Day: November 13, 2003

I’m not exactly having a Hawaiian adventure like FC, but the crazy New York City weather is enough to make me dream of Hawaii. Strong gales making leaves and trash and pieces of buildings flying all over the place. Please be careful out there tonight, folks!

Last night had some very good television. Pardon the vagaries of the following, since I don’t to give away plot lines for those who haven’t seen the episodes yet:

“Star Trek Enterprise” had a strong episode. It wasn’t nearly as predictable as I feared and had good hopeful for humanity moments, in the great Trekkian mode. Maybe all isn’t lost yet; so, I guess I can’t give up on Star Trek just yet. For those who missed it last night, Channel 9 (NYC’s local UPN) will show it again at 9pm on Sunday (yeah, I know – against ABC’s “Alias” time slot – just tape one or the other; “Enterprise” was good, really!). I’m scared about next week’s episode – the preview indicates that Trip, the chief engineer, will be cloned. The Star Trek writers run the risk of making this upcoming episode lousy; then again, I wouldn’t trust “Star Trek” previews with the way the bad habit of undermining the episodes they are supposed to promote, so maybe I’ll be proven wrong. That remains to be seen.

“Angel” continues to be on an incredibly strong streak; I really enjoyed last night’s episode. The subtext continues – the tension Angel feels toward his friends is almost palpable because only he remembers the timeline he arranged to delete. Meanwhile, Wesley is perplexed by Angel’s tension (not realizing that in the deleted timeline that he caused the grief in the first place) – but then becomes ultimately busy with his own unresolved issues. I get the feeling that the writers are able to better concentrate on “Angel” so far into the new season, because they don’t have to worry as much about dealing with “Buffy” episode to parallel at the same time (i.e., they don’t have to develop two simultaneously cataclysmic plotlines on two different networks, like they did last season). I hope they keep up the good work.

Day Two in Honolulu. I wanted to be Hawaiian for the day and four students were coming into HNL that night. I went to Chinatown to buy lei’s (Lin’s Lei Shop is the place to go — it’s like a 1/3 of the price at the airport, assuming the stores were open, which they were not because they were night flights). I took the 19 bus to the airport, which took about 45 minutes. P– called me on the cell phone on the way there. She was also on public transport — the Q train. At the airport, I met John who was meeting his Korean wife coming in from Newark. He is a German who moved here from Middle Village, Queens. He was a butcher before moving here and got into the real estate investment business. The team members showed up ahead of schedule; I made my alohas and they were estatic. To be on the giving end of aloha was worth it.

Other stuff I did that day: plate lunch at I Love Country; shaved ice (green tea and mochi — mmmm….) at Waiola Bakery. The Triple Crown of surfing is going on, but that is on the North Shore. Lu’au tonight!