The big move...

  Waialua, Hawaii, United States
Saturday, August 23, 2008

Well, well, well.. here I am in "paradise"! What do I think? well, it's all that its cracked up to be, that and a bag of chip, amazing, stupendeous, and any other adjectives you like to insert here. But then I'm in the honeymoon phase, so everything seems great, golden and cheery. :Will see if that changes in next couple months. :)

Front entrance to my Place, Unit B

Though the first time I saw my new place, I'd have to say it was a bit of a disappointment. A friend of mine warned me that all the "modernization" that has happened here happened in the 60's, and well in some places it shows. Not many buildings or places have been renovated or just bulldozed down and started over.

my back yard and "laundry room" :)

Strange, considering a small island country like Taiwan can afford to take down and put up a new building in two weeks, but here on the island things have kind of stagnated in infastrature or urban renewal. Maybe its the magical laid back atmosphere that seems to soak into your pores by just being here. But I digress.


My place, don't get me wrong, is awesome on the inside, and fits my needs just right. But outside you wouldn't be able to tell it wasn't in the projects someplace in Aurora. While many people have told me should have got a place in Honolulu, but then it'd be no different from getting a place in San Franciso. Even on the weekends, during the middle of the day, there's rush hour and bumper to bumper traffic. Everything seems fast pace and packed in.. strange for a tropical island thats known for its laid back attitudes. So being out on the North Shore seems to be the smartest move I've done so far.

View from my front door, through the trees

Now don't get me wrong, my place has been "Renovated" (that is it has all new appliances, cabinets, fixtures and painted well :) and from the 5 pictures I saw of it before coming out, yeah it looked all nice and modern.

View from parching spot of mtns

Though should have asked for more shots or just bit the bullet, came out stayed in hotel, and got a place that way and paid someone else to mail my stuff... but I had work computers that had to overnight over the weekend at the latest, so didn't really want to move all that stuff twice. Eh.. I'm here for 3 months then month-to-month, so I have 1-2 monthes to figure out if this place is for me, then give notice and move on if not. Not a bad deal either way.

View of the front of the side-by-side duplexe

So the downside, as mentioned is that the neighborhood is like Lafayette in Colorado... from block to block things can change dramatically. You have the Japanse style house with amazing Mr. Miyagi wonderland

Place that one ups Mr. Miyagi's place coipond

next to "I don't care, I'm not lifting a finger to improve my place" white trash neighbor. Makes life interesting,eh? :)



 My place is 500ft from the beach, less than a normal block away, but what they left out or expertly danced around when I asked, is that its not a real "swimming beach" that's 500ft away.

lovely beach 500ft from house

  From the pict you can see its a bit rocky and has that lovely metal pipe sticking out from it (seems common at all the "public access" points on the beaches, still have yet to figure out what and why they're there.)  But I did find just another block west from there, is a beach park.

swimming beach 2 blocks from house

There its definately worth swimming and such, as I've found out first hand, and further down I see plenty of people surfing from their beach homes.


Speaking of which, check these out from one of my many walks down the beach... can't tell if I want to get the DREAM house version

ahhhh beach dream house

or the FUN house version.. :) Both I wouldn't mind. Out of curiosity I picked up a flyer (not for one of these, something a bit smaller) to see what they were going for.. it was on the beach, a 2bdrm, 3bath place with 2-car carport... $750k.. :)

This house would be fun!

From the move, you expect something to get lost or broken right? I was thinking.. sure, don't mind most anything getting messed up, as long as its not my computers... I just had to say that right? My work computer got lost, and after a frantic morning of trying to track it down, as it has sensitive data on it, not all of it recoverable, and put my boss on edge... it just showed up in their warehouse and got delivered the following day. At elast  got a 1/2 day to unpack and 1/2 day at the beach out of it... on FedEx (as they had to refund me the shipping... well, are supposed to refund me.. still haven't yet.)

sunset on beach west of my place

Then I thought it couldn't get much worse, my personal computer finally showed up Friday and ust yesterday got a chance to try and set it up on my lovely new computer tower/cart... it looks like someone in heavy boots kicked in teh sides like 3 or 4 times. The hard drive bracket was broken and it was loose and possibly flailing around inside the whole time.. my CD Burner was the same.. broken bracket rattling around. THe back barely screws in and the side panel screws don't screw in anymore. Hoping they'll rfund me the $500 it was insured for and I can get new computer, or at least a new hard drive as it won't boot at all. I get the lovely "disk boot error please insert system disk and press enter" error. Also the USB key receiver for my mouse is gone, so my wireless mouse is useless til I can get a replacement or unlikely find it. I'm hoping UPS will at least reimburse me for the hard drive, so I can get a new one, put the new one in the machine and then whatever data I can recover from the old one move over to the new after installing. I backed up my essential data (finances and documents) but stil a major pain to go through all that to get up and running again, losing e-mails and other settings. <sigh>

almost at end I can walk, gets to be rocky he

But the upside got a slim blackberry phone with GPS, and have been using the hell out of the GPS to get around and not get lost. Found all kinds of amazing restaurants and sites I would have gotten lost without it. (like my surfing lesson I took today was way out in midle of no-where... GPS saved me there... more on that later.


Well, better part of a novel so far, so will close with that. More next time with pictures of the inside of my place, after I get all the boxes cleared out and things finally set up.

Just missed it passing over horizon

-TIMMY!