You are currently browsing the category archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ category.
This morning I found a dead baby gecko under the table I work on. It was so tiny! On the opposite end yesterday while I was working on HIFF fliers I heard a lawnmower buzzing from far away. Then I realized that’s not a lawn mower! I walked to the back door and there it was a GIGANTIC bee that was as big as a gob stopper. I tried to take it’s picture and totally missed it.
I’m getting my haircut tomorrow. I’m nervous as hair is such an issue for me. Sarah at HIFF recommended 2 places beyond the two that I’d found from user reviews etc.
Hair Salons in Honolulu & Kailua
- Paul Brown
- J Salon
- W Salon
- Salon Blanc
- Chop
- The Fix
I’m going with Salon Blanc and we’ll see how it goes. I was talking to Sean at HIFF and he said that he’s getting his haircut on Saturday and he goes to the same person that Barack Obama’s sister goes to. Sean has great hair. It’s like Sean Cassidy circa Hardy Boys (sort of shorter). Which is coincidental because my hair is in an awkward growing out stage I was going to tell the person I’m going to that a Dorothy Hammil-ish style might work for me.
Two great recipes:
Macadamia Nut Crusted Mahi Mahi
Hawaiian Word of the Day, from answers.com:
In Hawaii a calabash is a large serving bowl. It is usually made from a hardwood, rather than from the Calabash Gourd as in Maroon cultures. It is used on a buffet table or in the middle of the dining table. The use of the calabash in Hawaii has led to terms like “Calabash Family” or “Calabash Cousins”. It indicates that an extended family has grown up around shared meals and close friendships. Food is very important in modern Hawaiian culture. “Komo E Kaukau”, meaning “come and eat”, it is the most expected greeting in a Hawaiian home.
This morning I woke up missing New York and feeling a little blue. But we got ourselves together mid-morning pulled out our copy of Oahu Revealed and headed to Maunawili Falls for a hike. The trailhead starts at Maunawili Road and Kalewina Road only a handful of miles away from our home. I had a great time but it was definitely a little harder than the previous hikes we had done (Diamondhead and Manoa). The main obstacles are crossing streams on slippery boulders (4 each way) and inclines that are slippery (mud), and a bit steep at times. I said to K at one point ‘my heart is beating so fast I can hear it in my ears’. But I’m also out of shape.
Things I would make sure to have on our next hike:
- a good walking stick
- good hiking shoes
- bug spray
- water
- knee brace (because I have bad knees)
At the end of the hour long hike is a seimming hole with a waterfall. There were a whole mess of local kids there. Alot of them ran past us up the mountain. Mostly boys with their shorts hanging down total indifferent to their butt cleavage. One of them was carrying a little knapsack with a radio playing inside. They were loud and rambunctious but totally fine. On the way up the mountain I would hear a large ‘boom’ like a bomb. and when we arrived at the water fall i realized it was the kids catapulting themselves off of a cliff and landing canon ball style in the water. it was impressive.
There were many pretty things to see on the way up but it was hard to see them because I was looking down all the time.
It was very satisfying. I wish it was possible to do things like that everyday. The only thing I would change is that I would bring a bathing suit and I wish the swimming hole wasn’t so exclusive. Oh and that I could swim.
Today was by my definition in the sidebar a real 319 day. I took care of a lot of things as well as came to understand alot of bureaucratic garbage that had been dogging me. The issues I solved today:
Mobile me
I switched to Apple’s Mobile me email service two months ago before we came to Hawaii. It was brand new and had ALOT of bugs. I basically couldn’t sync my computer with Mobile me. Apple was horrendous to me. I say this being an Apple super fan. The service costs about $80 a year. I have aol, gmail, and rocketmail accounts. I didn’t really need Mobile me but their marketing campaign of all your ‘things’ happily coexisting together and accessible anywhere on a fluffy cyber cloud totally won me over. So I paid the price even though I had just quit my job. In the couple of days before we flew out I frantically tried to work out the kinks. I had sent an exit email to all of my contacts using my me.com address as my new address. First of all mobile me only provides support through articles on apple.com and when you’re totally desperate online chat with a representative. I was on hold for two days once for 2 hours another for 4 hours. Granted Mobile me had just come out. The representatives had no clue. They referred me back to the articles and forums I had pored through that lead me to chat support. After that I called Apple care and even went to the genius bar to no avail. They all had no clue. It was staggering. After a few days the me.com website was operating properly and synced all my information. I got an email while in Hawaii from Apple saying that they were crediting mobile me members with a month free service. It wasn’t great but I could send and receive webmail and from my iphone. The only remaining problem was the mail application on my computer.
I have Tiger which retained the .mac program which mobile me was an update to. I could recieve mail but I couldn’t send mail. I really didn’t want to deal with Apple so I just let it slide. This morning I said ‘no more!’. I decided to confront it head on. And after screaming at people (not very Aloha) for about an hour I finally got a tech person to agree to help me without charging me. Initially they insited on chrging me $50 for help because I hadn’t purchaced the extended Applecare warranty for $250. I screamed so loud that I was worried the neighbors would come thinking that I was being murdered. It took a couple of times calling them using this method to actually produce results. When I would yell at someone they would put me on hold and never come back. Eventually I got someone and said ‘let me preface this conversation by saying that if you don’t find a way to help me on this call I’m going to spend my whole day writing user reviews about how crappy your products are and how I didn’t get any help because I didn’t pay the extra money for Apple to be nice to me.’ This seemed to work. I got a real tech person on the phone.
I am a huge fan of IT people. I love how they think and how they solve problems. My admiration for them is similar to how I love film and theater production people. They know their shit and they get it done. Until Dustin, the tech support person at Apple that helped me, all the other people were flacks. Do nothing, know nothing, bureaucratic, out-sourced hacks that speak in some indistinguishable accent and sound like a robot. I HATE THOSE PEOPLE. They rarely solve anything. So Dustin got on the phone and stayed on the phone with me for over an hour–maybe even an hour and half. When he couldn’t figure it out he told me so and he said he had to do research and call me back. Unlike the gentleman at the SOHO Genius Bar who was so obviously not a genius because he decided that it was my operating system and I needed to wipe it clean and reinstall. Oh the Hubris! I digress. An hour later Dustin the Apple IT angel called me back, wiped the application clean and walked me through adding mobile me as an IMAP account which worked like a dream. He’s a stand-up dude in a sea of people getting paid to do nothing. NOTE to APPLE when you stink you really stink.
HEALTH Insurance
I’m on a COBRA health insurance plan. The original plan was no great shakes so I have been considering switching to an individual health plan. My boyfriend has great insurance through SAG which I learned is basically Blue Cross Blue Shield. So after being lead around by the nose calling unhelpful brokers and a whole mess of numbers from different websites I finally found Gerry at Empire Blue Cross Blue Shield. And he broke it all down for me. What I learned is that unless you are RICH it is not easy to get a comprehensive individual health insurance plan in this country. He outlined three plans for me and though I’m not going with any of them I thought Healthy New York was the most interesting:
Healthy New York
state subsidized 263.86 a month
incoming gross monthly has to be under $2167
must be able to prove that you worked one day in the past year
IPhone App TEXT GURU
I downloaded a new app the other day called text guru. I find it to be really great. It is a wireless filesharing application for the Iphone like Airsharing but you can edit and SEND documents from your IPhone. Totally great. So my problem was that my firewall was blocking the port that Text Guru was using. The chat support walked me through how to make an exception in System Preferences and allow acces to a specific port. I didn’t know how to do that before! So basically for the other do-dos out there like me you go to: System Preferences>Sharing> firewall and from there you click ‘new’ choose ‘other’ and create an exception. It took 2 seconds and my text guru began connecting beautifully.
Mold on Concrete
It’s been raining like crazy here in Oahu. Our patio which is made of concrete bricks was staring to get a gross green sheen which I can only imagine is mold or fungus. I looked up some ways that you could clean concrete and found all kinds of concrete cleaning products. I thought well I guess I’ll have to wait for a trip to Home Depot. But it kept bothering me to an OCD level. So I gabbed a bucket and clorox. I mixed in hot water and just scrubbed the patio. It didn’t work amazingly but it worked well enough. At least I don’t feel like we’re living in a slimy aquarium tank’s pirate treasure chest.
Corn on the Cob
I made corn on the cob to go with dinner tonight for the fist time.
- I husked the corn.
- brought a big pot to a rolling boil
- added Salt
- put the corn in and let it cook for exactly 7 minutes
- took a big pad of butter and coated the ears thoroughly before serving.
It was delish.
Favorite Hawaii made sweets available at Foodland:
- Bubbys Homemade Ice Cream and Desserts (mochi ice cream)
- Roselani Chocolate Macadamia Nut ice cream
- Ted’s Chocolate haupia cake
Things I’m going to check out as soon as we get home for the holidays:
- Permanent Brunch 95 First Ave., New York, NY 10003 post–Tasting Room Colin Alevras and Tillman’s Lesly Bernard open this project dedicated to the weekend meal all day every day, and introduce what must be New York’s first artisanal bacon bar.
- Kurve 87 Second Ave. , New York, NY 10003
- Priti Organic Spa 35 E. 1st St., New York, NY 10003
Followed by a pate bonanza at Marlow & Sons with Mary.
Went out to Wilder Ave yesterday for my first sit-in with Bamboo Ridge’s (bambooridge.com) event planning committee. The small press has been dedicated for 30 years to showcasing and publishing local Hawaiian literature including the work of wonderful writers like Lois Ann Yamanaka and my friend Wing Tek Lum. This coming December will be their first big birthday bash and fundraiser honoring over 30 of the unsung contributors and volunteers who have helped Bamboo Ridge thrive. The people that were there were so nice. I really enjoyed myself and I’m looking forward to helping them plan.
set photos from HIFF trailer shoot starring Jason Scott Lee and Kelly Hu
Tomorrow I’m attending the HIFF staff meeting. K is working and has to use the car so I’m going to try to take the bus for the first time (thebus.org). I’ve heard bad things about it. Like that it never comes when it’s meant to. And I have to take three different routes and it will take over an hour for a normally 20 minute car ride. Egad. We’ll see how it goes.
I met my friends from NY Wayland and Desiree for dinner tonight at Champa Thai. It was delicious! I had a great time–seeing them was like a little bit of home. Wayland is originally from Hawaii so it was great to get his perspective on alot of things like art and community on the Island. They told me to check out Makapu’u Beach Park/Waimanalo and Sea Life Park.
We had pad see yew and fried tofu with garlic sauce. YUUUM. Oh yes and I drove myself to dinner for the second time. Which again, is very exciting. If cars weren’t one of the leading contributors to global warming I’d want to drive everywhere.
I picked up Honolulu Magazine recently. The current issue is 50 reasons to love this city. The two things that stuck out were Waimanalo Beach and plate lunches at The Rainbow Drive-In. Seeing Wayland and Desiree made me miss NY a bit.
I’m going to attend a Bamboo Ridge meeting tomorrow. It’s interesting because part of why I wanted to come to Hawaii was to get some distance from things including community–to discover a new world. But I find the more that I meet people here that anonymity is something you have to consciously maintain. I’m not sure how I feel about that right now.
the Kailua moon behind the edge of a cloud
Last night I saw my very first shooting star. It’s amazing that it’s taken 34 years for me to see one. It’s likely because I’ve never lived in a place that the sky was so clear and free of city lights. I made a wish after the fact. It was exactly as I had imagined a shooting star would be, only better.
We’ve been in Hawaii exactly one month today. Aptly, I’m having dinner with my friends tonight for the first time–friends that will introduce me to another poet living in the area. I’m nervous. I haven’t been around alot of people in the past thirty days or so. I can imagine feeling out of practice. Either way this week has been about not only letting go of New York, but finding a place for myself here in Hawaii so I say bring on the awkwardness. I’m ready!
Last night we watched Obama’s speech and I made my first cake. It was a cake out of a box and I probably have made one like it in my lifetime but when it was, I can’t remember.
Beachwear brands for the imperfect:
- Juicy Couture
- Malia Mills
- Ecko
