Chinese New Year in Hawaii

Chinese New Year is something my mom, grandma and I have been celebrating together off and on throughout the years. Unfortunately, grandma is no longer with us, but my dad was kind enough to tag along.

We covered the usual ground of feeding lions, buying food and participating in superstitious Asian customs such as fortune telling and jewelry investments.

This has been filmed in Hawaii, so expect slight differences in how we celebrate. Happy Chinese New Year!

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71. Learn to drive a stick shift vehicle.

I have these goals that I've been working on, 101 of them to be exact. I have 1001 days to complete them and though the numbers seem daunting, they're not so bad when taken in stride.

The latest quest has been to tackle goal number 71) Learn to drive a stick shift vehicle.

I've tried to accomplish this off and on throughout the years starting shortly after I got my license, driving around my high school parking lot in my Dad's big blue Aerostar. I once tried with my neighbor/best friend back in 2004, grinding the gears of his brand new vehicle in the middle of the night. An exboyfriend tried to teach me, though his patience was limited and I wound up crying at the steering wheel, and then my brother later took me around the neighborhood in vain attempts to get me driving stick. I live in an area that is basically one large hill, so not only did that lesson run short, but I never got behind of the wheel of a manual transmission car again.

That is, until I sent out a request on Facebook for someone to play the role of teacher for a girl who seemed stick-shift impaired. John H. answered the call, and within weeks, I was perched in the front seat of his truck.

Were we successful? You be the judge.

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Nixfunkle Goes Geocaching

Geocaching: A form of high tech treasure hunting that I haven't been privy to until Ryan dragged me out of my shell and forced a GPS in my hand.

For a simplified explanation, someone would go out, hide a container of varying size and mark its coordinates on the internet. From here, this location can be accessed by other geocachers who then go out, GPS in hand, and search for it. Believe me, this is not nearly as easy as it sounds; The hiding places that people can execute are mind-blowing.

Ryan and I spent an entire day, scavaging around parks, deserted lots and beach cliffs only to successfully uncover seven of our original 15 locations. When you find one it's awesome all over. When you don't... well, let's just say that the walk back to the car sucks a lot more. Regardless, found caches or not, it was a great time and a worthy adventure.

For more information on the history of Geocaching, or just if you're interested in participating, go to www.geocaching.com and sign up.

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Also, many thanks to Ryan for putting up with my slow walking and short attention spans. You're super (with a German accent).

Thoughts on pidgin from a hapa haole.

My Hawaiian Studies class frequently sends me home in a state of deep thought. It's perplexing only because I solely expect to learn about the pacific islands, and yet, I spend hours musing on questions like, "what is your culture?" It's pertinent, and yet, vastly more intriguing than I anticipated.

Today we watched a film on pidgin English and before we left, our professor said, "Think about pidgin." Now, this almost seems like a last ditch phrase to encourage your students to study, but I found myself actually thinking about pidgin while I walked back to my car. While I drove home. While I ate dinner. Did you know that in 1920, the Hawaii school system became segregated? Not by race, but by language. Standard American English speakers went to good schools and those who spoke pidgin didn't. You think my grandma passed that oral exam? Do you think yours did?

And so the school system nipped pidgin in the bud, making it a lesser form of speaking. What, you don't have that stigma? Without being told directly, I grew up believing that pidgin speakers were associated with the lesser educated when really, pidgin is our culture. It's the dying spawn of a conglomeration of plantation workers, inventing a language through input and effort in order to communicate across barriers. My great and great great grandparents helped to found pidgin! My grandma carried it with her everywhere she went and I... well, I helped to kill it. I wanted to be distinctly different from the pidgin speaking kids at school, I wanted to be associated with words like "educated" and "proper" so I enunciated from the day I could speak. I conjugated properly and kept my tenses right, and pidgin, why, that creole never had a chance with me.

But without pidgin, we'd be that much closer to losing what's left of the identity of Hawaii. And though I travel and often find myself on the turf of others, these islands are still my home. No matter where I go in the world, no matter what I see, I always have the inherent belief that Hawaii is the most unique of them all. But filter out our language, make it pure and white, and you'll have nothing more particular than what you find on the rest of the US. The native Hawaiian culture has already taken a blow from tourism, don't let pidgin go aloha print too.

You got me a what?

Someone knocked on my door early Monday morning. It was my brother, Shaun, and he said to me, "I got you a treasure chest." I do this thing where my eyebrow goes up and I exude skepticism, which was his cue to repeat himself, "I got you a treasure chest. It's outside."

So, abandoning the task of getting dressed, I went to investigate just what exactly he meant by treasure chest.

I should have known that it was out of character for him to be metaphorical and poetic, because what I found waiting for me in the garage was a bona-fide treasure chest. It is also quite possibly the coolest thing I have ever received. You must concur.

Also! I recapped my first month being back home in the following video. Included are snippets of: Italian homecoming party, a failed Oreo back, mochi making, new years eve, new years day, Japanese traditions, cemetery visits and a shaka outro! Enjoy! (ps. If I saw you this month, then you are likely to have made a cameo somewhere in these four minutes!)

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Viewing Pleasure.

Maintaining a blog originated as a way to memorialize my experiences abroad and keep in touch with the people back home. The thing is that I now have friends in places other than Hawaii, and my adventures are able to continue no matter where I am. To stop now would only satiate a lazy version of myself and, needless to say, I'm not enthusiastic about indulging lethargy.

Proof of a good time, if you haven't seen it already, a BBQ set up sea side with friends and lots of fish.

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Not to overload you with videos, but I have also put another one up recently, and this is what I'm going to call, "A Year of Dance." For those of you know were familiar with how I was making my living abroad, you know that I spent the entirety of my working hours with four girls, two of which I taught English to. They have been a source of both joy and learning for me, and so the least I could do was to immortalize our time together in the form of a dance montage. Indeed, we danced a lot.

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I suppose you'll hear from me again, soon, as my 101 Goals depend on it.

Christmas 2009

The holiday season in Hawaii is celebrated in a wide variety of ways depending on certain upbringings. There’s a plethora of cultures and ethnicities on the islands, so much so that there is no majority race. In fact, 20% of the population come from multi-ethnic backgrounds, like myself, resulting in a widespread fusion of culture.

My moms side of the family has been born and raised in Hawaii for many generations, though ethnically, we are Japanese. The following footage is from Christmas 2009, typical to how I’ve been celebrating it for the past 24 years. Enjoy!

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