Today Joe did a thing he does best. He'd been talking all week about surfing lessons, so we challenged him to do his own research and choose a location and instructor(s), which he did: North Shore Surf Girls in Haleʻiwa. We were instructed to meet them "behind the 76 station" at 9 AM on Thursday, which we did, arriving just on time. A deeply-tanned adorable girl with salt-spray tousled hair drove up in, no kidding, a battered old BMW with all the windows down and six giant surfboards mounted on top and an "NSSG" vanity plate with mermaid frame. Seriously, like a movie. She talked with a slight surfer accent and did the cute head-tilt. Not dumb at all, rather the most laid-back sharp-eyed businesswoman you'll ever meet. Joe, Laura's parents, and I as Anne's guardian ... read more

Should have been obvious, but I just figured out that the thing that saps the will to blog, for me, isn't the vacation itself—after all, the sun sets at 18:30 here, and on our side of Oʻahu they roll up the sidewalks by 19:00, which leaves plenty of leisurely evening non-beach time perfect for blogging—no, sadly, it's Facebook and Foursquare and high mobile data availability. By the time I sit down at home (== the beach house), I feel like I've told the interesting parts of the story already, in couple-hundred-character increments and checkins and phone-camera tagged uploads. I don't really painstakingly maintain my Flickr feed, either: I definitely upload, but I don't spend extra time labeling each photo to tell its story. It's a little microcosm of the debate about crowdsourced news via social media ... read more

We're having a spirited debate about whether lying around the house doing nothing (i.e., on our laptops) in Hawai'i is different from lying around the house doing nothing at home. I'm arguing that it is, because: louvered windows open, ceiling fans spinning, warm breezes wafting, and exotic birds calling outside. I have sand in my ear. This is what we do. ... then Joe and I and Cheryl can get some men's body wash to share. Now, Greg is trying to write the grocery list in German. Anne is alternating between *facepalm* and making helpful corrections. Mau. We spent the afternoon stack-ranking possible activities; Greg applied Fibonacci values to each person's preferences and then we pretty much threw out the results and started scheduling things by consensus in a Google spreadsheet. qu... read more

Being a tourist in the capital city of a very small country, if anything whatsoever is happening in the whole country, bam! you're in the middle of it. It's cool. To grip the entire vast, diverse USA in any shared national experience takes a huge, crazy, usually unpleasant thing. But not here. Fun stuff gets to be a shared national experience too! Which is timely, because I've been thinking about spending "9/11" abroad. As it happens, I was abroad for the actual original 9/11/2001 - in Glasgow, Scotland with my brother in the middle of our three-week tour of the UK. It was surreal being away while something so all-consuming was happening back home. Watching news coverage on the BBC; hearing a national reaction and response presided-over by PM Tony Blair; looking out of our hotel ... read more

After yesterday's emotional visit to the Museum of Latvian Occupation, I soothe my post-Cold War angst with some spectacularly delicious traditional Latvian food at Bistro LIDO "Alus sēta" - a cafeteria-style chain restaurant, this one located in the Old Town. ("Alus sēta", I just learned, translates literally as "Beer Yard".) Apparently LIDO is the Disneyland of Latvian cuisine, with a flagship restaurant/entertainment center located just outside the city. I do, in fact, notice the similarity between this LIDO in Rīga and Рэстаран-бістро ЛIДО ("Restaurant-Bistro LIDO") in Minsk, where I dined the night before. If they aren't the same chain, then perhaps copyright enforcement here is even more lax than I thought. In any case, cafeteria dining is perfect for we who are language-challenged. Even... read more