Christmas in Honolulu

As I mentioned in my prior blog, I flew to Honolulu over Christmas. This was my doing, as I picked this trip out of a list of many others because I wanted to A) work as little as possible and B) be able to call my family and friends without a trans-Atlantic phone card. Amazingly enough, no big problems occurred on the flight over. I slept most of the way, as I was deadheading. I did have the frustrating realizationg that my sort of new iPod needs to have a lot more music downloaded on it to be a viable source of entertainment for an eight hour flight, though. I must have listened to Simon & Garfunkel's the Boxer and Kings of Leon's Sex on Fire 20x each. Wide spectrum of musical variety there.

Whilst in Honolulu, I did not do much. I did have high aspirations - Catholic guilt led me to put Midnight Mass on my to-do list, along with tanning on the beach, a brisk morning walk, and maybe some shopping at Ala Moana Mall. None of these things materialized. I did make it to Duke's with some of the crew for some appetizers and a Lava Flow ( a heavenly concoction of pineapple juice, coconut milk, strawberry puree and spiced rum). Then I called my parents who were at my sister's house doing the tradional unwrapping presents gig, and then my best friend from Guam called and we talked for about an hour, and then I crashed. Quite literally, the radio was on when I woke up at 1 in the afternoon. I don't really know what my problem is with sleep, but it is a massive one.

When I rolled out of bed I went to the best sushi joint on O'ahu, and I am going to use the remainder of this blog as a shamless plug for my favorite restaurant ever in existance, Doraku. http://www.dorakusushi.com/I have been going to this place at least once every layover I have in Hono since this place opened in early Spring 2008. I even asked for a discount card one time I was in there; the waitress looked put on the spot, but talked to her manager and gave me some sort of card meant for concierges and the like. It gives me 1 point for every dollar spent and when I get 250, I het a $25 giftcard. Needless to say, I was way pumped to be in such an exclusive club! But, since then they have started giving these "D Club" cards to anyone who asks. Not so exclusive anymore, but I was the one who started the ball rolling! See what I started! :D So anyways, I got the same waitress on Christmas who I had originally asked for a discount from and she recognized me and gave me a free dessert! Yay! This place rocks! And, post script, the tempura bananas are delish!