Hawaii 2024

August 26

August 27

August 28

August 29

August 30

August 31

September 01

August Review

A quick monthly review before starting the holiday reports.

Continued on with a slightly underwhelming year of running with just four parkruns. Some were good at 18:00 or below, but others struggled to make 18:15. Heading into a week of holiday I was a little less concerned, but adding a few interval training sessions I thought might have started to help a bit. Hopefully from September I can start to improve again.

This section is back to shares only thankfully, since finally no other money things at the moment. Had another small market crash of over 5% in a single day, but it slowly returned to where it started a week later. Only had a few good results from the mid year reporting season, and significantly more bad results with a share price drop of 10% or more, so much for diversifying.

The Olympics seemed to be over quite quickly, probably because we don't really get the same experience when everything happens overnight. Many of the track athletics and the marathons were the highlights. A good transition into the start of the premier league as well, except there's only three weekends of matches until the first of many international breaks.

The to do list has slowed down with a holiday coming up:

• Holidays
• Good timing for my annual covid vaccination a week before leaving
• Paid for last reservations and travel insurance
• Running Holidays
• Probably no big changes now for this year
• Nothing much happens between January and March usually

Still nothing of interest at work and haven't started any exam study.

That's it for this month.

• Books
• None
• Movies
• Longlegs
• Hoped it was going to be great but the story was a disappointment
• The presentation was the highlight
• 5 out of 10
• Music
• TISM surprise tour in November
• TV
• None
• Video Games
• Xbox One
• Elder Scrolls V Skyrim
• Ordered cheap off ebay
• Have installed but not started yet, next on the list
• Gears Of War 2
• Finished the main story, better than I remember the first one
• Have some other achievements to replay
• 6 out of 10

Hawaii 2024, September 01

Already the last morning in Hawaii. Another breakfast and slightly shorter run around the canal again, doing a full loop for the first time, then back to to hotel for the last packing and check-out.

I got an uber ordered which took about 10 minutes to turn up, but I wasn't in a hurry. Had a pretty easy ride to the airport and through check-in and security, so I was left with about 1.5 hours to spare afterwards. There wasn't much happening in the international terminal so just got a drink and rested before the flight.

The flight took off on time, I had an aisle seat in the centre section of three, but nobody next to me. Although it was a day flight I still tried to rest due to the duration and the time change coming into Australia. After listening to some podcasts for a few hours, and with meals service, the first half of the flight had gone pretty quick.

I was getting a bit tired and the flight was dragging on, so just loaded up this Angry Birds game on the monitor to kill some time. Finally we landed a few minutes early, even though Sydney was using only one runway instead of two due to wind. The early landing also meant the 90 minute transfer to domestic wasn't going to be such a hurry.

I'd heard bad things about the smart gates at Sydney but they actually worked without incident this time. It probably helped being in premium economy so there was no crowd in front of me. The luggage was very slow like usual, but then a small line through customs.

Next it was off to another line for Qantas domestic transfer, more security, and a bus to the domestic terminal. Once I switched on my phone with local SIM card installed I got a notification the flight was leaving at 8:30pm instead of 8:00pm. That extra time also meant there was definitely no risk of running late, so I got off the bus with plenty of time but very tired, being midnight Hawaii time already.

I walked around and got some food, then less than 10 minutes before boarding we were told the departure was now 9:35pm at another gate. We had to wait for a Brisbane flight to offload from that plane, so we weren't seated until about 9:55pm but still not taking off. We got an announcement we had to wait for the catering truck for another 20 minutes, which seemed quite unnecessary at 10pm. After we finally left they said they actually gave up waiting for catering.

I was extremely tired on the flight, and we didn't land and get baggage until almost midnight eventually. The sky bus was still running until after 1pm but the trains stop at midnight and there's no public bus either, which is useless. So the only other options were taxi or uber at 1.6 normal rate. Eventually I got home around 12:45am or 4:45am Hawaii, having been awake since 6:30am - nearly 24 hours.

Steps = 17,000 including 9.5km running