We arrived in Jakarta International Airport in the afternoon. Aliya was one month shy of 2 years old and handled the flight very well. She was very cranky waiting in the line at customs and cried a lot there. Even though her mother is Indonesian, the Indonesian government will not allow Aliya to have an Indonesian passport because I am an American. It’s a shame that she will always be considered an outsider in her mothers home...

We’d been planning our trip to Indonesia for some time and all of the events were coming quickly together toward the end of September, 2008.  My wife’s US visa was set after over a year of trips to the pseudo American embassies (the American Institute in Taiwan) in Kaohsiung and Taipei.    My daughter was also nearly 2 years old, which was a concern because 2 year olds fly for adult fair and children less than 2 get a...

We’ve been enjoying ourselves this summer, and this trip fishing at Captree State Park was no exception.  We went on the 4PM – 8PM fluke fishing boat and managed to catch some nice fish.  The bad part of it was none of the fluke measured greater than 20 inches so we had to throw them all back.  Luckily Eddie managed to get a passing cocktail blue fish so we had something to bring home besides a few crabs that were caught in...

I went out for a few hours on my friends new boat tonight. We cruised around Northport Bay and caught a gorgeous sunset.

Landing Avenue Park is an extremely small yet extremely cute little park located on right as Landing Avenue crosses the Nissequogue River in Smithtown. The road becomes extremely narrow so use caution while crossing. It is a nice place to take your kids (the playground is pretty nice) and enjoy a natural river environment. According to a plaque placed on a rock within the park, in 1688, Richard Smythe, the founder of Smithtown, donated...