Category: shopping

A day that nothing gets done.

thethreeonenineLeave a comment


I read poems
and took a nap
after we had
breakfast at
Cinnamons.

I got irritated
and wondered
if everyone else
was irritated with me
or if it was me
that was irritated with them.

I read two poems to
K about Happiness
and then I pretended to
be the fish that was
deep fried
while kept alive.

We went to the mall
and checked the movies.
I bought undergarments
and we looked for a toy
for a cat that isn’t
ours.

The mall was ready for Christmas
and I heard songs about Santa Baby
and Marshmallow World.

We shoplifted things that would never sell
and that no one would buy.
a bunny for me
stickers for him.

When there was nothing else to see
we went home.


Made in Hawaii

thethreeonenineLeave a comment


Last Sunday we caught the last two hours of the Made in Hawaii Festival. We’d been moving all weekend and almost forgot it was happening. Our new landlady sent us an email reminding us about the festival. We dashed over there before it closed down and walked through the whole thing.

It was pretty much how I imagined it would be. If there was more time and a little less people I really would have liked to explore each booth. There were so many great things like pidgin t-shirts, roasting pan cozies, straw hats, koa wood jewelry boxes, Hawaiian christmas ornaments, local fruit jams, and on and on.

At first I was dashing around grabbing every business card that I could. And then I realized there’s probably a roster of vendors on their site. Even though we won’t be here for next year’s festival, I figure I’ll look up individual companies and explore their wares over the course of this year. There were lots of people there and it seemed like a lot of the popular vendors had sold out. Like the Made in Hawaii Foods mochi strawberries.

It’s a really great event. We came home with a clay coaster that absorbs water ‘magically’, a Hawaiian crest key chain, and poha jam.



Dress code

thethreeonenine1 Comment

IMG_0094
When we first got here I had to get a new bathing suit because I’d left mine in NY. We wound up in the swimwear section of Nordstrom’s at Ala Moana Mall. Along with a wide variety of swimsuits they have all manner of beach cover-ups. This is generally somthing you wear over your suit when going to the beach, sitting at the beach, or leaving the beach.

I was so enamored by these light loose fitting garments that I got a few. I think I believed that these dresses would help me ‘fit in’ to what felt like an alien sunshine-filled culture. I don’t think I’d ever owned a beach cover- up before this. I also got three pairs of glittery flip flops.

I proceeded to wear these dresses not only to the beach but everywhere else too. I think I wore one to my first staff meeting at HIFF. I was always confused when people in non-beach situations would say to me ‘oh I like your beach cover-up.’ I always thanked them but then wondered how on earth they knew it wasn’t just a regular dress.

Now that I’ve had a little time to mull it over I realize it’s because of several reasons:

1. they’re usually see-through
2. if they’re not see-through they’re made of terry cloth
3. they usually come in offensively bright colors and patterns.
4. and often times they’re held together by drawstring, ribbon, or elastic.

I started to notice that outside of Kailua, people wear very normal non-beach clothes. Honestly I don’t know what took me so long to realize this. I also realized that although flip flops are pretty prevalent out here it’s not really appropriate to wear them everywhere. Say, dinner at a fancy restaurant.

So this time around I left half of my beach cover-ups back in NY so that I wouldn’t be tempted to wear them everyday. I have a new one that’s all black and doesn’t even look like one. Honest. I only wear it around Kailua and the times I wear it into town are times we’re actually going to the beach.


Stickerama

thethreeonenineLeave a comment

roll-306

K saw a bumper sticker on the road that he thought was hilarious.  It said ‘Eh! Try wait!’  Since then he’s been looking for it.  Someone at work told him that he might find it at Town and Country, a surf shop at Ala Moana.

They didn’t have it but a salesperson steered us to a lower level kiosk called ‘You Name It!’  Again, no luck but they did have three ‘pages’ of Filipino car stickers!  Incredible!  K and I were marveling that there probably isn’t any other place in the US that you can go to the most upscale mainstream mall and find dozens and dozens of Filipino themed car stickers. Hawaii is awesome.

I got one that says ‘Ilocano’ and then I got paranoid and called my mom to ask her if I was in fact half Ilocano and she quipped ‘no your American’.  She was on the phone with someone else and said she’d call me back.  Later she told me ‘I am Ilocano, your dad is Bikolano and I like to say we’re Bilocano.’  And then she started to go into this whole spiel and I told her I just needed to know if I could put this bumper sticker on our car.

Later I thought about it and told K, ‘so what if I wasn’t actually Ilocano, it’s not like I’m an elephant’ (in reference to our Ganesh bumper sticker).  He said that that in fact was very true.

A Nordstrom Day

thethreeonenineLeave a comment

dsc01825

We’re going to a restaurant opening tonight and there’s a red carpet.  Which is tres fancy because in my experience Hawaii is the anti-fancy.  So when it comes to fancy situations Nordstrom at Ala Moana Shopping Center is the one-stop-shop-for-all-your-fancy-needs department store.

The exciting part is that K got his first Aloha shirt:

dsc01823

and I got this delicious thing:

dsc01824

In the parking lot I saw this which I liked alot:

img_09911

And when we got back to the car there were cookies on my seat which K said were from the Aloha Santa.  They were YUHHH MEEEE:

img_0996