New Year in Hawaii

First post of the new year almost half way through the January...please excuse my absence. As anyone in my field knows things can get pretty crazy around the holiday season and when I'd get home all I wanted to do was feed my face and fall into bed. Thank goodness we had a trip to Hawaii planned right after Christmas...I definitely needed a break from all the craziness at work.

The cost of flights to Hawaii were seriously out of control when we bought our tickets. So in an attempt to save a little bit of money we made the switch from Hawaiian Airlines to Alaska Airlines. But after 2 flights with poor service by the cabin crew of Alaska we decided that we'll be sticking with Hawaiian. On the flight to Hawaii my entire row was skipped over and wasn't offered any drinks. When I noticed they had skipped me I politely turned around to ask for a drink and was greeted with a completely annoyed stewardess. And while we were experiencing a relatively long duration of light turbulence quite a few people were hitting their call buttons...they were answered by an irritated announcement over the speaker system telling people to stop pressing the call buttons unless it was an emergency. On our flight back to California it seemed like the entire cabin crew staff had a stick up their ass or a major case of "resting bitch face." I even overheard the passengers behind us complain about the cabin crew member who rudely removed the digi-player from the passengers hand as she tried to turn it off before handing it over. Needless to say we definitely missed the warm aloha spirit of Hawaiian and will not be returning to Alaska any time soon. end rant.

group photo of the c/o 2003

Conveniently we were in Hawaii during the same time as my high school 10 year reunion...damn I'm getting old. The reunion was held at Stage Restaurant with good people and pretty good food. It was a nice chance to get together and catch up with a lot of people that I hadn't really kept in touch with. It's amazing to see how people have and haven't changed in 10 years.

The next day we hiked Pill Boxes with someone I used to ice skate with and her little brother. I am nothing close to an outdoorsy girl so it was the first time I hiked anything besides Diamond Head in Hawaii. It was a pretty easy hike even for a newb like me. Probably the toughest part of the hike is going back down since there's a lot of loose gravel which makes for a slipper trip.

my favorite ladies

That night we met up with the usual suspects at MW Restaurant. Of course the food was delicious, our culinary friends were the ones who chose the place. I'm pretty sure we should always let them choose our dinner spot since they always know someone in the kitchen and we get extra special service. Even though we had just seen them the night before at the reunion it was so nice to get to catch up in a more intimate setting. With one of them newly engaged and the other with a wedding coming up in summer there was definitely a lot to talk about. It makes me so happy to see that my friends have found such good guys to spend the rest of their lives with.

The main reason for our trip to Hawaii was to ring in the New Year with my family...especially since it was my parent's year to host the big New Year celebration at their house. It was really nice getting to see a lot of my family and celebrate with them since we don't get to see them too often. After growing up on an island with my family so close, living on the mainland and being so far away is a little bit tough for me especially during the holidays. I'm so glad we got to spend New Years in Hawaii with my family this year.

Before we left Hawaii and returned to our lives in California we made a trip to North Shore to check out the winter swells and to eat our favorite garlic shrimp at Giovanni's. Lastly we met up with a couple of friends from pharmacy school for dinner at Shokudo. It was great to catch up with them over some delicious honey toast.

Although our trip was short it was great to get away and see some of my family and friends that we don't get to see very often. Already looking forward to our next trip back for my friend's wedding.

Spring Breakers: Hawaii (Part Deux)

Here we are folks! The final post in the Spring Breakers series. *WHEW* (Bet you guys didn't think I'd get through it all, huh?) Our last stop on our trip was back in Hawaii. We flew back to Hawaii from Japan so that we could have 2 precious days to spend catching up with some of my friends before we headed back home.Not to mention it really helped ease us back into pacific standard time.

We spent sometime catching up with some of my pharmacy school friends over milk teas at Taste Tea. The milk tea was just meh...but I may have a strong prejudice due to my nostalgic attachment to the tea place I frequented during pharmacy school. Regardless, it was great to have a chance to catch up with friends.

look at all that buttery, garlic-y goodness!

The next day we met up with one of my friends I used to ice skate with. We made our way to Haleiwa for the best garlic shrimp truck, Giovanni's. This place is always on our list of places we must go to while in Hawaii so I was glad we could check it off our list.

On our last night in Hawaii we had a spectacular dinner at Roy's in Waikiki with my friends from highschool and their sig others. The only thing that topped the delicious food and awesome service was the great company. We hadn't seen these friends since our wedding so there was so much to catch up on. We were so caught up in conversation that we didn't realize we were the last people there. You know you're having a good time when you shut a place down.

It's always great when we are lucky enough to meet up with friends from so many different stages in my life. I love catching up and seeing what's going on in their lives. But most of all I love that no matter how much time has passed since the last time we've seen eachother when we do finally get a chance to get together it's as if no time has passed at all.

That finally wraps up the Spring Breakers series. Thanks for bearing through all the long posts that have been far and few between. I promise I'll try to step up my blogging game.

Check out all the stops from the Spring Breakers series... Hawaii, Singapore, Hiroshima, Kyoto, Nara/Hakone, and Tokyo.

Spring Breakers: Hawaii

Hubs and I have been back from our vacation for almost a week now and we're STILL recovering. Don't you hate that? Hopefully we can get resettled and rested over the weekend. During our 2 weeks away we went to Hawaii, Singapore, and Japan. In order to avoid posting an epically long post about our whole trip I'll break it up into some bite sized easy to swallow pieces.

L to R: super lame in flight meal from Hawaiian Air, view of Waikiki from the airplane before landing

First we flew to Hawaii to meet up with my parents. As per the usual we flew Hawaiin Air...can't really beat a free flight due to accumulated and stolen miles from my parents. Hawaiian is supposedly the number one domestic airline in the states, but it seems to be getting worse and worse each time we fly. No blankets or pillows were provided since we weren't on a red eye flight. Not that I actually use those grody things...but it's nice to know they're there to rest my feet on. Our in flight meal was a bread roll with 2 pats of cold hard butter in it. I mean DAYMN it wasn't even King's Hawaiian sweet bread! Just a plain ole crusty bread roll like the ones that you buy in bags at Costco. I know some people would say these are luxuries you don't have with other airlines to begin with, but it's hard to imagine how we got to this point when they used to have carts selling cookies and snacks and meals made with Sam Choy's recipies. I guess times have really changed (that makes me sound really old, doesn't it?)

While we were in Hawaii we were able to squeeze in a little quality time with my family before we had to jet set off to Singapore. We had dinner at one of hub's favorite restaurants, Camellia. In all honesty it's a pretty filthy K-BBQ joint where the floors are greasy and the air is smoky, but damn the food is good...or at least the bulgogi is, since that's all we really eat. It was really nice to spend some time with my family. Although I love living in the bay, it's tough to be away from my close knit family...especially with my grandparents getting older. Hopefully we'll be able to make more trips to visit them more often.

Stay tuned for the next installment on the Singapore leg of our trip.