I love you Plate Lunch

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K said that his friend Josh loves Keneke’s in Waimanalo.  So naturally we wanted to try it for lunch after my yoga class.  I was ravenous.  I needed a smoothie.  It’s crazy how good my last two lunches have been.  I can’t even take it.  I feel like I should skip lunch tomorrow just to restart the machine.  Because lunch shouldn’t be so dang delicious.

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It gets even better.  K said we should go through the car wash so I could put my ganesh sticker on.  So we ate our lunches in the car wash with out fruit smoothies.  There are few things that make me feel so content.

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Popcorn plus plus

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We got this at the Kahala movie theater but then didn’t use it because I didn’t know what to do with it.  Apparently it comes with a plastic bag inside and you mix your popcorn with the pouch ingredients like a shake and bake.  The mix has nori flakes and crispy cracker things.  Made in Kaneohe.  It was pretty good.  I’d say it would be BETTER if they added something sweet to it like bits of chocolate covered marshmallows.  Or lucky charms.

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When all other lights go out.

We’ve had two power outages in the past 2 weeks. Our neighbor Corey said that it happens regularly on stormy/windy days and that it takes the electric company forever to fix it. I told K that I was terrified that the power would go out on a night that he was working late. This last Monday it happened. It was about 6PM and it was getting darker and darker. Our place is somewhat remote. It’s hard to find our front door. Even with all the power on it feels very isolated.

I shut down my computer to conserve the battery and fetched our hand-crank flashlight from the kitchen drawer. I turned it on even though the sun was mostly still up. I felt like Frodo.

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I wanted to conserve every last drop of power on my iPhone in case I needed to entertain myself or talk to someone until K came home.  But I decided that texting him about the blackout was worth the battery juice.  Two seconds later he replied he was on his way home.  Joy!

So I sat down and played Supermarket Mania until he got home 20 minutes later.  Because our oven is electric we went out to Lucy’s Grill for dinnr.  I had a glass of Reisling and Opah Crab Dynamite with sweet potato mash. Disaster averted.

Me. What is a Yoga head?

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I dragged my butt out of bed at 7AM this morning to go to class at Kula.  I really like that place–particularly teachers Martin and Brigitte.  I was telling Ken that Brigitte makes you feel like she’s paying attention to you even if she doesn’t look at you or talk to you.  She’s really tall but there’s this gentleness that emanates from her.  It makes you want to cry.  That sounds bad but it’s not.

It wasn’t an old lady class.  It was in fact very hard.  Halfway through I had to stop and rest.  I had this fleeting thought:  why is it that despite doing yoga almost every day it’s still really hard to get through most classes.  I think it’s because I’m competitive and I forget to breathe.

After class we went to Lily Lotus for new yoga togs for me!  I wore a hole through my yoga pants.  K got me a top from Lululemon (which is great)  but I hate how their stuff looks so jock-ish. I prefer this:

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That’s a t-shirt.  I like it so much.

As I was choosing stuff to try on, the Lily Lotus person would come and take my things and bring them to the dressing room.  After the third time I looked up and smiled at her and she crinkled her brow and said ‘did you take class with me?’  I totally didn’t recognize her so I said no. She said ‘I think you did…at Open Space’.  After a minute I figured out that Sarah and I had taken a class with her over a MONTH ago.  We came in 10 minutes late and it was a hard class.  We left without saying hi to the teacher, Laura.  That was her.  She remembered we came in late AND she remembered that Sarah and I were together though she thought she was my sister.

We talked for a little bit.  I said it was hard for me to find a class that didn’t make me worry about my bad knees while at the same time being a rigorous enough workout.  She suggested a Mysore class at Purple.  That I might be able to develop my own practice.  She said the owner, Cathy Louise, is from NY and if I wrote to her she could make suggestions for my knees.

She also satisfied my curiosity about the missing Yin Yoga class.  The woman Jaime Schrack who taught it at Open Space moved to the Big Island to study cranial-something-or-other.  That’s why all her classes disappeared from the online schedules.

I told her I’d been trying Bikram and that it was weird.  She laughed which was great that she knew what I meant.  She said there was a good teacher in Hawaii Kai.  Maybe one day I’ll go try it.   Laura was really nice.  I will definitely check out the Mysore class she assists at Purple.

Sarah joked that there were yoga teachers that every student has gone too–that I was going to be the student every yoga teacher has had.  Not a bad thing.

We had lunch in Kaimuki.

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It was good but it was tooo much food.

Finally, I’m obsessed with these cookies.  Maybe because I’m drinking less coke.

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The Skirt that was a Teddybear

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When I was in highschool I used to call very good days ‘love’ days in my journal.  As in, ‘Today was a love day’.  Today was not that for me but in the same spirit I would call today a Sun Day.  K’s job isn’t a normal 9-5 job.  Sometimes he has to leave very early in the morning.  Sometimes not until mid-afternoon.  In a way it’s nice because everyday can be different somehow.  But the suburban in me longs for routines and schedules you can count on.  This morning felt like a day that could be someone’s routine.  K was driving into town and the timing worked out that he could drop me off at yoga class.  We were even able to do some early morning grocery shopping before heading downtown. It was a very lite FM kind of morning.

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I loved it.

After two weeks of dedicated attendance ( 11 of 14 days) Sarah and I came to the the end of our new student discount at Open Space Yoga.  The sadness is that we’ve been able to go to an unlimited amount of classes for only $30.  We saved over $100.  We’ll definitely go back for classes with Murti and to try the Yin Yoga class which we didn’t get to do.  But next week we’re moving on to a new place.  More than likely Manoa Yoga Center.

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Sarah and I were going to try lunch at Mix afterwards because neither of us had been.  It was really crowded and I suggested we go back to Nuuanu and eat at Indigo.  We’d passed it on the way and Sarah said it was a buffet style lunch that was rather good.  And it smelled good!  So we splurged and had a little bit of a fancier lunch.

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Yum!

It was a very decadent day.

Sometimes talking to Sarah is like a Master Class on Hawaii for me.  She drove me back home to Kailua and on the way she was telling me about Mu’u mu’u Heaven–a little shop in Kailua that carries dresses and apparel made out of vintage mu’u mu’u’s.  The store is tucked in behind Foodland.  Its’ so awesome that I’ve passed the turn countless times and never knew it was there.

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So many lovely things– dresses, skirts, tops, jewelry, bags…  When Obama was last here he donated his Toot’s mu’u mu’us to the store and the designer made a bow tie and cummerbund for him out of the material.   I pulled a post-Holly Hobbie/ Laura Ingalls type skirt off the rack and told Sarah that I loved it so much that I could feel it in my stomach but that I would never wear it.  Rather I’d sleep with it every night like a teddy bear forever.

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Shortly after Sarah dropped me off I got a call on my cell from an unfamiliar Long Island telephone number.  I tentatively answered assuming that it was a wrong number.  Turned out to be a friend of someone that K and I both know back in NY.   We got a message that  this woman was going to be in town and didn’t know anyone aside from the friend she was staying with and that friend was going to be working much of the time she was here.  I very off-handedly sent a message saying she could call me and I’d meet her if I could.

I answered and she said she was at the beach (which is right across the street) did I have time to come out.  My instinct was to say I couldn’t because I was tired and had alot of writing I wanted to do.  But I told her to come over and after I had some time to change we could go to the beach and swim.

It was unexpectedly a very relaxing  and pleasant afternoon.  Sunah was very nice.  We ended up spending a long time bobbing in the water and talking about all types of things.  I’m really glad that I behaved counter intuitively and met up with her. Maybe there’s hope for my Aloha spirit afterall!

These are the cookies she left behind:

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Lei munh ngaw, ngaw munh biin gaw?

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So little and yet so much happens here in Hawaii.  Last night we went to a ‘Januaries’ birthday party thrown by K’s coworkers/friends at La Mariana Sailing Club.  Touchingly they included me on the birthday cake.  I met Annie there who has been living in Kailua for 2 years with her husband who works with Ken.  She was breathtakingly warm and full of kindness.  It was really really nice.  She stopped us as we were leaving the party and we ended up talking for an hour standing at the exit.  It was a small relief to hear her stories of settling in Hawaii and leaving a life and career behind.  Two thoughts that I shared with her that I don’t feel anybody else can really understand :  how is it when there’s really not anything that you have to do that the day goes by so quickly anyway; and how do you answer the question ‘what do you DO all day?’  when it’s a combination of so much and so little.  I like Annie.  If nothing else she made me briefly feel like we weren’t alone.

Interestingly K mentioned to Annie that I’m doing yoga and the first three words out of her mouth were ‘ my friend Murti’.  –which was pretty shocking because of all the teachers I’ve tried so far in Hawaii (6), Murti is the only one who has made a big impact.  From what I gathered he used to do classes here in Kailua.  Annie said she would find out if he still did.

I’ve learned and keep being reminded that in Hawaii everyone is someone’s cousin so don’t talk stink.  Being from New York, my second language is stink.  But not usually for malicious reasons.  It’s just a habit of saying something’s weird if its weird or saying someone’s annoying if they’re annoying.  That generally doesn’t happen here.  People here either live by an Aloha spirit; generally don’t have malicious things to say about one another; OR they know better than to say something openly critical or judgmental about someone else.  This is opposite my personality but I’m pretty sure I haven’t really said anything bad about anyone since I’ve gotten here.  Except for Alvin at Servco.  I yelled my brains out at him when our battery died the day after we bought the car.  I do feel bad about that.

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Lunar New Year festivities started on Friday.  It was pretty neat–lots and lots of lions, very organized and not terribly crowded.  Ken said that the feeling could be called iit nao in Cantonese or festive crowded-ness.  Wing Tek had a special dinner and lion dance at his office.  We weren’t able to go.  But it was really nice to see them briefly and wish them Gung Hay Fat Choy!

There was a phenomenon that we encountered that I don’t think really would have happened in NY Chinatown:

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That is white people dressed in Chinese costume.  This person is not the only one we saw and certainly not the most intricate.  You can’t see in the picture but he has a fake queue hanging from his hat.  These people seemed oblivious to the fact that it might be weird…much less offensive.  K said it would be like white people walking around with an Afro for Martin Luther King Jr. Day.   I would’ve taken a picture of the weirdest example but I was too engrossed in shooting them dirty looks–which had no effect on them whatsoever. Ah, me.

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We picked up take out from a restaurant on Nuuanu called Little Village.  It was so crowded.  People waiting for at least an hour to be seated.  It seemed like a very nice place and most of the food we got was very good.  Much better than Mini Garden just a few feet away.  My favorite was the Taro Duck which I’m eating as leftovers two days later.

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A centipede ran over my foot the other day and didn’t bite me.  I’ve been told that it’s so painful if you do get bit that you have to stay in bed for three days!  We scooped it up in a bowl and let it go in the dirt.

Every week here I miss New York in a different way.  This past week spending so much time with Sarah was great– spending time with her transcends geography or circumstance.  I would like Sarah for a friend whatever city I met her in.  But in a way it makes me feel the loneliness a little more.

My friends Calvin and Deanne are coming in a few days.  It’ll be nice to see them.

Kanye Oh Hey

Went to Kaneohe today for mac nuts and coffee.  In comparison to Kailua, Kaneohe is musky, jungly, very very green.  I don’t know that I’d like to live there but I love when we drive in.  Even in the car you can smell the mossiness.  It’s intoxicating.

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Driving to Tropical Farm you pass cows, orchid farms, little wooden kiosks selling ice cold coconut, and acres and acres of trees.  It takes us about 30 minutes to get there and that’s a long way to drive for coffee but it’s worth it.

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When we got home there was a gift from Mary in the mail: a year subscription to Diner Journal.  I totally forgot that she told me to keep an eye on the mail so it came as a lovely surprise.

Having dinner with Mary at Marlow and Sons is one of my favorite regular things.  It’s funny, the issues they sent have probably been hanging in their restaurant all the way out in Williamsburg.  They smell lovely like a catholic school classroom at 5PM. Love Mary! She’s so awesome.

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Another awesome thing which I meant to mention yesterday though not on any kind of profound level like Mary is Spoonalicious Hawaiian Fudge for ice cream.  It’s really good.  It’s not even like fudge it’s more like pudding.  Pudding to put on top of ice cream.  For lunch the other day I started thinking about it and ended up scooping myself a big bowl of  ice cream just to put  spoonalicious on it for dessert after my lunch.  This is meaningful for two reasons:  I’m not that into ice cream and even when I am I’m not into fudge on top of it.  So. There you are.

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And here’s a picture of the people that take care of the trees and grass around our temporary home.Kinda weird to be Asian with Haoles fixing the yard.  They all look like a version of Chris Atkins from the Blue Lagoon.

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Next to the Foodland we shop at is a specialty food shop called RField.  K and I were loitering outside their window today while we were eating our Baskin Robbins.  There’s much more access to local products and produce here.  It’s easily one of my favorite parts of being in Hawaii.  Anywhere we go it isn’t hard to find a Made in Hawaii alternative.

In that context, I remembered today this Kombucha Gingerade that K and I had when were home.  For New Years Eve we went to Wholefoods for organic frozen pizza and ice cream. Instead of soda we got the gingerade and it was delicious.  It claims to cure many of life’s problems: cancer, obesity, etc etc.  Too bad they don’t sell it here in Hawaii.

When we saw the Domingo’s before we left NY, Ron said that he thought I was a vegan in my heart.  Something about that sounds right, except for my love of beef and good cheese.  Who knows.

A fix.

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Two things perplex me this morning:

  • why I can’t make good oatmeal
  • what are apple bananas

The oatmeal thing is like pancakes for me: I get the proportions of water to oats/batter wrong.   Every time I make pancakes I have to ask K what’s half of 1 1/2 and yet I still get it wrong and the pancakes come out like  manhole covers.  With oatmeal, half the time it comes out like kindergarten paste while other times the oats are just floating in too much water.

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The apple bananas: the only thing I found online about them are that they’re a favorite among Hawaiian kids.  We bought them at the farmer’s market and no one volunteered any useful information other than you can only eat them raw if they’re really really yellow.  Out of the bunch we bought, one turned yellow shortly after we got them.  The rest are a very insistent non-changing shade of green.  I tried to open one this morning and put it in my oatmeal.  It took washing my hands 5 or 6 times to get the sap of my fingers.