Why I coach

I've gotten some nice words of encouragement from parents throughout the season - one from a parent whose kid was previously on my team saying "the kids on Ryan's team always have fun", another from a parent saying her son's skills have improved this season, and lots of e-mails of thanks for what we do.

But the ones that are especially nice are the words that come from the kids. When I was telling the girls about registration for next season, I told them I can't coach them again, and some said "awww". And yesterday, one of the boys on my U10 team told me that when I was on my trip, he missed me.

These are the moments that make all of late night line-up arranging, coaching classes, unsuccessful referee recruiting, leaving work early, etc. all worth while.

The Puppies

One of the parents on my team is an excellent photographer and offered her photography for our team picture. It's awesome!

Soccer 9-19-09

Sara on the ball!

Connor and Keani on defense

The girls had another excellent day today, with 4 of my 6 girls scoring goals throughout the game. One girl scored 2 points! The other team was much more aggressive than last week's team so it was a stronger challenge, but we still played well. Though I wasn't keeping score, I'm pretty sure we won by about 3 points. But winning's not the priority in AYSO, and it was nice to see teams playing on our field before us allow the losing team to score some goals without too much defense.

And Sara played her first game ever!!! She got to go to the movies and Fun Factory in celebration!

Ryan's big kick

Our boys struggled a bit more, but still played well. We had previously scrimmaged the team that we played, and they beat us then too. They have a really strong offense. Still, we could not get any scores in. But it was a good learning experience and gave me a lot to work on with the kids at practice. Oh, and speaking of "firsts", this game was Evan's first as goal keeper too!

AWESOME soccer day

What an incredible day it was today. We started out taking pictures for our girls U6 team. Then we had a 9:00 game. Though AYSO is supposed to distribute the teams evenly, it seems like we have a lot of really good players on our team. And in fact, my girls were scoring too much today. I had to ask one of them to start passing off and playing with her less dominant foot, because AYSO discourages running up the score.

Here are a few of the girls enjoying some downtime:



And here's a video of one of the many breakaway scoring drives of the game:



It was a really nice victory for us, but in a lot of ways it was really sad. There was a girl on the other team that (according to my wife) just gave up every time she saw one of our girls breaking away with the ball. At the very end, there was a girl who just stood there, not facing anyone, and just cried. I felt so sad for them. And yet I can't ask my girls not to play their hardest. So finding ways of getting them to NOT score so much (like playing with your less dominant foot, etc.) is something I'm going to have to research more before we progress through the season, just in case this happens again. But I'm sure we'll have our share of crying due to getting outscored too this season!!

We had a little break before we headed over to our U10 boys game. We were missing two boys, one due to baseball, and another to a church event. So no one was able to take a break during the game. It was intense, but we won 5 to 2. I was particularly proud of my son, who went head to head with one of the best players I know from last season. And my son stole the ball from him several times.

This video is one of my son's steals, though the opponent in the video isn't the kid I was talking about.



And here's my son stealing from the kid I mentioned.

Thai Pandan-Wrapped Chicken (gai ob bai toey)

Our neighbor Sam, who is from Singapore, sometimes brings us herbs from her garden. A few days ago she brought us a bunch of leaves called Screwpine leaves.
Along with the bunch of leaves, she left us a note about the different ways you can use these in cooking: as a rice or dessert flavoring, as food coloring, or to wrap chicken in.

I decided to try wrapping chicken, so I looked up a few different recipes and made a sort of amalgamation of all of the different elements that I thought looked good: soy sauce, sugar, oyster sauce, fish sauce, garlic, sesame oil and a lot of coconut milk. I marinated the chicken for an hour, then went through the tedious process of wrapping about 30 bundles and securing them with toothpicks.

Next was the part that I HATED. I had only enough oil to do a medium deep fry. The wrapped pieces leave little pockets of liquid that explode when they hit the oil. Or they lie dormant, waiting for you to walk by to check the doneness, then BAM, they splash all over your arm.
But according to my wife, all of the work and oil splashes were worth it. She loved it!! The marinade for the chicken is similar to a chinese minute chicken, with the exception of the fish sauce and coconut milk flavoring which gives it the Thai taste. The Screwpine leaves added a really nice and unique fragrance, almost like a cross between ti leaves, green tea, and maybe lemongrass. Just a really unique flavor that really can't be replicated with any other leaves, though I guess I would try wrapping in ti leaves sometime.

To complete our meal, we had it with some rice, and a Thai red vegetarian curry with cabbage, bamboo and onions.
Kinda ambitious undertaking for a weeknight, but there was no soccer today, and I had the kids bathe and finish their homework early. Next time I'll wait for a weekend!!

Soccer banners

I finally finished the banners for my U6 girls team and my U10 boys team. Overall I'm pretty happy with them, but I would have liked to scale the elements a little bigger to fill the banner up more. But I was working with 8 1/2" x 11" printouts on a 7' x 30" banner so it was tough.

Here is the Puppies banner:


And here's the Extreme banner:

My son is blasting the ball into the Herbalife and Meadow Gold logos!! In hindsight I could have extended the lightning bolts farther out.

Both banners were built onto PVC frames to provide rigidity while the kids parade around the field tomorrow. Hope we win the banner contest!!

Dee

Here was my attempt at Dee by Randy Rhoads. It's sloppy, but mostly because my classical technique is poor, and partially because the action on the classical is really high.

Tofu Musubi

My daughter wanted spam musubis for her class for the last day of preschool. Since there are two vegetarians in her class, I had to think of some other musubis to make.

We bought this tofu, already fried, and chopped em into spam sized slices. Then we marinated em in shoyu and sugar, fried em up again, and put em atop some brown rice with green furikake, and wrapped with nori. They turned out pretty good!!

Chance'um Appliance Repair

When we bought our house 4 years ago, the oven/range was already installed. This was the first oven I've ever owned that is computer controlled. And quite frankly, I don't use any of the fancy features. I just want to turn it on, set the temperature, and put my roast or cake or whatever in. I don't need any fancy 350 for 15 minutes then 400 for 30 minutes.

Lately, the "on" button on the touchpad hasn't been working. I've tried repairing appliances before. In our old townhouse, I used to change the thermostat on the water heater all the time, and I once changed out a lot of parts on my dryer (though nothing worked so I ended up buying a new one).

But with my oven, I was a little hesitant to try it. I have this friend at work, Neal, who always fixes his own appliances, installs his own flooring, etc. Basically he tries anything and everything. With Neal as inspiration, I set out today to attempt to fix my stove. What's the worse that could happen? I mean, other than electrocution, sheet metal finger cuts, or faulty wiring fires?

After both cutting the power at the junction box AND unplugging the oven, here's the disassembly:


After a quick trip to Reliable Parts in Waipio Gentry, I had a new control pad (and my wallet was $220 lighter to boot!).

Here's the old touchpad on the top of the stove, with the new one already installed below it. The design changed pretty significantly so I had to buy the entire front panel as well as the control panel. I'm guessing the redesign was due in part to reports of failure due to faulty design.


Here's what the touchpad looks like on the back. Notice the traces all leading to the ribbon, which plugs into the computer.


Finally, look at the third trace from the left - that's the one that leads to the "on" button - notice how it's broken - a ha!!


After plugging back in, it works!! Yipee!! Now I can try out my new pizza stone!!

Letter from my daughter

Videos from the Pipeline gig 5-14-09

The view from stage

Here's a shot that was taken from the stage. That's me on the left. It was a huge crowd!

Pipeline Cafe

Here's a pic of my band playing at Pipeline Cafe opening for the Plain White T's. It was an awesome show and hopefully I'll have video up soon.

Laminate flooring

I helped my brother-in-law and his friend install laminate flooring yesterday at my b-i-l's house. We got about halfway through the downstairs. It was a lot of work! Fortunately the house was pretty square and the walls were decently straight (though one wall was curved a bit). My body is aching today!

The Sophisticated Hula

My daughter performed the Sophisticated Hula for her preschool graduation on Saturday. It was SO cute! She's the one in the light blue tank and the blue grass skirt.

Getting ready for the gig

I'm getting pumped up for our gig tonight opening up for the Plain White T's. I wasn't originally a huge fan of these guys, probably because I'm not familiar with most of their stuff. However, I listened to a live internet streaming performance at the Road Runner Music Hall (which our singer Kevin runs), and I am a convert - these guys do great three part harmonies and write really great melodies.

Here's a gig flyer that I saw in Chinatown with our band listed.

Beef Tomato

Chinese people like to stir fry things. It's probably because a lot of raw veggies in China are irrigated with raw sewage. Even though I'm just speculating, when was the last time you walked into a Chinese restaurant and saw raw veggies other than the Chinese chicken salad?

I think Beef Tomato is an adapted Hawaii Chinese dish. It's a lot sweeter than the typical Chinese stir fry dish. I like it because it has a lot of different vegetables in it, which includes onions, celery, bell peppers and tomatoes.

One place that Beef Tomato is a fixture at is the neighborhood Chop Suey, which is a dying breed. Back in old Hawaii, there were always these Chop Suey restaurants located in the middle of a mixed residential business area. And the name of the restaurant was always preceeded by it's locale - Manoa Chop Suey, Palolo Chop Suey, McCully Shop Suey, etc. Nowadays it's all that generic mainland style choose-your-own Panda Express stuff sprouting up all over the place. Screw that! I want to order a lunch plate at a place where you don't get a choice - you get sweet sour spareribs, kau yuk, noodles, a fried won ton, and fried rice (for $1 extra). You get what the Chinese cook tells you is good, you don't get to choose!!

Anyway, Beef Tomato is something that you mostly get at a good, Hawaii Chop Suey. For mine, I start by marinating sliced flank steak in a mixture of shoyu, sugar, chicken stock, sherry and oyster sauce, then I stir fry it in hot oil (being careful not to ignite a fire and destroy your microwave). I take out the beef and then stir fry the vegetables, starting with the onions, then the celery, garlic and bell peppers. I put the beef back in and then stir in the tomatoes, and the marinade stock and some extra oyster sauce. I finish it off with some cornstarch. Yum! Gotta have plenty rice with this one!

More sparkles

For B - check out the sparkles - it really flashes when you move around it.

My bass is back from the painter!

Nice and sparkly, a huge contrast to the matte black truckliner finish!

Mad Hello Kitty

My 4 year old's latest picture.

Apart after only 2 hours

I bought a new old stock Music Man 5 string bass last week, and after owning it just two hours, I disassembled the entire thing. Actually the reason for that is I'm sending the body off to get painted a really bright and flashy sparkle red. Here's the bass prior to disassembly (pickguard removed):

And here's the neck taped up, getting a fret polishing.

Finally, here's how much lemonoil the fretboard absorbed (notice the rosewood on the last few frets that are unoiled):

"After" pics to come in about a week!!

50 mpg

After inflating my tires and slowing down from my usual, ummm.... speed, I managed to get my average mpg rating for my Toyota Prius up to 50.0 mpg (for the last 32,000 miles or so). It was teetering at 49.9 for the longest time. Now I gotta try and keep it up!!

Band logo

My band, the Desert Sea, is opening for the Plain White T's on May 14th at Pipeline Cafe. We needed a logo for the promo poster, so I came up with a quick one in Illustrator.

Finally installed the pickups with the correct pots

This is an update from the More Guitar Nerdity post. I finally got a chance to rewire the guitar using the old pots. It sounds great! Here's a video of some of the tones you can get from these pickups:



All in all these GFS pickups are GREAT pickups that I would highly recommend. The prices are really nice and the quality is high.

Rubber Duckie Race

Today we went to the Rubber Duckie Race to benefit the United Cerebral Palsey Association. The opening festivities were held at McCully Shopping Center. Here you could "buy duckies", which meant that you could buy serial numbers for duckies they were dumping into the race, for $5 apiece. The kids played various games like ring toss, magnetic fishing, and a wheel of fortune:


At about 12:45, we walked over to the bridge over the Ala Wai near the Convention Center. For those that don't know, the Ala Wai has had sewage spills into it over the past couple of years - gross!! Anyway, here are the duckies getting put into the water - close your mouths, duckies:


They land in the water and off they go!!


Go duckies Go!! And go #4083 and #4084!! We wanted to win one of the 50 prizes. The top prizes were pizzas for a year, gas for a year, dinner at Sizzler for a year, an iPhone and $150 Apple gift certificate, and a trip for 2 to Las Vegas!!


The finish line - it's a nail biter....


We waited around to hear the winner. Unfortunately we didn't win any of the 50 prizes (though AIG apparently bought some duckies and won a prize - grrr!!!). But that's okay, it was for a good cause, and the kids had a lot of fun. And, I got my very own devil duck! Yes!!