I like the super human part of this, but I didn’t care for the concept of the one ‘real’ city. It made things really confusing in some ways, as the concept of shadows was confusing. The story was good, and the crazy painter character was fantastic. The ‘trumps’ he made seemed like an odd concept, especially if he is the only one to make them. The descriptions of the battles were dry by being too over the top in many ways, and not descriptive enough of the inglorious parts of the battles.
This was an amazingly well done book. I liked much of the writing in that it shows his understanding and at the same time it shows how much he doesn’t understand. I especially like the parts where he is too smart to understand that everyone else isn’t on that level. The ending has some really sad parts, but I liked that he eventually became a really nice guy again.
I didn’t particularly care for this book, especially the resolution. I think the characters in it were very well developed and had interesting stories, I just didn’t like them. That seemed to be part of the point. I’m liking that I can go through some of these classics and read them, but I’m not always liking what I find in them.
I have really enjoyed this series so far, especially the interesting play of humanity, freedom, and civilization, and how many gradations of those concepts there are in the book. I liked this one in particular because of the later reveal to the others that the captain used to be a ship.
After a few minutes I didn’t notice the she pronoun being always used, and imagined amorphous people until they did some action that I considered particularly masculine or feminine. These actions were typically were they being pursued or pursuing when it came to sex.
We had people over to our place for the fourth, since we miraculously got the pool house. I was surprised since the cost of renting the pool house is only $25 for the day, and I checked on July 1 if July 4 was available. The complex was pretty empty so I guess everyone must have been going to visit people elsewhere.
We had a ton of food, and people started arriving with more food. Jeremy brought some amazing paneer kebabs over, and a great tasting asparagus to grill. Amit and Tina brought over some of the best steak I’ve ever had, and Adam brought over some sausages. Lindsay and Kevin brought a few salads, and Riley and Rong got some drinks. We lounged by the pool, and eventually got in. We also got a good bit of soak time in the hot tub. I managed to core a pineapple without breaking through the bottom, and used that as a cup for the second half of the day. It made me really happy that I was able to do that.
We played a few rounds of Hanabi, which is appropriate since the original theme of Hanabi is fireworks. We happened to be playing with a drink themed version.
We split up to clean up, then met up at Amit’s place to head in for the Shoreline fireworks show. We played Hanabi a few more times while waiting for the show to start. Once it did we got a really great view through a window in the trees we were sitting under. Stephanie had picked out just the right spot for the view. We all headed back to the car and went our separate ways after that.
We had a nice long games day at Beachhead with Adam, Tina, Erik, Jeff, and myself. We started off with some general laziness as we felt more like hanging out with each other and not thinking too hard than playing games. We then somehow decided on Tzolk’in as the first game, but Jeff decided to just hang out with us and not play. I did decently well, but Adam won the day with a huge come from behind victory. I was playing as the character that could get any level 4 tech when teching up, and I had used it pretty substantially.
The next game we played was Galaxy Trucker. I got a handicap after winning the first round, so I was at a bit of a disadvantage, especially since the handicap was meteoric inversion. A few times while playing we got the space billiards card, which, when combined with the inversion made me a fantastic target, especially since I was winning. The game went on like that and I managed to keep mostly intact. The first round I took the rift ship, the second round was the toroid, and the third round Tina and I took the missing plans ship. That final round was especially interesting since the missing plans ship ended up being three ships, a large one on the right and two small ones on the left. We both somehow managed to make it back to port with all three ships, despite both me taking out the front half of Tina’s large ship and the constant barrage of inverted meteors taking out the back section of my ships so that I didn’t have any engines at the end.
After sitting around for a while we decided to watch some Archer, try for watching a downloaded version of the Avengers, but it was too low quality, and then ended up watching Ex Machina. The movie was interesting, but not really my kind of movie.
We went to Alexander’s for dinner on Andrew and Haru’s birthday. We had a delicious dinner, with some amazing hamachi shots beforehand. I struggled with the diet Stephanie and I are starting, but the steak was delicious enough to keep me going.
We went to Andrew’s place and had a pretty nice cookout. Debby had made some tofu skewers. We also had some tasty tasty burgers. Steph left after dinner, then Debby, Andrew, Lindsay, Kevin, Adam, and I played some poker. We started with a tournament, that I stayed in about half of the time. It was a $20 buy in, and Andrew ended up winning, unsurprisingly. We then did a cash game where I bought in for $40, the topped up with $20 when I had lost some more. I then got some really lucky breaks against Kevin with A’s over his Q’s pre-flop, as well as hitting the straight on the river. I really enjoyed it, and that is the second game in a row where I ended up.
Stephanie and I got in, and it was already very late. We spent a long time at the rental car place, since they didn’t have the cars ready. Once we got to the time share we were so ready for sleep that we just said hi and slept.
Day 2 we decided to go to the volcanoes. We had breakfast with everyone, and Jeff did a great job cooking it. We talked with everyone and it worked out best for us to go to volcanoes the first day. We left and spent some time in Hilo area, first going through an amazing lava tube cave. The cave had an amazing set of hydrophobic bacteria, which had tiny beads of water in patches. The brown bacteria appeared as gold because of this, and the grey bacteria appeared silver. We met an interesting woman from Alaska who’s friend was waiting in the car, and she didn’t want to do the cave by herself. We went through one collapsed area, and met with a second, but decided to turn back.
We went to an amazing place for lunch, Paul’s Place. This was a tiny hole in the wall restaurant that was in the front section of a very small hotel. The food was amazing, and the service was excellent. There were only 3 tables, and they appeared to enjoy their work. They took off early that day, and turned away a few people saying that there were reservations when there weren’t. I’m glad Stephanie made reservations, as we were the last people they chose to serve that day.
We then headed to the crater and did the Kiluea Iki hike across the surface of a frozen lava lake. This lake was like the surface of Mordor, and surrounded by jungle. The hike was pretty spectacular. We then went to dinner at a Thai restaurant, and the food was pretty good. After dinner we went to the observatory, and waited for the sun to go down. After sunset we saw the lava lake lighting up the steam/sulfur dioxide coming out of the caldera. It was a pretty amazing sight, but didn’t change much, and you couldn’t actually see the lava, so we left quickly.
On the way back we stopped by the Mauna Kea visitor center, which is at about 9000 ft above sea level. We had to drive through the clouds to get to it, and it was a harrowing experience. We got to see some pretty amazing sights, despite the clouds coming up and covering the view some. We saw that Venus was at about 3/4 full, since it has phases like the moon does. We also got to see Saturn. This was something that I really wanted to do since we were there during a new moon. Kim and Benjamin were there before we showed up, and they got to see a good view of Jupiter. We got back late, and went to sleep.
Day 3 we got up early to go to Pololu Valley. This is a tradition, that we’ve done every time going to Hawaii since the second time we went. The first time we did horseback riding in Waipio, which is in the same series of valleys, but on the other side of that section of the island. The beach was pretty full, and a lot of people had been camping there. We got there early enough that we got a parking spot, and the hike down and across the valley was pretty nice. My dad did surprisingly well on the hike. We then stopped by Hawi for lunch, and of course went to the Bamboo. The food there was great, as expected. There wasn’t much choice for Steph, but she found something she wanted. We headed back, and stopped by A Bay. We looked around for Turtles, and eventually found some as we were just about to leave. We got a good walk along the beach, and found a section that had a lot of green sand. That night Stephanie and I relaxed a good bit in the Volcano Tub, which was very nice. I was able to spot a satellite, and the part of the stars that were not covered by clouds were amazing to view.
Day 4 we had a bit of a relaxing day, and went to Mauna Kea beach in the morning. We did some snorkeling and had a pretty good time there. There were a few cleaner wrasse that refused to clean us, despite some decent attempts. We must not have had enough parasites on us. We went to lunch with my Mom on a nice walk to the Queen Shops.
That night we did some amazing night diving, first a manta ray dive, where we saw two manta rays. On the way to the ‘campfire’ we saw a tiny octopus, about the size of a golfball. The first we saw just as sitting down, and it came right over my head. We then waited 25 minutes without any other rays showing up. I blew a lot of bubble rings, and a few of them stayed together for a long time, making it about 15 feet up.
On the way back to the boat we saw a cleaner shrimp station, and they wouldn’t clean us either. We then got into a big storm of krill, which attracted another ray, which was adorable. It was swimming around all over the place.
The second night dive was a black water dive, where you go into deep (7000 ft) water, and hang off the boat. This is to see the deep sea creatures that come to the surface during the night. This is mainly jelly like creatures, and they are very unique and amazing to see. We saw one that was about 6 feet long, and made of hundreds of segments. Once we got back on the boat, we saw squid in the water. These squid were small ones, only about a foot and a half long. The crew turned the lights off on the way back, and we got an amazing view of the stars, since we were a couple miles off the coast. I had a fantastic dive experience with them, Big Island Divers.
On day 5 we had breakfast late, and the other young ones went zip lining. We decided to go towards Kona, and stopped by the sea horse farm. It was interesting, and Stephanie really enjoyed it. We grabbed lunch in Kona, and Stephanie noticed that the city was mainly a tourist trap. We headed back and took a well needed rest time. For dinner we went to the Four Seasons and witnessed one of the most glorious sunsets that can be seen. The clouds were arranged just right with high altitude clouds along the horizon, but no clouds past the horizon so the sun could shine back on the close clouds and turn them amazing red colors. The dinner itself was very nice, and probably one of the top 10 meals I’ve ever had.
On day 6 we took steph to the Airport, and got Jeff signed up on the car. Then I relaxed and did pretty much nothing all that day. I played cards with my dad after a nice lunch at another Thai restaurant. We then had a really tasty meal prepared by Jeff.
On day 7 I headed back. Kim and Benjamin drove to the airport and we stopped by Kona for about 30 minutes before getting on the plane.
It's an Exciting World 