Lots of updates from Liz.  And for those of you who have wanted to comment, but not give blogspot any information, I think that I have changed the settings so that anyone can comment - you will have to enter a word to show that you are a real person, but I think that you don't need to sign up or anything else like that.  Please give it a try!

The reason that I am using Zach's account to blog is because I didn't feel like signing up with them either!  :)

Also formating the pictures and text is surprisingly frustrating.  It seems impossible to have two pictures next to one another, except when it is not.   I really have no idea how to make them be adjacent.  So, I am sorry about the white space and the text that may not be really relevant to the pictures.  My usual compulsive, detail-oriented self....

First, the food, since that was where we left you.  First, the big news.  No one got food poisoning or burnt themselves.  Upon reflecting, at the end of the week, Zach thought that making dinner itself wasn't so bad; the work was actually figuring out what to make.  I agree.  We may work in various combinations of teams during the upcoming weeks.  Next up: Abby and Liz.  

Tuesday, we successfully ate dinner out.  Very good Vietnamese place on the Northeast side of the island, near Hawaiian Institute of Marine Biology.  Liz had her tofu - in a very delicious Vietnamese curry, Steve had pretty decent pho and the kids had soup - Zachary, meatball soup and Abby, chicken soup with a poached egg.  Truce.  Maybe I can eat my tofu out instead of at home....



Details about what Liz did at HIMB are below.  While Steve and the kids were waiting for her on Tuesday, they got to see the pirate ship (the Black Pearl??) that is being used for the filming of the newest Pirates of the Caribbean movie.  Alas, no sightings of Johnny Depp yet, but apparently that is big work these days on Oahu - trying to see/get close to the ship and figure out where the crew/actors are hanging out.




Wednesday brought scrambled eggs.  Generally the kids make these in the microwave, but tried for the first time quite successfully on the stove since they are much tastier.  Reasonably good collaboration without too much sniping and snipping at one another.  Forgot to add cheese (to make cheesy scrambled eggs) but patrons were permitted to add their own, as well as ketchup or salsa.  Showed Zachary how, if there are burnt parts, hiding them on the bottom is a good idea.  Not sure whether this is a good life lesson or not. 

Thursday, rice and beans for dinner.  Kids successfully made rice in the rice cooker and opened a can of beans.  Tortillas were available to those interested.

Overall, not too flavorful or palate-pleasing, but edible.  Probably how the kids feel about 90% of my dinners.

Lunch on Thursday was at the Rainbow Drive-In.  Drive-Ins in Hawaii do not really seem to mean what I thought Drive-Ins were  - you need to get out of your car and most people seem to either eat at the tables nearby or take the food away.  Not much eating in vehicles.  Nonetheless, this place was noteworthy for two reasons.  First, Barack Obama frequented this place in his younger days and also comes back when he is on-island, as it is supposed to be one of his favorites.  IMHO, it was fine, but not necessarily worth a repeat trip.  I am enthusiastic about trying some other pseudodrive-ins in the future though.  Second, it was our first "plate lunch" which is a Hawaiian tradition.  Some meat, two scoop rice, one scoop mac salad.  Carbs and protein.


I had purchased vegetables last weekend when we went to an agricultural fair highlighting Hawaii's farmers.  Because the kids have not used much of this produce, it is still in the refrigerator.  I hope that we can get to it before it rots.  The fair was good because I learned where to buy local produce other weeks - at a Farmer's Market that is near Diamond Head on Saturday mornings.  I will not go this week, because we still have stuff left from the fair.  Lots of good fruit, veggies and coffee.  The nearby grocery store does not have that much local stuff - their mangoes are from Mexico, for example!  They do have "apple bananas" which are tasty small local bananas that we have been enjoying quite a bit, and local green beans and a few other things, but I have really been wanting to buy more local produce and so the Farmer's Market will be a good source.  There are a very few CSAs and we might end up doing one, but I would like to give the Farmer's Market a try first.

Friday, out!  To our local Shabu-shabu restaurant, which is definitely a family favorite.  Kids get a mild broth, Steve and Liz having been trying a variety and had the curry broth for the first time, which might be the new favorite and also tried some butterfish for the first time.  Very nice.  We pick different meats, veggies and noodles to cook in the broth.  The kids are pleasantly helpful to one another while we are there.

Dinner on Friday was after seeing two movies at the Surfing movie festival, put on at the Doris Duke theater and Honolulu Academy of Arts.   I was the catalyst for making us go to this - seemed like something that we should do - how many places can one live where you can go to a surfing movie festival?

I think that overall, it was a good call to go to this.  The first movie we saw was called "Gum for my boat" which was about a children's surf club in Bangladesh and a professional surfer and organization called Surfing the Nations who visit them.  The title comes from a boy who did not know what a surfboard was and called it his boat, and wanted board wax, and called it gum....If you want to see a link to a short from the movie, you can look at



I can't decide what I think of it.  On the one hand, it was pretty inspiring to see these kids surfing and get hope and friendship in their lives from surfing.  They were happy and enthusiastic.  On the other, I guess I don't really feel that it is realistic for these kids to think that they can make a living surfing.  But I don't really have any basis for that one way or the other....

The second movie,  Fiberglass and Megapixels was about the people that  film  (video and still) surfers for a living.  It was pretty interesting to hear these guys (yes, all men) talk about how they "get the shot" and fun to get a view of that side of the surfing business.  We have seen many pictures of surfers but I had not really considered how hard it might be to get some of those shots.  Holding pretty large cameras, in watertight housing; needing to stay out of the surfers' way (and one another's way); needing to keep in the air pocket and not get any spray/drops on the housing in front of the lens, etc.

The other things that have been going on:

HIMB from the dock.  A small motor boat picks you up and drives you over to "Coconut Island"

I went to the Hawaiian Institute of Marine Biology to help out with an experiment Monday night and Tuesday.  Really though, I was just tagging along for fun and didn't really do much that was too useful but I was on time (important for field trips and field work) and didn't get in anyone's way or drop anything.  Clearly I have high expectations for myself as a field biologist.  And I got to snorkel a little bit.  

HIMB.  A lab building and tables with sea water pumped into them and critters on them

View from HIMB.

Fungia are coral that spawn 1-3 days after the full moon in the summer months.  They are used as an experimental system by some folks, and because they spawn reliably at a particular time, it is a nice way to be able to make larvae/juveniles that are all similar in age for experiments.  Also, they take up symbionts from their environment and so they are a very nice system for the manipulation of symbiont uptake.  I wanted to see them spawn and also visit HIMB.  Elisha Wood-Charlson, a former graduate student with Virginia Weis (we read one of her papers in seminar one or two of the years of the seminar) is out here for a post-doc and she was going to set up a small pilot experiment so I went along.

One of the cool things about Fungia is that a single polyp is quite large and they come in different color morphs as you can see in the pictures.

The water in this one is cloudy b/c it has just released sperm!

These are a bunch of Fungia all in separate bowls.  The cloudy ones have released gametes.

When they spawn, they either release eggs (heavy and clumpy) or sperm (much lighter and milky).  Basically, there were about 15 people standing around watching bowls with individual Fungia in them that were up on a table.  Some people poked them to try to get them to go...when they released their gametes, Dave Krupp, who works at HIMB in the summer, would suck them up with a turkey baster.  At some point, sperm and eggs were mixed, and I helped carry bowls with them over to the other side of the (very small) island.  Along the lines of my high hopes for work as a field biologist, I did not trip or spill the precious gamete-laden solution.

The next day, we came back and there were larvae!  We then set up an experiment that required us to put the larvae out on the reef in little containers with mesh.  Elisha did all the work including carrying the samples, the zipline ties and the anchor with a buoy on top.  Carrying here means swimming out to the reef.  I carried her camera and documented the site and all her hard work.  Really, I mostly snorkeled around and saw a bunch of fish, corals, anemones and large sea cucumbers.  I managed to stay out of Elisha's way and did not kick her with my fins as she was doing all this work and I was just sightseeing.