Catching up as 2008 wraps up [PICS]
Jason Genegabus photos
Hope everybody is having a happy holiday season… can you believe tomorrow is New Year’s Eve?
I’ve been pretty busy myself, since the mid-week holidays have forced me to get four or five days worth of work done in just three. Lots of people end up taking time off, which can make it hard to get a phone call returned or an interview scheduled.
My mom, who normally works as a flight attendant on holidays to earn that overtime cash, was home for both Thanksgiving and Christmas this year. That meant plenty of home-cooked food – and leftovers for days!!! – plus time to enjoy the view from her window overlooking downtown Honolulu (see above).
No matter if I’m on the clock or not, my iPhone is great for capturing those moments when I don’t have my normal camera with me. With help from the free online service TwitPic, I’m able to take flicks and post them to my Twitter account when I’m out and about.
Instead of waiting for my column to get caught up with my adventures, you can follow me for up-to-the-minute updates on what I’m doing and who I see… even what I’m eating, and sometimes what I’m wearing, too!
Earlier this month, I spent a lot of time eating tacos as research for my December installment of Barfly in the Star-Bulletin. While the professional shots got published, I snapped a few more pictures to remind me of what I’d eaten.
These are the tacos at Bikini Cantina. At $2 each, they were more expensive than the places that serve the hard-shelled variety, but more than made up for it with tasty kalua pork (or chicken) filling and plenty of tomatoes and lettuce with spicy salsa on the side:
My favorite hard-shelled tacos are served at Ryan’s Grill during their version of Taco Tuesdays. The beef and chicken filling is made that day from fresh ingredients, and you can definitely taste the difference:
Can’t make it out for Taco Tuesdays? Try Wahoo Wednesdays at Wahoo’s Fish Tacos.
Like Bikini Cantina, Wahoo’s chicken or fish soft tacos are $2 each. Like Ryan’s, live music is offered while the tacos are on special. And you can order $2 bottles of Primo to go with your food!
The weekend before Christmas, I got invited to be a judge for two different events at Aloha Tower Marketplace and Ala Moana’s Mai Tai Bar.
On Dec. 20, I helped pick the overall winner of Aloha Tower’s annual Christmas Boat Parade. Unfortunately, my iPhone doesn’t really like to take pictures of moving boats that are covered in Christmas lights.
I did, however, get a nice shot of Honolulu Harbor before the procession began:
On Dec. 21, I joined DJ Wu-Chang and a visiting mainland DJ to pick a finalist in the Mai Tai Bar’s first-ever DJ competition:
You can read more about that night in last week’s In the Mix.
As I wrote earlier, I spent Christmas day at my Mom’s. But I forgot to buy wrapping paper, so she ended up with a present that got the newspaper-style treatment:
And you know I can’t post a new blog entry without mentioning last Friday’s island-wide blackout. I ended up cruising around for most of the evening, picking up dinner at Safeway (chicken ceasar salad, cold fried chicken and a bottle of Gatorade!) and having a few drinks at my local before braving the streets to see if people were still partying.
There was a fire in Kapahulu early in the evening, which along with the lack of stoplights caused a major traffic jam in the area:
As I drove around later that night, I was surprised to see a number of parking structures and office building with lots of emergency lighting. This apartment building in Kapahulu was completely lit up, and many Waikiki hotels had enough generator power to keep their lobby lights lit.
That brings us to this week, which saw me chasing Ne-Yo in advance of his Jan. 5 concert at the Blaisdell and writing my annual year-in-review column for Friday’s HiLife section.
I’ll be back in a bit with a few more New Year’s Eve picks for those of you who still haven’t decided what to do tomorrow night.
If you already have plans, party safe and I’ll see you in 2009!
