A tribute to the best blog post in the world

Wow, it’s been like two months since my last post. In honor of my return to bloggery, I typed up this awesome 3 page post while I was on the road somewhere between Grand Junction and Las Vegas. I finally had a few moments where my only option was to just sit there and enjoy the view. Let me assure you that Southern Utah at 2 am provides the same clarity offered up by sensory deprivation tanks.  Sadly, I lost that post because I plugged my laptop into a non-working outlet at our hotel room.  Thanks Embassy?

Anyway instead of trying to repeat what time-travelers will eventually recover and call “The Greatest Blog Post Ever Written”, I figure I’ll just give you a brief synopsis of where we are in the grand scheme of things.  So just for clarification, this is not the greatest blog post ever written… it’s a tribute. (Jack Black fans cue smirk)

The last two months have been a whirlwind of activity. You may recall that we had moved out of our house a few months ago and had parted with the majority of our things. Well the time came for yet another culling. This brings us to Reality Check #1.

Reality Check #1 – Be prepared to doubt yourself

Think about the last time you moved. How far was it? Most people have enough trouble moving across town or to another state. Now imagine if you had to do that move again all in one shot. No looking back, no second trips. Try to think of everything you need to fit into the fewest number of boxes possible, knowing that if it doesn't make it you will have to buy a replacement. Not only that but leave behind all of the people you have regularly associated with for the last decade or more and realize that the majority of them will not be able to visit you. You start to question, do I really want to do this? I can honestly say that for a moment, I wondered if I was just putting my family through too much.  That moment of self-doubt didn’t last very long. I quickly realized that what we are setting out to do is the impossible. If it was easy, everyone would be doing it.

Reality Check #2– In Hawaii your options are 1) Deal with it or 2) Deal with it

I just discovered this lovely little rule yesterday. 6 months of planning basically blew up in my face, and apparently it happens all the time. Saturday, my bro-in-law and I drove from Denver to Los Angeles to drop my car off for shipping to Hawaii. Turns out that despite having a reservation and arriving on the correct day, Pasha Hawaii decided that their ship was full and that my car would be coming two weeks later than I had planned. Wait what? Oh it gets better. The customer service reps helpful advice was that I could let the car sit in the secure holding area, or I could come pick up the car. I politely (Yes… politely) explained to her that we are flying to Hawaii the next day and that we need our car as soon as possible. Her response was to repeat the above options. That little snag doubles my rental car budget. So I picked “Deal with it”. I just going to have to learn to roll with the punches. After all within 24 hours I was expecting to be diving into the nearest ocean. Yeah not quite… Turns out we chose the busiest day of the year for flying out of LAX. Despite leaving at what I thought was plenty of time, we arrived too late to check in for our flight. Oh and were also notified that Delta decided to move the departure time forward 10 minutes to get out early. Really Delta? Way to overachieve. So again we were forced to “Deal with it” and were informed by Surly Agent #1 at the Special Services Counter that we could fly standby on the 6 pm flight (Oh only 10 hours later? Awesome). When I asked what our chances were she couldn't even look  me in the eye to tell me it wasn't going to happen. Here is where things get less crappy though. After getting through security, I started reviewing our options and ended up tweeting Delta Assist. Best decision I've made all day. The agent on Delta Assist was responsive and very helpful. Eventually she got us confirmed to Hawaii via San Francisco and Honolulu. We will arrive at 8:30 pm.

Getting ready to board the first leg of our trip so I’m going to save and upload this. More updates as soon as I’m able. I apologize in advance for any spelling or grammatical errors…

Time flies and reality sets it

It's been several weeks since my last update and so much has happened. Let me get you caught up.
So those of you that know me personally know that when we originally bought our house, we bought in a cheaper neighborhood so that my wife could work part-time and then eventually become a stay at home mom. The downside of that is that the housing bubble really took a toll on neighborhoods like ours and so the value of our home never increased. Like many people we lost value. So when the time came to sell our house things didn't look good for us. In fact after doing a lot of research, it appeared that our best option would be to rent it out. Naturally that brings with it a whole new set of issues but it worked out. We rented out the place, packed up, moved out and in with...

The In-Laws

Its funny, I always said I'd never be the guy that moves back in with his parents. I am currently typing this blog post from the "FEMA" tent we have set up in my in-laws backroom. Now admittedly, it's for a limited time (92 days 22 hours as of right now....) and it is to save money for the move. Truth be told my in-laws are about the nicest people I've ever met so it isn't like I'm walking around on egg shells. They do have some odd habits though. Just the other day they were sitting around watching old episodes of the Lawrence Welk show. Not the SNL parody (I checked) and not to make fun of the sheer amount of polyester featured in shots of the crowd. My wife's dad also has a vast knowledge of horrible jokes. Not horrible like The Aristocrats horrible. I mean horrible like I may have already read the joke on a laffy taffy wrapper. So obviously it could be a lot worse.

The Job

A couple of weeks ago I had a trial with my employer to shake out some of the issues I'm going to have working remotely. It was a very limited test that only lasted a couple of weeks but it kind of opened my eyes as to what I'm in for. During this trial period I woke up around 3:30 and was supposed to work until Noon. These are the hours I will have in Maui and so I think they just wanted to make sure that I could wake up and be productive that early. The problems we encountered stemmed from the fact that while I was working the hours I would be in Hawaii, I was still located in Omaha. So if I needed a response on something, I wouldn't hear back until everyone showed up for work.  I also may have received a complaint or two about my 4:00 am emails. The other issue is in the level of engagement with other employees. I still need to come up with a way to engage the other employees remotely. Working in a small office, most people are more comfortable with face to face communication and collaboration. In this day and age though, I really believe that we should be able to communicate effectively with anyone no matter where we are. All in all things went well and I am officially proceeding with the plan to move. Like a runaway train the only thing that is going to stop us now is a complete derailment.


I hate long blog posts, so I'm going to cut this one short. The next one I'll talk a little bit more about getting the cat ready to go over and what is involved in that. I will also be discussing the amount of planning and coordinating involved in a move like this.

For motivation I've been looking for other blogs and podcasts of people that have made the move and I find the variety of people interesting. There is one particular couple that I've been following for a while now. Check out their channel TheDavisDuos. Josh and Kalie have truly been an inspiration. They had a dream and decided to follow it. Watching their journey from just before they moved to more than a year after their move to Oahu has been great. Just getting a glimpse into what daily life will be like helps everyday pass a little quicker. Check em out and Subscribe.

Recovering Horder...

Only time for a quick one today. Between packing up the things we will keep, numerous trips to the Goodwill, buying a new car (more on that in a future post) and all the other aspects of daily life I just haven't had much time.

Here in the Midwest, there is one thing we are not short on - space. I wouldn't say our house was large. I think we only had something like 1200 square feet of living space. After the last couple of weeks I'd say we were only really using half that. After living here for the last 8 years we have done nothing more than accumulate things "Just in case". In our packing we even found boxes of pictures and keepsakes that we haven't touched since the day we moved in.

So as I sit here surrounded by bags of items destined for the thrift store I invite you to take a look around. If you have actually used everything within five feet of you I would like to congratulate you. I have a feeling most people will quickly be able to spot several things they just don't need. For a society so bent on consuming, I find it amusing that we hold on to so many things that we don't need.

As for me? I'm going to be much more discriminating with the space I allow to be used. Well to be honest I wont have much of a choice. Have you looked at rental prices on Maui?

The Every Day Challenge

Recently I was reminded of the fact that my proficiency level with Java is about on the same level as my proficiency level with Mandarin. To the lay-person I'm fluent, but in reality it seems I only know enough to get myself into and out of some sticky situations.  So I'm going to challenge myself. For the next year I'm going to take some time everyday to write code and speak Chinese.

You might be asking yourself "What does this have to do with a Move to Hawaii blog? I cam here to be inspired."  In my opinion, the decision to move to Hawaii is a life changing decision that has and will continue to touch every aspect of my life. I've had to make a lot of changes to get where I am, and if I want to be successful in my move, even more changes are needed.  For one, I need to make sure that I'm an invaluable member of my team here in Omaha, Nebraska. While a remote worker doesn't use many resources in the daily operations of the home office, there are still added expenses that need to be dealt with. Extra fees from payroll companies as they now have to deal with taxes for another state, added expenses from flying me back to the office every quarter or more as needed and a shiny new laptop which will become my permanent workstation and any number of things I'm sure I haven't thought of.  I don't want them thinking I'm more trouble than I'm worth, so I need to stay at the top of my game. The best way for me to do that is to become a better programmer. I need to evolve and grow beyond a simple set of job requirements. I need to be able to handle any situation that comes my way. So for my own benefit, I'm going to spend a little time each day writing some code. Specifically for a game. I'm not really sure what kind of game yet, but I'm sure it will have something to do with Hawaii. I'd like to make it available so that people can kind of check out my progress, make suggestions and comments. The game I'm imagining will require that I familiarize myself with technologies and libraries that I've had no use for, but will help me to become a more well rounded programmer.

As for Chinese, that's another story. I think as a whole, my Mandarin is solid until I'm speaking to someone who isn't from Beijing. All of the sudden when you throw in a regional dialect and regional slang, I'm lost. I need to work on this as well as my ability to just talk about any subject on the fly. I'm sure that in Hawaii I'll actually run into more Japanese speaking people than Chinese but I feel I need to master Chinese before I dive back into Japanese.  So if I can just spend a few minutes each day actually speaking Chinese, I'm sure my everyday conversation will improve. I think what I'd like to do is supplement my blog posts here with a vlog where I only speak Chinese. Who knows, that could open up a whole new audience and help my language skills to develop at the same time. For the time being, just trust that before I go to bed, I will have spent at least 10 minutes talking about my day using only Chinese.

Its funny a couple of years ago, I set a daily reminder on my calendar. Every day at 9:00 am I'm reminded that I need to do the following: "Move to Hawaii". So everyday I'm reminded of my goal, and honestly I think it has really helped me get as close as I am right now. Everyday no matter what was happening, one of the earliest things I'm reminded of is my goal. So here I am setting another calendar event. Every day at 10:00 pm, "Write some code and speak some Chinese"

Why do you want to move to Hawaii?

Why do you want to move to Hawaii?

For years I operated under the impression that this was just one of those questions that didn’t really need to be answered. In fact nowadays when people ask me, I assume they are doing it tongue-in-cheek.  For example, as the Polar Vortex ripped its way across the country, someone asked me why I was moving to Hawaii...and they were serious.  There is a guy that I work with that on multiple occasions has asked “Why Hawaii?”

It got me thinking. What are people really asking me? Don’t they already know why someone would want to 1) leave the Midwest and 2) move to Hawaii? The answers is both yes and no. I started to realize that real question people were asking isn’t ‘Why do you want to move to Hawaii?’ but ‘Don’t you know [blank] about Hawaii?’ Every question is tainted by the asker’s personal experiences and goals. Every time we ask a question it’s bound to be based on our own point of view. Kind a “Duh” moment if you ask me, but hey I never claimed to be some great thinker.

So the guy at work for example, he asks from his point of view. He is nearing his retirement years and so everything he does is based on the fact that he would like to retire in the next 10 to 15 years. In his opinion the cost of living in Hawaii is a hindrance to a healthy retirement portfolio. You see his plan is to invest and save millions so that he can someday have enough money to move to some tropical paradise. In his opinion I’d be better off picking a place like Costa Rica. It’s tropical, its lush and the cost of living is significantly cheaper. I have no doubt that I could live like a king there. But I have absolutely no interest in living in Costa Rica (no offense to the Costa Rican bureau of travel). I’ll spare you all the other examples but the majority of people that ask ‘Why Hawaii?’ are really asking isn’t it too expensive to live there? Isn’t it too hot to live there? Won’t you get claustrophobic? Are you really going to abandon your friends and family? Will I ever see you again?  All good questions actually. Questions I had to ask myself before I could be sure that moving to Hawaii was the right move for me and my family.

So why do I want to move to Hawaii? Well there are a number of reasons starting with the culture. To live in a place that has been achieved this perfect blend of Asian and Polynesian cultures is kind of a dream come true. Having tried learning Japanese in the past and succeeding in learning Chinese I feel perfectly at home in a place like this. Can’t wait until I can say ridiculously long street names like it’s no big deal. As for the cost of living? In my opinion it will force us to maintain a simple life-style. Like the locals, we will focus of enjoying and appreciating the land. Knowing that soon I’ll be able to see both the mountains and the ocean everyday as I go about my normal routine brightens my day. Will I miss my family? Of course I will, I miss them now. It will just be my job to make sure I keep up with them and stay in regular contact. But people have been striking out on their own since the beginning of time. No reason to stop now.  Who knows, maybe once I’ve reached a place that truly feels like home I’ll “get” it. I’ll want to put down roots, and be content never leaving my bubble. Then it’ll be me asking ‘Why do you want to move to the mainland?’

I'm going to be working on a page that documents and reviews "Moving to Hawaii" blogs. There are several that I used to kind of help motivate me and answer questions for me. No one blog will answer all of your questions about moving to Hawaii but depending on your reasons for wanting to move, some may be better than others. I'll attempt to provide an unbiased review. If you have a suggestion I'll take a look at it. 

Brown Baggin' it

To be obsessed with something means that every aspect of your life revolves around the object of your obsession. Well it should come as no surprise that I'm obsessed with moving to Hawaii. People have told me that before, but I've been able to just brush it off as merely being very detailed in my planning. Well last night I realized that it's official. I'm obsessed. Let me walk you through my revelation.

Last night we went grocery shopping. Like actual grocery shopping. The last year or so it seemed like Hope and I were content running to the store every couple of days to buy ingredients for whatever sounded good on the way home. That is unless we were distracted by Chipotle or some other food joint. I'll go ahead and take credit for this one. "Hey no big deal right? There's money in the bank let's just grab something quick on the way home. I don't feel like cooking do you?" My favorite was, "You worked hard tonight. I'm cooking. It's just unfortunate. I had a taste for [insert favorite Pan-Asian dish here] and we have 1 of the 15 ingredients I need...."  That spur of the moment spending has characterized our shopping habits for at least the last year. As much as I love to be spontaneous, that kind of thinking will leave me and my family living in a van down by the river ocean. Not a horrible future if you ask me, but Hope and Gavin have this thing about "having a roof over our heads" and "feeling safe". We realized the need to get into the habit of planning meals ahead of time. By minimizing quick trips to the grocery store we will be able to keep the already high cost of food from being even higher. Perfect example, this past July while we were on Maui, I got a hankerin' for some grilled teriyaki chicken. Despite spending [censored by Blogger for being obscenely high] at Costco on food for our stay, there were still a few things that we needed. Naturally, I did what everyone tells you not to do. I went down the street to Foodland. I didn't realize that Hawaii had any native vultures until I saw them circling over head.  You know those stories of $8 gallons of milk and $6 boxes of cereal? They originated here.  Even with the kama'aina discount (I'm think it means you've got the look down if locals assume you are one of them, or maybe they saw my pupils dilate when I saw the total.) everything is still expensive.

In the back of my mind, I was always thinking "We can plan for dinner and maybe even breakfast. But I work hard, so if I feel like going out to lunch, I'm going out for lunch". -- Cut to me holding a package of deli meat with sad eyes realizing what I've become.... responsible. Planning ahead? Thinking for the future? Moving to Hawaii has officially invaded every aspect of my life. Responsible Ken would rather save the money he could be spending eating arm-sized burritos, buckets of seafood and the occasional buffet and put it toward the move. As it turns out this will be a significant amount of money saved. Assuming an average $10 a day over the next 20 or so weeks and I could save $1000. Not bad. Enough to make me commit to the brown bag? It'll have to be. However, I can't live off of sandwiches or soup. I need some variety. I also need it to be healthy. What's the point of living in paradise if you are swollen from all the sodium in instant ramen or banquet meals?
I'll have to get creative to keep things interesting. Any suggestions for cheap and healthy lunches? I'd love to hear them.

I find the fountain drowns out the voices in my head begging for fiscal freedom

My Five ....Err... Eight Year Plan

An event five eight years in the making

According to my old blog "Psychotic Infarction", 9/30/2011 was the date that I had set for my family and I to move to Hawaii - a five year plan. I'll wait while you double check today's date. Yeah... I'm a bit late. In fact we didn't even return to Hawaii until almost two years after that date. Now I know several of you are frantically searching for what is sure to be an embarrassing snapshot of my life back in 2006.  Let me save you the trouble. It had one post and 95 views and a total of 5 comments. Two comments from friends and 3 from anonymous strangers trying convincing me that I was an idiot for even dreaming of moving to Hawaii. I learned several things after that. 1) Life is hard (Duh?). When I set that date, my wife had recently become a stay at home mom.  It didn’t take long before I realized the true cost of that worthwhile investment. Supporting a family on one income tends to change your perspective on a lot of things. 2) Turns out you can't just declare you are going to do something, not follow through, and expect results. Crazy right? 3) There is no shortage of haters. People who literally hate your dreams and aspirations. Especially when it comes to moving to Hawaii (or leaving Nebraska as I've recently found). You have the "Good Lifers" as I like to call them. The people born and raised in Nebraska home of "The Good Life" and insist that you'll never be able to make it anywhere else. I may be exaggerating slightly. Obviously there are many benefits to raising a family in Nebraska. You also have the "Paradise Fear Mongers". A group of people so bent on keeping newcomers out of Hawaii that they literally troll forums (it was 2006 remember forums?) and blog posts looking for people expressing a desire to move to Hawaii and then beating them over the head with tales of over-priced milk , killer geckos and meth’d out Haole Hunters.  

Admittedly, I got a little discouraged. The naysayers had some very good points as it turns out. I wasn't remotely prepared for a relocation to Hawaii. Not only was it expensive, but there was (is) a severe shortage of jobs that pay a living wage.  Remember A Beautiful Mind? Well that was me, crunching numbers for days on end trying to figure out a way to make it work. One night, I had a realization. I cracked the code. I only had to move the cheapest part of the island where access to necessities is limited and the threat of volcanic activity was very real oh and work 2 full time jobs with an average of 4 hours of sleep a night. It didn’t take long for me to realize that it just wasn’t going to happen.  So that dream was put on a shelf. You know the shelf in your house where things go to die? A once-treasured gift loses its luster and is put up high to only be occasionally acknowledged with awkward side glances.  Eventually the guilt gets to you. So you push it back even further on the shelf or get rid of it. For a while my mental shelf worked. I got so busy taking care of my family that I really never had time to think about my failed dream. 9/30/2011 didn't even register on the radar. How could it? Between working two jobs, learning Chinese and keeping a toddler from consuming everyday household cleaning products I was tapped out.

So how did I go from not even considering a relocation to literally counting down the days? To be honest I don't really know. It’s as if my subconscious kept at it always looking for the formula that would crack the code. A couple of years ago I was fed up with my job. I had a horrible supervisor who didn't understand how to manage a technical resource and I just couldn't take it anymore. I came home one day with a box of my stuff from work and told my wife, "If I don't get a new job in two weeks, we are moving to Phoenix." Sure enough I found a great job about a week later. It would seem I was not being allowed to leave Omaha. In fact some friends and family even suggested that this was a clear indicator that I was stuck here. A year later some things started clicking into place. Here I was with a job that I enjoyed, a job that challenged me and not to mention had an okay salary. My wife went back to work and I quit my second job, all of the sudden I could think clearly. After years of neglect it was time to dust off that little mental shelf. What did I find? It wasn't broken, it wasn't lost. My old dream of living in Hawaii was right there waiting for me to just ask the right questions. I didn’t even realize what I was doing at the time. In passing I’d ask my manager questions like “What’s our policy on working from home…occasionally?” A little more time would pass and here I am asking more questions. “Have we ever had a remote employee? What if I were to live in another state?” “What if that state is say…. and I’m just pulling one off the top of my head… Hawaii?" Boom. That was it.  Management considered it, and then with a little more time they considered it some more. Finally they agreed to it. Forgetting moving back to Phoenix, just like that my dream of moving to Hawaii became very real.

So why are you here? The purpose of this blog is document my family's journey to Hawaii. I haven't written in years so I apologize in advance as I will be a little rusty. If you are like me you are tired of reading blogs that don't relate to you in the slightest. I've read blogs where people detail their struggles in moving. By struggles I mean deciding which of their three mainland homes they are keeping and which are they selling to purchase their new home in Hawaii. Or smart people who have been saving for a decade and have a year’s salary sitting in the bank allowing them to spend the first 6 months on the island reading books on the beach. Not to take anything away from their accomplishment, they made a decision and followed through with it. Congrats. No this blog is for people that despite all of the things working against them refuse to give up on their dream. There is also a good chance that my situation wont relate to yours either. After all, not many people can simply decide that they want to be a remote employee 5,000 miles away from your home office. If that doesn’t do it for you, then just come for my perspective on working remotely, java development, learning Mandarin and other assorted geekery. I’ll even have guest posts from Hope and Gavin just to keep things interesting.