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Skainverse
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Name: Charlie
Country: United States
State: Virginia
Birthday: 7/7/1981
Gender: Male
Interests: Travel (air and auto), Languages, People, Cooking (and EATING)
Expertise: Naval Aviator, Tailhooker par excellence.
Occupation: Military
Industry: Other
Message: message meEmail: email me
AIM:  Skainverse
Member Since:
11/5/2003
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| Here's links to more pictures of recent events. Check the link in the previous post for updates as well.
Korea Pics:
http://duke.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2041929&l=1fa44&id=1303845
Christmas pics
http://duke.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2041928&l=5014c&id=1303845 | | |
| Haven't been updating this, as you can see. I've been keeping a steady stream of pictures uploaded on www.thefacebook.com. For those not hip to facebook, here's a direct link to my photos.
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| Happy New Year all! I hope Santa was kinda, the fireworks were righteous, and the hangover was fleeting for all of you.
Santa got me a lot of things. Mama sent me a "12 days of Christmas" series from Mr. and Mrs. S. Claus. It had all sorts of nifty stuff like "a brass candle christmas tree" (with a little partridge) a "drum" of nuts (for drummers drumming) and my favorite, fuzzy massaging slippers (for all the leaping lords' and dancing ladies' aching feet). I sent the fam some goodies from Osan, which they seemed to like.
I finally put something in the gaping ikebana nook in my tatami living room. Its kind of a western theme presented in Japanese style - typically you'll find Japanese kakejyuku (tapestries) and heirloom swords on display. You'll see I mounted some nice tapestries of pretty non-japanese locations. On the right, the Japanese sword normally displayed is replaced by a US Navy sword. Sitting adjacent to tthe sword is a crane folded from a fortune I received at the Asakusa shrine, which predicts excellent luck in my future. Hora:
Probably the best gift came over the New Year, when Rob, Norie, Emi, Youngjin and I got together for some Tokyo ryokou. When a bunch of old friends were all riding my local Ebina bus 12000 miles away from Durham, there was a real surreal joy. Youngjin was doing a whirlwind visit of Japan, so we took her on a bus tour of Tokyo. We hit up the Tokyo Tower, Asakusa, the Emperor's Palace, and Ginza. Check out the pictures by clicking here.
I'm running Physical Readiness at the squadron now, which means I get up at 0500 every weekday to work out and get the fatbodies at my squadron in shape. The Navy came out with a new instruction last summer. If you fail 3 Physical Readiness Tests in a 4 year period, they HAVE to kick you out of the Navy. You can fail the test by not doing enough push ups, sit ups, or not running a mile and a half fast enough. In addition, you can simply just be FAT. The standard is less than 23% body fat for men and 33% for women. One of my friends looked at this, realized he was out of standards, and went on the South Beach Diet. He went from 230 lbs to under 200 in 3 months. He's still keeping it off too. So I'm trying it out. Day 3 and I'm already 4 pounds lighter. Its not too hard either. If I ever see my six pack I'll send you pictures.
Looks like I'll be losing even more weight now that I have to bike to work for a little while. I just got into the first car wreck of my life yesterday. A japanese lady T-boned me at an intersection. I'm okay, she's okay, but our cars are not. Until I get a new axle and left side door, I'm pedaling to work. Guess it'll be good in the long run for my health. In the meantime its a little bit of a squeeze on the old wallet. I have to eat the cost of a couple of bullet train tickets, as I was planning to go skiing up in Nagano with Rob and Norie. Plus there's the money in the wreck. The shrine at Asakusa predicted excellent luck for me - No one got hurt, so I guess it came through!
I'll talk to you later, villians. Matane. | | |
| Hey everyone! I got back from the Kitty Hawk's short winter cruise around japan last week, so its finally time to play catch-up on Xanga.
Japan is fun. One of the first things I did back in August was climb Mt Fuji, aka Fuji-san or "the Fooj." Since I had already done it back in 2001, the decision to go up a 2nd time was pretty dumb. Climbing mountains sucks. But a bunch of my bros in Det FIVE went up too, so I was able to get this righteous picture of all of us at the summit:
From left to right: Swamy, Me, Jason, Bob (The "MO"), Kris, and Chris. Rock on, heavy metal.
I have a tight house here in Ebina, Japan. I'll post pictures later, but essentially I live like a king out in town.
The Kitty Hawk pulled out (again) in October and cruised around Japan until the beginning of December. I spent a lot of that time in Okinawa operating out of Kadena AFB. That made me pretty hard to get ahold of unless you know my keitai denwa number and email. Okinawa doesn't have as much going on as Tokyo, but it sure is a heck of a lot warmer! Cheap scuba equipment too, so I picked up a lot of gear there!
I got to hit up Hong Kong for a night this cruise. The story behind that is kinda funny, but the kind of operational stuff I don't think I should post on a website. The end result is that I got a righteous evening in Lan Kwai Fong! Hong Kong is really fun, and even more of a melting pot and a great night spot than Roppongi in Tokyo!
Back in Atsugi after cruise, my primary mission was to organize a righteous Xmas party for Det Five. This we had last Wednesday. It featured prime rib, and open bar for 5 hours, and giveaways of a bunch of righteous gifts like a PSP and an iPod nano. A good time was had by all.
This weekend is a four day off reward for working had last cruise. To get some nice pictures to show you guys, I took a higaeri (day trip) down to the beach at Enoshima. There's a big aquarium there that has some righteous exhibits.
  
 
There's also an old style (for Japan) electric train called the Eno-den that takes you to a lot of shrine locations in Kamakura, like the Daibutsu (big buddha) in Hase.
Enoshima has some good restaurants and bars too. I ended up eating at this place called Chianti. Not surprisingly, it has good chianti. The spaghetti and mentaiko pizza is really awesome, and their blood orange sherbert made me writhe in tasty bliss.
Well, hopefully this post will tide you over for a bit, villians! I'll TTYL! Happy holidays!
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| Shibaraku desu ne, villians. Japan has been fun so far. Sorry about the lack of updates - no computer, no internet at my place and I'm working my butt off at Det 5. For example, I've been at work all day today on a Saturday. Plus I had to get drunk with my command last night too. Oh, the pain. But before I jet out of here, let me give a shout out to all my fans. It sucks that the time difference and my lack of chat-access keeps me out of the loop with you cats in Amelika. But on a positive note, the Duke representation over here in the Kanto plain is phenomenal. Its crazy who I've bumped into out here. In Tokyo I've seen Take, Rob, Norie, Melissa, Yvonne, Luke (my freshmen year next door neighbor), and even a bunch of Duke people in the class after me that I had never met before! I even bumped into my cousin Chris up in Misawa. Crazy small world.
Gah, well my computer and household goods shipment will finally make it here the middle of this month, so maybe then you can look forward to more regular updates. Right now I smell. Bad. So I better shitsureishimasu and wash my filthy body. Tata. | | |
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