My Summer Vacation: Cyclosporiasis

We had dinner tonight with high school buddy Alden; one of my favorite people to hang out with because it is always interesting to talk with him. Alden is an epidemiologist. Tonight Kai joined us because he had numerous questions about the cyclosporiasis outbreak that has been in the news. SPOILER ALERT - Well not really. There was nothing new that we heard tonight that is not already on the news. The 4 cases in Hawaiʻi are people who picked it up elsewhere on their travels.

We had dinner at The Brick Fire Tavern in Kaimukī. We tried the Prosciutto & Arugula pizza & Mamma Mia! pizza; they were delicious! We also had the Porcini Rigatoni pasta. I was a little disappointed in the flavor of the mushrooms; they tasted more like bland button mushrooms (Agaricus bisporus) rather than umami-rich porcini (Boletus edulis). Our server had recommended 2 pizzas & a pasta dish for 3 people. She was correct! We practically licked the plates clean!

Prosciutto & Arugula Pizza.

Mamma Mia! Pizza.

Porcini Rigatoni.

Later we went to Via Gelato for dessert. I did a terrible job on photos. Alden & I had the Mango Sticky Rice; we liked it. Kai had the Houjicha Honey Milk Affogato; it is ice cream with coffee which he likes.

(L-R) Houjicha Honey Milk Affogato, Mango Sticky Rice gelato.

I got an email from LPC secretary Melissa; I needed to docusign the regular & executive session minutes for June & the corrected minutes for the April Leeward Planning Commission meetings. Chair Dean had to recuse himself for 1 of the projects during the June meeting so I was Acting Chair. Since I had attended the entire meeting, I had signature authority for all the minutes of that meeting. Next year, if I become Chair, I will be doing this every month. More if we have any month with special meetings like in June. The chair also approves the agenda for the upcoming meeting & potentially requests a special meeting if it looks like there will be too much to cover in a regular meeting like there was in June. Yay! More "work" to look forward to!

I am now using an auxiliary cooling system for my laptop so it can run cooler. When computers run hotter they are less efficient. I have found a very light weight portable system, unlike Kai's big, heavy, unwieldy system for his gaming computer.

My auxiliary cooling system. It greatly increases the amount of air flow.

ʻŌhuna got out of the cat yard! I was checking the security cameras to see how Moʻo was doing last night & saw a cat by the garage very early this morning. It was ʻOhuna! I looked at earlier clips & found out the 1st time she had gotten out was on 07/06! Since then she got out every night from the 11th through early this morning.

This morning.

07/06.

This afternoon I watched 3 shows with Kai; Chief of War was my choice (Episode 6). His 2 choices were The Apothecary Diaries (Episode 3, we watched 2 episodes while in Kohala) & the movie Project Hail Mary. I really enjoyed the science in Project Hail Mary; I would watch it again. It was written by Andrew Weir, the guy who wrote the novel The Martian; I also enjoyed that movie. I tend to like movies with real science not Hollywood science. FYI Project Hail Mary was in English but I found I could have the subtitles in Simplified Chinese, so I did! I think for future movies/series in English, I will have subtitles in Mandarin or Simplified Chinese if available. I was able to recognize more Hanzi characters than I could a month ago! Progress! Hūlō!

The language in Chief of War now has less ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi, but I knew it would be going in that direction. Historically, as the missionaries spread through the islands, they also translated the Bible, aka Ka Baibala Hemolele, in to ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi by creating the written equivalent for the Hawaiian alphabet sounds which was previously totally oral. When at least 3/4 of the show is presented in English, I will change the subtitles to Mandarin/Simplified Chinese, if available.

The original language that The Apothecary Diaries was recorded in is Japanese even though the story is set in feudal China. Since I am not fluent in Japanese & Kai is also watching it with me & he is not fluent in Japanese either (but he would like to learn), we are watching it in Japanese with English subtitles. It is an anime series so quite different than what I am used to watching but I am finding the story line interesting. When I saw this landscape in the 1st episode, I said, Wait a minute! That's China, not Japan! Which Kai confirmed. I had assumed it was in Japan since it was a Japanese anime in Japanese.

I also watched Episode 2 of Judge Dee's Mystery later in the evening. There was a normal saddle on the horse of a suspicious character! SPOILER ALERT - The "suspicious" character is actually a bodyguard who works for the Empress who sends Di Renjie to various places to clean up the corruption.

This looks like a western saddle.

I missed doing my Lingopie lessons today. Which ended my 9-day streak! Auē! I am finding it more difficult to keep up with the daily Lingopie lessons since I can't do them 1st thing in the morning while lying down in bed like with my Duolingo lessons! I will have to try harder! I might have to set up an appointment with myself to get the lessons done on a daily basis. 🙄

But I did the Duolingo lessons as usual. Today we are apparently examining Wang Ming's apartment. But it does not sound like Wang Ming is there with us while we check things out with his roommate. It seems there are 2 bedrooms but can't say for sure because they only comment on there being only 1 kitchen. And they apparently have a cat who likes snacks!