I posted several photos from a short trip we took recently. Have a look at the flickr set, why don’t you?

My second favorite genre of books has to be travel essays. I even love to read tourist guidebooks from Frommers and Lonely Planet. I guess it’s the part of my personality that some people descibe as wanderlust. At this point in my life, my real-life traveling is mainly family vacations and doing stuff with the kids. But I always used to love traveling on my own, even if that meant going to a bookstore across town, or taking the train to somewhere I hadn’t been before. Usually I’d just have my camera and cd player with me.

Nowadays I have to travel vicariously through others, and their travel essays. One of my favorite books so far is Jupiter’s Travels, where Ted Simon rides his Triumph motorcycle around the world. It’s an interesting trip, and lots of fun. I’ve also read Vroom With a View by Peter Moore (thx for the recommendattion Nina) where he rides his Vespa around Italy. And continuing with moto-adventures, I read Long Way Round by Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman. Good stuff!

I’ve read several books about traveling in Japan, like the The Roads to Sata by Alan Booth. It’s fun to relive my time in Japan by reading similar experiences that others have had. It really makes me look to the future when the kids are a little older and we can have more adventurous travels again.

I’ve recently joined the Travel Literature group over at Goodreads.com, and look forward to getting some recommendations as to some more good books. Of course, money is tight, so I’ll check the local library as well, and the used bookshops too. Maybe even try out a book-trading site like Bookmooch.com. Except I don’t like to let my books go. But I am learning to live “lighter” and not keep as much stuff as I used to, so I really should give Bookmooch a try.

Went down to New Braunfels to meet my uncle and cousin to do a little fishing. We caught only one trout and three perch, but it was lots of fun. Must do it again soon! Fishing is so fun.

I was just playing with Google Maps on my G1, and I asked for directions from my present location (Austin, TX) to my brother’s house in Honolulu. Google Maps came back with a route which has a distance of 5185.1 miles and an estimated drive of 376 hours and 54 minutes. I scrolled through the directions to see how it figured to span the ocean, and it recommends kayaking across the Pacific from Seattle:

• Turn left to stay on NE Northlake Way. 1.0 mi
• Kayak across the Pacific Ocean Entering Hawaii 2765.4 mi
• Slight right at Turtle Bay Hilton .1 mi

I better start now if I want to make it by Xmas!

One of the great things about visiting California is all the great food there is to eat. Both my mom n dad’s cooking at home, plus the awesome Japanese restaurants around SoCal make certain that I will gain a few pounds. In fact, this past vacation, I gained about 2kg. (our scale is metric). It’s sort of a tradition that when we arrive, my mom has several submarine sandwiches + a big bowl of potato or macaroni salad waiting for us, plus my favorite chips, plain Lays potato chips. This trip is a bit different since I don’t eath beef, chicken or pork anymore. The sandwiches this time were basil, tomato, red onion, feta cheese, olive oil, and a couple other secret ingredients and they were awesome! I had maybe 2 1/2 sandwiches this time. The good food kept on coming throughout our visit, including an oyster pot pie, baked scallops, clam pasta, marinated shrimp, bruschetta, bagels and lox, oysters in wine sauce, and then the big dinner was a Jamaican feast of jerk chicken, jerk pork, rice & peas, plantain, and giant curry crab legs. Those were so amazing!!! I did eat a little meat this trip, a tiny piece of char-siu in my ramen, two dodger dogs, and a little piece of Jerk pork. Oh, and a homemade burger on the last night. I love home-cooking!

I’ve been pretty busy lately, these past two days I have been at the Hyatt downtown taking photos for a User Group for work. On Sunday, however, we went out to Fredericksburg and visited Wild Seed Farms. they have a nice butterfly house, and lots and lots of flowers to take photos of. It’s a great place to try out a new lens! (Unfortunately, I was just using my old lenses) Anyways, here’s a pic, and you can see a few more on my Flickr photostream.

I decided not to bring my little GPS unit to Japan because I figured it wouldn’t be very useful since I don’t have any map data on it. Plus I could travel lighter because I wouldn’t have to bring extra batteries and charger. But now I regret that, since it would have been good to save the track data and look at it in Google Earth. For instance, I would have loved to check out the route our bus took up to the resort in Kanazawa. Oh well, next time I will remember!

Just updated with Dec 25th’s happenings!

Just updated with Dec 24th’s happenings!