Week 2 & 3 - Hawaii

Week 2 & 3 (5 – 19 Dec)

Aloha.  We’ve just come from 2 weeks in Waikiki.  What can you say about Hawaii that hasn’t already been said, written and photographed.  It is the picture perfect postcard with great beaches, sunshine, shopping, plentiful food and lovely people.  From a tourist’s perspective Hawaii has everything you’d need for a great holiday.  The only down side to Waikiki for me is the crowds and luxury shopping that dominates the streets.  For a family back-packing around the world, leaving our “luxurious” life behind, the last thing I needed was to be “sold” how much more beautiful and successful I would look if I had a little piece of Louis Vutton,  Hermes, Prada, Bally, Coach, Tiffany & Co, Chanel etc in the my life.  The first time I saw them in 2010 I was shocked that there were so many.  They are not there for the locals or visiting Aussies, Canadians or Americans because from what I saw only the Japanese were buying.  There a significant number of Japanese living in Hawaii and many more tourists.  Which means there are some really great Japanese restaurants but we didn’t visit any of them on this trip as, having just come from Japan, Big A was over Japanese food (read my  Week 1 - Tokyo blog for more on why!).  

The food in Hawaii is really good with plenty of options from Denny’s cheap American fare to the high end Japanese restaurants like Nobu.  We found great value in the Cheesecake Factory.  We must have eaten there every other night during our two week stay and never spent more than $70 for dinner.  This would typically include 2 Edamame, 2 beers and kids drinks, a burger for the girls to share, a salad or couple of appetisers for Big A and I to share and a Lynda’s Chocolate Fudge cake to take home and eat the following day.  The Cheesecake Factory is located in the Royal Hawaiian Shopping Centre opposite Jimmy Buffets and Macy’s on the main street.   We also ate at Wild Buffalo Wings which is on the way from the Hilton Hawaiian Village to Ala Moana Shopping Centre and Roys which is voted (on Tripadviser) as the Number 1 restaurant in Waikiki.  Roys had the best service I’ve ever experienced anywhere and the food was ok as well although I ordered Mahi Mahi and forgot how dry this fish is and wish I’d ordered something else from the menu.

We had booked into the Sheraton Waikiki for the first week and Best Western Coconut Waikiki the second (which saved us about $180 a night).  The Sheraton was booked due to it’s location right next to the Royal Hawaiian in the heart of Waikiki on the beach.  It had a fantastic pool with kids slide and plenty of space.  Right on the beach it was easy to move from one to the other and the staff around the pool were great.  The rooms at the Sheraton were really average both in size and design.  I like minimalist décor but this was simply bland and uninspiring.  Given the extent the Sheraton has gone to to ensure the public spaces are so well appointed it is a shame the contrast to the rooms is so great.  It was lucky for us that we had an ocean front room with a 180 degree of the Pacific Ocean (nice).  We certainly made the most of the view while we were there and prepared for our departure from ocean front comfort to the corner of windy and noisy at the Best Western Coconut Waikiki.  Over all this hotel was nice enough but all the things we loved about the Sheraton, pool, location,  free wifi – the Best Western failed to deliver.  It did have a pool, was located on the water and had wifi but the pool was rectangular, the water was the canal and the wifi only worked when I stood in the doorway.  They did offer to move us but we’d already unpacked and couldn’t be asked.

The two weeks were filled with much of the same bliss of long days at the beach and Sheraton pool, afternoon rests and then out for dinner.  We were lucky enough to have met up with the ‘McNightmare’s’ (Kona and Mrs) and they were just lovely.  Big A and Kona shared some bonding at their better halves’ expense but Mrs McKnightmare and I deflected their jibes with grace and dignity (well that was until the 2^nd or 3^rd bottle of wine!!!).  They invited us out for a fabulous night at the Outrigger Canoe Club and we spent a few more days and nights in their company which turned out to be such a great addition to our family vacation.  Speaking of family, yes even in Waikiki I can bump into someone from Rockhampton.  This time our kids had been playing for 2 or 3 days when the girl’s mum ‘Wilma’ came over and introduced herself.  It wasn’t until the father ‘Fred’ turned around that I recognized them from Rocky.  I probably haven’t seen them for +15 years so there was a lot to catch up on and even better to get to know them again as parents and “grown ups”.  Weird though as Fred and Big A swapped “poor bloke” stories (they have 3 daughters) Wilma and I could have sworn they were swapped at birth (along with Kona). 

We actually spotted Mark Occhilupo the Australian surfer on our last day in Hawaii and introduced our new found friends and relatives to him for a Kodac moment.  I’m sure 2 hours later when we dragged our collective children away from him he regretted being so nice to us, but he’ll get over it – eventually.

Big A’s perspective

I’ve been to Hawaii about 15 times now probably as I always used to fly via the US to Europe and from Oz when I lived in the US….and I love it….I just find it a really easy place to relax . Lazy days with the girls at the beach and pool…life really doesn’t get an y better. Then add hot buffalo wings, the Cheesecake Factory and the Outrigger Canoe Club ….just fantastic.

My ratings regarding the Sheraton – room – dated & sparse 5/10, location – perfect 10/10, facilities – pool was great 9/10, price – expensive 5/10…so overall 7.5/10.

However, for me the Best Western Waikiki was awful. Located on the corner of Noisy and Windy, tiny, unusable pool ….and really crap breakfast. Ratings : room – OK 7/10, location – awful 4/10, facilities – pool was tiny, internet useless 4/10, price – 7/10…so overall 5.5/10….I’d stay at the Aqua Wave and save $30/night.

Cheesecake factory – fantastic but be prepared to wait. No reservations so you HAVE to wait…and you might have to and around for an hour or more. But order 1 meal for 2 …they are huge so your bill ends up being less than one of the cheap crap places like Chilli’s, Senor Frogs or Sunset Bar and Grill etc.

Rental cars – Hanauma Bay and north Shore was great.….once we found them…road signs and directions are not the greatest.

The Shrimp Shack was OK but for me overpriced for what is was.

Kids amazed me at Hanauma Bay. Sunset and Pipe were awesome even though they weren’t at full bore …only about 6-8 Hawaiian (25 foot faces). Waimea wasn’t working but shore dump is worth the visit …watch the Japanese, English and Canadians get hammered in some of the biggest shore dump you’ll ever see…cracked me up!

The rental car was a heap…but lots of fun…and what do you expect from $40/day.

Hooked up with the McNightmares from Victoria, Canada - surely one of the nicest places in the world - these guys and their gorgeous daughter ‘Duracell” were just brilliant…’Duracell’ entertained our kids enabling both sets of parents a few minutes break each day.

Child Bride ran into another set of relatives…..I swear everyone in Rockhampton is related to everyone else…..and they keep in touch! Great family though….and with 4 girls on holiday to provide for,  how Fred still has a sense of humour and any hair is beyond me…having said that his girls are amazing, especially the eldest who helped occupy seemingly 10 kids on the last day!

So overall…Hawaii ….loved it.

Week 1 - Tokyo

Week 1 (2 - 5 Dec)

We arrived in Tokyo after about 9 hours flight from Sydney.  The girls were fantastic on the flight although didn’t think much of airline food (such discerning food critics and yes even with a celebrity chef’s name on the packaging the output still tastes synthetic and bland).  We flew into Narita Airport, arrived at about 4.30pm and caught the Express JR train to Shinjuku – which took about 90 mins (thank goodness we didn’t get a taxi).  When we arrived at Shinjuku station (the busiest in the world) it was absolutely freezing (about 6 degrees) but luckily we only had a 3 mins walk to the Century Southern Tower Hotel.  At A$225p/n, the hotel was lovely, big rooms for Tokyo, no minibar or room service but very comfortable and clean.  At about 4am we woke to an earth tremor and the room moving (just a little but enough to wake you – bit freaky at 24 stories above the ground).  Apparently this happens every few days somewhere in Japan – which is comforting!

Tokyo is huge with some saying it’s the largest city in the world.  The city covers 618 square kms and has a population of 17 million people during the day it certainly isn’t small.  It’s also so spaced out that I’m not sure you could stay anywhere that’s perfect for everything.  In the morning, having caught a train to Tokyo station and having spent an hour walking around looking for the Marinuchi Building hoping to grab something to eat, I was wondering why on earth I’d dragged the family all this way.  The objective was to see the Imperial Gardens but as it was raining so hard we had to stay underground (which is fine as that’s were all the shops and entrances to the food and shopping areas are).  Apart from not really knowing our way around we also discovered that not much opened until about 11 or 12 o’clock.  Eventually a lovely Japanese woman asked if she could help us and walked us the 100 metres to the entrance.  We had our Sushi and headed home.

The next day the rain had gone and so we headed off again to see the Imperial Palace and gardens.  I’m not sure if we saw the palace.  There were a number of buildings but access to all was forbidden on the day we were there.  The gardens are large and we spent a good couple of hours wandering around.  Big A could see Tokyo Tower in the distance so we headed off on foot (for the next 5 hours).  They say that guys have difficulty with measurements often thinking that things are “longer” and “bigger” than they actually are…well not Big A.  It would have been fine if we didn’t have Middle and Little A’s chants of “I’m starving” to contend with.  Who teaches kids that when hungry, bypass the word “hungry” and go straight for “starving”?  Kids bellies really do change your priorities when you travel.  I’m a foodie but Big A isn’t so eating is always a negotiation between always and never. Luckily for me, when it comes to eating, it’s 3 : 1,  (Big A would say he’s outnumbered on a lot of other things too!).   On this occasion though, Big A won out.

During the 5 hour walk and constant “I’m starving” chants we at least managed to get a bit of sight seeing in and covered off not only the Imperial Gardens but also Tokyo Tower (built to resemble the Eiffel Tower) and the Senso-ji, the most famous Buddist temple in Asakusa where we asked for good-luck in the incense sticks the kids burned and coins they tossed.  Asakusa is also home to Tokyo’s oldest geisha district with 45 active working geisha – but we didn’t see any unfortunately.  The walk also gave us the opportunity to see some pretty fantastic local areas and the contrast of seeing a brand new Bentley parked outside a traditional Japanese townhouse.  Popped into KFC (as you do) and the girls had a photo taken with two Harajuku girls which was fantastic as I just find their style so beautiful. That night we went for a walk around the local area behind the First Kitchen which is across from Shinjuku Station (west exit) and the Luminer shopping centre. I was keen for us to eat “locally” and of course we were on a budget.  So we ended up eating at a traditional noodle bar.  Middle A was particularly interested in how they cooked and served the noodles which was a bit like watching my old grandmother wash the laundry 30 years ago in a big old boiler.   So we got our noodles and broth and then we had to add our “cold” tempura sides. It all sounds ok but the A’s were not happy.  I added soy, shallots and chili to mine but they had theirs plan which made them bland.  The broiled pork cutlet was the highlight for them – which even when writing this, just doesn’t sound right (which might explain why I didn’t order it)!   In addition to the cold tempura vegies and unflavoured noodles the kids were also struggling to eat their noodles with chopsticks – very funny for me but not so much for them. Perhaps this is what made the pork the highlight as it’s the only thing they really ate.  Big A has declared that it is the worst meal he’s ever eaten (and that includes a specialty served up by his dad of microwaved mince with a raw egg in the middle).

On the last day we went for a walk to Yoyogi Park (but it was closed) and Shinjuku Gyoen where the girls played for a couple of hours.  We were short of Yen so couldn’t do much and headed to the airport about 5 hours early.  

In summary I am glad we went to Tokyo and would go back there but it really feels like a city you’d appreciate more if you had money and were more familiar with the geography and language.  Off to Hawaii….

Big A’s Perspective “

Ha…the flight to Tokyo would have been a delight for the Child Bride….I had the 2 girls next to me and she had a seat on her own!!!

As for Tokyo…I considered it to be big city that was clean with very few homeless and little graffiti….and the people are lovely and very courteous.

I am not in love with Japanese food but am subjected to it enough via the local sushi train to at least be OK with it….but ‘real’ Japanese food is not sushi train food…I found it very difficult to find decent Japanese food at a reasonable price that didn’t taste like dirty old underpants.

The Imperial Palace gardens were great …although you can’t go ‘inside’ the palace …unlike some of the other great palaces of the world which was a little disappointing but overall it was still impressive.

Tokyo has a great train transport system…..but for a travelling family is relatively expensive even with a strong Aussie dollar and when we visited it was cold and wet which didn’t help the overall impression….so overall I though it  offered little for a family with small kids….i’d only go back without kids….as for the  Harajuku girls…what the????

Project Management 101 & the Task List

13 September to 29 November – I cannot tell you how many times during the last month I thought to myself “what on earth are we thinking”.  What seemed at first like “heaps of time” quickly became “no time at all”.  Compiling the enormous list of things we had to get done to enable our departure was relatively easy.  Of course Big A ‘assisted’ with his professional project management skills to ensure the task list had a thorough work breakdown structure and each task had a completion date, an assigned resource and all dependencies identified.  So basically if a task was simply to paint the skirting boards in order to rent the house, we needed to have already booked the cleaners, removalist and storage, cleaned the house, moved our stuff to storage, bought the paint, cleaned the walls and skirting boards and scheduled a date prior to our departure date… and we had 94 of these! 

Big A kept a vigilant eye on progress and requested regular updates – but what the! I was supposed to be enjoying my redundancy.  I managed to get in a few lunches (far less than planned and desired) and meanwhile the task list gradually reduced with some sense of order, until the last 2 weeks.

It’s crazy to think of the things you need to do to remove yourself from a house and country for a year.  We might as well have gone for good as the only difference is the fact that we stored instead of shipped a lot of stuff.  One of the biggest challenges was trying to get things done but not too far in advance of our departure dates as we needed to have them available for as long as possible. There were some massively important things that remained unresolved such as sorting out Big A’s job. Would Big A need to resign, take extended leave or would he too be offered redundancy? We agreed the least favorable outcome was for Big A to resign so they needed to work through the options. What was his notice period and obligations under his contract? What were the policies of his company in relation to extended leave etc? What were the chances of redundancy and the potential timings? And what was the drop dead date for a final decision about this to be made?

Further, to convey the magnitude of effort, some of the more critical tasks included: finding an agent and tenant to rent the house, selling the two cars,  organizing storage and removalists, changing insurance policies,  setting up direct debits for all remaining bills (insurance, rates, water, mortgage repayments, body corporate, etc), organising access to our funds across 3 different banks including international banking,  cancelling all utilities, mobile, private health, phone, foxtel and other bills, redirecting mail, setting up a PO Box, collecting information for the girls for next year’s school work and so on and so on...

A few people said to me “no matter how prepared you are the last couple of weeks will be chaos” and how right they were.  At times, the last 2 weeks were enough for me to call the whole thing off.  I’d started the boxing-up process at the end of September and we’d also started selling household items we didn’t want to store on eBay, Gumtree and via a Garage Sale.  Stuff we didn’t want and couldn’t sell made it to the perfectly timed kerbside cleanup.  This was great in theory but then for the last month we were living like students, surrounded by boxes and missing key things we’d sold like our dining suite, sofa and cars.  On top of this there wasn’t the fulfillment that I could just sit back because there was still a lot of packing to finish, the completion of the task list, normal life like looking after the kids, school commitments, tax, keeping house (something Big A and I both had to adjust to – and this wasn’t all smooth sailing), paying bills, doctors, dentist etc etc etc.  There seemed no end in sight and I was over it!

 

Thank goodness for the welcomed distractions like the annual trip to Noosa for the vintage car racing that doubled as a family Christmas event, lunches, afternoon drinks in the park with close friends, weekend at Burleigh and dinner with our gorgeous neighbours who took us out of our chaos in the last 2 weeks.

D-Day came and I’d booked a local storage facility that regardless of the many discussions I had with the storage people still turned out to be too small. It took Big A away for half the day while he supervised the move and cost us nearly $800 in transportation to move our truck load less than 2kms away because the guys had to unpack the small storage unit and repack it in a larger one.  At 4.30pm on Tuesday 29^th November we were out the door driving to my mum and dad’s and I think it was about 10 minutes into the trip when I had my first glimmer of the excitement everyone said I must be feeling.  

Big A's perspective: 

The move – a difficult time. The Child Bride had decided she wasn’t going to work for the couple of months before we left because she wanted a break…whilst we both viewed the redundancy as a real positive these things always make you question yourself. There were a few very lucrative offers put on the table for the Child Bride to do some short term roles but she felt these could compromise her ‘brand’ …she is exceptional at what she does and so I could understand this …..well somewhat anyway.  And most importantly she wanted to spend the time with the girls at school and focus on managing our ‘project’.……However, I‘ll admit my first thought was wow…$20k of post-tax lost earnings…that would come in handy on this trip!

But I figured we’d save money by not needing our Nanny, our regular cleaner or outside hours school care so that would ease the pain somewhat. Furthermore, it would be nice for the girls to have their mummy take the to school and pick them up every day and to not have to do the grocery shopping on a Saturday morning (in between rushing for ballet classes). And finally, what joy to actually have clean properly ironed clothes… our cleaner’s idea of ironing was to hang the clothes on a hanger and blow 3 times on them!... I was even prepared for the Child Bride’s need for the odd coffee morning and lunch…… yeah…we could justify the $20k for that.

It didn’t exactly pan out that way however.... one of the big ticket items on the list was doing our tax return….now the tax gent I had engaged for the previous 4 years to do both of our tax returns for $300 in 2 hours (just gave him a box of papers to sort out) was replaced by a tax accountant costing $1800 and taking 4 weeks at the Child Bride’s request….for the accountant we also had to provide him a spreadsheet containing the information rather than a box of papers…this would have cost even more! Admittedly, the Child Bride had some complications regarding her deferred shares and options but mine was very straightforward…so to say that I felt the additional expense of the tax accountant was unwarranted was a bit of an understatement…..and although it did get done, even the Child Bride will admit that it was not an easy process for her to go through…..especially as our accountant decided to go on holiday part way through!

The Child Bride also needed to spend quite a bit of time ‘handing over’ her P&C treasurer responsibilities to the incumbent (who just happened to be a qualified accountant but for some reason still required a seemingly lengthy handover involving a number of ‘catch-ups’ with her and some ‘others’!) She also needed to attend a few catch-ups with ex-work colleagues and attend a number of post-redundancy career coaching sessions.

Furthermore she decided that ironing was no longer required as our clothes were going into storage ….. now unbeknownst to me at this point our cleaner was still coming in but was obviously now just focusing on cleaning……further freeing the Child Bride up to focus on the ‘project’….notwithstanding I still needed clothes for work!

Speaking of my work, I’m not saying that my job was taxing at this point…far from it…other than a few trips away I could definitely afford to spend some time helping out on some of the ‘project’ activities on the Child Brides list….but much to my frustration (given I am not the career-oriented parent!) I still needed to leave my 3 girls and go into work each morning…..finally finishing up 2 days before we flew out.

This is not to say that some ‘big-ticket’ items on the list weren’t assigned to me…..both cars needed to be sold and were, insurance for the 2 properties needed to be obtained and was, the Noosa trip needed to be organized and was and my work needed to be sorted out one way or the other and was…after 2 months of silence and apparent inactivity I was approved to take extended leave without pay…although the length of leave was less than I had hoped for, it would provide some breathing space…..things were definitely coming together!

The moving and storage was a pain….but always is and the under-estimation of storage space required is not uncommon given the storage capacity is provided in cubic meters……as long as your stuff to be stored is short, thin and can be stacked very high you are ok…a lesson learned!

2011 - The Year of Change

2011 was a transformational year for 3 of the 4 of us.  Little A started school,  Big A rode the wave of a privatisation transformation and I saw a changing of the guard at Board, CEO and CIO level (my 3rd executive in as many years).  Change can be exciting but it can also be exhausting and frustrating.  A significant conversation at work with a former boss in February had been enough to "suck up the bad days" during the year and Big A had also been on hand for some very timely advice on more than one occasion.  
Having just come off a two day leadership course I was feeling pretty good about seeing out the next 2 months until I could have the difficult conversation with the boss about having a year off or resigning.  So when I was called into the office for a "catchup" on 13th September 2011 I was ready for a completely different conversation.  
Needless to say I left 30 mins later,  surprised that my position had been made redundant but happy to have a rather nice letter in hand and no more plans for the day.  Met with Big A who was a shocked as me (but also happy at the freedom this now gave us) and SE and SB as we headed for a Sav Blanc at the Boardwalk by the Brisbane river. 
Leaving drinks followed 10 days later and by then we had booked our around the world flights leaving on the 1st December 2011.  8 weeks to get our TO DO List compiled (it ended up being 94 items) and completed.  

Big A's perspective.....

I never attended a school for longer than around 2 years as a kid as my parents had always moved...whether it be between towns, cities or countries. No where felt like home to me really. So as soon as I finished university I wanted to head off and travel the world....which i did for about 16 years. I've never bought into the corporate bull or figured out how people can derive so much pleasure from working...the Child-bride is great as what she does; Storms is even better....and whilst I love them both dearly I have no idea why they want to be so good at what they do...the travel, the after work functions...the smoozing and networking...I actually find it offensive....in my opinion its all false. Work is what you do not who you are. 
So, as you can imagine, when the Child-bride told me her role was being made redundant I was ecstatic...I'd always thought that I would be the one that was going to be made redundant...and any thoughts of taking a year off were contingent upon me being made redundant...now the pressure was off. 
Having worked for a number of start-up companies through the 90's I had faced redundancy twice before and actually viewed the whole thing saw as 'winning the lottery'...a company was actually paying me to leave and find another job...I'd find another job soon enough and be quids in! I've no doubt therefore that from her perspective I probably didn't show enough concern about her feelings about being made redundant...it was a shock to her after all...but to me it was fantastic news. 
Now came the difficult part...the Child-bride wouldn't be working for a couple of months and would be manaing the move and the travel plans....I'm a project manager...I'm a project manager by profession....a born planner...and I've travelled a lot...this was me down to a tee...handing over control would prove difficult for me.