2024 May 03 | induction stove, shopping for aloha shirts

Ogii's home office all set up. She's still working on California time, so we get up at 5am.

The gate to the parking garage stays open from 6am to 11pm and you can't close it, so to check if the gate clicker works, I had to get there before 6am.

Chocolate covered macademia nuts and Choco Pies, yum.

We're on the 14th floor, and we get a few birds a day on our balcony.

They have an induction stove top, but we couldn't get it to work. It displayed E1.

Time to check YouTube for what's going on.

They said E1 means there is no cookware, or it's the wrong type of cookware.

Also found the instruction manual.

It says the same thing as YouTube.

Ah, you can't use aluminum. I think almost all of the pots and pans here are aluminum. Although I can't find a magnet to check.

They had some hot pots, but those took quite a while to heat up, so I think we'll but some stainless steel pots and pans.

I was worried about the little edge chunks falling off the fob, so Ogii found a little bag we could put it in.

There are a few ants in the kitchen, but just a single line, so hopefully they should be easy to take care of.

The parking company called and said I needed to move my car because they were working on the water pipe behind it. There were many other open spaces in the garage, so that was easy to do.

Since we were only staying at our current place for a month and our mail hold back in California was going to run out before then, we thought we would use this post office as our mailing address because the online information said we could use it as a physical location. However, when we arrived, they said that information was incorrect, and we'd have to go to another one, possibly the one downtown, to use it as a physical location. Although then we'd have to change it again once we found a place to stay long-term unless we wanted to keep going to the post office to pick up the mail. If instead we can find a new place within the next few weeks and avoid the temporary post-office address, that will be much easier.

Mural of olympic athletes.

Our unit faces north, so we can see a bit of the mountains. This unit across the hall faces south, so it can see the beach.

There's a monthly opening in the Waikiki Landmark, the cool building.

Unfortunately it's double our price range.

The Waipuna and the Waikiki Landmark are very close.

The pipe is fixed. That was fast.

There are daily hula shows at the Ala Moana mall.

Dancers.

Many people watching from three levels.

Men and women dancers.

A lot of birds always hang out in front of Target.

There is an Eco-Town thrift store in the mall which sells more expensive items.

Including many aloha shirts.

Some are still very expensive; hundreds of dollars.

We're looking for the ones closer to $40 from Reyn Spooner...

... and Kahala.

Ogii looking at dresses.

They also have some Hermes purses for over $10,000.

There is an actual Reyn Spooner store in the mall, too.

Where the shirts are $120.

Macy's sells aloha shirts, too.

Again for $120.

Ogii thought this purple one was a bit more upscale looking, and they didn't have it at Eco-Town, so we decided to pay full price for it.

Ward Village is another shopping mall nearby, although smaller than Ala Moana.

Gorilla statue.

A few people playing chess there on Thursday night.

They have a TJ Maxx.

And a Nordstrom Rack.

Which also have a bunch of aloha shirts.

At half price. Eco-Town is still cheaper as it's a third of the price.

Tall, skinny blue building.

Another lighter one.

This is the only piece of cookware they have which works on the induction stove top. It'll work for breakfast.

It looks like there was carpet on the lanai, but they pulled it up. Although now the floor is kind of irregular and sticky, which is weird. We'll buy a rug to put over that.

I found some random keys in our luggage and couldn't figure out what they were for, so I threw them away. Then I remembered they were for our storage unit, so I dug through the garbage and found them. Good thing we hadn't thrown our trash bag out yet. I'm sure Public Storage can open our lock as I'm sure plenty of other people lose their keys, but I'm also sure they charge for it.

My new aloha shirts.

There's someone at a table on the patio with a large monitor.

He has a whole setup. I guess it's a nice working environment.

Many people still ride in the back of pickups here, and many even have chairs in the bed. On the smaller roads, that's fine, but you'll even see them with people on the highways.

Going to Costco.

They have some stainless steel skillets, so those would work with the induction stovetop.

Some mats; we could put these on the lanai, although they're not very pretty.

Huge amounts of beef and bacon. We use these, but not nearly that much. I had put the skillets and mat in my cart, but there were huge lines to check out, and I didn't want to wait for just those two items, so I put them back on the shelf. I'll check at Walmart or Target and see if they have anything better.

The Costco optometrist.

He (or an associate) is there every day, although shorter hours on Saturday and Sunday.

Even a huge line for the pizza and hot dogs. Sure, they're cheap, but are they worth your time to wait for them?

Finding some local radio stations. 95.9 is my favorite because it's electronic music, although unfortunately it's more house than eurodance.

Others I like, including a country station and a reggae station.

Huge lifted yota at Best Buy.

Which I went to to buy a cheap printer.

Then to Walmart. There are multiple entrances, and this one is the worst because the line of cars is often huge and barely moves. It's much better to park on the roof as there is almost nobody else there.

Some coasters for mom. I was going to buy some skillets, but they are all aluminum; Walmart didn't have a single stainless steel one.

The optometrists at Walmart.

I bought some liquid ant bait.

Many of the ants are crawling on it; hopefully they take it back to the next and it gets rid of all of them.

I found a nice rug at Walmart, so now we can enjoy the balcony.

Ogii spotted this tiny little gecko on a parking meter.

So cute.

Eaton Square has a little post office. Well, it's more like a post kiosk, as it's not in an enclosed building.

It does have the flat rate priority boxes, though, which is what we want.

A fish pond with some ducks.

Food Pantry, a small grocery store.

A fair amount of goods inside.

Including fruit.

The clerk is wearing an aloha shirt.

The RAV4 is going to be delayed because the ship it was going to come over on has mechanical problems. That's OK, though; we have the Prius, we don't need two cars, and I'd rather it get put on another ship than have this one try to take it, fail, and have the RAV4 end up at the bottom of the ocean.