Getting vaccinated for COVID-19 in Honolulu was a pleasant experience

  Today, we got our first COVID-19 vaccine shot in Honolulu, Hawaii. There was no hitch of any kind and everything went smoothly.

The vaccination for senior citizens started from Jan 25. The registration for getting the vaccination was available on line. The registration begins with choosing a date and time on the Queens Hospitals online forms. 

A day before the vaccination, there was a telephone call to verify the details of the folks receiving the vaccine and making sure they show up.

The vaccination was provided at the Blaisdell Center, a landmark community facility in Honolulu.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neal_S._Blaisdell_Center

Photo source: Facebook

Folks receiving the vaccine need to line up (of course mask and distancing was mandatory) for entering the registration and the vaccination seats. There were helpers to assist seniors who did not bring in the Covid-19 safety questionnaire, an important document for addressing any safety issues.

After verifying the registration information, folks were guided to the vaccination seats, that took place in the entrance of the concert hall. There was no need to line up as there were plenty of stations. The details of the person receving the vaccination was verifieed one more time. They were especially careful of people who had previous history of allergy, vaccination or food related. Folks who had allergy hsitory were asked to wait for 30 minutes after they took the vaccination. The following is the detail of the immunization recieved:

MODERNA Covid-19, mRNA vaccine (PF) 0.5 mL IM

The second shot is scheduled after i month interval.

The experience was pleasnat and the execution was faultless. 

Here are some pictures of the day:

Line up to enter

Register

Wait for a short while after the shot

Get a badge to show that you are vaccinated.

Don't waste your time ordering grocery from Amazon Prime Now in Honolulu

We have tried couple of times in Honolulu. It accepted our orders all the time but always failed to deliver. You get a message that it failed and a charge may temporarily appear which will be zeroed later.

However, amazon.com continues to show these pages and the ordering app is working great. Don't expect any delivery.

You may get the delivery if you are lucky. However, you cannot plan on it.

8/28/2020

One of our neighbors got some grocery delivered. However, the order was not delivered in its entirety as the inventory does not adjust automatically. 

Does a spider dream of Waikiki?

It is time for introspection and looking out for things that one may not notice usually. There are always wonderful and deadly(New Corona Virus) things in nature. They humble us and bring us to our knees. We have come a long way from our primitive beginnings, but have we really conquered the world with our superior knowledge.  We probably have made just a little nick in knowing the existing universe.

Here is an arresting picture of the clear skies by Ben Lockett that appeared in BBC's article. The photographer found easy to capture this courtesy of corona virus with no flights spoiling his picture.

Here is my attempt to capture a spider's web on my lilikoi (passion fruit) creeper. I tried to juxtaposition Waikiki in the distance and barely made it.

A nice business may close its doors

We have been eating Veggie Pizza for over 4 years every Sunday and buying the bread from Fendu Boulangerie in Manoa, Honolulu. It appears due to litigation arising out of some construction period rent dispute with Alexander and Baldwin they may have to close the business.

We request Alexander and Baldwin to take a compassionate view of the circumstances and negotiate an agreement with Fendu. We thank Alexander and Baldwin in anticipation of this kind gesture.

Here are some Fendu Boulangerie pictures.

Travelling from Honolulu to Europe and back is not a joke

Except travelling to far eastern countries like Japan, Korea and China travelling from Hawaii to Europe and back is not a joke. You may have to make a one day stop in US mainland both ways if you do not want to be too tired to do anything at the destination.

Add to this the waiting times in the various in-between airports.

Speaking of airports, you will have to contend with transfers between domestic and international carriers; security checks at every point of boundary crossings; shuttle trains or buses to collect your baggage; shuttle buses or taxis from airport to hotel and back; innumerable walkways, elevators, and escalators. Of course, you have your schedules that some brilliant person has come up with which assumes that you are floating to get to the next point.

Despite this we decided to take the trip to Naples, Italy from Honolulu and back. It was a whirl-wind 18 days long great trip with like-minded people. It was indeed memorable touring so many historic Italian towns; enjoying the beautiful Italian countryside; eating pastas and pizzas and drinking Tuscan wines.

Tour of Munich, Budapest, Vienna, Prague and Salzburg - 1

Living in Honolulu, Hawaii, it is not easy to think about going to Europe. However, as we go even eastward to India, sometimes, it does not feel too tough to go to Europe. In order to visit Budapest, we had to go via San Francisco, Newark, and Munich.

We took off from Honolulu at 10:55 after our son, daughter-in-law and their dog Oliver dropped us at the airport, a mere 20 minutes from where we live. We reached San Francisco the morning of June 16 at 9:00 AM just in time for a breakfast at airport.

We hung around in the airport as our flight was in the evening at 8:00 PM. It was quite a wait. It so happened that our flight from San Francisco was delayed more than 2 hours and we barely made it to Newark. Newark airport has changed a lot with lots of new construction. We barely caught the shuttle to the departure terminal. We reached Munich somewhat late (around 11:00 AM) on June 17. The arrival/departure gates are such that it takes effort to board the plane as you need to change the terminal using the shuttle. We literally ran like crazy to board the shuttle. The escalators at Munich Airport are really steep and run fast like at other airports/subways in Europe compared to those in USA.

Again we hustled to board the plane from Munich to Budapest where our tour begins. We reached Budapest a little after mid-day and to our chagrin the suitcases did not accompany. We had to do some paper work and the girls at the Lufthansa kiosk attending the lost baggage were very efficient. Good show!

We were met by our tour director, a very friendly and outgoing guy. He seems to have had lots of experience as tour director in Europe as well as North America. He was presently living in Salzburg, Austria. He spoke fluent German and English but I am not sure how well he spoke Hungarian (a tough nut) and Czech. He being originally Czech, I am sure he spoke Czech like any other native.

We were going to stay (for the following three nights) at the Radisson Beke in Budapest and after check-in we attended the tour orientation for a short while with a glass of champagne and had dinner at the hotel. I assume either the food was good or folks were hungry, I could not tell. Being vegetarian it is not my place to make a comment. I did observe though that the waiters appeared to have been preoccupied. I later found that the Europeans were playing football and surely they had the game on their mind.

  Although we were dog tired, decided to take a short walk and followed some of our tour buddies.

The photos we took are in the video hosted on google docs slides.
Partially filled slide pictures were taken with iPhone 6S and the full screen pictures using Microsoft Lumia 950.

It is also on YouTube here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecouB7XcjIw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecouB7XcjIw

This chick dared the storm....

Darby, the first storm to hit the Hawaiian Islands last week did bring a huge down pour in Oahu although it affected Hawaii lot more. My son spoted this White Tern chick near his office at Honolulu Hale and took these pictures. The chick looks quite defiant the next morning after the storm.

White Tern also called by other names (check this please!) Angel Tern or Fairy Tern or White Fairy Tern (Gygis Alba) is common to the Hawaiin Islands and feeds on the fish at its shores. It is said, it lays a single egg on the fork in the branches without building a nest. No wonder the chicks can weather a storm! White Tern became the official bird of Honolulu in 2007.

Here is the adult bird in flight. This beautiful picture is from this source.

Who am I going to elect..?

I will elect the person who does not come through as dishonest and who is a people person, not
necessarily the rich and famous.

I want to choose a person not necessarily linked to previous administrations and one who has spoken widely about the issues bugging the country.

What if I do not find such a person, or party? I would have to think about who will be ultimately getting the party's ticket.

There is still time to watch the unfolding drama...

Here are some pictures from Hawaii's primary in Honolulu. There was a lack of organization which could have been improved by a better navigation scheme inside the building.

Honolulu celebrated the first ever Mango Jam

There were two parts to the first ever Mango Jam event (8/7/2015), the first one in open air behind the city hall (Honolulu Hale) and the second, an exhibition of mango related watercolors in the courtyard of the city hall.

The open air event was joyful with lots of families, music, soft drinks and a stall by the University of Hawaii. Perhaps I did not visit the proper stalls but there was not that amount of mango to see that I had imagined. Coming from India, I almost have an obsession for mangoes and I was fairly disappointed.

The watercolor exhibits were nicely arranged and there were plenty of them, some by the same artists who exhibited at the Hawaii Watercolor Society's Juried show in my previous post.

Here are some unedited phone shots (Nokia Icon) of the watercolor exhibits.

 

 

[Space for Mango fact sheet from University of Hawaii at Manoa]

Visit again to review the fact sheet. Thanks

 

Have you seen one like this?

We have rainbows very frequently in Honolulu. Hawaii is very appropriately called the Rainbow State.

This island is optimized for rainbows, it seems.

But I have never seen like this one before.

I copied this from BING, my best source for great pictures. This is actually from the Crater Lake National Park from
this source:
https://wfoster2011.wordpress.com/2014/08/03/picture-of-the-day-thunderstorm-over-crater-lake/
The picture is from the National Park Service (http://www.nps.gov/crla/index.htm)

Also review these links  if you are a rainbow fan:
http://www.philiplaven.com/p5a.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Circular_rainbow.jpg

Hands-on Learning Event in Honolulu: Introduction to Structured Query Language

Besides the gorgeous beaches there are other serious things possible in this city.

This was offered once in 2102 and once in the beginning of the year and was a total success. It is offered once again to those who could not make it.

Please register at the PCATT.ORG site.

New in 2015: You will also get an introduction to Windows PowerShell. SQL Server 2012 Express will be used.

For details you can also write to:
Hodentek@live.com with course name in the Subject line.

PCATT, HCC, Honolulu, Honolulu Community College, University of Hawaii, SQL, RDBMS, SQL Server, SQL Server2012