DAY 1 on the DIAMOND PRINCESS

This blog site has been posting daily now for 18 years.

• Has been visited by 221 countries, and the reason why this is more than the 193 countries in the United Nations is that there are entities like Antarctica, and smaller territories that have their own domain.
• Not sure when I first reached 1 million total visitors, but I do know that for the first 15 years or so the average viewers/day was around 500, so I would guess that this site took around 7 years to hit one million.  Now up past 6 million total.
• However, during the past two days, the number of visitors reached 147,720 and 123,579, so for reasons I can't explain this site went viral.  

For long-time readers, I have tended to focus on certain topics on a given week day.

• Sunday:  spiritual, religion, reflection on life, etc.
• Monday: global topics, with some thoughts about what is to come during this week.
• Tuesday:  nostalgic, linking with the past, etc.
• Wednesday:  sci-tech and the future.
• Thursday:  health, nutrition, and the like.
• Friday:  thoughts on the coming weekend.
• Saturday:  entertainment, sports, etc.

After being away on a trip for 50 days, I feel reflective and returned with a higher appreciation for my life.

• I am 85, still travel a lot, golf on occasion, try to walk as much possible, and have found my final cocoon, which is 15 Craigside (the greenish one to the left), a seniors' community located in Honolulu, where I was born.  Having moved here 12 years ago from 2101 Craigside (the tall brown one) a condo, where I lived in a fabulous penthouse for 32 years, this means I've been on this same corner of Nuuanu Avenue now for 44 years.
• 
  I've now been retired from the University of Hawaii for 27 years.
• I joined the engineering faculty 54 years ago in 1972, which means I worked as a professor and administrator for 27 years.  
• I still maintain an office on the Manoa Campus, so have not totally escaped from academia.
• Just before leaving on my trip, I had a chance to sit next to Dean of the School of Ocean and Earth Science Technology, Skip Fletcher, and caught up with news of our school.
• As Director Emeritus, I also have free parking on campus.

Was born and grew up in Kakaako, Honolulu, Hawaii.  

• Never left the state until I went away to Stanford University.  At graduation in 1962, my closest classmates mostly joined the first year of JFKs Peace Corps, something I was not all that enthused about, but compromised by returning home to help the sugar industry survive.

• 
  Spent seven years in the toughest job I've ever had in sugar plantations on the Big Island and Kauai.  While at the Kilauea Sugar Company, an old man mentioned that he knew my grandfather, who was buried up on a hill above the town.  After I retired, I made a thorough roots search and learned that he was from Utashinai, Japan, was sent to the USA for some advanced schooling, stopped by Kauai to build the first hydroelectric facility on the island, but just before it was commissioned in 1906, fell at the site and died at the age of 33.  Somehow, had gotten married, and my father was born.  I visited the hydro plant a hundred years after it was built, and was still pumping out around 3 MW of electricity.
• 
  The oldest company in Hawaii, C. Brewer, decided to send me to graduate school in 1979, but only to Louisiana State University, which had the sole sugar program in the world.  I worked out an arrangement to stay for a PhD in biochemical engineering, and the next section reports on my academic life.

Reflecting on my period of campus activity:

• Joined as an assistant professor of Engineering in 1972, and around the time of the first energy crisis in 1973, my primary research topic was in geothermal engineering.
• I then became part of the Hawaii Natural Energy Institute when it was created in 1974.

• 
  Google AI reports that I worked with a Nobel Laureate one summer.

Patrick Takahashi spent a summer at the NASA Ames Research Center working on SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) in 1976. During this assignment, he helped advance a concept to directly detect extrasolar planets based on suggestions by physicist Charles Townes. [1]

• 
  As my PhD dissertation research involved designing a tunable laser before one could be built, I spent two summers on laser fusion.  Again from Google AI.

Patrick Takahashi spent two summer assignments working on laser fusion at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory shortly after completing an assignment at the NASA Ames Research Center in 1976.[1]

• 
  At the end of my second stint at Livermore, I was asked to join the staff of U.S. Senator Spark Matsunaga in DC.
• Was the Senate staffer linking with the House to pass the wind energy budget.  House lead Tom Gray went on to become president of the American Wind Energy Association
• Drafted the first Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion R&D legislation,
• Drafted the first Senate Hydrogen R&D legislation, which on to become the Matsunaga Hydrogen Act.
• Was also the Senate staff lead for the Deep Seabed Hard Minerals Act.

I then returned to the University of Hawaii in 1982.

• Became director of the Hawaii Natural Energy Institute (HNEI) in 1983.
• That same year, Dean of Engineering Paul Yuen and I created the Pacific International Center for High Technology Research (PICHTR).  Budgeting difficulties at the University of Hawaii convinced us to make PICHTR a not-for-profit organization in 1985, with an off-campus office.  Still active, 43 years after formation.

• 
  HNEI became the leading renewable resources organization in the Pacific, and served as the Department of Energy's Hydrogen Research and Training Center with the Florida Solar Energy Center, Department Interior's Mineral Research Center with the University of Mississippi and National Science Foundation's Marine Bioproducts Research Center.
• During my final decade of activity at the University of Hawaii, State Senator Richard Matsuura and I created a Blue Revolution program.  He had previously worked for Norman Borlaug, father of the Green Revolution.

I retired at the end of 1999 and, as great as my life was during my 27 years with the University of Hawaii, the past 27 years of retirement have been better.

• Wrote three books.
• Went around the world almost ten times.
• Started this blog site in 2008.

• 
  Wrote more than a hundred articles for the Huffington Post.  Among the more interesting ones were:
• Geoengineering of Climate Change
• What About Hydrogen?
• Why Do We Spend So Much on National Security?
• The Dawn of the Blue Revolution
• The Ultimate Ocean Ranch
• Is There An Option More Promising Than The Plug-In Electric Vehicle?
• America, Don't Copy...Build Something Better
• The Blue Revolution
• Extraterrestrial Intelligence?
• What Is The Best Biofuel?
• The Carbon Dioxide Credit Program?
• The Future of Sustainable Aviation
• The 10% Solution to Peace
• The Sustainable Expo for 2020
• The Great Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami:  The Aftermath
• Star Power for Humanity

In case you were interested, Dara of Bulgaria won the Eurovision Song Contest singing Bangaranga.

To close, I took a walk this morning to the roof of 15 Craigside, plus some other photos of future activities here.  A beautiful day in Honolulu.

Violet playing the piano.

Paper carps are flown in Japan and Hawaii for Boys day.

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