Ye Olde Photos
Venice, Italy, 2001. Don't you love how the building looks like it's about to crumble? We even had a garden. Very unusual. Mom and me.
Top Ten Ways to Look Like a Tourist in Hawaii
Edited to add: I first wrote this post in 2005, when I was living in Hawaii and noticing a lot of the same things that tourists did over and over. These days, 2012, I live in Alabama and I write books for a living. But I seem to get a lot of hits on this post, so I wanted to explain when it was written and why. Basically, it was a tongue-in-cheek look at the ways tourists stand out — with some real advice in there too. Do NOT turn your back on the ocean. And wear sunblock. Very important!
In no particular order:
1. Rent a Chrysler Sebring. Yep, it's a convertible, and yep, you're enjoying riding around with the top down, but I'm 99% certain you ain't from around here. Wanna go local? Rent a Jeep. You can still take the top off.
2. Wear matching Aloha outfits. In very loud prints. That say “Hawaii” on them. Locals don't usually wear his ‘n' hers duds. Aloha attire is gorgeous and yes, we wear it here, but if it comes from a hotel gift shop and it's really cheap, chances are it looks like something a tourist would wear. Want the real thing? Tony Bahama, Kahala, Tori Richards labels to name a few. They aren't cheap. They are gorgeous. Best deal on Aloha shirts for men? Goodwill, I kid you not. And yes, Hilo Hattie's has the real stuff.
3. Wear shoes. If you've got close-toed shoes on, you probably aren't from around here. We wear flip-flops, otherwise known as slippers (or slippahs in pidgin). Tennis shoes are for jogging. Men may wear shoes to the Symphony, but women will still wear open-toed heels. I avoid shoes at all costs. I have worn knee-high boots to Borders in the winter, but that place is COLD. I also wore a wool blazer and a long skirt. Which brings me to another point.
4. It's winter (roughly Nov-Mar), 70 degrees, windy, and it's raining. You're wearing shorts. You are NOT from around here. We get cold in winter. We wear jackets and jeans. We turn our AC off (if we have it; you'd be surprised at the amount of places that don't). We even wear sweat shirts. Brrr! If you are a true Hawaiian, as in an indigenous person and not a haole transplant like me, none of this applies to you.
5. Two words: white skin. If you're coming to Hawaii for a vacation, invest in a self-tanner first. Please. The glare off your white legs is killing my eyes. And, heck yes, I committed the same faux pas when I first arrived, which is why I am in a position to tell you this.
6. It's dusk, or dark, and you're splashing in the ocean in Waikiki. There's a reason it's called feeding time, you know. Strange creatures like to prowl the ocean in the dark and they are usually doing so because they are hungry. Remember this when you get that urge to plunge into the warm Hawaiian waters at night.
7. You turned your back on the ocean and now you're a) being dragged out to sea or b) you just got soaked by that massive wave. Never turn your back on the ocean. Never, ever. It does not behave the same here as in other places you may have been when you had Aunt Bessie take your picture on the beach. Especially don't do this in winter on the North Shore.
8. You just ordered a sno-cone from the nice ladies at Matsumoto's Grocery Store. It's not a sno-cone, it's a shave ice. And Matsumoto's really does have the best ones evah (Haleiwa, North Shore, Oahu). No sno-cone on earth looks like a real shave ice. Shave ice is fine, fine, fine.
9. You're lying on the beach and you're beet red. Locals know the sun is strong. Us lighter skinned locals wear sunblock (and maybe the dark-skinned ones too, but I can't speak for them). Notice when you go to the beach the people who have big canopies set up under shady trees. Locals. Notice how they stay in the shade, too.
10. That puzzled look on your face when you ask directions and someone tells you to go mauka three miles, makai for a block, and turn left. Aloha ain't the only word you need to know when you get here. Mahalo is a good one (thank you). Mauka and makai are pretty necessary too, especially if you plan to venture away from Waikiki and need to ask directions. On Oahu, we have two great big landmarks that you cannot miss. One is the mountains (mauka). Two is the ocean (makai). If someone tells you to go mauka, drive toward the mountains. If they tell you makai, go toward the ocean.
Okay, that's the ten I could think of off the top of my head. This is from the perspective of a transplant. I've lived here for a year and a half now and I'm still learning. 🙂 And I didn't mention taking pictures of everything because, heck, you're supposed to do that. I still do it, though not as much.
Aloha nui loa.
Why blogging is depressing….
Because when one blogs, one inevitably surfs blogs. And blogs lead to more blogs, links to links, in a never-ending universe big bang kind of way. And you realize that there are ten billion writers out there with the same dreams you have–and that's just the ones blogging because there are a whole lot who aren't! And you realize that talent and ideas are rampant, no matter that you read industry blogs that indicate otherwise. Perhaps it isn't that the talent and ideas are lacking so much as people really don't know how to communicate those ideas, etc, which sounds ridiculous because we are talking about writers, people who toil with the written word and who ought to darned well know how to communicate.
But we don't, not always. I, for instance, am a perfectionist Virgo. I'll rewrite that query 500 hundred times and still think it isn't good enough. And, probably, the best version was an earlier version that I've nit-picked myself out of by now. I couldn't say it that way again if I had to, and the trouble might just be that I have to in order to get the project read.
The more I know, the less I know. Years ago, as a newbie writer who was convinced the first book was saleable, I got good responses and even some requests for material. I didn't know enough to know I had to keep trying and keep writing, which is really dumb in hindsight. So, I packed up my writer's kit and went back to school instead. I didn't quit writing, though I wrote less and I figured I wasn't destined to sell anyway (dimwit!). But of course the writing bug bit again, and hard, and I reentered the game with the idea of selling.
And I'm not giving that idea up again, but day-um! Why was I so dumb back then? Why didn't I keep writing and submitting, because when I look at some of those old rejections, it was there. The encouragement, the secret if you will, that if you keep doing this, you'll get there because you've got something. Do I still have that something? Hell if I know. And this is where the blogs come in. They've shown me so many more people with the same dream that I wonder if what I have is any better or any more saleable than the next guy's is. What got me those “good” rejections then? Was it the greenery around my edges that translated into a certain freshness that's lacking in more seasoned word warriors?
Do I know more now or less? I'm a better writer now, I know that for sure, but am I any better at selling myself to those I need to entice into reading me? I'm not sure about that at all, and as I sit here trying to write a two paragraph pitch, I know there are dozens of ways I could say this, dozens of angles I could exploit. Which one is best?
Hell if I know.
William Gerhardi who?
Who the hell is William Gerhardi, one might ask? Dig this quote from the dude, mined from the copious notes to Virginia Woolf's Three Guineas:
Never yet have I committed the error of looking on women writers as serious fellow artists. I enjoy them rather as spiritual helpers who, endowed with a sensitive capacity for appreciation, may help the few of us afflicted with genius to bear our cross with good grace. Their true role, therefore, is rather to hold out the sponge to us, cool our brow, while we bleed. If their sympathetic understanding may indeed be put to a more romantic use, how we cherish them for it! — From Memoirs of a Polyglot by William Gerhardi.
Apparently, Mr. Gerhardi (1895-1977) was considered the “English Chekov” of his time. But really, is it wise to publicly call oneself a genius and to leave it for posterity? Because Time, that cosmic equalizer of giant proportions, has decreed that the “polyglot Englishman” is little more than a footnote in a Virginia Woolf rant. Who's rolling in whose grave now, eh? Spiritual helpers indeed.
Truth, Justice and the Snarky Way
In case you haven't been reading Miss Snark (which I HIGHLY recommend), here is a tale of woe about a fee-charging self-proclaimed literary agent (someone posted link in the comments section). Miss Snark detests fee-charging literary agents and has embarked upon a one-woman crusade to convince us desperate writers that we do NOT pay agents for representation. They sell our books, we all get paid. Not before. Long live Miss Snark and her gin pail!
Frickin’ New York Times
I love the New York Times. I read it every day. I send email links to friends and family all the time. A few months back, however, I noticed a change in how the emails were done. You used to be able to choose whether to send a brief synopsis and link or to send the whole article with a link. I always chose whole article because it was easier for those I was sending to. And for people like my hubby, who is on a firewalled out the ass server at work, it was the only way he could read the article. But then the NYT changed their options. Now there is no option. Synopsis and link is it. Annoying, yes, especially when I have to copy and paste the entire article if I want my hubby to read it. But, on occasion, when I want to have an article for my files, I just send myself the link.
Today, when I tried to access a link that's only 3 weeks old, guess what. The NYT wants $3.95 to let me see an article I already read. Bastards. Maybe I'm viewing this all wrong, considering I get to read the entire NYT online for free every day when there are folks who pay to have the print version delivered, but I'm pretty sure the NYT is flush with moolah and doesn't need nearly four freaking bucks for a two page article. I probably wouldn't pay even if it were only 50 cents, but still. $3.95? Ain't that a bit much? I buy the print version when I'm traveling and don't have Internet, or when I want to sit at a coffee shop and read the paper. I also get inundated by all the advertisers, and I probably buy some of what they are hawking. Yep, the NYT is doing A-okay without my $3.95 per article.
On the other hand, I get the last laugh. All I have to do is log into my university library and head for dear old Lexis Nexis and voila, free article. But you know what, that's a hassle and it isn't that important to me at the moment. Lesson learned though. From now on, I cut and paste if I want the damn article.