The battle continues …

“Happy Aloha Friday”, my friends!  I actually started this blog yesterday but couldn’t finish it because I had to go to a meeting, so I’ll pick up where I left off ….

Thursday:

Wow, is it Thursday already?!  This jet lag’s a killer … it didn’t really affect me on Monday, the first day back, but I started feeling the effects on Tuesday afternoon and got slammed full on yesterday and today.  I had a couple of meetings yesterday and was totally useless – it’s like I’m still in some sort of time warp.  People were saying things to me but my mind refused to process the information … like someone would say, “what do you think?” and my mind would hear “go back to bed”!  Oh well, I’m sure I’ll be back to normal by this weekend … by the way, what is “normal”??

And since the last two days were a blur, there hasn’t been too much stuff going on.  Oh yeah, I did go to Islands Burger in the Ala Moana Shopping Center to have one of their awesome burgers and boy, did it taste great!  I always get the Maui burger with avocado and Swiss cheese … also onion rings instead of fries.  I usually have a cold draft beer with it, but opted for an iced tea instead.

Last night we performed at a Rainbow For Japan Kids farewell party at the Pagoda ballroom.  A group of organizations here in Hawai’i, including JASH (Japanese American Society of Hawai’i),  JAL, and Studio Rim, combined their efforts to bring over a group of 20 kids from the disaster-struck prefectures of Fukushima, Miyagi, and Iwate.  We were honored to be asked to perform for the kids along with Jake, the KoAloha family, Jody Kamisato and his students, and special guest singer, Cano Caoli, from Japan.  It was an amazing evening filled with smiles, laughter, and tears … seeing these kids who have suffered so much brought back memories of our visit to Miyagi last April and all the emotions came back to me.  What really got to me was when we gave out the t-shirts which my good friend, Carole Kai, wanted the kids and their families to have.  Some of the children were crying as they stood in line waiting for their shirts and I wondered why until it suddenly dawned on me that these kids had literally lost everything!  That brought tears to our eyes too …

Friday:

I’m not feeling so good today – woke up with an upset stomach and headache … hope I’m not coming down with something.  Anyway, I played golf yesterday afternoon with my Thursday group buddies out at Waialae and actually shot a decent score of 82.  It was a beautiful day with lots of sun and cool tradewinds, and it’s always a great feeling to come back from a long trip and be able to relax in such a great setting!  We took tonight off from Lulu’s so I’m going to lay low and try to get over the last of the jet lag.

Aloha, “D”