Hah! You thought moving to Hawaii was all sand and surf? Not so, my friend. This, as people like to remind me, is the tropics. That means bugs... big bugs... nasty bugs. On the East Coast, roaches are the sign of bad hygiene and low moral fiber, but here, even the nicest places can have them. DH and I have spent a lot of time at open houses and looking at rental options and inevitably, if the place has been empty for any length of time, there will be a dead roach or two, belly up in the corner. And I don't mean the little critters that scurry away when the lights go on. I mean big, honking brownish red things as big as your thumb that fly when they're alive.
Aaagh!
We went out looking for rentals with a very high end realtor who was a friend of a friend. She took us to a very nice town home in a fancy complex, hoping that by being nice to us as renters we would go back to her when we were looking to buy. There we all were in a lovely three bedroom when I spotted one of the thumb-sized carcasses on the carpet. When I stopped shuddering and could speak without squealing, I mentioned it. The realtor just shrugged.
"Oh, they get inside now and again."
If the bleached blond, high-end, high maintenance house seller thought nothing of it...
Another time, we looked at a place that had little tiny carcasses in the cabinets and when DH asked the owner about any bug problems, the woman was also very calm.
"Oh, we spray regularly, but of course there are roaches."
To make matters worse, this particular house had neighbors that were a bit too interesting. On one side, the family had a flock of chickens roaming the yard. On the other side, the family had a tribe of cats. We found one of them in the backyard. Cute as a button and no doubt full of fleas. We passed on the opportunity, overwhelmed by the livestock and wild life.
As time has passed, I haven't gotten any more used to the idea of large roaches or the slugs we see after the rain, but I don't mind all the geckos that dart here and there outside and sometimes dart around our walls. I know they won't turn and start talking to me with a cute little accent, but that insurance gecko has convinced me that little lizards are cute, not nasty. And besides, a lizard is just too big to swat. The yuck factor is way too high. I'd rather live and let live, at least in the gecko's case. The roaches are another matter entirely.
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Friday, October 24, 2008
You want rice with that?
The local discount store, like many of them on "the mainland" (that's what we call the rest of you folks) contains a fast food restaurant. It has the usual menu, sausage and egg on muffin, biscuit, or whatever. A seating area full of elders who congregate there for their morning coffee and kibitzing. Kids toddling around getting into everything they can reach. The usual stuff.
They also have on the menu, the local platter. Eggs, spam and rice. For breakfast. Or you can have eggs, Portugese sausage and rice. Or you can even have eggs, spam, sausage and rice. Yum. And over in the area where the elders are sitting, chatting and chuckling over their rice and eggs is a man strumming a ukelele. How many times have you seen that in your local hangout?
On the lunch menu, along with the typical hot apple pie dessert, one can order hot taro pie. For those of you who may not be aware, taro is a local starchy plant. It might be in the potato-type family. It cooks up purple. So the picture on the menu is a nice, crispy, crusty pie thing with purple pasty stuff spilling out- and it's not blueberry. Different, to say the least. I agreed to try some local tapioca pudding for dessert at a local chain. The waiter told me it had sweet potato in it. Naturally, I expected it to be orange. Nope. It came out looking like blueberry tapioca. Purple. I'm afraid I was not able to conceal my horror and just added to the local disdain for tourists, which they all assume that I am. My apologies to future visitors, but it was just too much of a shock. Apparently, okinawan sweet potatoes cook up purple, not orange like mainland sweet potatoes. Who knew?
And rice goes with everything.
They also have on the menu, the local platter. Eggs, spam and rice. For breakfast. Or you can have eggs, Portugese sausage and rice. Or you can even have eggs, spam, sausage and rice. Yum. And over in the area where the elders are sitting, chatting and chuckling over their rice and eggs is a man strumming a ukelele. How many times have you seen that in your local hangout?
On the lunch menu, along with the typical hot apple pie dessert, one can order hot taro pie. For those of you who may not be aware, taro is a local starchy plant. It might be in the potato-type family. It cooks up purple. So the picture on the menu is a nice, crispy, crusty pie thing with purple pasty stuff spilling out- and it's not blueberry. Different, to say the least. I agreed to try some local tapioca pudding for dessert at a local chain. The waiter told me it had sweet potato in it. Naturally, I expected it to be orange. Nope. It came out looking like blueberry tapioca. Purple. I'm afraid I was not able to conceal my horror and just added to the local disdain for tourists, which they all assume that I am. My apologies to future visitors, but it was just too much of a shock. Apparently, okinawan sweet potatoes cook up purple, not orange like mainland sweet potatoes. Who knew?
And rice goes with everything.
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Why fly when you can walk?
One of the first things we noticed, here in Kailua, on the seacoast, the birds are a bit more interesting and they have a peculiar behavior pattern.
It seems that no matter what type of bird they are, and I'll try to describe the ones that I can identify, they would rather walk than fly. It's true! Here's a typical siting. You're driving on Kaneohe Bay Drive, a relatively busy thoroughfare, and you spot a couple of brown and black birds( I think they are myna birds) in the road ahead of you. You slow down, they continue meadering across. You slow down some more, after all, you don't want to have myna feathers stuck in the front fender. The birds continue to stroll, heads moving in time to their little yellow feet, yellow beaks leading the way. Eventually, you get so close that they realize they have to do something different. Do they spread their wings? Heck no. They run.
So you may be thinking that perhaps myna birds can't fly. Wrong. They can and I have seen them. But apparently they only fly when it suits them. And they aren't the only walking birds. The egrets walk, too, and so do the pretty little cardinals and even the sparrows. They just walk about their business. Up tree trunks, along limbs, across the street, with traffic, against traffic and on the lawn in front of the Akahi Shopping Center or any other lawn or grassy area around.
Walk, walk , walk, and occasionally they run, if it's really important. Like to catch a feisty bug or, oh yeah, to escape from a car. Flying? Not so much.
Yesterday, DH and I were stopped at a stop sign when an egret came near. Picture a white, yellow-legged bird, about the size of a really skinny turkey and maybe 2 feet tall. We looked at the bird, it looked at us, it flapped its wings and leapt to the roof of the car. We heard the little clicking sound of its landing and then it jumped off the other side. The thing couldn't be bothered to fly all the way over! I was afraid that it might have scratched the roof with either feet or beak, but it seems to have made a perfect landing. For goodness' sake. It could have just waited until we pulled away and walked.
It seems that no matter what type of bird they are, and I'll try to describe the ones that I can identify, they would rather walk than fly. It's true! Here's a typical siting. You're driving on Kaneohe Bay Drive, a relatively busy thoroughfare, and you spot a couple of brown and black birds( I think they are myna birds) in the road ahead of you. You slow down, they continue meadering across. You slow down some more, after all, you don't want to have myna feathers stuck in the front fender. The birds continue to stroll, heads moving in time to their little yellow feet, yellow beaks leading the way. Eventually, you get so close that they realize they have to do something different. Do they spread their wings? Heck no. They run.
So you may be thinking that perhaps myna birds can't fly. Wrong. They can and I have seen them. But apparently they only fly when it suits them. And they aren't the only walking birds. The egrets walk, too, and so do the pretty little cardinals and even the sparrows. They just walk about their business. Up tree trunks, along limbs, across the street, with traffic, against traffic and on the lawn in front of the Akahi Shopping Center or any other lawn or grassy area around.
Walk, walk , walk, and occasionally they run, if it's really important. Like to catch a feisty bug or, oh yeah, to escape from a car. Flying? Not so much.
Yesterday, DH and I were stopped at a stop sign when an egret came near. Picture a white, yellow-legged bird, about the size of a really skinny turkey and maybe 2 feet tall. We looked at the bird, it looked at us, it flapped its wings and leapt to the roof of the car. We heard the little clicking sound of its landing and then it jumped off the other side. The thing couldn't be bothered to fly all the way over! I was afraid that it might have scratched the roof with either feet or beak, but it seems to have made a perfect landing. For goodness' sake. It could have just waited until we pulled away and walked.
The first posting
Greetings, and welcome to my blog. I don't claim to be any kind of expert, but given the fact that I've moved countless times in my adult life, I have a certain amount of experience in both moving and paradise. So when my Dear Heart(DH) and I committed to moving from the East Coast to Oahu, I thought I knew what we were getting into. Do you hear that big, loud buzzer drowning me out?
You might think, well, what could be wrong? And on one level, you'd be right. What could be wrong with living in a place where the temperature hovers between 70 and 85 degrees on most days? Where you can see rainbows and waterfalls on the commute to work? Where one of the most beautiful beaches in the world is just a 10 minute drive?
On the other hand, there are so many differences here. Not that these things are wrong, but they are definitely different and often quite unexpected. On the good side, the drivers here are immensely more polite than those on the East Coast. They will actually wait for you to merge onto the highway, rather than speeding up to cut you off. On the less-than-good side, there are bugs. This is the tropics, remember? Fleas, roaches, and centipedes have all made very successful adaptations to the Hawaiian climate. Lovely.
At any rate, my plan is to explore the changes and differences encountered by a woman of a certain age, her DH, and their elderly cat upon transplanting themselves to Oahu in the fall of 2008.
Enjoy!
You might think, well, what could be wrong? And on one level, you'd be right. What could be wrong with living in a place where the temperature hovers between 70 and 85 degrees on most days? Where you can see rainbows and waterfalls on the commute to work? Where one of the most beautiful beaches in the world is just a 10 minute drive?
On the other hand, there are so many differences here. Not that these things are wrong, but they are definitely different and often quite unexpected. On the good side, the drivers here are immensely more polite than those on the East Coast. They will actually wait for you to merge onto the highway, rather than speeding up to cut you off. On the less-than-good side, there are bugs. This is the tropics, remember? Fleas, roaches, and centipedes have all made very successful adaptations to the Hawaiian climate. Lovely.
At any rate, my plan is to explore the changes and differences encountered by a woman of a certain age, her DH, and their elderly cat upon transplanting themselves to Oahu in the fall of 2008.
Enjoy!
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