Rollin' Hawaii

Me and Anniken at one of the beaches we visited:
Group picture:

On Sunday morning, 7.30, we all met outside the VIP Transport Car Rentals, everyone was set for an awesome trip around the beautiful island of Oahu. On this trip we was going to visit Kahamea beach, Waiamae beach, Turtle beach, North Shore and "the LOST beach"! This was a blast! We started off driving, our lovely Jana was the driver of the car I was in. We had the map, so we went first. We had some problems with getting on the right roads in the start, but after some wrong turns and stuff, we was on our way, we was on the highway, heading east. We stopped after a some driving at a scenic point, to take some pictures and stuff.

Marilyn Monroe / Anniken Volckmar:

Then we kept on driving until we saw the mystery island, or something.. Not sure what it's called, but it is close to Oahu, and is a small island. Beautiful sight. As always, Hawaii is so unpredictable! One second the sun is shining, and the other second, it looks really bad! So the weather ahead looked really bad! But luckily, we dodged a bullet, and we never experienced any rain. And yet again, some complications with the map reading / communication got us to a military base, which was cool!

Me and Pia:

The weather didn't look good as we were getting closer to North Shore:
Famous monument as seen in the movie "Iwo Jima":

Then it was over to the beach, where we could see the "Chinese hat" - thats the island that really looks like some Chinese hat! Then we arrived at the Waiamae beach, and there was this rock where we jumped from, and it was really fun, even though you got so much salt water in your nose that you could serve salt for a whole dinner-party.

Me handstanding next to the Chinese hat:

Jumped from the cliff:

Yet another group picture:

Then we went to a beach that a local told us we would most likely see Sea turtles! And we did! We even got a really good close look at them, and that was so cool! I didn't enjoy touching it, but it was still cool, just to do it.

Jana touching the sea turtle:

After this, we went on to the trips last stop: The beach were the very popular TV show LOST is being recorded. There was supposed to be houses and effects from the series, but it was getting dark, so we didn't have time to find all that stuff. So we just went to the beach where it is being recorded. We tried to write "LOST" with ourselves, but it didn't work out that well, or it worked out well writing it, it was just hard to get a decent picture of it, since had to take it from a bad angle, when the optimal angle would be over us and down, but that's hard! So we just figured to write LOST in the sand, and get the heck home, as we were all getting tired after a long and adventurous day!

Trying to form LOST w/our bodies:

"Det enkle er ofte det beste":

The last group picture of the day:

The L.A. Lakers game

Well, last Thursday, exactly a week ago from this very day, I was at a Lakers game - for those who doesn't know, Lakers is a NBA basketball team, and they were having a pre-season game vs another NBA team: Golden State Warriors, respectively from San Fransisco. I went with Truls, a Norwegian friend of mine. We took the best seats available, and had to pay freakin 80$ for the ticket. And the tickets was very close to the 35$ tickets, but it doesn't matter, we couldn't know that! And it was an awesome game, so I don't regret it for a second that I payed for the best seats!


In the start, we didn't sit at our own seats, because we had seats EE row 18 seat 15 & 16. But we sat at E row 18 seat 15/16 the first quarter of the game. But after a while the owners of that seat came, and we had to look for our own seat.

And of course, how could I not tell; the Lakers girls. They entertained us in every time-out and every pause between the four different quarters. It wasn't the most amazing show, but they were all pretty decent looking, so there is nothing wrong about enjoying their lame entertainment.

As the game was closing in, we went to the courtside, and sat on the 4th row or something, the last quarter or something. This was cool, and we got a close look at Lakers' coach - Phil Jackson, a legendary Basketball coach, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (old school Michael Jordan?) He is now the assistant coach of Lakers, I think. He is the NBA player with the highest total points together in all time! And of course, this times Michael Jordan: Kobe Bryant! He is at the moment the worlds best player, and it was AWESOME! I actually was so lucky, that I got a video of a 360 slam-dunk of him, which I will try to post in this blog!

I Find My Way Around

So far, so good. Everything is still all good here in paradise. Lately I've been surfing a lot, and as mid-terms are coming up and on-going (had my math mid-term today) there is not that much of interest that is happening except from me having a really good time. Both socially, actively and school-wise. The last few days I've gotten back a lot of graded homework, projects and quizzes. And I am sad to say, I got my first B. And that in COM 1000, the one course I actually find interesting, and the one I do most in. Well, I guess it's bad luck or lets blame the test! But even though I got my first B, I also got back four more A's, and my first essay is due on Thursday, so I guess that will be my second "not-A-grade". Don't feel to confident about it, even though it is a well-told story about an dynamite-accident; my grammar sucks, big time!

Anyways, the last week I've been surfing 4 times or something, and it is AWESOME! As I am getting better, it just gets more and more fun and exciting. So this weekend I will go to Ewa Beach and a spot which is called "Barbers point" to surf. It is supposed to be much better than Waikiki, both for starters and advanced surfers, because Waikiki isn't really that good at all for surfing. So on Saturday morning I will be surfing Waikiki, and on Sunday morning I will take the bus over to Ewa Beach, and I am going to try "Boogieboard" for my first time. I got this girl in my math class, she promised me to teach me how to boogieboard, so I am relying on her to make this a fun experience.

As this past week has been boring and nothing much have happened. This week we're in right now is so full of stuff to do. Today I had my Math mid-term as I mentioned earlier. Tomorrow I need to see a tutor as a part of my essay assignment and do a extra credit assignment in math. On Thursday my essay is due, so I really have to work on it tomorrow.

Need a new paragraph for this one: Thursday night is L.A. Lakers night! The L.A. Lakers and the Golden State Warriors will have a pre-NBA-season show-off match here on Hawaii next to University of Hawaii (not HPU, which is my university). Me and Truls (a fellow norwegian student) will go to that match. So we will see "the new jordan": Kobe Bryant - in action! Pictures of this will be uploaded as soon as I get a hold of them.

That's all for now folks, or something; I'm off for the gym

P-P-Police and P-P-Poker

Lately nothing major have taken place. This week have been some quizzes and stuff, just the usual. Only gotten A's so far, so school is going fine I guess. This weekend I mostly just chilled and worked on some big project for my computer science class. But on Friday I took some time off to play poker with some guys down at "The Ohia" - that's the student dorm on Waikiki.



Other than that there is not to much to write about, except from today, a couple of hours ago there was a weaponed action with the police hitting a probably huge drug catch or something. Because there were six police cars, about 20 police officers and a couple of guys was handcuffed. They were still searching the car when I was passing by. I was on my way back from the gym. And it is so frustrating, right before I went to the gym I thought; "Should I bring my camera?" - I usually thinks that before I go to the gym, and most often I end up with leaving it at home. Same as for today, left it at home, so I didn't get any close "mug shots" though... To bad, huh? But since it was on our avenue, I got some ok picture from our Lanai which I will add. And I've learned my lesson; always bring the camera, wherever I go, even if it's just to the gym or convenience store.

Thunderbird airshow

I was supposed to tell about this last week, since it was last week it happened, but anyways; there was this AWESOME show on Waikiki beach last week with five Thunderbird F-16. Have you ever seen Top Gun? Multiply it with 10 and add another 30 and thats how many times better it was than Top Gun. They did all these amazing stunts and awesome tricks. Of course I brought my camera, but to take good pictures of F-16 going 1200km/h or whatever they do, I have no idea... Probably even faster. Anyways, I got some photos worth showing, but the picture don't really show how amazing it really was, and thats to bad. I did take some videos too, but you need to see it with your own eyes to know how good it really was. To describe how cool and awesome it was, I almost got tears in my eyes, I had to struggle to hold it back. Why? I am so sad that I didn't choose to be a F-16 pilot. Of course it is never to late, but I rather head the way I am heading now, than to be a F-16 pilot. Enjoy the pictures!