I have a deep abrasion that is taking a long time to heal (since I'm in the water 5/7 days a week), on the back of my right hand, and so my father gave me a special oil to apply to it to speed up the healing process. I dreamed that I put it on, and right away, the surrounding skin rose as the scab sunk into the tissue, first forming a volcano-like cone, and then the surrounding tissue folded around the scab, making a pod. It didn't heal completely, but seemed like it was healing. In the light of the morning, the scab kind of looks like it did in the dream: it's sunken into my hand, without the pod.

Another dream had a movie-like quality. I was being introduced to some children in Thailand, and ushered onto a bus by the principal, who told me that we were going to a very bad school. Many kids had crazy colored hair, some curly, some straight, and they were being pretty rambunctious. We ended up going to a graduation ceremony, and as the principal was giving a speech, my view floated above the crowd to the very back of the field where a boy took a sheet off a balloon.

The giant balloon rose, pushing a kite that fell off at about 100 feet, and caught the wind, and the attention of the crowd. An irate principal jumped off the stage and started to chase the kid. The kid almost made it to the gate in the back to safety, but the principal caught him and threw him fifty feet in the air on top of a pole.

The kid jumped off the pole, and it looked like he was going to die, but the principal caught him, and tried to throw him up the pole again, but his aim was way off and he ended up in the pond across from the gate and splashed down on a couple of ducks who were eating a wet salad with forks off of a plate. The male duck contemplated his splashed salad before jumping in to save the kid.

And then, just as things were getting really strange, the alarm went off, and now I have to go to work.

I can't wait to have strange dreams like this again...

Of all of the positions I've held at the Aquarium, this one is by far the most fun, flexible, and provides the best opportunity to get young people interested in learning more about nature and the ocean, and ultimately to be the next generation of scientists, policy makers, educators, and stewards of our natural resources.

The program is pretty amazing in that it allows kids to bypass lengthy training courses, and to get in the Bay immediately. They get a short orientation talk, put a $2k dry suit right on top of their street clothes, don hoods, gloves, booties, masks, and SCUBA equipment, and start exploring in under 30 minutes from the start of the program.

Many kids are nervous when they first step into the water, but once they start seeing the fish, sea stars, anemonies, chitons, crabs, algae, and other organisms, most of them become fearless. It usually only takes a few minutes of coaching until the kids are able to balance in the water and get into the swing of swimming with all of the gear on.

I try to get my students to experience as much stuff as possible. I have them feel the rough-velvety mantle of a gumboot chiton on their face, eat some giant kelp (and explain that algin and keragenin are common emulsifiers that they can find in many foods and toothpastes), to feel gently prod an anemone, to catch crabs, to feed monkeyface eels, and to explore all of the things in the Great Tide Pool. By connecting these things to their everyday lives and experiences, we are helping these kids to understand and ultimately fall in love with the ocean and with nature at large.

It's awesome to hear a kid say that they want to become a marine biologist, that they now want to go SCUBA diving as soon as they are old enough, that they can't wait to learn more about the oceans, that they want to stay in the water forever, and that they're no longer scared of the water or the things that lay in them.

In 30 minutes, you can accomplish a lot. It's not just the students that benefit from the program, it's also the parents. They are so happy to see their kids learning, having fun, conquering their fears, and doing what they love to do, or in many cases doing what they wish they could have done when they were kids (or just something they wish they could do period). I can see the instructors growing as well, as students, as educators, and as individuals. Everyone wins in the end.

We send them home with a log book in which they record the conditions of the GTP, mark off what animals they saw, and recall other things that they experienced. In addition, all participants get a cup of hot cocoa. The program is simply a win-win experience for everyone involved.

One of the last things I did on my vacation is something I haven't done since I lived in Japan: I made a big pot of curry.

Curry is one of those dishes that evokes a plethora of sentimental memories and can awaken experiences from long ago. I can feel the humid heat of Nara under my T-shirt, and taste the hot green tea accompanying it. I can see the perfect triangular slices of watermelon, an ice cold treat that waits on plates in the center of a communal table patiently waiting to be enjoyed after the curry. This is but one of those memories.

While enjoying doing the things that I do on my time off, I not only remember, but if I am successful at relaxing, I forget.

This vacation has imparted a beneficial sort of amnesia on me, allowing me to forget work almost completely. I forgot the things that stress me out, the things that make me frustruated, and the things that make me tired. I also forgot the things that I look forward to doing, dependable co-workers, and to some extent, work friends. This is not to say these things are not important to me. I am still mindful of my work culture and environment, it's just that everything is pushed to the way-back of my mind into storage.

I've been enjoying a vacation from my vacation, something that I've always wanted to do but have, up until this point, not been able to experience. The transition between vacation and work is often abrupt, jarring, and to some extent a traumatic experience. I've been able to hang out, go outdoors, stock up on groceries, cook, read, watch TV, catch up on correspondence, and generally digest my vacation. Like a well crafted culinary treat, this break left a pleasant lingering flavor that I was able to truly savor until the very end.

I have no regrets for this vacation, and thanks to the latter part of my time off I will have curry to enjoy well into my work week.

It's funny that ladyboys are so ubiquitous in Thai culture that they appear in commercials!

On another subject, this is a project for Justin and Nam:

Start practicing to make Max the best bento in the World.

I didn't spot it right away. As I was looking at the mural on the southernmost bakery in the United States, I found a gecko hiding in the lau lau.

Only when I got really close to it, did the gecko move away from the middle of the painting, bringing its vivid colors and patterns into full view, against the beige background. Those flashy patterns really do break up the full form of the body on the top picture.

On an unrelated note, I no longer catch geckos because the last one I caught peed on my hand. I think it was trying to tell me that it didn't like being captured, so now I only take pictures.

My brother, on the other hand, likes to eat them.

The shot below shows the view that we came upon, after overhearing some man talking to a friend about calling 911. It sounded like he was talking about someone that was elsewhere (he mentioned that they were located at least 30 minutes away from help), so we continued on, and took a short rest here:

While starting back on the trail, the old man came up to us asking if we spoke Japanese, because there was a girl near the top of the mountain that couldn't speak English and was in critical condition. I told him that I could, and after a short briefing he sent us up before him on a sprint to the summit.

It took about ten minutes of passing people through narrow tunnels bored through the mountain and narrow switchbacks to reach the girl. The old man had told us that she was unconscious, and when we got there, a physician informed us that they had given her candy because they thought she was going into diabetic shock.

When we arrived, she was regaining consciousness, and I was told that she had hit her head. I asked the girl what her name was and where she was, and she was able to answer both questions. A physician who was also there asked me to interpret questions that the paramedics would need when they arrived:

Does she have diabetes? After being back for 2 years, I have had little opportunity to practice, so my Japanese was a bit rusty. Luckily, it seemed to come back to me, but I had no idea how to say "diabetes". Instead, I had to ask "Does she experience problems if she eats too much or not enough sugar?".

Did she hit her head?
Initially the answer was "yes" from the boyfriend. The answer on this changed later on, as the boyfriend thought she hit her head, but the girl didn't, and didn't have any visible marks, swelling, or discoloration on her head.

Can she wiggle her toes?
She was able to.

Does she feel dizzy?
She did at first, but after drinking some water and resting in the cool tunnel, she was able to regain her strength.

Is she pregnant?
No, she was not.

Does she have any pre-existing medical conditions that we should know about?
No.

Is she taking medication?
No.

I had to ask her these questions three times: once with the physician (who decided to leave her with us after he assessed her condition as stable), once with the firefighters who met us later on, and once at the ambulance at the base of the mountain. Her symptoms indicated that she was suffering from heat exhaustion, and her condition gradually improved in the shade.

After she said that she could make it down the hill with her boyfriend, Steve and I helped her down the trail, and met a team of firefighers a third of the way down. Once again, I asked these questions, and they made it clear that they wanted to airlift her out. It was my job to explain what was going to happen and why, but more importantly to reassure the couple.

It turns out that getting airlifted out of Diamond Head is free, and that there are 2 delivery systems. One rig uses a gurney-like platform where the person being rescued lays down. The other one, the Bill Pugh, is the one that you can see in the pictures.

The girl was afraid of riding in the rig, so we told her that a firefighter would be riding with her, and that she could decline treatment when we got the the ambulance. After ten minutes, the chopper showed up, dropped off their rescue team on a tiny pinnacle, and swung around to pick her up:

A firefighter accompanied her on her ride down to the bottom of the mountain to an ambulance awaiting their arrival. When we got there, I asked the questions a third time, and stuck around until they had finished their business. After declining treatment, the girl and her boyfriend thanked everyone and we decided not to climb Diamond Head a second time. We had come so close to the top and didn't quite reach the summit, but at that point it didn't seem as interesting.

We met the old man shortly after. Royce, it turned out, used to be a local firefighter, and he just had happened to be hiking the trail, and called in the rescue. Of all the people he passed on the trail, I was the only one who could interpret.

Usually, when I go on a short hike, I don't carry so much stuff with me, but on that day, we used them all, except for the First-Aid pack (ironic, huh?). We let her use our water to cool off, used the flashlight to assess her condition in the tunnel, Steve lent her a hat to keep her cool, and the marker to write down her medical condition to pass to the EMTs at the bottom of the hill. Things just seemed to work out well for the couple, it seemed.

As we were leaving, we saw them waiting at the bus stop, and stopped to give them a ride back to their hotel. They were from Wakayama, it turned out, on a Hawaiian vacation. In the air conditioned car, they were a lot more relaxed, and asked to take a picture with us:

It seems that things like this happen when I go traveling, and when I hang out with Steve. I have good luck meeting the right people, being in an interesting place at the right time, and just having fun or profound experiences. Maybe it's a sign that I should do both of these things more frequently...

I don't get scrapes, scabs, and bruises as frequently as I used to when I was a kid. Maybe that's why I enjoy them: they remind me of when free time was a certainty, and most of the fun times I had were spent in the outdoors.

One and a half weeks in Hawaii seemed much longer than that, which was unexpected. From the moment the plane took off from San Francisco, time immediately slipped into a relaxed pace, packed full to the brim from the time we got up until we went to sleep. It could have been a month or two ago that I was last in Monterey, and I wouldn't be surprised.

Good food, spending most of the day in the water, catching up with friends, getting tanned, exploring new places, soaking up the local culture, more good food, adventure, and almost four gigs of photos taken along the way: this is a synopsis of how the trip was spent.

There is so much stuff I could write about, but for now, I will spend a bit of time digesting my time in Hawaii.

In two days from now, I will be in Hawaii. That plan seems so abstract right now, like a faded poster hanging in an ancient travel agency, complete with palm trees, surfboards, and tikis framing a faded blue wave crashing against the washed out white sand.

I plan to spend a lot of time in the water, to take a lot of pictures, to go exploring, to go hiking, to meet cool and unusual people, to appreciate the culinary versatility of Spam, to breath slowly and deeply, to enjoy a drink whenever offered, to poke around in the jungle, to crack open a coconut, to drink pineapple juice out of a fountain, to unwittingly start picking up pidgin, to get rid of my farmer's tan, to go everywhere in flip flops and short-sleeved shirts, to wake up rested and refreshed, to experience excitement and not too much pain or injury, to jump over or off of objects and document the results, to seek out strange, beautiful, and horrifying organisms, to get lost and then find my way again, to forget what day it is, to fall asleep on the beach in the afternoon under the shade of a few palm trees, to hear and make some good stories, to run into friends randomly, to read a good book during the times I'm waiting for something, to stop frequently along the way to take in the beautiful sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and textures, and to add more things to this list.

For me, this vacation will really start the second that the rear landing wheels leave the runway pavement. Only then will I know that, barring some freak emergency, I have left my work life behind where it belongs. I imagine, in this situation, that I know how a crab, who has outgrown its rigid carapace and sheds it to grow larger, feels.

My mind is currently fogged from fatigue, and I have to say, in this state I am really enjoying the anticipation of going on vacation. Ah, good stuff.

In the first dream, I was talking with my little sister in her room, when she started screaming. I turned around, and saw a baby turkey-like bird walking past the cracked door followed by a larger one. I got a pet carrier and quickly put them into it. Then I saw a pair of hands place three kittens and what looked like their mother through the front door to our house. They ran upstairs into my sister's room.

The birds started screaming, so I ran to check them out and found my cat inside trying to eat them. It took a long time to shake Boo out of the pet carrier, and he looked pissed off when I finally got him out. He didn't like me taking away his meal. I heard mewing coming from my sister's room.

I opened the door and saw the three kittens' heads poking through the blankets piled up in the corner of the room, followed by a blur of something charging. I picked up the nearest item to fend it off. When it got up close, it turned out to be a badger. It was really pissed off and trying to bite me. Almost miraculously, I was able to knock it away time and time again using an ordinary pillow! At this point I woke up.

I quickly fell asleep again, finding myself in a really boring meeting at work. I was talking about all of the things that needed to be fixed with my boss, and the talk was dragging on. Suffice to say, I was pissed off when I woke up for the second time, and then relieved to be rid of that particular dream once I realized what was going on.

I know that I dream regularly, but I rarely remember them by the time I get out of bed. In this case, I know why I had both dreams and what they mean. My mom had left the dogs over, and they woke me up with their barking, which disturbed my sleep (messing with my sleep is usually something that will make me unhappy). The second one happened because work has been really stressful lately.

I much prefer wacky dreams, even if I am getting attacked by crazy animals. Even if they are scary and I wake up with a quickly beating heart, I'll take "fight or flight" dreams over the ones where the mundane parts of my life follow me into the sleep world every time.