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giftedericAloha!
For those of you that don't know, I am currently in Hawai'i.
It's an interesting part of the world. Obviously VERY touristy, which isn't my bag really, and also consistently hot, also not really my bag, and yet I do like it here. My survival requires only thinking about going out in the early hours of the morning (for dawn) and in the evenings, starting pre sunset, and this means I now fully understand siestas.
One of the very interesting things is that it is Thanksgiving tomorrow, and the holiday period is in full swing. Tomorrow I will be having a classic thanksgiving dinner courtesy of one of the local eateries depending on how fancy I want to be. Xmas music is in full swing in the shopping centres (though much to my inconvenience many shops don't open 'til 9:30am, which is useless to me wandering around at 7:30 am!). And it doesn't sound weird. Mainly because it stays in the style of the pretty constant backdrop of female singing that you find everywhere in Waikiki (where most of the hotels are). In fact , in style, it reminds me of Disneyland, you know with that constant soundtrack, trying to create the idyllic moment. The ads on TV are for stores opening at 3am and 5am (Walmart is open all night and all through thanksgiving), and with 19" LCD TVs for $99 etc.
I may have mentioned my dislike for Whistler, a rocky mountain ski resort near Vancouver, and of course it would be fair to point out that I knew in advance that Hawai'i was also a resort, and that I should have expected to dislike it. But the reality of it is that they are 2 very different beasts, and that is why I like Hawai'i (or at least Oahu) quite a bit. Because there is such enormous US style commercialism here, it requires an enormous workforce, and an enormous workforce means that real people doing their everyday job live here too in great numbers, and this means there is real culture here underneath some of the over emphasised polynesian culture. (Not that that isn't cool, but it feels like theatre mostly).
Not that I have a good overview of real hawaiian culture or anything, I just am not going to be here long enough nor will I be able to interact with enough different people. And Hawai'i includes 6 other large islands that I am not going to visit on this trip.
That's it really. I had no real point to make. I like it here despite the weather, and the resort nature of things. I imagine that people who were more into either of these things would love it.
Other asides... The number of men in ads here is spectacularly low. It's gotta be atleast 80% women, mostly young, hot and not wearing very much. I also notice a startling lack of car ads on the TV (which makes some sense I guess), though the biggest shopping centre I have been to was invisible from every road because it is completely surrounded by an enormous parkade. And I had Hostess Twinkies yesterday, just in case there is a zombie apocalypse I won't be able to find any...
For those of you that don't know, I am currently in Hawai'i.
It's an interesting part of the world. Obviously VERY touristy, which isn't my bag really, and also consistently hot, also not really my bag, and yet I do like it here. My survival requires only thinking about going out in the early hours of the morning (for dawn) and in the evenings, starting pre sunset, and this means I now fully understand siestas.
One of the very interesting things is that it is Thanksgiving tomorrow, and the holiday period is in full swing. Tomorrow I will be having a classic thanksgiving dinner courtesy of one of the local eateries depending on how fancy I want to be. Xmas music is in full swing in the shopping centres (though much to my inconvenience many shops don't open 'til 9:30am, which is useless to me wandering around at 7:30 am!). And it doesn't sound weird. Mainly because it stays in the style of the pretty constant backdrop of female singing that you find everywhere in Waikiki (where most of the hotels are). In fact , in style, it reminds me of Disneyland, you know with that constant soundtrack, trying to create the idyllic moment. The ads on TV are for stores opening at 3am and 5am (Walmart is open all night and all through thanksgiving), and with 19" LCD TVs for $99 etc.
I may have mentioned my dislike for Whistler, a rocky mountain ski resort near Vancouver, and of course it would be fair to point out that I knew in advance that Hawai'i was also a resort, and that I should have expected to dislike it. But the reality of it is that they are 2 very different beasts, and that is why I like Hawai'i (or at least Oahu) quite a bit. Because there is such enormous US style commercialism here, it requires an enormous workforce, and an enormous workforce means that real people doing their everyday job live here too in great numbers, and this means there is real culture here underneath some of the over emphasised polynesian culture. (Not that that isn't cool, but it feels like theatre mostly).
Not that I have a good overview of real hawaiian culture or anything, I just am not going to be here long enough nor will I be able to interact with enough different people. And Hawai'i includes 6 other large islands that I am not going to visit on this trip.
That's it really. I had no real point to make. I like it here despite the weather, and the resort nature of things. I imagine that people who were more into either of these things would love it.
Other asides... The number of men in ads here is spectacularly low. It's gotta be atleast 80% women, mostly young, hot and not wearing very much. I also notice a startling lack of car ads on the TV (which makes some sense I guess), though the biggest shopping centre I have been to was invisible from every road because it is completely surrounded by an enormous parkade. And I had Hostess Twinkies yesterday, just in case there is a zombie apocalypse I won't be able to find any...
