Hsu family’s annual reunion trip—2011, to Hawaii (part-3 of 3)

continued from : Hsu family’s annual reunion trip—2011, to Hawaii (part-2 of 3)

[At the summit, there happened to be a team of movie makers and actors from the National Geographic making movies]

[They must be making some films of the early settlers meeting with the original Hawaiians with spears!]

[The shot was taken from behind a glass. There is a small volcanic crator at the right side.]

[I am the swimmer with bald head. I can swim pretty fast for 25-50 yards.]

[Ashley, 13!  Blooming into a young lady.]

[Still a child!? Her grandpa was eating too.]

[Another quite expensive Japanese restaurant, Sansei, at a rich Kalapua district amidst golf courses]

[I need to buy a good High Sensitivity (HS) Canon camera!]

[7/30, Ben's family leaving the hotel, back to Sacramento.]

[7/30 afternoon, after renting snorkeling gears, we went to Honolua Bay.  Walking past a rain forest-like path, we reached the rocky beach. With a float around the chest, I also went as far as 400-500 meters off the shore. Undersea sceneries are OK to me.  Corals are mostly white and blue, with a varieties of fishes swimming between them. Felix and Renee saw huge turtles.]

[Salt water kept coming into my mouth piece. Felix was making sure I was using the gear right.]

[Almost a full rainbow!]

[That evening, we went to another restaurant, Roy's, that Ben's family went the night before with Jet.]

[The Border's book store is having discount]

[Costco is always my favourite place.]

[Evening flight to Phoenix, then to DFW.  Dillon was sleeping already.]

By noon of 7/30, Ben’s family left, back to Sacramento to be ready for the work on Monday.  It was only a 5-hour flight for them. We left the next day by an evening flight, stopping over to change plane in Phoenix. We arrived back to the DFW around noon, right into simmering 105 degrees Fahrenheit temperature.

After feeling this scorching heat in Dallas area, which almost recurred every summer, I started wondering why there was not a thought of developing solar energy 50 years ago, as soon as the space flight was planned? In 1972, when I went to the Northwestern University Med. School, and met with the Chief of Medicine, Dr. David Erl, for the first time, he revealed his complaints to me, "why congress does not approve solar energy research? What kind of mentality is that?"

Nearly half a century has passed between my two visits to Hawaii.  What has changed? The progress in the Honolulu must have been eye opening, though the sceneries probably have been the same. But as far as I am concerned, as I have gotten older and the idea of making it in the medical research was blocked, my goal has shifted to other matters that are right in front of me. The new goals were more easily attainable and just as important. I have mellowed and the tension inside me has softened. It is a change for the better. Flexibility is a virtue.

Seeing my children and grandchildren playing around happily always gives me higher hopes for the future. They may choose whatever way of life they want, as long as it is useful, productive, and respectable. I do not believe in after-life. But as I inherited from my parents, my life continues in the DNA I gave to my offspring; and in the influence that I might have exerted to the others whom I have had the fortune to interact. It is not much, but that is what every person can leave behind in this world.