think there’s really not much that’s terribly interesting for adults, but we went there for the kids. There’s a maze, and there’s a train ride. It’s a novelty for the kids. We didn’t have time to the maze, so we just took the train. It’s about a 20 minute ride through the plantation. It’s mostly pineapple, although they do have a few other types of fruits to show off too. The main attraction, I think, is really the ride in the train itself.

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Day eight in Hawaii is Christmas Day. We went for a drive around the island of Oahu. It was only half the island, actually. In fact, it was even less than half the island. We planned to drive eastward, head toward Kailua beach, then turn west to Pali Lookout, then back into Honolulu and return home. This is supposed to be a scenic drive to take in the sights of the sea, the beaches, and the highlands. It’s the first longish drive after we got the rented car.

The first stop is the Halona Blowhole, which we had already visited on our own (wife and two kids, as opposed to the whole holiday party). The first time we didn’t really figure out where the exact blowhole spot was, but this time we did. As I posted previously, the blowhole wasn’t all that impressive.

We took a longish break for lunch at a local restaurant chain called Zippy’s. Food is quite good and reasonably priced. I had a Burrito and rice set meal, which came with soup, dessert and drinks.

Kailua beach was reasonably crowded. At the least, it was comparable to Waikiki and Ala Moana. I’ve come to realize that many of the beaches in Oaho are quite uniformly crowded. It is not as if there was something that was outstandingly popular. Perhaps the locals just help to balance out by heading to locations not overpopulated by tourists.

Pali Lookout wasn’t like at the highest point of the highlands (or nearly so) as I thought it should have been. It was nevertheless a nice lookout point over the windward coast of Oahu. It’s cool and windy up there. Maybe it was helped by the cloudy day too.

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It’s Christmas Eve. We spent the morning at the Ala Moana Beach. It was a big logistic exercise to get that many adults, and an almost equivalent number of kids and infants, organized, packed, and ready to go. It was a really hot day, but that didn’t matter at all to the kids. The adults had to smear lots of sunblock lotion on them though.

The sand at Ala Moana Beach isn’t really nice though, because it had lots of small little pebbles in them so it’s not all that nice to walk on. Again, I think the kids don’t care about that. They were in the water most of the time anyway. No one seemed terribly interested to built sand castles. Except me. When I did, the kids only want to destroy them.

We were supposed to go to the Ala Moana Shopping Center after we had enough of the beach. But I think, by the time we had enough of the beach, we just wanted to head home too. Besides, it was Christmas Eve and we needed to prepare dinner. Dinner was a little haphazard, partly because this is a temporary holiday home where we are not quite “fully equipped”. There’s no Christmas tree here either.

This would be my first Christmas outside of Singapore. The coming New Year Day will also be my first outside Singapore (it will be on the plane, which would actually be quite close to Singapore by then).

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We did some research the night before on what transport to get. We wanted to get an MPV, or what the US folks call a mini-van. It turns out that every rental company seems to be out of mini-vans. We decided to go for a “mid-sized” vehicle from Enterprise. It turns out to be quite a largish vehicle, at least by Singapore’s standards. I’ve driven several times in the US, so I am not unfamiliar with left-hand drive and driving on US roads. But this would be the first time I drove out of the car rental lot without a navigator sitting next to me.

It turned out okay, because the road back to where we’re staying is quite simple. I just need to get onto the freeway in the right direction. I used to depend on a navigator so that I can concentrate on keeping on the correct side of the road. It gets confusing at traffic junctions, circles, and generally anywhere that you have to make a turn.

We headed out for a drive in the afternoon to nearby sightseeing stops. We drove up to Halona Blowhole. The blowhole wasn’t too impressive though. It just emitted a mist of water from time to time, with occasionally spill over of water.

We also stopped over at Koko Marina Shopping Center, and while we were there, we decided to snack at Taco Bell. They have free flow fountain drinks too, so I got to satisfy my thirst for Coke/Pepsi. Free flow drinks seem to be a common thing. It would be nice if we had more of that in Singapore too.

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