Hawaii Trip

Since the semester hasn't started again yet, I have some time to make a post. My trip to Hawaii for Globecom 2009 went really well. My presentations went well and I had some people ask me questions during and after my sessions. I'm not sure we got a lot of exposure there, but it's ok, it was Hawaii after all.

Besides the conference, I got to snorkel, hike, and explore some of the island, besides cheering the Badgers on to victory over the University of Hawaii in football. All of these were fun, but I'd have to say the highlight of the sight-seeing part of my trip was going to Pearl Harbor.

I went twice, first on 12/5 and then again on the anniversary on 12/7. I went on the U.S.S. Arizona memorial tour on the first day, which was fortunate since the tour was full on the 7th. It is a heart-wrenching experience, but I

wholeheartedly endorse it. The first picture shows the memorial from across the harbor, and the second the flag over the memorial from inside.

It was amazing to see the wreckage underwater and the oil still bubbling up. I tried to take pictures of the latter, but a photo just doesn't do them justice. Since it was close to the anniversary on the 5th (I assume that was the reason), they were handing out flowers for us to cast into the water. The third picture shows my flower in the oil slick.

On the 7th, I spent more time at the submarine memorial, the submarine museum, and I toured the U.S.S. Bowfin, a WWII-era submarine. It was cramped. Climbing through the bulkheads was challenging while carrying a camera.

The only thing I missed was the U.S.S. Missouri, which was not there because it was being repaired or was having some maintenance done on it. Too bad.

If I had to choose between the big island and Oahu, I'd go to the big island. There's way less people, things seem cheaper, the snorkeling is better, and there's lava. That said, having Chantal and Alethea with would have made either island seem more like paradise. I very much hope that the next time I'm in Hawaii they will be with me.

Rio de Janeiro

I thought it's about time that I update everyone on my trip to Rio.  

First, business...  My talk went well.  I practiced, giving my talk a number of times to Yih-

Chun in Rio.  I now think I have a much better handle on what to present at a conference.  The actual presentation went smoothly, though there were probably only 2-3 people in the room that weren't other presenters, Yih-Chun, or the session chair.  I did get people to nod though, so that made me feel good.  Thanks for all your prayers for this.  I know I wouldn't have been able to do it without them.  

Second, fun...  I did get some time to have fun in Rio, and it was a great place for it.  We were about a 10 minute walk from the beach in Leblon (a district in Rio).  People seemed really active there.  There were regular games of volleyball and Brazilian volleyball (volleyball played with soccer rules).  We took tons of pictures of people playing this game.  In the picture above, the guy actually got the ball over the net, if I recall correctly.  

We went to see the statue (Christo Redentor or Corcovado, above) and to a mountain called Sugarloaf Mountain, which is in the middle of the city (below).  We got some great pictures.  We were on top of Sugarloaf during a lightning storm with really highwinds.  We were stuck for an hour before they would let us down.  It was interesting being crammed into the cable-car house for an hour with a bunch of people.  We met some other people from Infocom there, whom Yih-Chun knew.  I got a bit of a cloud-to-cloud lightning strike in the picture below.  

It was a good trip, though it would have been better if I hadn't needed to do as much work.  We never really felt in danger there, but we didn't venture out after dark, except to get into a taxi immediately from wherever we were to go back to our hotel.  

Hawaii Recap

Hi everyone. I've wanted to post pictures from my Hawaii trip for quite a while now. Finally, I'm getting to it. It was a really fun trip. You can ask me how the IEEE meetings went. I'm sure you're not surprised that the highlights of my trip were not from the meetings. There were actually some really nice views from the conference hotel, though we didn't stay there. (too expensive) Here's an example to the left. The meeting took place at the Hilton in Waikaloa Village.

We were in Hawaii for approximately a week. We stayed in a resort in Kailua Kona on the Big Island. The weather was absolutely gorgeous. The only time it really interfered was to keep us from going all the way up to the top of Mauna Kea to do some star gazing one night. Overall, it was a great opporunity to make use of our new digital camera, a Nikon D40X. (For you photo bufs, I stuck with my 50mm F/1.8 prime the whole time.)

One day we drove around the island to Hilo. We had dinner at an excellent Thai place there, which you can see to the left. That day, we also went to see the lava flowing into the ocean, which was near Hilo. We couldn't get too close to the lava since the park had set up tape keeping people back, but it was pretty cool to watch too. Jerry and I had fun making fun of the people who were trying to use their on-camera flashes from approximately a mile away as it got dark. Sorry, we're engineers, what do you expect. If you look closely under the rising cloud of steam, just to the left of the flow, you can see a water spout. They would spring up once in a while.


That same day, we visited a black sand beach. If I remember correctly, it's lava rock that has broken down and is only a few hundred or thousand years old, and the minerals haven't yet been removed from the rock, which would turn it to the normal sand color. I tried to take a little bit of a close-up so you can see how course it was and how jet-black it was. We also tried to visit a green sand beach near what's called south-point, but it was quite a walk across some hot and dry areas, so we turned back and didn't actually get to see it. Next time...




One day, we went to a luao in Kona. It was pretty cool. They roasted a pig underground for us, had some other native Hawaiian dishes, including poi. I don't recommend it in general, though, if you have it whole how they prepared some of it, it reminded me of yams. I was interested to see that the poi was purple. They put on a show for us, including dressing up like the royal Hawaiian court of the 1800's, specifically King Kamehameha. There's a picture of them to the left. They also dressed and danced like natives of New Zeeland, Fiji, Tonga, and other islands.



On our final day, Jerry and I went to a coffee plantation and to a farmers' market in downtown Kona. The coffee plantation had avocado and banana trees in addition to the coffee plants. The farmers' market had some interesting fruits, including dragon fruit, rambutan (I'd never seen thsi before and wish I'd gotten some to try it now.) and apple bananas (they're small, red-ish bananas, which Jerry and I tried). We had some dragon fruit when we had gone to a grocery store one day, but it didn't really taste like anything; it just looked nice. We also saw some geckos crawling around on some boxes in one of the stands. He was giving such and odd pose, as you can see to the left.

We enjoyed great pineapples, passion fruit and papayas during our time there. I have a bunch of pictures from the underwater camera from snorkeling, but I'll post them another time. I have to get them organized yet. All in all, it was a really fun trip, but I do wish Chantal would have been there. She just makes everything more fun. :) Next time...