MY LIFE IS JUST ABOUT TO CHANGE

We all have had life-changing moments, and beginning tomorrow I will return to work for the rest of the year after 21 years of blissful retirement. I will still board the Island Princess on 19January2022 to begin my world cruise.

Some of my sudden past transitions include:

Leaving Hawaii for the very first time in 1958 to begin college at Stanford University.
Starting my academic life in 1972 at the University of Hawaii, where my presence in my office during the summer of next year will mean I will have been on the Manoa Campus for 50 years.

I was, however, away once from 1979 to 1982 working for Senator Spark Matsunaga in DC, where I drafted the original legislation for hydrogen and ocean thermal energy conversion.

So what is it that I will do for the next six months? All that will unfold over the next few days in this blog.

Today, I will focus on my final weekend of dabbling for the rest of the year, where I went out of my way to do what I have mostly been doing since I retired at the end of 1999...almost nothing. Mind you, I did publish three books and wrote for The Huffington Post during these past two decades, so it was not all frivolous.

So anyway, everything was triggered by my changing TV stations Saturday afternoon, when I noticed that the final half an hour of Sleepless in Seattle was playing. I never, never just watch a movie at this stage, but did this for just about the first time. Here were Tom Hanks, Ross Malinger and Meg Ryan on their way to the top of the Empire State Building, when on comes Tammy Wynette's Stand By Your Man. A snippet, but just enough to change my life that day. I had recently completed viewing all 16 episodes of a South Korean series on Netflix, Something in the Rain, and each one had at least one full rendering of that song. Just one tune can make a difference in what you next do.

In the movie, mention is made of a 1957 film, An Affair to Remember, starring Deborah Kerr and Cary Grant. Yes, they met on a cruise. That plot also used the top of the Empire State Building as a signal moment. Rotten Tomatoes audiences gave it a good 87 rating. However, the original was called Love Affair, with Irene Dunne and Charles Boyer, where reviewers scored it 86.

I was thus at a crossroad after dinner. More nostalgia? Do I next go on to Irene Dunne, perhaps in Roberta, where she sings Smoke Gets in Your Eyes? But then, I had recently recorded King Solomon's Mine, rated 92 by RT reviewers, starring Deborah Kerr and Steward Granger. I'm an aficionado of this film, for I've seen four of the five versions and a couple of related efforts. So on to the 1950 Kerr movie. I then remembered I had the CD for the 1956 The King and I, where Deborah Kerr sang again. Of course, her voice was that of Marnie Nixon, for this and An Affair to Remember. Kerr passed away in 2007 at the age of 86. I went to bed late last night.

So tomorrow, something a lot more technological. Progress on the Blue Revolution. But to close, the first two photos I took with a brand new Sony RX100 VII. My view from where I sit cranking out these postings:

A NEXT COVID SUBVARIANT?

By now most know that the Omicron BA.5 subvariant has become the dominant infectious agent, now accounting for more than 80% of all COVID-19 cases. Very few are aware that a new one, BA.4.6, is sneaking in and steadily rising, now accounting for 13% of sequenced samples . However, as BA.4.6 has emerged from BA.4, while there is uncertainty, the scientific sense is that the latest bivalent booster targeting BA.4 and BA.5 should also be effective for this next threat. One concern is that Evusheld--the only monoclonal antibody authorized for COVID prevention in immunocompromised individuals--is not effective against BA.4.6. Here is a reference as to what this means. A series of two injections is involved. Evusheld was developed by British-Swedish company AstraZeneca, and is a t ixagevimab co-packaged with cilgavimab . More recently, Los Angeles County reported on subvariant BA.2.75.2 . which Tony Fauci termed suspicious and troublesome. This strain has also been spreading in

Part 3: OUR NEXT AROUND THE WORLD ODYSSEY

Before I get into my third, and final, part of this cruise series, let me start with some more newsworthy topics. Thursday was my pandemic day for years. Thus, every so often I return to bring you up to date on the latest developments. All these subvariants derived from that Omicron variant, and each quickly became dominant, with slightly different symptoms. One of these will shock you. There has been a significant decline in the lost of taste and smell. From two-thirds of early patients to now only 10-20% show these symptoms. JN.1, now the dominant subvariant, results in mostly mild symptoms. However, once JN.1 infects some, there seem to be longer-lasting symptoms. Clearly, the latest booster helps prevent contracting Covid. A competing subvariant, BA.2.86, also known as Pirola , a month ago made a run, but JN.1 prevailed. No variant in particular, but research has shown that some of you will begin to lose hair for several months. This is caused by stress more than anythi

HONOLULU TO SEATTLE

The story of the day is Hurricane Milton, now a Category 4 at 145 MPH, with a track that has moved further south and the eye projected to make landfall just south of Sarasota. Good news for Tampa, which is 73 miles north. Milton will crash into Florida as a Category 4, and is huge, so a lot of problems can still be expected in Tampa Bay with storm surge. If the eye had crossed into the state just north of Tampa, the damage would have been catastrophic. Milton is a fast-moving storm, currently at 17 MPH, so as bad as the rainfall will be over Florida, again, a blessing. The eye will make landfall around 10PM EDT today, and will move into the Atlantic Ocean north of Palm Bay Thursday morning. My first trip to Seattle was in June of 1962 just after I graduated from Stanford University. Caught a bus. Was called the Century 21 Exposition . Also the Seattle World's Fair. 10 million joined me on a six-month run. My first. These are held every five years, and there have only been

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