15 CRAIGSIDE GOES TO WOLGANG'S AND ALAN WONG'S

Natural disasters almost always draw the most visitors to this blog site.  However, to my surprise, friends tell me they especially relish the food photos.  So today I will feature 15 Craigside's outings to Wolfgang's and Alan Wong's.

But first, after I returned from my 65-day Grand Around the World Adventure, I had a sashimi and salmon lunch, with Kirin beer and a glass of hot sake on my lanai:

Then two of my Diamond Head lookout lunches, the first two shots of the bento from Hawaii's Best Kitchens, and the third from L&L:

I might add that for $10.95, HBK provided the best bento I've ever had for that price.  Barbecued chicken and teriyaki beef, yellow-fin tuna Hawaiian poke, macaroni salad and rice, plus a bottle of beer.  HBK is located next to a now up-dated Rainbow Drive-In, which just re-opened yesterday.

Wolfgang's (Wolfgang Zweiner to the right) is located on the third level of the Royal Hawaiian Arcade in Waikiki:

Can't see everyone all that well, but the 15 Craigside group:

Our leader Cookie with her meal (most had steak, which was not exactly cheap):

That gigantic gold thing is a fully loaded baked potato.

Pepper and her salmon:

Eric, with his steak and some of Pepper's salmon:

Rose and Herbert:



Audrey and Henry:



Unfortunately, for these outings, Henry always is served last.  Florence and Fred:



I suffered from food poisoning at a steakhouse in Frankfurt, so I had a $6 Canadian Bacon (the steaks were more than $50 when you add tax and tip):

I also had a baked potato with spinach and a glass of red wine.  This was the best Canadian Bacon I've ever experienced.

Then last night a different 15C group went to Alan Wong's, more recently made more famous because the Obama's have annually dined there.  This was my first time in a decade, and there now appears to be a section with a view of the Koolaus.

Like all the other 15 C diners, I ordered the six course sampler of Alan Wong's most popular dishes, but added a wine pairing, for a total price of $125. The  first course involved a  Chilled Vine-Ripened Tomato Soup with a sandwich of Kalua Pig, Foie Gras and cheese with a edible "plate" of mozzarella cheese, plus Chopped Ahi Sashimi and Avocado Salsa Stack:

The tomato soup was nothing special, but the sandwich was superb, and the slab of mozzarella outstanding.  The poke stack was okay.  While the others got the   Keahole Lobster and Shrimp Lasagna, because of my allergy, I got Chinese Steamed Opakapaka, which tasted exactly like the similar Onaga at Orchids.

My next dish was a Ginger Crusted Onaga with miso sesame vinaigrette, mushrooms and corn.




A nice change of pace.  At this point I was up to four white wines:  champagne, chenin blanc, pinot chardonnay and sauvignon blanc.  Save for Francis, who ate his Twice Cooked Short Rib, Soy Braised and Grilled "Kalbi" Style...:

...the rest of us were approaching saturation, so we took that dish home, and ended with The Coconut, which looked like a coconut, and was mostly haupia sherbet with a shell of chocolate, enhanced wit tropical fruits and lilikoi sauce:

At this point they added a Gamay Beaujolais and a slightly sparkling sweet red wine.

There was a general consensus that this was the best meal outing we've had yet.  However, that HAVE YOU EVER HAD A $300 JAPANESE MEAL IN HONOLULU posting of our gourmet society from 15 Craigside was at least as good...but for twice the cost:

I  tend to have my Friday lunch at the beach, so Bor Yann and I went to Duke's:

He had some kind of fish tacos, but I went to the buffet ($19), which I thought was terrific.  There is a station for pasta and another for sandwiches, plus a huge salad bar.

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HOW SAFE IS THE WORLD TODAY?

The Doomsday Clock is a warning guide adjusted by the board and advisors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (this is a published magazine, not a scientific organization--members have included Albert Einstein, Edward Teller, Robert Oppenheimer, Carl Sagan, Werner von Braun, Al Gore, Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke) to show how far away Humanity is to possible global catastrophe, or, Doomsday.  They use a 24-hour clock and originally set the time to 7 minutes to Midnight, as shown here by the original clock still kept at the University of Chicago.  The low was reached in 1953 when  both the U.S. and the Soviet Union exploded Hydrogen Bombs, and should have been lowered even further when in 1961 the Soviet Union exploded the Tsar Bomba, more than 3000 times the yield of the Hiroshima Atomic Bomb.

Earlier this year the clock was again re-set to 3 minutes, meaning we are again as close to Doomsday as any point in our history.  Frankly, I can't get too excited about the current danger, for the reasons they cited were lack of global political action to address global climate change, modernization of atomic weapons and the problem of nuclear wastes.  That, compared to the willy-nilly testing of H-Bombs, the threat of First Strike and the imminence of a nuclear winter?  No comparison.  Al Gore must have personally cajoled the process.  We are today as safe as we've been since the end of the Cold War almost a quarter century ago, when the clock in 1991 was adjusted upwards 7 minutes to 17 minutes to Midnight, the furthest away ever from Doomsday.  You would think this moment in time would have been celebrated in the media, but I could not find even one Google visual showing this glorious event, so I had to take my own photo.

Note that terrorists are not even in the discussion towards bringing an end to our civilization.  Is that a surprise?  Hardly.  A nuclear war would kill billions.  Over the past decade, terrorists have been annually responsible for 20,000 deaths.  It would take half a century to get up to a million killed.  Notwithstanding, I'll tomorrow or on Saturday, focus on terrorism, and, in particular, suggest that ISIS has peaked and will over the next couple of years become as important as Al-Queda or the Taliban, still threats, but a few squads of Navy Seals and some drones can handle them.  This is not to say, however, that all is well, for there are tens of millions in the Middle East severely impacted by those recent wars.  Then there is now the growing issue of locally-born Muslim terrorists who get radicalized.  This will persist for another generation or two.

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JACKIE EVANCHO, DALTON TRUMBO AND THE HOLLYWOOD TEN

Jackie Evancho and Dalton Trumbo are on opposite ends of the entertainment spectrum.  Some of you have followed Jackie since I first introduced her to this blogsite when at the age of 10 she auditioned for America's Got Talent.  Last night, she had a PBS show, Awakening (actually first shown in December of 2014) and she is growing up well, indeed, at the age of 14.

About Dalton Trumbo, let me begin by summarizing reviews by Rotten Tomatoes of three films I've seen since my return to Hawaii:

                                     ROTTEN TOMATOES
                                    Reviewers       Audiences    Box Office Mojo

     Specter                         64%               66%                     3
     Creed                            93%               96%                     4
     Trumbo                        70%                82%                   13

All of them were excellent, but the top two are fiction.  Very few know of Dalton Trumbo.   The film was not that well reviewed and did not even make the top ten this weekend.  Bryan Cranston, though, playing Dalton Trumbo, might well win an Oscar for his portrayal.  Voting is by the members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and there is lingering guilt of a dark moment in its past, not unlike, for example, the Japanese Relocation Camps of World War II, or, maybe, even the current attitude today against Syrian immigrants.

Hollywood has been utilized by our Federal government in the past.  Anything having to do with Adolf Hitler during World War II showed him to be a buffoon.  Then you visit Germany, see a more accurate personage, and realize that Hitler had a strong personality, and, in fact, was domineering. I still have difficulty shedding the propaganda I grew up with seeing Hitler in To Be or Not to Be with Jack Benny.

But Trumbo was a different kind of Hollywood betrayal.  He was with the Hollywood Ten, a group of mostly screenwriters, who refused to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1947.  They were the most vilified of the Hollywood Blacklist, inflamed by, perhaps, the most despised man in American political memory--yes, worse than Richard Nixon--Senator Joseph McCarthy, who raised pathological demagoguery to a new high.

Trumbo had a reasonably normal upbringing, and for nine years wrapped bread, yes, wrapped bread, for a Los Angeles backery, while he sometimes studied at the University of Southern California, but mostly wrote:  88 short stories and six novels, which were rejected for publication.  He finally published a book in 1935 and went on to fame as one of the highest paid screenwriters, even gaining an Academy Award nomination.  He joined the Communist Party in 1943, but his reasons had to do with equal pay and anti-Fascism.  Remember, the Soviet Union joined America in fighting Hitler.

World politics, however, shift instantly.  In World War II our mortal enemies were German and Japan.   Today, they are our most dependable allies.

Thus, you need to appreciate the hysteria of the times, with the Soviet Union suddenly becoming the perilous villains after World War II.  Students (me) practiced hiding under desks in case of an atomic bomb attack during the Cold War.  Ronald Reagan, as president of the Screen Actors Guild, was an FBI informant.

Maybe because he avoided serving  in World War II, John Wayne became a vocal anti-communist, so much so that Joseph Stalin hired hitmen to murder the actor.  They, and a whole host of other stars, including Hedda Hopper (well played by Helen Mirren in the film) and Lucille Ball no doubt sincerely, squared off against Trumbo.  Not exactly with an unflawed character, it made it worse that he felt that the Red Menace was not as dangerous to us as the American Menace was to the people of the Soviet Union.  He kind of sympathized with "the enemy."  Most of us growing up during that period were not informed enough to understand the true reality.  Turned out Trumbo was more right than wrong.

In any case, the Hollywood 10 lost in a Supreme Court ruling, paid $1000 fines and served up to a year in prison.  Maybe hundreds caught in this post-war paranoia couldn't get hired, committed suicide, left the country and otherwise suffered for two decades and more.  Many of these reputations were never restored.

Dalton Trumbo and his fellow "traitors' turned to ghostwriting movie screenplays.  However, in 1960, aided by Kirk Douglas and Otto Preminger, Trumbo was announced as the screenwriter for Spartacus and Exodus.  He passed away in 1976, and it took until 1993, forty years after the film's release, that he was posthumously awarded an Oscar for his screenplay,  Roman Holiday.

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ABOUT THAT DENGUE FEVER OUTBREAK IN HAWAII

Sure, people are concerned here, but there are only little more than 100 dengue fever cases on the Big Island, compared to 50 million to 100 million worldwide every year.  Legislators are getting hysterical, but I guess that gets votes.

In 2001, dengue fever struck Hawaii.  To quote:

Autochthonous dengue infections were last reported in Hawaii in 1944. In September 2001, the Hawaii Department of Health was notified of an unusual febrile illness in a resident with no travel history; dengue fever was confirmed. During the investigation, 1,644 persons with locally acquired denguelike illness were evaluated, and 122 (7%) laboratory-positive dengue infections were identified; dengue virus serotype 1 was isolated from 15 patients. No cases of dengue hemorrhagic fever or shock syndrome were reported. In 3 instances autochthonous infections were linked to a person who reported denguelike illness after travel to French Polynesia. Phylogenetic analyses showed the Hawaiian isolates were closely associated with contemporaneous isolates from Tahiti. Aedes albopictus was present in all communities surveyed on Oahu, Maui, Molokai, and Kauai; no Ae. aegypti were found. This outbreak underscores the importance of maintaining surveillance and control of potential disease vectors even in the absence of an imminent disease threat.

The 1944 epidemic started in 1943, the first such cases since 1912.  Most of those afflicted came from the war in the Pacific, and totaled 1498 patients in Hawaii.

I once was on the board of Hawaii Biotech, and a dengue vaccine was on our list of potential products.  I guess they failed, for it is reported that none exists today,   A vaccine for malaria, however, appears closer to reality.

Those mosquitos responsible for transmitting the virus certainly all look the same to me, and both the Aedes aeqypti and Aedes albopictus seem most problematic in Hawaii:

More specifically according to another source:

Dengue is transmitted by several species of mosquito within the genus Aedes, principally A. aegypti. The virus has five different types;^[1]infection with one type usually gives lifelong immunity to that type, but only short-term immunity to the others. Subsequent infection with a different type increases the risk of severe complications. As there is no commercially available vaccine, prevention is sought by reducing the habitat and the number of mosquitoes and limiting exposure to bites.

Thus, dengue can be complicated, especially if you are unfortunately infected a second time.  However,  the total cases this year are similar to 2001 and less than 10% that of the 1943-4 outbreak, with what appears to be some stabilization at a little over 100 (112 as of yesterday). An isolated case on Oahu is not related to the Big Island variety, and South Kona, Hilo, Puna and Kau appear to currently be the primary areas of contagion.

Or more specifically when the number was 88:

How do you know you might have dengue fever?



The world-wide dengue epidemic:

In the USA:

So should you go to the Big Island?  Well, 100+ cases thus far compared to 50 million to 100 million worldwide.  I'm glad I don't live in those infected areas, but how will tourism be affected?  If you're a potential visitor with zero tolerance for dengue, there are other islands in Hawaii.

In any case, as terrible as the above symptoms are, in my past travels I encountered worse: chikungunya (also a virus) in Reunion Island and malaria (not a virus but a protozoan) in Papua New Guinea.

In Reunion (the smallest island right of Madagascar on the bottom) in 2005, short excerpt:  There are two other problems:  mosquitoes and cockroaches. In Norway, if you see a leaf rolling on the ground, it is a leaf. In Reunion, it will probably be a roach, especially at night. Actually, I exaggerate, for there are probably more large cockroaches on my roof area on warm nights than in any equivalent space on that island.  I did, though, have an encounter here with the largest flying cockroach I have ever seen. The mosquitoes, though, were the truly worrisome factor. Just this year, Chikungunya appeared. 5,000 now have been infected, and the symptoms are like Dengue Fever, but with a lot more pain. 

You can read the details, but my near catastrophe with malaria comes from a quote from my posting on my trip to Papua New Guinea in 1989:

What really caught my attention, though, was when I mentioned that I had not bothered with malaria precautions and asked, “just how serious was it?” One of them dropped his drink and the others, wide-eyed, expressed alarm. First, Lae is a lot wetter than Port Moresby, and the problem is amplified here. Second, it was too late. Third, those trying to prevent malaria as a resident by taking medication can go blind.  However, S.L. (don’t remember her first name) gave me a bunch of pills and said, all things concerned, it might help. I asked one of them about the getting blind part and asked for some details. He (a colleague from the University of Michigan who was a visiting professor at the University of Lae) said he decided not to take that chance, the blind chance. So, he had malaria.

Oh, I might conclude with the incredibly lucky news that I did not contract chikungunya nor malaria. I certainly don't want to take my chances on the Big Island, so no reason why I can't remain in my cocoon at 15 Craigside until this invasion subsides.  Just to make sure, I won't go for any walks around our building, as I've been stung too many times already.

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