late spring articles

Eating cheesecake and sampling cocktails, yeah, I know, I make it look easy. But the painstaking hours of research paid off because both these articles look good enough to eat. And drink.

A Sergio Goes photo takes full page in the Hana Hou piece and the four (count em, 4!) pages in HI Luxury include a shot of my girl Chia making a sour face while muddling limes. haha.

April/May 2008

Hana Hou

• “Otto von Cheesecake.” Photo by Sergio Goes.

HI Luxury

• “Mixing it up! Get a lesson behind the bar at E&O Trading Company.” Photos by Ryan Ohara.

music and life

An Alan Watts animation produced by Trey Parker and Matt Stone.

[mahaloz@Brave New Traveler]

dreamland Bhutan

The Honolulu Academy of Arts was buzzing on Sunday afternoon, when I finally made it to see The Dragon’s Gift: The Sacred Arts of Bhutan, which had been there since February but held over til this weekend.

I was lucky enough to catch part of a guided tour of the exhibit, which allowed me more insight than I would have on my own. A lot of the pieces were intricately embroidered and appliqued thangka with symbol-ladden scenes from the life of important Buddhist teachers and deities.

There were also centuries old metal-cast sculptures and some ancient Buddhist ritual items including a phurba and a vajra, pictured, which I recognized because M left them here, his spiritual practice no longer a priority. This NY Times article explains how this one-of-a-kind collection was put together, the slideshow is good, too.

The exhibition was presided over by a small group of Bhutanese monks, who also lead prayers in another area of the museum called the Altar Room. The smell of incense and drone of chanting was enveloping even outside the doors, where shoes were piled. Beatific people were seated on cushions around the room in various meditation positions, throwing rice and plumeria blossoms up and into the center of the room either at certain times in the chant, or maybe just following along when the monks did it, which is what I was doing. Aping such earnest ritual made me uncomfortable.

Continue reading »

Manoa vog

The afternoon sun was an unnatural-looking orange smudge in the sky when I got off work yesterday. The city was covered in a blanket of gray. I honestly thought there was huge fire somewhere. Nope, just the vog back again.

These were taken the today, looking into Manoa valley.

9 a.m.

6:30 p.m.

Mel breaks down the vog phenomenon, for those unfamiliar.

Weather people say it should clear by the end of the weekend when the winds change. One TV newscast reports that the most noxious of the sulfurous fumes dont travel too far from the eruption. *cross fingers* Tho the Big Island gets the worst of it, vog is causing health problems across the islands and apparently economic ones, too.

My contacts feel like plastic wrap on my eyeballs; sinuses and throat are itchy. I think I’m building up an immunity tho, last month I was sneezing and sniffling like crazy. Meh.

More info:

• Vog Safety Tips [Honolulu Advertiser]
• Volcanic Emissions Cover State [KITV]
• Vog in Hawaii: Information and Resources [Virtual Scratchpad]

photographs from Japan

Hawaii photographer Rowen Tabusa took these photographs on a recent trip to Japan. I know very little about photography, but I like the textures here a lot, and also the colors, or lack thereof.

this is real and not for play, twitter, vote Obamaway

Ti$a - Vote Obama

[via The Rap Up]

Why didn’t Obama Twitter the news of this video?? LoL. He’s got his account set to follow everyone that follows him. Brilliant! and how flattering: Barack Obama is following me! hahaha! No doubt it’s an aide that reads & sends the messages, but still, interesting use of technology. And fun video :~j

my toxic omelet — best ever

According to this urban legend/recipe, if you can boil water, you can make an omelet. All you need is a couple eggs, the chopped-up ingredients you want in your omelet, and a quart size Ziploc baggie (same size they want to see your toiletries in when you fly).

The recipe has apparently been circulating on the interweb for some time:

Crack 2 eggs (large or extra-large) into the quart size Ziploc bag (not more than 2) and shake to combine them. Put in a variety of ingredients such as: cheeses, ham, onion, green pepper, tomato, hash browns, salsa, etc.

Make sure to get the air out of the bag and zip it up. Place the bag(s) into rolling, boiling water for exactly 13 minutes. You can usually cook 6-8 omelets in a large pot.

Open the bags and the omelet will roll out easily.

Because I’ve never successfully made an omelet–it turns into scrambled eggs every.single.time–I knew I had to try this. “But is it safe?” was my nagging, second thought. After googling around, I’m pretty sure the short answer is no, not really. That’s why you don’t do it every day. Just like you don’t microwave your leftovers in Tupperware and don’t drink from plastic water bottles every day…. right?

So anyway, I didn’t take pictures of the process, but I tried this with olives, tomatoes and mushrooms inside and came out with the fluffiest, most cohesive omelet I have ever made! tah-dah!

Only one minor mishap: the bottom of the baggie split open at the end of the cooking time, and the eggs got a little soggy. Maybe cuz I used generic Ziplocs? Some sites recommend the freezer baggies, but I don’t buy those in that size so, whatever. My toxic omelet had a deformed lump on the side because I cooked it with part of the baggie under the lid of the pot in an effort to keep it from touching the bottom. Next time I guess I’ll just put a metal strainer down.

Oh and that purple poo on the side? Potatoes. When I bought em I thought they just had purple skin but they were purple all the way through. Not sweet tho. Fried em up with some onions and rosemary, yes yes.

pressurizing the local

The band was in-between songs and there were still tables open when I walked in to the Dragon Upstairs last Saturday, just behind a group of retiree-aged hipsters. “C’mon in,” boomed a voice from a dimly-lit corner; the band gestured for us to do the same. I gamely follow a white-haired man in a pin-stripped fedora into the intimate, match-box sized club.

Ideas from the class reading bopped around inside my head:*

Stressing and pressurizing the local as a site of “critical resistance” posits a more dynamic way of imagining the relationship of a region, nation, and globe in which difference is not subsumed nor reified but circulated and affirmed” (Wilson 14).

I side-stepped the bell of a trumpet held close and low, nodding to the band while snaking past the potentially expectoration-flecked front line, to the raised seating area where Rowen, Miki and Hank sat holding court at the best table in the house.

It was only the second time I’d met Hank, the owner of both the Dragon Upstairs and Hank’s Cafe, another live music venue downstairs in the same Nuuanu Street building. Last year was the first time we’d met, I’d interviewed him for an article for Hawaii Luxury magazine. He’d impressed me with his charisma and passion for music. I’d sat at the bar drinking chardonnay, asking questions and scribbling notes for my story. Eventually he leaned in and spelled it out: “I want Hawaiian jazz.”

Continue reading »

The Grouch - Artsy

This is a fun video from a poet of hiphop, hot off the front page of youtube. It reminds me not to accidentally turn into too much of a hippie and to take time to nurture art regardless :~j

$1.99 download on iTunes

The Grouch myspace

kawaii desu nee!

Added to list of things to do in Japan: visit a cat cafe… c’mon! this is adorable! It’d be like if they served coffee at the cat house at the Humane Society, only more comfortable.

Love the intro to the story in the Christian Science Monitor*:

Just around the corner from the pulsing blare and brightness of the Akihabara electronics and anime district, cafe Neko JaLaLa is an oasis of calm. Past the brass, paw-handled door to the inner sanctum, denizens loll on the thick carpet, drape over couches, and almost purr with pleasure in the quiet atmosphere.

And that’s just the humans.

The article goes on to explain that playing with cats, or even just watching them, is a great stress reliever. Apparently the cafes are kept quite clean, too, so it sounds great.

Here’s a little clip from one of the cat cafes

* Don’t hold their name against them like I did for a long time, this is an excellent publication.

earth day every day: plastic bags

It’s a pet peeve of mine how bag-happy the local grocery stores can be. Does the 12-pack of soda–with the handle–really need to be double-plastic-bagged?? I think not. Sheesh. My theory is they use as many bags as possible so you feel like your $80 worth of groceries got you something, but canvas, mesh and reusable plastic bags tell the truth, well, at least, they hold more and don’t require double-bagging.

A few years ago, I was too shy to bust out my own bag at the store. I didn’t want to be that granola chick holding up the line at Long’s offering a funky net bag or tote bag to the cashier. But when I got three of these bags for Christmas, I figured I’d at least use em at Kokua Market where the organic-loving clientele wouldn’t blink. Now I’m so used to carrying them around, I have no shame to bust em out at Safeway or the corner liquor store. Sometimes the clerk even thanks me.

Apparently normal plastic bags take like 1,000 years to degrade (or a few decades, depending on the source) and require obscene quantities of crude oil to make. When you combine that with the huge number we go through and the damage they can do in marine environments, it def becomes a problem–but a solvable one. You can easily find out more, it’s a trendy topic right now. Regarding that last link, I personally don’t see the need to make a fashion statement out of a shopping bag, I think it kind of misses the point that if you only have a few things to carry, any old bag will usually do, messenger, backpack, tote bag, whatever, but yea, whatever.

At the same time, banning plastic bags outright doesn’t seem totally necessary. They’ve recently done this in San Francisco and are discussing it in Hawaii and in a number of cities elsewhere. I think charging for (biodegradable) plastic bags would be fair and offering recycling for plastic bags seems like a great idea.

Of course if a store choses to ban them, more power to to them. But paper isn’t really environmentally that much better and there are a lot of ways to reuse plastic bags, from garbage to lunches, and my lil sis tells me that they’re essential for picking up dog poo. Or even these crazy lil craft projects that I’ll never do.

The Nation on Hawaiian sovereignty and resistance

A special issue The Nation is dedicated to the illegal overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy and ongoing resistance to U.S. control. Elinor Langer’s article “Famous Are the Flowers: Hawaiian Resistance Then–And Now” is, according to the editors “a probing exploration of the annexation of Hawai’i by the United States and of the issues of sovereignty and indigenous rights that persist in the wake of that seizure–accomplished not by treaty but by threat of force and unilateral act of Congress.”

Every article is not accessible without a subscription, but the main story is, as are some editorials and historic pieces of note linked from the Hawaiian Independence Blog. I thought the main feature was an informative read, tho I kind of kept expecting to hear about the armed resistance that took place at the time of the overthrow, because I wanted to know more. I remember something about rebels hiding out in Palolo Valley?! The armed resistance was apparently short-lived, but obviously worthy of consideration alongside the weighty petitions of protest.

Doug at Shaka Zine thought there might be some larger problems with the reporting, errors larger than the couple typos I noticed. Will be interesting to see the scholars and activists respond to this. Also the comments look like they might get good…

BTW Shaka Zine is by old school zine-ster, performance artist, poet and _________ Doug Upp–the man has many talents. (I’m so glad you’re blogging!! everybody needs more Doug Upp in their lives. Big fan. *smooches*)

s’alright shrimp fried rice

There are about 282,000 ways to make fried rice and there doesn’t seem to be much consensus on the steps or the ingredients. The more I look around, the more I am convinced that an “anything goes” approach to the dish is just fine.

So last night, pressed for time again and my stomach rumbling, I threw together some shrimp fried rice using what I had on hand. It came out okay, but it was bland. I solved that problem with some hot sauce, but I would rather have the shrimp be more savory.

Next time I’ll do a quick marinade of the shrimp in some kind of garlic/ginger/shoyu sauce and include red pepper or hot sauce while cooking. I’d love to hear how other people make it… holla at me in the comments if you have suggestions?

I did use Jasmine brown rice instead of traditional white rice (no, please, keep reading!). And I really messed up because I added the egg to the same pan as the rice (doh!), which coated the rice and looked bleh. Next time I’ll scramble it on its own, set aside, and mix it in at the end. Finally, I didn’t have any green onion, and it was seriously missed.

Continue reading »