Month: November 2005

Tales of the South Pacific

Breakfast: we went to Zippy’s, a local 24 hour diner chain which serves typical Hawaiian food, such as plate lunches, chili, and saimin, which is basically soup noodles. P- had the fried chicken and chili platter, while I had the Zip-min, which is basically a huge bowl of wonton mein soup with other goodies. Not bad, and 24 hours to boot!

Dessert: Shave ice at the other branch of Waiola Shave Ice, the Waiola Bakery. I had the li hing mui and pineapple, P- had the rainbow, which is strawberry, banana, and blue vanilla. Good as always. Second course of the famed Leonard’s masaladas, Portugese fried yeast donuts. Absolutely light, a thousand times better than Krispy Kreme

Along the eastern coast: drove past Diamond Head, passing Harauma Bay and the “Dragon’s Nostrils” blowhole, up 15 miles of curvy coasts with perfectly blue water. You’ll just have to see the pictures, but it was awesome.

South Pacific: at the end of the tour up the coast, we saw the closing performance of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical “South Pacific” at a local community college. South Pacific is one of the most important musicals of the R&H canon because of its moral of racial equality and the appearance of Asian Pacific Islanders, which were groundbreaking in Broadway musicals for 1949. Fifty five years later, it was amazing to see that production actually in the South Pacific (ok, one of the most northern of the South Pacific), and to actually have all of those connections to this island, and have a very diverse cast. The production was well done, although over the course of its run, several members of the cast and crew were absent because of deaths in the family and other issues – a stage manager and a choral director took the roles of Stew Pot and Billis, and did a good job, and the previous night the director actually conducted instead of his son, who was the musical director. Good show.

Mad rush up and down the Pali Highway, mostly in 3rd gear because it was extremely rolling. Caught the last bit of light at the Pali Lookout, having a panoramic view of the eastern side of the island. Again, see the pictures, words do no justice.

Dropped back home exhausted, and then randomly tuning into the West Wing debate. The debators did an excellent job.

Election Day Eve

Lawyers who blog… (and I guess we of triscribe.com are no better…)

The marathon was fun tv (yeah, I actually watched; wasn’t in the mood to watch the political stuff) – on the men’s side, the American was so darn close; then the South African and the Kenyan had their head-to-head match, with the Kenyan winning by a .1 second margin. Yikes. Meanwhile, the women’s side was no less exciting, insofar as one wouldn’t think that Latvia would suddenly be a marathon power.

The live debate on “West Wing” (I missed half of it, because I watched the Simpsons’ latest Treehouse of Horrors episode – not great; too many movie parodies – and those weren’t even movies I liked or cared for) – fun! Alan Alda (a known real-life liberal) playing a moderate Republican Senator Vinick who believes in the free market and smaller, more efficient government (but not believe in global warming). Jimmy Smits plays Latino TX Congressman Santos, who isn’t the most liberal of liberals, but did a rousing argument that he is proud to be liberal because liberals are the ones who actually did things in this country (like fought for voting rights for every citizen of every gender and race; ended slavery (well, a liberal Republican anyway), and stuff like that). Loved that defense of liberalism! (I may not be a liberal, but I despise how Right Wingers use the word “liberal” like it’s profanity). Both actors acted very well. Forrest Sawyer (ex-ABC journalist) played the moderator on NBC News. Umm, sure, Forrest. You might have an acting career! The fake campaign has been intruiging (well, I haven’t watched enough “West Wing” to say much more).

A profile of the making of “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.” – hmm. So they are already planning making the film version of Book 2, “Prince Caspian”?

Personally, I’ve the theory that one could make the books into four movies:

– “The Magician’s Nephew” was the prequel to “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe” (arguably, it can be made into the prologue to LWW; the story there was pretty negligible, unless you really wanted to know how Narnia was created and how the Pevensie kids’ Professor came to be who he was – and really, the story never did explain how he got the wardrobe!)

– “The Horse and His Boy” was more of a contemporaneous tale within LWW (wherein this kid meets up with the four Pevensie kids during their reign of Narnia; the talking horses were lovely characters, but I personally felt it was the weakest of the seven books). You could just insert it into LWW, or not have it at all.

– “Prince Caspian” and “The Voyage of the Dawn Treader” and “The Silver Chair” were pretty much The Life of Caspian (although the Pevensie kids’ cousin, Eustace, is a real annoying British kid, who somehow learned to redeem himself – if Edmund was annoying in LWW, Eustace was a heck of a lot worse, since his parents were apparently the strange atheists of the unseen parents in the series – maybe the Christian C.S. Lewis was trying to hint at something).

– “The Last Battle” – well, the title sums it up. I came out of that one feeling sad; I can easily imagine the movie looking a lot like Lord of the Rings’ “Return of the King” (a movie that really didn’t know when to end).

But, this is starting to feel quite exciting, I must say, when they make a movie of a book I really enjoyed as a kid.

Juxiposition

Saturday: Went to Shangra-La, the Doris Duke estate. We got out of the hotel like 5 minutes before the tour was supposed to leave, and that was downtown. We missed the video, but barely got to the bus just before it was getting ready to leave. We then rode to the other side of Diamond Head in a secluded harbor, something like the southern part of Hong Kong island, if you’re familiar with that. It looks so unassuming from the outside, but once you are inside, you discover an incredible collection of Islamic art covering the walls, the floors, and even the ceilings, all painstakingly collected and restored. The dining room is like a big tent pavillion in the Middle East. Outside, there is a large salt-water swimming pool, and an enclosed beach and boat jetty. Much of the intricate work was done by Doris Duke herself. If you are here, you must go and see this. Apparently, even the locals try hard to get into this place, which is limited to about 300 visitors a day.

Ward Warehouse: we had a monsterous “plate lunch”, which was the traditional lunch of the plantation workers. The defining things are two scoops (usually an ice cream scooper) of rice, one scoop macaroni salad, and your choice of a meat, which we chose fried mahimahi and stewed chicken (a cross between teriyaki and filipino adobo). We wolfed that down. Most of the other things at the mall are your typical stuff, but the real good stuff is at the Ward Fresh Market, which includes Lin’s Market, headquarters for “cracked seed”, aka Chinese mui, like salted plum, cuttlefish. We picked some marlin fish lemon/salt jerky, which was amazing. Also the Hawaiian salt was half the price of the ABC store.

Outrigger Catamaran: we dashed back to the hotel to get to the Outrigger Reef hotel, the sister hotel of the one we are staying in, for a sunset cruise in the harbor. This wasn’t just a boat, it was a racing sail cat, so it was one, very fast, and two, it was all outdoors, so we got some spray, but that was cool. The open bar was cool, too. We got to see all of the beach, went around Diamond Head, and P- saw the famed “green flash” at the moment of sunset. Super romantic, always an amazing ride, and less than half the cost of the canned tours”.

Hawaiian Music Night: We went to the Convention Center for a slackkey guitar concert by Makena. This wasn’t the watered down tourist stuff, but a one man performance intended for the locals,and the spirit showed. Slack key style basically means playing multiple parts on the same guitar, usually a bass line and a “falsetto” high part. This virtuoso can do this with both hands, meaning he can get four part harmony going at the same time. He also accompanied a slam poet, and brought on his guitar teacher for a few duets. His work is his own attempt to preserve Hawaiian culture; there is that same dicotomy that is featured in asian american studies, where how two distinct cultures can meld and coexist which not having one overwhelm the other.

More local stuff tomorrow. Check out the flikr photo stream on the left side.