Category: Hawaii

We’re in a sublet for the next two weeks. It’s designed to be very utilitarian and easy to clean. Primarily because it functions as a short-term beach house. All the appliances are super new and have a solid feeling about them but the result of all these smooth surfaces feels a little cold and not homey.

With that said, I love this washing machine. However discombobulated I feel the way we’re living right now is no comparison to our quality of life in Manhattan.

Like most, we have to take our laundry to a public laundromat. Sometimes you’re washing your clothes next to a homeless person who is basically sitting there in as little as he/she can wear. Once I watched a homeless man ask a young girl folding her laundry if he could have a shirt. Luckily a man close-by (who was more compatible size-wise) gave the guy one of his shirts.

Psychologically it makes a huge difference to wash your laundry at home. For me, it borders on pleasurable to use this washing machine. First off, it’s shiny. It has lots of settings. It has wrinkle guard. And when it’s in use, it’s so quiet it sounds like a cat purring.

It’s moving day! That is, we’re finally leaving the hotel and Waikiki. Granted, we didn’t end up spending alot of time here. In fact most days we found excuses to drive to our old neighborhood and spend the whole day far from here.

One night, I really wanted a drink and the only options were rowdy hotel bars. At the ABC Store next to the hotel, we found this fabulous and definitive collection of little bottles of liquor and wine. I was blown away. Ken wasn’t. He said to me ‘they [Hawaii] want you [tourists] to have the greatest vacation possible.’ That’s pretty much Waikiki in a nutshell for me.

Here’s a picture of a liquor leis:

We’ve been home in New York for just a little over 2 months now. I’ve been meaning to blog but have been lost in my thoughts, unable to articulate what being home feels like. Reconnecting with people and trying to feel normal in this bustling crazy town has taken up most of my brain power.

When we first got here I was so occupied with noting the differences between being here and being in Hawaii. The thing that struck me as the funniest and most perplexing difference was that everyone in New York is on their cell phone. Which isn’t a spectacular observation but it takes being away to see how odd it is to be surrounded by people having passionate, personal conversations everywhere you go.  Even when you’re sitting in your tiny apartment with your window open and someone decides to stop right under it and berate some faceless sap for drinking too much, or not wanting to get married, or for flirting with someone’s best friend.  The first day after we arrived we were buying drug store supplies and a South Asian girl behind us on her cell phone declared to the person on the other end that there wasn’t any other person in the world that she could confide what she was about to confide. Meanwhile there were about 5 of us on line with her.

But that’s what it’s like here. We live in tiny spaces with roommates or partners. Most of the day is spent walking to either meet someone for lunch, pick up your dry cleaning, attend an event, or go to a dr’s appointment. I find myself constantly on the phone ranting or raving about something or someone completely unfazed by the strangers walking alongside me just a couple of feet away. It’s like being woven into a crazy rug.

I missed Hawaii terribly when we first got here. I was very pleased with myself whenever someone said to me ‘you’re so calm!’ or ‘Hawaii is good for you!’. I was worried that being back would wind me up again and that I’d lose that aloha spirit. Perhaps I have because being here feels alot more normal than living across from a beautiful beach and driving thirty minutes to buy mac nut kona coffee.

We head back to Hawaii in four weeks. I can feel the nervousness stirring up again as we shift from being here to getting ready to be there. It is, at least, not an uninteresting existence.

It was a mad dash for us to pack up our life in Hawaii for the Summer and head back to NY.  We had four days after K’s family left.  K was incredible.  Encroyable!  He was a packing/moving machine.

It was very sad to leave.  In our last few days we ran alot of errands.  Did our last Meals on Wheels route and donated anything we couldn’t store or  bring back to NY.  We had alot of food.  I gave Hawaii Food Bank a call and they said they could take anything that was unopened.  Even perishables!  We packed a box and brought it to their drop off location.

We didn’t get to buy much pasalubong this time around but we got some stuff.  Like a color copy of Kalapawai Market:

…trinkets from a store we’d never noticed before at Ala Moana mall:

I saw these for future pasalubong:

And as we left I had a chance to snap a pic and say goodbye to my favorite koi:

At least I’m pretty sure that’s him.

All in all it was frenzied but complete.  We had one of my favorite meals for our last lunch:

We found out what happened to that gecko that hitched a ride with us to the gas station a few weeks ago:

And we took a final quick swim at our beloved Kailua Beach.  I’d packed all my bathing suits and put them in storage so I had to go swimming in my nightgown.  It was awesome.  24 hours later we were in NY.  My heart is filled with love for Hawaii.  It was a great season and I can’t wait to come back.

NEXT STOP: NYC

We all went kayaking on the canal by our house on the day of the I Love Kailua! town party.  All this time in Kailua,  we never went kayaking.  I personally never thought to kayak on the canal.  I thought the water looked a little yucky but once again I was wrong.  We had great fun.  I loved seeing the different homes along the canal. A few months ago K and I saw a sale listing for a house by a canal.  The copy read ‘the charm of canal living’.  I couldn’t stop laughing.  I thought it was the funniest thing.  In my mind it may as well have read the ‘charms of garbage dump living’.  I don’t know why canals have such a bum rap in my mind.  Maybe because I worked off of Canal Street in NY or maybe because K told me that the Ala Wai Canal has a the reputation of being a swamp.  Point is, the homes that we saw while kayaking were in fact charming and it felt very relaxing to float down the canal.

By the time we arrived at I Love Kailua! it was in full force.  The elusive Tat’s Shave Ice truck was even there.  There was only about an hour left, lots of people and long lines.  We got scrips but the only food I got to try were these little baby donuts coated in sugar and cinnamon.  They were like funnel cake only little baby donuts.  We also caught a couple of impressive performances at the Hula Stage.  K pointed out that despite the gentle movements if you looked closely you could see the dancer’s hands shaking with the effort.  Like ballet dancers!

One afternoon we headed up to the North Shore to show K’s family where he works sometimes.  I was excited to try Giovanni’s Shrimp Truck.  I thought it would be hard to find but after calling them and getting some directions we found it quite quickly across from McDonalds and right before Cafe Haleiwa.

By the time we got there, they only had shrimp scampi available.  The portion was generous: two scoops of rice and a dozen shrimp.  We were all pretty hungry.  But not as hungry as Kevin.  He ordered a second shrmp scampi and finished it as fast as the first plate.  The next day I asked him about it and he said, ‘because it was delicious!’  Just thinking about it now is making me kind of hungry.

Sarah, Steven, and I got on the topic of Zippy’s one night.  I said that we hadn’t tried it because I thought it looked ‘not good’.  Sarah described it as a kind of Hawaiian institution.  She explained that even her parents would go to Zippy’s when they were in town.  With that in mind we took K’s family there the next morning for breakfast.

It was pretty delicious.  I had eggs with cheddar cheese and corned beef hash. They were right.  If I’d known about it sooner we’d be there all the mornings that the line in front of Boots and Kimos was too daunting.

In closing, I know I’ve talked about this before but the mango pudding at Royal Garden in Ala Moana is so yummy.  Not too sweet, totally creamy, totally refreshing. I could imagine carrying around a bunch of these in a cooler bag as a mid-day snack.