Maui Ocean Center, Part 2

(Part 1 is here.)

I was going through my phone looking for a picture of something or other when I found photos that I had taken with my phone at the Maui Ocean Center. The luminous jellyfish were hard to take pictures of, but they showed up a little better with my phone.

And bonus, I had taken a video of those God rays that had so beguiled me. Not a great video, but the point comes across- the sunlight going through the water is gorgeous, even at crappy resolution with bad color.

Saturday at work, as usual. I'm breaking out my sweaters and coats again because of the weather, so I'm thoroughly confused. I keep thinking it's still winter, which then depresses me because I know I'm working on a summer movie, which means I'll be working for a long time.

In actuality, it's not too much longer now. A month more and I'll be going back home, I think (I hope). I miss California, but I really miss the people I left behind there. Just a few ... more ... weeks!

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Pacific Whale Foundation

More late Hawaii posts. As in the aquarium post, I'm lazy and I didn't touch up this pictures. I should at some point, because I can see some of them as black-and-whites that would be quite pretty. (Yes, I just complimented my own photographs, don't judge me!)

During our time in Maui last year, we decided to go whale watching on an eco-cruise with the Pacific Whale Foundation. They seem to be a very dedicated and hard-working organization, and we had read good things about their whale-watching cruises.

Like pretty much every day in Hawaii, it was beautiful, though the weather was quite mercurial. We saw an incredible amount of whales (even the captain and the guide were amazed) and heard even more of them (the boat had a microphone that was lowered into the water, and we could hear tons of them calling to each other). It was a fun day, though surprisingly tiring.

Before the barrage of photos begins, I know all my pictures are crooked. I don't have the software to tweak them (I'm at work right now) and I don't have the time. It was super windy when we set out, so holding the camera steady was not as important as keeping myself on the boat, without falling into the water.

There are little turbines on the top of this mountain. They were so cute, like little toys all lined up. And though they lead to inclement weather, the clouds in Hawaii were gorgeous- puffy, white, soft-looking cotton balls.

I have a strange fascination with God rays, light moving through clouds. I almost blinded myself taking some of the pictures this day, but I will always take pictures of skies, no matter where I go.

I also really love the way clouds nestle between mountains. I never saw it as frequently as I did while I was in Hawaii. The best example, of course, was when we went to Haleakala Crater to watch the sunrise- it was stunning (and I have better pictures of that morning ... somewhere ... and I'll get to them someday).

A whale! Spouting off! Isn't it cute?? I thought the whales, while ENORMOUS, were really just so cute. They seemed playful, in a way. Some of them got really, really close to the boat, close enough that the captain turned off the engine (there's a law that if whales are within a certain distance from the boat, you must turn off your engine) and we could watch them play and frolic...

... And flip up their tails. I know, crap photos of the actual whales. They're actually hard to take pictures of because they move so fast. I mean, really fast. I tried, and these are the best I could come up with.

Cloud of water after a whale had breached. I think this one was from an adult whale- the babies left much smaller, cuter little poufs. The most giant, cute babies ever.

Blinding sunlight, blinding water. I love the ocean for how changeable it is. Never constant, never still. The colors change in the blink of an eye, too, especially in Hawaii, where there are always clouds and they are fast-moving. The color of the clouds and sky instantly change the water, which looks almost black here but looks so blue in the other pictures.

Mid-motion. This was a baby, I think, and he got really close to us. Didn't make huge splashes because he's little, but did move gracefully and beautifully. I wanted to take him home and put him in my bathtub. Except he wouldn't fit.

Waving goodbye with his tail?

Waving goodbye with his fin!

Clouds moving in. I loved these clouds because of how they were colored by the setting sun with that pale orange. The ocean turned much darker and grayer as the sun started to set.

Clouds tinted pink as the sun set even further. I love the color of the sea in this one.

Sunset and the wake of the boat as we sped back towards land, seawater in our hair, faces windburned, but so happy with all the whales we had seen and heard.

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Maui Ocean Center

My brain is soft and woozy lately because of work (yes, the long hours are getting me all loopy), so I'm (slowly) going through some old photos that I never looked through.

I love taking pictures, but I hate editing. And since I'm short on time lately, I didn't even bother color-correcting these, I'm just posting them as they are. Some of the pictures are really saturated, some of them are very washed out, but all of them are exactly what my camera saw at the Maui Ocean Center in Wailuku, during my trip to Hawaii last year.

As it turns out, it's very difficult to take pictures through thick Plexiglass aquariums (and then all that water), so there were only a few that I could even stomach. 

So very blue. It was a very small aquarium, but had a lot of tanks and a lot of fishies.

The little fishy in the first photo. It was crazy trying to get this picture- the warping caused by the refraction of the glass, the intense blue lighting- but I really liked this fish.

Cartoony fish. This one was in a tank with natural lighting, so no more deep blues.

It's Gill from "Finding Nemo," otherwise known as a Moorish idol!

A rather evil looking fish, but his colors were so pretty. I love that so many fish have underbites, it makes them endearing to me somehow.

We called this one Pinocchio. Doesn't he look like a smiling alien? So cute, and so ridiculous. And we're back to the blue tanks.

Lovely, beautiful coral and sea plants. They have an unreal quality to them, and the fact that they move and sway is calming and ethereal.

Seahorses simultaneously fascinate and repel me. They're cute, in a sense, but also gross, in a sense. There were a lot of little horsies in this aquarium and this was the clearest photo I got of one of the suckers.

Looks like one of those sesame covered filled tteoks (떡) that I love ... that sounds delicious right now, actually.

Starfish. I love the color of many sea creatures, they can be so vibrant and unreal.

Our buddy the turtle! He was swimming around and I kept taking pictures of him, but the glass was very reflective and, for something that moves so smoothly, this guy was fast.

More turtles! Our buddy is the one swimming with his head sticking out of the water. And it was a gorgeous day in Hawaii, of course.

We nerds in visual effects call this effect "God rays," because it's that holy moment when the "Hallelujah" chorus rings out and the clouds part and you see rays of sunlight with particles dancing in them. This effect, rays shimmering in water, was beautiful. I took a video on my phone, but it doesn't do the rays justice.

More rays and some other rays, of the swimming variety. I love rays, I think they're beautiful and sleek and friendly. I got to feed some manta rays at the Monterey Bay Aquarium once, and they were so fun.

Rays and fish. I love the dappled pattern that the fish got because of the sunlight and the ripples of the water.

I miss traveling. Okay, to be honest, I miss being on vacation.

There's something so great about traveling- the memories, the new things to experience- but there's something awful about it, too. I never missed Hawaii until I had been there. Now, I miss having fresh pineapples for breakfast. I miss that sticky sweet smell that seems to linger everywhere. I miss Waikiki. I miss doing nothing, going shopping for nothing, rewarding the nothing with a fruity umbrella drink.

I certainly want to experience other places in the world, but Hawaii is temptingly located between here and Korea, and I fear that I will always want a long layover in Hawaii before making my way to Korea.

Speaking of Korea, I'm trying to figure out if (when) I will be back there. It's only been a little over a year, but I miss my family and my grandfather (maternal) is turning 90 (Korean age) this year. I'd like to visit for that, at the very least.

More updates as I have time. I'll probably try to get through my backlog of photos from my trips to Korea and Hawaii last year (now that I think of it, I think I have some good ones of my aunt's ill-tempered cat).

Back to "Green Lantern" for now.

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Kim Chee II, Hawaii

Kim Chee II
3569 Waialae Avenue
Honolulu, HI


Telephone: 808.737.7733

Monday - Sunday:
10:30 am - 9:00 pm

(Here's the UrbanSpoon link- the restaurants don't have a website.)

I've probably mentioned this- I have not one lick of kimchi in my apartment right now. My abode is incompletely Korean. I am upset about this, understandably, but have not had the time to make kimchi. I'm sure that I'll document the process of me, making kimchi by myself for the first time ever. Shudder. I feel that things could be horribly awry.

Anyway, tearing myself away from potential kimchi-tastrophes! I was flipping through photos on my phone when I saw something kimchi-esque in a thumbnail. "What could that be?" I said to myself. I looked at the picture and realized that it was from my Hawaii trip, where we ate Korean food once, in Honolulu.

I remember it well (okay, it was only three months ago, but still) because it was so weird to speak in Korean in Hawaii. I had gotten used to people speaking in island-time English (slow) or rapid-fire Japanese. (We had a theory about why people spoke to me in Japanese- it's because I'm pale. My best friend, who actually is Japanese, is darkly tanned, and wasn't bothered by the tourists asking her things.)

The meal wasn't very good, but it was welcome. I just wanted Korean food, what can I say? I took photos on my phone, so excuse the indecent quality:

The kimchi was totally crappy. I hate this type of kimchi, with cabbage sliced and tossed into a rather flimsy marinade. I still ate a lot of it, because sometimes, bad kimchi is better than no kimchi at all.

This is a type of namul (나물) made of dried moo (무). Moo is similar to daikan radishes, but shorter and fatter. It's the radish that is generally used in making kimchi. Anyway, the moo is dried and then kind of re-hydrated in a marinade. This dish was far too salty, but actually quite good, especially with rice.

Obligatory Korean BBQ. It was fine. Nothing to write home about, but not bad.

There aren't many Koreans in Hawaii; at least, not in the places I visited. We had a tough time finding a Korean restaurant to go to, and while this one had pretty good reviews, it pales in comparison to a lifetime in LA, where we have an entire town devoted to us.

I'm going to make kimchi soon, because if nothing else, these pictures make me want to prove that good Korean food can be even in the midst of non-Koreans. I just have to find the appropriate vegetables, and then I'll be set.

Wish me luck, I'll definitely need it...

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Rising with the Sun

Yesterday morning, we had an idiotic mission of going up to Haleakala Crater to see the sun rise. I haven't been that cold since I was in Korea!

Probably between 30 - 40 degrees and insanely windy- not good, even with (literally) four layers of clothing.

The sun rose FAST. These photos were taken all within about a minute or two. We were at an elevation of 8,000 feet.



























































































It was amazing. And we really didn't regret getting up at 5:00!

We leave for the real works on Saturday morning, which means there are only two days left to enjoy paradise.

Tonight, luau! Tomorrow, recovery from the luau!

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Vegas, Hawaiian-Style

I have to say, Maui was a bit quiet. We went hiking, explored tidepools, and saw a lot of nature.

I'm not the hugest fan of nature, though most of Hawaii's nature is quite lovely.

There was the time we had to cross a stream to get to this little bay... That's a story for another time, with accompanying photos (on my dslr).

We are out of the sleepy island of Maui now and on Oahu, in the Vegas of Hawaii, Waikiki. It's a bit like Vegas- lots of hotels, lots of shows, lots of drinking- but the huge difference? Hawaii closes early!

We enjoyed our first night by walking about four or five miles, though it felt like more.























There are penguins! In our hotel! They share their space with turtles and koi-

The koi are GIANT. There are even bigger ones, but they don't turn out well in photos because they're greenish blackish gray.

There are also macaws, flamingos, all kinds of ducks (including ducks that look EXACTLY like the ornate wooden ducks Koreans get when they're married), and tons of ponds, streams, and waterfalls. There's even a lagoon, complete with island. Crazy hotel village.

More later, off in hunt of some pineapple juice!

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Paradise, Hawaiian Style

(The post title refers to the Elvis movie of the same name- a preposterous film, but I love Hawaiian Elvis movies!)

The view from the beach just outside the condo- there are little fish and anemones in the small pools at low tide, when all these volcanic rocks emerge.

Several macadamia nuts, pineapples, and drinks have been consumed, with more to come.

We're off to Oahu Friday morning, so tonight and tomorrow are all we have left in the wonderful condo. Sad to go, but excited for Waikiki and adventures in East Maui once we return!

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Hawaii

Horribly sporadic posting, I know. I apologize and have a good excuse- I landed in Hawaii tonight (technically, last night, the 20th)!

I'm in Maui for the next six days, then Oahu for four days, then back to Maui for three days before I head back home.

I'll try posting updates from here- the condo is literally right on Napili Bay; we can hear the waves crashing on the shore as we are lying in bed. I'm willing sleep to come, but it ain't working. So I'm reading tour guides instead.

It's past midnight and still in the sixties. Windows are open, the stars are insanely bright, and the ocean is lovely. A far cry from the frigidity of Korea!

More soon- and if anyone's been to Maui or Oahu, I welcome all advice!

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