a new yorker’s year in hawaii
We just arrived back from NY late last night. I can’t believe yesterday I was bundled up in a hat, coat, and gloves and now I’m sitting in our living room with bare legs, delicious smells wafting in from a neighbor’s barbecue grill. Crazy days.
We were relieved to find that our car was where we left it (in the airport parking lot). It felt really nice to just get in our car after a long flight and drive home.
K said as we drove, that it felt like we belonged here.
I’ve been back in Hawaii for about a week now–been slow getting back into posting mostly because the past three weeks have been a surreal roller coaster for me. Being in NY was crazy. It felt as if I’d never even been in Hawaii. It was no trouble adjusting to the cold, people, or space. I did notice that it was really easy to smile at people. I used to be the most stressed out person in almost any given situation when we first left NY but being back this time and around friends I felt like the most relaxed person in the room. It was a very interesting shift in perspective. It all happened way too fast. I’m in Hawaii now as if I were never in NY and K and I are going back in a week for Christmas.
Since I’ve been back we haven’t done very much. It’s been raining constantly and we had flash flood warnings from the EBS for three days.
Because of my long plane rides and the gray weather here I got sucked into reading the Twilight books. One of the rainy days we went to Windward Mall to watch the film. They’re all wretched. The whole lot of them. But it passes time quickly and at least I know what everyone else is reading. My favorite parts of Windward Mall are the pet store, the movie theater, Borders books, and Swirl the caramel apple store. I like the caramel apple place because they slice it for you.
I’m basically opposed to the pet store. But it’s really hard to resist the bunnies and the puppies. I think they sedate all of them because they all look so sleepy and satisfied.
We visited Tamashiro Market again and Tropical Farms (for mac nuts) so that I could make our favorite mahi mahi dish. That was fun. I love the mac nut farm–especially their deeeelicious mac nut coffee. We did a belated Thanksgiving-style dinner since K and I weren’t able to spend it together.
I finished the third Twilight book and couldn’t find the fourth one in any of the big chain bookstores or the little ones nearby. We went to 3 bookstores. I almost gave up. But then I found Barnes and Noble at Kahala Mall. What an AWESOME book store to find. Easily the biggest of all I’ve seen while living here. They had many ‘Breaking Dawns’. I bet K that I wouldn’t read it until we were flying home next week. He doesn’t think I can, but I’m very disciplined with that sort of thing. Especially because it’s the last book.
Kahala Mall is great in general. It’s not nearly as fancy as Ala Moana, or even as well stocked as Windward but it has a really wonderful community/family feeling to it.
It’s carpeted which I love. There’s an Apple store. And it smells delicious. I don’t know what it is but it smells like weekends. We got a personalized Christmas ornament at Santa’s Pen. K thinks it’s funny that I know how to say mele kalikimaka all of a sudden. I think it might be because of the song.
Christmas and Birthdays are my ultimate favorite. But this year it came so fast and has been marred by my personal losses. It makes me sad to be away from home, snow, people, and that feeling of everything being purposeful and special. Hawaii is festive for sure, but it’s different. I’m looking forward to being in NY with K next week. I hope that the Christmas in me kicks in.
We headed to Waipahu after the mall. My friends Wayland and Desiree were dancing at ‘Pasko’ at the Fil-com Center. We didn’t get to see them dance but we had some yummy food and dessert.
I feel a bit rusty at blogging. Maybe it’ll be better later.
Maligayang Pasko!
I learned an interesting thing at the airport. You can buy a lei and it will last 2-3 days without refrigeration.
We were on our way to Kauai. It was going to be our first excursion to one of the other islands. We booked our flights, our car, and our room at the Hanalei Surfboard House. We were so excited to visit Hanalei Bay and try one of the uber muddy hikes. We spent one whole day shopping for our trip, picking up clothes we could get grubby in. K got a great pair of hiking shoes from Nordstroms. He even put them on at the mall to start breaking them in.
We had to try different places for my hiking shoes and found a great place suggested by the Nordstrom salesperson: Mauka to Makai. Their inventory was low so I ended up with a decent pair from Sports Authority.
Unfortunately when we got home K was called into work for the next few days so we had to cancel all of our plans. Hopefully we’ll be able to go before the holidays.
Instead of visiting a luxurious vacation island, we went to a couple of movies to unwind. We settled for Journey to the Center of the Earth at the dollar theater. Dollar did you say??? Yes we were shocked. I haven’t been to a dollar movie in at least 10 years. And I’m not even sure it was a dollar I think it might have been two. The crowd at Hollywood Restaurant Row 9 was a pretty rowdy crowd. Lots of locals and lots of kids. I mean I felt like we watched a show before the actual show. I whispered to K during the cartoon previews that we could leave at any point if it ended up not being good.
The movie proved to be perfectly fun. In NY I carefully choose theaters based on the fact that I know it’s a neighborhood crowd and people won’t be chattering through the whole thing. I was a little skeptical at Hollywood. Particularly when an older Hawaiian couple plopped down next to us and started talking right away. But a quarter of the way into the movie I gasped at a heart racing scene and the portly woman next to me immediately whispered ‘what?’. I was immediately won over and didn’t mind that they talked through the whole movie.
This past weekend we got to see Quantum of Solace. Which I loved. In looking for a theater we discovered Winward Mall in Kaneohe which is so different from Ala Moana. The mall reminded me of my Long Island roots. It was fantastic. We had lunch at IHOP and wandered the mall after seeing the movie. The highlight for me was the pet shop–very diverse. I think all pet shops in general are, to varying degrees, not good. But I’m a sucker for baby animals. Here is one of my favorites:
Also, note for the future. There was a Leonards Malasadas truck in the Winward Mall parking lot.
No, not fishy at all! Tamashiro Market that is. I found this place on Yelp when I searched for the best place to find fresh fish. As I’ve written before one of the dishes I’ve learned to make very successfully is Macadamia nut crusted Mahi Mahi. The other day K and I decided to explore the boundaries beyond Foodland Kailua. We had found the mac nut farm the other day and I’d been eager to check out this market. It was smaller than I had pictured but packed with so many kinds of foods! K and I circled the tight aisles a few times. I kind of felt like Alice in Wonderland, like I was spinning and couldn’t focus in on one thing. Finally K said something that brought me back to the filet counter. We got to two beautiful filets and left with little else.
Driving from Honolulu to Kaneohe took awhile. I likened it to taking the subway from the East Village to the Upper West Side and then back down to the LES in search of fresh ingredients. That would have been a nightmare. Instead we’re in Hawaii driving past awesome mountain ranges, orchid farms, stretches of ocean, and strange beautiful trees dripping with vines and lush green.
I love the mac nut farm. We picked cinnamon macadamia nuts and decided to try a pound of the macadamia kona coffee. The fish ended up so much better. In fact we had enough to reheat for lunch the next day and even THAT tasted better than our Foodland version. Definitley one of my favorite things about here in Hawaii.
Also the kona coffee is so good that whenever I get a whiff of it I CRAVE at minimum a cup.
I haven’t missed home as much as I did on election night. We tried to find a copy of the NY Times but Foodland only had the Star Bulletin. And while the Times is going for $100 on ebay, the Honolulu Star Bulletin is going for about $5.05. The thing that made me most homesick was this video:
We went hiking to celebrate the day. Until yesterday the book OAHU REVEALED has been a handy guide for us, never steering us wrong. There are entries in the book that encourage visitors to disregard ‘no trespassing’ signs or wiggle through gate openings in an effort to experience secret beaches or hidden trailheads. I’ve pointedly avoided those attractions when looking for things to do. But yesterday we decided to try a hike with an obstructed trailhead to Waihe’e Falls. I liked it because it said it was moderately easy and that the pay off was a ‘refreshing shower under the cascading waters’
There was an ominous feeling emanating from the quiet person-less street leading to the trail. Modest houses all with high fences–most with a ‘Beware of Dog’ sign (on one garage a ‘BAD DOG’ sign). We parked down the street and had to walk past three unleashed dogs loose on their front yards. Of the three dogs one was a rottweiller and the other was a pitbull.
I love dogs. I mean I really love dogs and will go up to most and say hello. But everything in this neighborhood felt geared towards making strangers feel on guard. The rottie and pitbull stopped playing long enough to coolly check us out from afar. I kept reminding myself to take deep breaths and relax. I tried to remember what Ceaser Millan said you should do if confronted by an aggressive dog…I couldn’t remember. As we entered the trail and escaped the clean cut Stepford-on-steroids neighborhood, we noticed big piles of dog poop on the trial. My mind started racing, picturing a giant frothing rottie step out from the the thick woods onto the trail in front of us. There was a mile and a half more to go.
The trail for the first mile or so is almost downright ugly. Lots of gravel and strange abandoned concrete structures. The book says that on this trail is one of the only dike tunnels in Hawaii. K said it was like being in New Otherton (referencing the town that the Others lived in on Lost). I have to agree. I found the odd relics on the trail menacing. I told Ken that I kept expecting to be shot by a resident who would later claim he thought we were bears. That’s what a handful of KEEP OUT, NO TRESPASSING signs will do to you.
There were definitely some pretty things. Like coffee plants and wild orchids along the way. But I mostly remember my own fear and the place smelling kind of bad. I tried to occupy my mind with happy thoughts as we ascended: Barack Obama is our president and the big bowl of ginataan at home in the fridge.
We didn’t make it to the end. I got really winded. And it felt like it was going on forever with no sense of the supposed pay-off at the end. At one point we stopped to put mosquito repellent on and as I put my hand to my leg I killed 2 mosquitoes with my palm that were already perched on my shin. Blech.
Oh what an amazing day. K and I wanted to be together because we suspected it would be a day we would want to remember. He had to work so I went to set with him and got to see some beautiful sights in Kaneohe.
On our way to a location one of K’s coworkers told us about the macadamia nut farm close by and that they had free coffee. So before he started working we went to the very cool little farm and picked up a delicious cup of macadamia kona. It’s great place to know about for future pasalubong (greeting gifts).
We’ve been watching CNN for hours now. We made a special election night dinner. As we were running around getting things cooked and the table set I hear K say, ‘is that a SPIDER??’ In fact it was. It was a Big Spider.
We had a mild freak out. K trapped it in a tupperware container and we brought it out to the parking lot and let it go. We later found out that it was a cane spider. A harmless house spider that eats cockroaches and silver fish. But like all the creatures here Hawaii it LOOKED downright sinister.
Tonight is a great night. We had a great meal and basked in the satisfaction of seeing Hawaii’s son Obama become President Elect.
K and I went to Mokes for breakfast. I like to revisit places with K after I discover them because it’s always better with him. We had a really delicious breakfast and were able to park right acorss the street. We got there right before they stopped serving breakfast but they had run out pancake batter so I had waffles and corned beef hash.
We went to Kailua Library next and I got a whole stack of books.
We read there for awhile. It’s an awesome place–quiet and smells great. I tried to get a picture of my favorite thing there (pens that have big fabric flowers and leaves taped to the tops) but all of them are by the security guard and I just didn’t feel like asking permission.
Three One Nine 
