starrwriter
11-06-2005, 02:19 PM
I suspect some of you might be interested in what it's like to live in Hawaii. Here's the inside scoop from my twisted point of view:
First, I don't really keep native women chained to the walls of my apartment in Honolulu. They come and go freely. A crazy woman lives in the apartment directly above me. I would guess she is in her late 20s and she has shaved her head to make herself look insane. She walks around talking to people who aren't there. Late at night she hammers on the walls of her apartment with a pick ax. The maintenance main says she has knocked a hole right through the wall into the adjacent apartment. Everyone complains about the noise waking them up, but the landlord refuses to evict her. He's probably afraid she will go after him with the pick ax. Her last known address was the state mental hospital. I don't think she's taking her meds anymore.
My apartment building is located at the mouth of a large tropical valley. At the rear of the valley is a mountain rainforest where no people live. I know what's up there because I lived in a Big Island rainforest for a long time: wild pigs, mountain goats, guava trees and giant tree ferns that block out all sunlight, and four trillion mosquitos. The ground is mucky from incessant heavy rainfall. In the wrong places you can sink up to your knees and never see your rubber boots again. It's a jungle out there.
Waikiki is 2 miles from my apartment. It's a concrete jungle of high-rise hotels, but it has some nice white-sand beaches. I often sit at sidewalk cafes across the street from the beach, sipping beer and ogling sweet young tourist women in their tiny bikinis. Many of them are trolling for hula-hula boys (Hawaiian beach boys who are actually young gigolos.) They want to get laid by a handsome native so they'll have something juicy to talk about back in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
Young tourist men are looking for native women to woo, but they succeed much less often than their female counterparts. Most Hawaiian women have better sense than to crawl into the sack with a drunken tourist man who likely has a wife stashed in one of the hotels. They prefer local hunks who know how to surf. Or divorced haole (white) men like me who can show them a good time.
Chinatown starts about a mile from where I live. It is the location of infamous Hotel Street, the red light district of Honolulu where young hookers stand on every street corner at night clicking their high heels and buzzing on drugs. Chinatown is my favorite neighborhood (and not because of the hookers, so get your mind out of the gutter.) It looks exotic, like the old part of Singapore: tea shops, Asian restaurants, bars with verandas overlooking tropical gardens, century-old brick buildings, knick-knack trinkets for sale on the street.
"I think I'm turning Japanese, I really think so." Remember that song from the 80s? Across the street from my apartment building is the Japanese consulate surrounded by a rock wall. Not far away is a Zen mission (church and school) with a statue of a smiling fat Buddha out front. I often eat Japanese ramen noodles for lunch, teriyaki meat and rice for supper and I drink Japanese roasted green tea. I have become what is dolefully known among haoles as a "rice head." I could probably go to Tokyo and feel right at home.
From my rear window I can see Punch Bowl, a landmark in Honolulu. It's a 500-foot-tall lava cone covered with grass and home to a military cemetery. American soldiers from four wars are buried there. In the opposite direction I can't see Honolulu's other famous landmark, Diamond Head, because high-rise buildings block the view.
On Sundays I sometimes travel to Hanauma Bay a few miles out of the city. It's a collapsed volcanic crater that became part of the coastline millenia ago. The ocean water is crystal clear and enclosed by motley-colored coral reefs. The bay teems with sea life: schools of small reef fish, delicate angelfish and other beautiful varieties found in salt-water aquariums, larger parrotfish with beaks like parrots and teeth like human molars (for crushing coral), goatfish, flat one-eyed Hawaiian sole burying themselves in the sand. Occasionally, a manta ray or moray eel or shark is seen. If anything bites you, you can't poke them with a speargun to get even because Hanauma Bay is a marine conservation zone.
The North Shore 30 miles away is the Land Of The Laid-Back: beach bunnies, crazy surf Nazis who try to ride 50-foot waves in the winter, pot growers, aging hippies, health-food restaurants, and on a remote beach the setting of the TV series "Lost." Sunset Beach has a strange daily ritual. People gather in hushed silence late in the afternoon to wait for the "green flash" -- an optical effect when the sun dips below the horizon. If it doesn't happen, everyone goes home disappointed.
The best drive on the island is around the windward side. You pass little towns with unpronounceable Hawaiian names nestled in a lush green environment. This is the cool rainy part of the island. The leeward side is hot, sunny and bone dry like a desert. If you search the hills, you can even find prickly pear cactus.
I live between the wet zone and the dry zone. It rains occasionally, but most days are pleasantly sunny. If the tradewinds stop blowing, the equatorial air mass drifts north to cover the islands and Honolulu turns into a sauna bath. Tempers run wild and the city court is flooded with assault cases. Fortunately, this weather phenomenon only lasts a few days typically. Called Kona winds, it is named for a southerly wind so hot and humid it wilts all hope in the sweaty human animal.
First, I don't really keep native women chained to the walls of my apartment in Honolulu. They come and go freely. A crazy woman lives in the apartment directly above me. I would guess she is in her late 20s and she has shaved her head to make herself look insane. She walks around talking to people who aren't there. Late at night she hammers on the walls of her apartment with a pick ax. The maintenance main says she has knocked a hole right through the wall into the adjacent apartment. Everyone complains about the noise waking them up, but the landlord refuses to evict her. He's probably afraid she will go after him with the pick ax. Her last known address was the state mental hospital. I don't think she's taking her meds anymore.
My apartment building is located at the mouth of a large tropical valley. At the rear of the valley is a mountain rainforest where no people live. I know what's up there because I lived in a Big Island rainforest for a long time: wild pigs, mountain goats, guava trees and giant tree ferns that block out all sunlight, and four trillion mosquitos. The ground is mucky from incessant heavy rainfall. In the wrong places you can sink up to your knees and never see your rubber boots again. It's a jungle out there.
Waikiki is 2 miles from my apartment. It's a concrete jungle of high-rise hotels, but it has some nice white-sand beaches. I often sit at sidewalk cafes across the street from the beach, sipping beer and ogling sweet young tourist women in their tiny bikinis. Many of them are trolling for hula-hula boys (Hawaiian beach boys who are actually young gigolos.) They want to get laid by a handsome native so they'll have something juicy to talk about back in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
Young tourist men are looking for native women to woo, but they succeed much less often than their female counterparts. Most Hawaiian women have better sense than to crawl into the sack with a drunken tourist man who likely has a wife stashed in one of the hotels. They prefer local hunks who know how to surf. Or divorced haole (white) men like me who can show them a good time.
Chinatown starts about a mile from where I live. It is the location of infamous Hotel Street, the red light district of Honolulu where young hookers stand on every street corner at night clicking their high heels and buzzing on drugs. Chinatown is my favorite neighborhood (and not because of the hookers, so get your mind out of the gutter.) It looks exotic, like the old part of Singapore: tea shops, Asian restaurants, bars with verandas overlooking tropical gardens, century-old brick buildings, knick-knack trinkets for sale on the street.
"I think I'm turning Japanese, I really think so." Remember that song from the 80s? Across the street from my apartment building is the Japanese consulate surrounded by a rock wall. Not far away is a Zen mission (church and school) with a statue of a smiling fat Buddha out front. I often eat Japanese ramen noodles for lunch, teriyaki meat and rice for supper and I drink Japanese roasted green tea. I have become what is dolefully known among haoles as a "rice head." I could probably go to Tokyo and feel right at home.
From my rear window I can see Punch Bowl, a landmark in Honolulu. It's a 500-foot-tall lava cone covered with grass and home to a military cemetery. American soldiers from four wars are buried there. In the opposite direction I can't see Honolulu's other famous landmark, Diamond Head, because high-rise buildings block the view.
On Sundays I sometimes travel to Hanauma Bay a few miles out of the city. It's a collapsed volcanic crater that became part of the coastline millenia ago. The ocean water is crystal clear and enclosed by motley-colored coral reefs. The bay teems with sea life: schools of small reef fish, delicate angelfish and other beautiful varieties found in salt-water aquariums, larger parrotfish with beaks like parrots and teeth like human molars (for crushing coral), goatfish, flat one-eyed Hawaiian sole burying themselves in the sand. Occasionally, a manta ray or moray eel or shark is seen. If anything bites you, you can't poke them with a speargun to get even because Hanauma Bay is a marine conservation zone.
The North Shore 30 miles away is the Land Of The Laid-Back: beach bunnies, crazy surf Nazis who try to ride 50-foot waves in the winter, pot growers, aging hippies, health-food restaurants, and on a remote beach the setting of the TV series "Lost." Sunset Beach has a strange daily ritual. People gather in hushed silence late in the afternoon to wait for the "green flash" -- an optical effect when the sun dips below the horizon. If it doesn't happen, everyone goes home disappointed.
The best drive on the island is around the windward side. You pass little towns with unpronounceable Hawaiian names nestled in a lush green environment. This is the cool rainy part of the island. The leeward side is hot, sunny and bone dry like a desert. If you search the hills, you can even find prickly pear cactus.
I live between the wet zone and the dry zone. It rains occasionally, but most days are pleasantly sunny. If the tradewinds stop blowing, the equatorial air mass drifts north to cover the islands and Honolulu turns into a sauna bath. Tempers run wild and the city court is flooded with assault cases. Fortunately, this weather phenomenon only lasts a few days typically. Called Kona winds, it is named for a southerly wind so hot and humid it wilts all hope in the sweaty human animal.