Gene Higa 2011 Spearfishing tournament

My dive partner and I entered the Gene Higa Memorial dive tournament this past sunday. The tournament is a memorial to a fallen diver, Gene Higa, as well as all the other fallen divers out there. It takes place on the north shore of Oahu at mokuleia beach and the boundaries stretch across mokuleia. Its a "biggest fish" tournament so everyone is out there looking for the big hogs.


We didn't really have a game plan going into this tournament, as it was the first for both of us. We swam out far enough pass the mokuleia drop off to where it was about 100-120ft depth. We dropped a flasher system that i made, and we chummed sabas for hours. We were lacking luck that day and nothing came in. As we drifted back to the drop off, i shot a 6.5lb uku. I was stoked on the uku as it had potential to place. Later i found the seven eleven crab. The crab was huge!. Never before have I obtained, let alone seen a  7-11 crab in the water. It took several drops to free and grab the crab out of this giant cave in was hiding in. The claws on the crab were huge and I was a little hesitated when grabbing him.

After bringing it back to the weigh in, is when i realized how large it really was. Everyone was congratulating me on the catch, both the uku as well as the crab. The crab weighed 3.4 lbs and beat out the old state record 7-11 crab by .3 lbs.  Unfortunately their was no largest crab category :P 

Overall it was a great experience for my first tournament, and all you other divers out their..... were gonna be ready next tournament, the fall shoot out is on the home ground. Gonna be exciting!

The Art of Bonsai

The other day I took some of my friends to see my old teacher of Bonsai. My friends were starting to become interested in the hobby of gardening and they wanted to see different styles and ways to grow plants. 

For a quick overview, Bonsai is the art of maintaining, trimming, and creating the perception of a large tree in a small scale. Bonsai plants are usually very old and are pruned and shaped regularly to maintain their beauty and to mold them into little trees. From what i believe, Bonsai is an art that came out of Japan. Check out the site at the bottom for more info on the art.

I took a bonsai class a while ago and i told them about the art. Intrigued with the idea they wanted to learn more. We decided it would be cool to go to my old teacher, Walter Liew's , garden in waimanalo to check out his collection of bonsai trees. It was a nice visit and my friends were happy that they got check out his work.

These trees are very old, and have had alot of time put into them. I really do appreciate this art form and plan on making some of my own bonsai trees that hopefully i will still have when I'm older. If anyone is interested in checking this garden out, it's called the Dragon Garden. Their is more info at this site http://dragongardennursery.com/gallery.html.
 Mahalo and thank you for keeping in touch with Onemoredrophawaii,
Kaoru Lovett

New Six Man Canoe For Le Jardin School

High school paddling season has been over for a couple months now. After coaching Le Jardin's junior varsity team with a friend, i have gained much more appreciation for the school as well as the sport. This year was the second year that LJA has had a paddling team, and they are growing fast. The other night, Le Jardin held an award ceremony for the school sports.
As coaches, we went to give all of our boys awards and congratulate them on a good season and wishe for more to come. At the end of the ceremony, one of the varsity paddlers Mike Dowsett's, father Jay Dowsett revealed to the school a brand new canoe that they had been working on. Jay and seven of the seniors on the paddling team had been working on a new Malia canoe for the school. This was especially awarding due to the fact that the school had no canoe's in its possession prior to this one.
I was lucky enough to get to see this new Malia and i have to say that it is one of the nicest six man canoes, that i have ever seen. The craftsmanship is excellent, and the overall finish look to it is amazing.

The Malia is the series of boats that all ILH schools must use in order to race in their division.

The seven seniors built this canoe from their hearts, and in doing so they decided to put some symbolism into the canoe. Each senior stamped their handprints onto the seat in which they normally sit. The Le Jardin community is very lucky to be blessed with this beautiful boat.

Finally over with the projects!

These past couple of weeks, I've been jam packed with a huge project as well as a portfolio assignment in my architecture class at the University of Manoa. I'm finishing up my second semester of my first year in the architecture program. I spent last week at school doing nothing but sketching, rendering, and editing work. With many sleepless nights, and much anticipation to get back into the water, I'm extremely relived as well as glad to be able to say that it is over.!

The project was a presentation that we had to create on one of the buildings on the UH campus. I choose the newest building on campus, the center of Microbiology- C-More Hale. With this building, we were assigned to come up with, a floor plan, an elevation, a section, a site plan, two vignettes, two models, and an abstraction. It was alot of work, but i gotta say it was an enduring challenge and rather fullfilling too.

planar model

 These are a couple of pics of the two models. The models are similar in the sense that they were made from the same abstraction. One is a planar model (made with planes and thin pieces rather then masses) while the other is a volumetric model (made with masses and thicker pieces). Both models were made with bass wood.

volumetric model

planar model

planar model

These are two pages out of my portfolio, covering the drafting done for the final project.