Archive for the 'rant' Category

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White Hell

Published on February 24, 2008 in Food, rant, Review, Snow and Travel by risu. Closed

Okay, to start, this isn’t an FTP thread…

Got back in to Sapporo last evening - just barely. 

Friday was clear in Sapporo, but cold.  We caught the highway bus to Niseko Annupuri Resort (2180 yen PP) via Otaru (not the Nakayama-touge route).  The weather in Niseko was overcast with the portent of snowfall.  After checking in to the Northern Resort Annupuri and attempting to find somewhere for lunch, we walked down to the ski center for lunch at the cafeteria.  I had a Hamburger with pilaf for 1100 yen.  The meat slab was good and big (A-), but the “pilaf” (C-) was just rice with a hint of butter and frozen mixed vegetables mixed in (peas, carrots, corn).  Back at the hotel, we were picked up by Minami-san of Niseko Adventure Center for a snowshoe tour.  He drove us over to the gondola in a Toyota Hiace and out came the poles and Atlas snowshoes.  The poles were mystery ski poles, so were of a fixed length which I thought were too long, even if the session was to be all downhill.  We caught the gondola up to the top station, where it was snowing nicely. Continue reading ‘White Hell’

In Sapporo

Published on February 15, 2008 in rant and Travel by risu. Closed

Got in last night a little late.  The flight was delayed due to non-arrival of aircraft.  Maybe 30-40  minutes behind schedule.  There was a light snow falling ant the temp was around -6C.  I was just happy the flight wasn’t cancelled.

I can’t get the IE Outlook interface to work here for some reason – I can check my mail, but I get some “file…text…unsupported…something” error if I try to send something.  That makes me cranky.  Some issue with the language version or something.  It used to work fine.  Had the same issue at 2 different locations.

KIX

Published on February 14, 2008 in rant and Travel by risu. Closed

Feet dry at KIX.  Flight was OK, but uncomfortably hot.  Probably the dummy-plug drives under the seats for the in-flight entertainment systems were cooking me.  My watch said the temp was as high as 31C in the cabin!  There were some non-Japanese people in back of me… semi-English speakers who insisted on using my seatback as a handle, especially when I had a drink in my hand.  Darn those overweight foreigners!  Fat dude was pushing his back against mine when we were waiting to deplane, expecting me to move – which I didn’t.  Pilot was really good.  Nice soft landing on the new runway.  Landing approach was over Awaji-shima, then turning in a big right arc to land going out to sea. 

It’s about 6-9C here.  My KIX-CTS flight is on schedule, so everything looks good.

Happy Traffic Day!

Published on February 7, 2008 in car and rant by risu. Closed

So did they let all the wacky/crazy/stoopid people out from wherever it is they are suppoese to be locked away and give them all cars to drive for the day?

This morning, I had this “unlicensed Polynesian contractor” make a left turn into the oncoming traffic in the contra-flow lane on Nimitz from the right traffic lane right in front of me in the left lane!  He did a good job testing the ABS on the new work van, and made everything in back that was on a pallet become not on a pallet anymore.

Thank you!

After returning to the warehouse to use the forklift to put everything back onto pallets, I left Kakaako and experienced something poetic.  The syllable count is all wrong, and there is no reference to the season, but here is my haiku:

Four white vans at a four-way-stop
Three do not know what to do
Welcome to Cooke Street 

Comfort Food

Published on February 1, 2008 in Food and rant by risu. Closed

Ahh!  To be back in Honolulu where a decent Mexican dinner can be had!

Met Fabio, Tracy, and JT for dinner at Los Chaparros last night.  I had a 2-item meal with a chicken enchilada and a soft taco al pastor ($13 USD).  It was “$3 beer night”, so I had a Negra Modelo.

If it’s one thing that Whistler is missing, it’s a good Mexican restaurant. There’s Caramba, the Mexican restaurant that serves Italian food.  I’ve been there once the first time we visited Whistler and never had any hint of a desire to go back.  There’s Dup’s Burritos, the little hole-in-the-wall with the ethnically insensitive sign (it features a round-faced dark-skinned man with a sombrero and a big moustache).  I’ve heard mixed things about this place.  Kevin and Naomi had nachos there and found them to be good, but the Symphony Ninja Sandwich Boys described a Dup’s burrito as, “a wrap with crap in it”.  That has almost a Ted Geisel ring to it…  There is a new place over on Creekside that opened this season, but we didn’t have a chance to try it.  Maybe next time…

58th Annual Kohaku Uta-Gassen

Published on January 2, 2008 in Culture and rant by risu. Closed

After watching the disappointing first half of the Hawaii-Georgia Sugar Bowl game, I started flipping back and forth to the one-day-late KIKU-TV telecast of the Kohaku Uta-Gassen.  There wasn’t anything good per-se, but it reinforced some judgements that I had from before: Continue reading ’58th Annual Kohaku Uta-Gassen’

Thank Ullr it’s over…

Published on December 26, 2007 in Culture and rant by risu. Closed Tags: .

Hooray!  Christmas has past and 101.1 FM has ceased playing horrible xmas music all day.  Back to natsukashii J-pop…

This is not History

Published on December 24, 2007 in rant by risu. Closed Tags: .

Every year when Easter or Christmas rolls around, the documentary channels up in the 70’s run all these “History of [insert Biblical name here]” or “The Science of [insert Biblical occurrence here]” programs.

This isn’t HISTORY – it is DOGMA.  Having these kinds of programs on seemingly “objective”, “scientific” networks lends credence to the assertion that the people or events involved are factual.  This is brainwashing through habituation.

I ran into these on both the National Geographic Channel and The History Channel this weekend. Give us natural history documenaries and war documentaries (respectively), not Christian demagogue!

FTP!

Tase him bro!

Published on December 21, 2007 in rant by risu. Closed

Tase him broAfter eating at Yotteko-ya last night, we left to find a situation in the McCully Shopping Center parking lot.  A dude in a Nissan Sentra had hit a delivery truck offloading food ingredients at Taco Bell, then has attempted to flee.  When we had arrived on the scene, an HPD officer was already there and was waiting for the perp to produce his vehicle documents.  The officer was on the perp, repeatedly asking rhetorically if he had intended to run from the scene and if he thought this kind of behavior was correct (not in so polite terms though).  If the perp wasn’t a perp, then the officer’s tirade would probably be considered hassling.  Growing frustrated with the perp’s inability to produce the proper documentation, even after rummaging through his glovebox for an extended period of time, the officer’s speech grew louder and became almost enraged.

A few thoughts came immediately to mind:

“He’s resisting arrest – tase him!”

“He’s going to make a run for it – tase him!”

I wonder where the cops were when the creepy LED-headlamp homeless dudes were raiding the trash cans across the street for discarded pornography?

Our Dog is an Awesome Dog

Published on December 21, 2007 in Food, rant and Review by risu. Closed Tags: .

There are a surprising number of Japanese-themed restaurants in Kaneohe.  I say “themed” because in general, they serve Americanized or “Local”-ized fare and not authentic, traditional Japanese cuisine.  Maybe I’m also being a racist, since so far all of the ones that I have tried in Kaneohe have been run by ethnic Koreans.  That’s not to say Koreans can’t make good food – they make terriffic food: I’m saying the restaurants in question don’t produce acceptable approximations of Nihon-ryouri.  It’s picture-book cooking – it looks like it’s supposed to, but doesn’t taste exactly like it’s supposed to.  It’s like those science fiction shows where aliens build soul-less, substance-less copies of earth cities, then populate them with kidnapped earthlings and assume the humans will not notice they aren’t at home anymore.  Continue reading ‘Our Dog is an Awesome Dog’