Friday explorations in shopping

June 29, 2012

Aloha auinapo! (Good evening, after midnight)

Busy day! I went in to work early to make up for my shortened afternoon on Wednesday and going to the meeting Thursday. I spent the entire day working on the childhood obesity data for Ann. She was off most of the day so it was something to work on that I could do on my own. The format was very time consuming but I followed instructions. I finished the extremely time consuming part today. Just one last bit to do and I will finish it on Monday. I ate lunch in today, I had the Amy's Burrito Especial I picked up at the store. It has rice, black beans and tomatoes. It was GREAT. I will have to get more of those for lunches. Lisa, Lori and I ate together. Lori shared her apple slices with me as well.

As the day drew to a close Shu came into my office and told me to hurry and follow her. She had seen a little kitten sunning itself on the wall, visible through the open grating of the stairwell. It was a beautiful light orange tabby, probably about 3 months old. Just sprawled on top of this tall stone wall and snoozing int he sun. It woke up when it heard us and I called it and watched it look our way. It was adorable. It scampered off shortly after that. It was so nice to see a kitty. There are so very few of them to see here. If you look very closely you can see it on the wall in the very center of the picture. My phone camera has no zoom option. regardless, this is the view from the stairwell outside my office looking to the side of the building. The front view is towards the ocean :)

Lisa was going to a store called Marukai and offered me a ride. I thought for a minute then said, "Ummm Lisa... Isn't that an island???" She laughed and then explained to me that Marukai is a STORE... MOLOKAI is an ISLAND and part of Hawaii. Yeesh. That was Melissa Making A ;)

Marukai is a Japanese wholesale market for members only. Lisa is a member so I went with her. It was SO FUN. She showed me all these Japanese candies, snacks and a million other things. Here are some picture I took of things I did not get. Hershey kisses with macadamia nuts! I'll have to bring some of these home. Also these neat looking things called Chinese pretzels. Lisa says they are tasteless but they look neat so I took a picture. I could have spent much longer there just learning about all the things but my ankle was pretty painful. 

Papa George (Lisa's dad) was with us. He made their purchases and went outside to the tables to wait for us. Apparently he knows Lisa loves to spend time looking at things in the store and this is their pattern. So we finished and went outside to meet him. He had bought me 2 sets of nice chopsticks (one for me and one for my boyfriend back home). Poor Scott, guess he's going to have to learn to eat with chopsticks! HEHEHE! He also bought me a bag of these puffy crispy chip things. They are called Shrimp Chip Crackers. They don't taste like shrimp at all. They remind me of munchos but not as salty. They are pastel shades of pink, yellow, green and cream and are super light, crispy and not oily. They are REALLY GOOD. I wanted to just eat the whole bag but I was hungry and wanted to actually eat dinner.

We left there and stopped by McDonald's. They had the haupia pies! This is only a seasonal thing and they have them now so I wanted to be sure to try one. Haupia is a pudding type dessert made of coconut milk. This was REALLY REALLY good and I want more of them before they (and I) go away!

This sign was inside the McDonald's.They have Rolo McFlurries which are good but I had those before. However, they have newly introduced chocolate dipped soft serve ice cream. I loved the sign so I took a picture, "Cremosos y chocolatosos"... chocoloatosos sounds like a disease. If -itis is inflammation and -osis is condition then chocolatosos maybe is a condition of craving chocolate! Sorry, just had a nerd funny moment there.

At the McDonald's they had an ATM. Tomorrow is Farmer's Market day so I needed to get some cash. I thought this screen was really funny so I took a picture. Welcome to Bankoh! Bankoh convenience! hehe

We were only stopping there to grab a haupia pie and then head out. We then stopped at Jack in the Box. Ok, so we don't have these in Kentucky. First off, this clown thing as a mascot looks freaking creepy. Second, the food is super cheap and I have heard it is good. So I was up for trying it. They serve breakfast all day which I will have to try in the future. The first thing I saw was this on the counter:

Thanks, but no Spam for me tonight. I asked for suggestions from Lisa on what was good. She recommended the tacos. The tacos are like Taco Tico tacos back home. They are cheap at 2 for $1.00. The shells are super crispy and the hot sauce on it is spicy but not unbearably so. So I got 2. These were SO GOOD! I loved them. Then she recommended the eggrolls, also on the cheapie menu. So I got 1 of those. The eggroll was also super delicious, I was very impressed. I've rarely had a better eggroll, even more amazing since this is a fast food place. She said neither of these were large items so I also got a burger called the Jumbo Jack. This was a delicious seasoned beef patty with lettuce, tomato, pickles and very light mayo and ketchup. I loved the spices on the beef patty, very tasty. The bun was nothing special but it also wasn't bad or soggy. All in all for around $5 this was a VERY good meal! I was surprised at how tasty everything was and now desperately want one in Lexington.

We also dropped by the post office so I could pick up a couple of flat rate priority shipping boxes so I could mail some things back home. I can pay for shipping online and print off a label and stick it on the box and ship from work. So I won't have to make a special trip to the post office. Or at the least pack it all up and then just take the prepacked box to the post office to ship.

I am very tired. I have muscle fatigue from hula class yesterday (nice though) and my ankle is painful. I am so very thankful for Lisa and Papa George driving me around and sharing the delight of finding all these new things. I have a bunch of things to ship home but I'll wait a bit before sending things. Don't want people at home getting spoiled, and they just got a package this week!

So I'm off to bed with maybe a bit of Angel on Netflix first. Not sure what I'll do tomorrow but I'll figure out something fun if at all possible.

Malama pono, (Take care)
~Melissa

Zippy's, Hula class, and pretty pictures

June 28, 2012

Aloha ahiahi, (Good evening)

I had a very interesting day. I woke and went to work - arriving at 7:30. I worked on the DVFR for a bit till Ann was free to come look at some data and answer some questions. She then gave me a side project to work on for her, doing some easy percentages for a childhood obesity project of hers. She has meetings to go to so I worked on my own for most of the day. That all went well and I got a lot done. I also had brought the Blue Monday candy bars that Scott sent and shared pieces of those with people at work. I'd brought in one Ale-8 and shared that as well. I can bring more Ale-8's in, but only wanted to carry just so much this morning! People thought they were both pretty good. They especially liked the Ale-8, ginger in cookies, candy, and ginger ale is very popular here. It was nice to have some more Kentucky edibles (and drinkables) to share.

Lisa called and was going to pick me and Ann up for a late lunch when she got out of her morning meeting, before their mutual meeting that afternoon. So Lisa called and I went down to meet her. I was this brochure on the wall as I walked down. Little things remind me that I'm not at home - this is a prime example. This is in Marshallese. I had never even HEARD of Marshallese until I came here.

Ann had already left so Lisa and I went to Zippy's. Last time we went I got the Zip pack so I wanted to try something different. I have been told the chili is good, and the meat sauce for the spaghetti. I have also never had Portuguese bean soup. So Lisa and I split a chili cheese fry (so I could try the chili), and we got the combo package with our meals. The combo added a small drink, soup or salad, and dessert. I tried the Portuguese bean soup (it came with the super thick saltine type crackers that are so great!) and the soup was delicious! I like it a lot. The only thing I didn't care for is they obviously added a thickener to the soup, I'd have liked it better with it just being a normal thin consistency. However, it was very tasty.

My meal was spaghetti with meat sauce, the small size order. The meat sauce is good, but doesn't top my homemade. I didn't take a picture, I was hungry and ate it all and then remembered I hadn't taken a picture. However, it's just spaghetti so it really wasn't exciting to look at anyway. The chili is quite good, especially on the fries.

For dessert I had the lemon dream cake. It was a light sponge type cake with a light fluffy lemon filling and a lemon buttercream type frosing. The fancy curly things on the top are shaved white chocolate (BLEAH! I don't like white chocolate at all) which I promptly scraped off. Without the white chocolate fancy schmantzy thingies the cake was delicious!

I also took a couple of picture of the menu, just because the offerings are so very different from home. they also have sushi in a variety of ways, but I didn't photo those pages.

I like to stop and look in the viewing cases at bakeries. Here are some of the offerings that I didn't get that were on display:

After we left Lisa thought she would be too late to go to the meeting but Ann told her to come anyway. However, by the time she could have dropped me off and then gotten downtown it would have been over so she just took me with her to the meeting. She and I figured it wouldn't hurt anything for me to see where the State Public Health building is and some of their conferences are held. It wasn't long till the end of my day and I was planning to take the bus downtown after work anyway so I went with her. This is the building the meeting was in as well as two interesting paintings that were on the walls in the lobby.

After the meeting we walked back to the car and I got a picture of the building that is where all the state covernment accounting is done. It has some neat decorations, I hope you can see them well in the picture.

The workday was over at this point so Lisa drove me over to Ward center Warehouse and dropped me off. This is where the free hula class is held from 5-6. Honestly though it is Hawaiian language till :30 then hula from 5:30-6:30. Hula is telling a story through music and body language in dance. Each movement of feet, hands, and where you look tells something. The class was great though it was way too hard on my ankle. The instructor let me keep my shoes on instead of going barefoot so I'd have some more support for my Achilles tendon and my ankle. I did buy the hula class CD so I can have it to take home. Also, the class afterwards started with a hula called "The Awakening" which is a dance for greeting or saying goodbye. They had lost a friend and did the dance as a memorial to the deceased. I videoed the dance. It is about 5 minutes long. It is quite beautiful. The woman in the second row is the instructor Germaine.

After class I went to the pet store by the class area and petted kittens. I got some kitten licks and nibbles. I miss my babies at home :( After a few minutes of that i went back out into the lanai area and Susan was checking on bus routes for us to get home. I saw this sign by the escalator and thought it was hilarious. Read the second line. No bare feet, slippers, sneakers... so... what footwear ARE you allowed to wear? I guess boots, galoshes, and heels? you can wear flippers but not sneakers!!!!! Craziness.

We went to the bus stop right by the marina. I took this gorgeous picture while we waited for the bus.

Possibly a plan for the holiday coming up?

These are of the evening sky and buildings.

So the bus came, we waves at it to stop and the driver went right on by! So Susan waved down a cab, we jumped in and went to near Ala Moana where we could catch the #3 bus home. She paid for the cab (which I feel guilty about and need to remember to give her money tomorrow). Ho`oponopono (To set things right, rectify). She knew my ankle was killing me. She said goodnight because she needed to go do a bit of shopping and I got on the bus (it showed up about 3 minutes after we arrived so perfect timing!) and went on home. It started sprinkling right as I was a house away from home. So I made it in, showered and now have my leg propped up with ice. My ankle FREAKING HURTS. It was worth it though. Susan called to be sure I got home ok which was super nice. I am very lucky to know the wonderful folks here.

Now I am going to get off this computer and get my exhausted self to bed. Some pain patches (thank God for SalonPas and MAHALO (thank you) Scott for sending me some), some tylenol and some soft music and I'm going to sleep. I want to go in extra early tomorrow morning to get some more work done since I had my work time shortened the past 2 days. I am listening to the soft sound of rain falling outside my window, and feeling the breeze from the fan. Life is good.

Me ka aloha pumehana, (With kindest regards, warm aloha)
~Melissa eha wawae (pronounces ay-ha va-vay) (sore foot) HEHEHE

Dim sum, a package, and the greatest book ever!!!!

June 27, 2012

`Olu`olu komo mai, kukakuka. (Please come in and let's talk story.)


I know my posts for the last week haven't been very exciting. I've been staying fairly still and trying to let my ankle heal. It is much better today and I am considering increasing my activity starting tomorrow. Tomorrow is the free hula class and I would very much like to go. Unless my ankle makes it known tomorrow that it is not doing ok then I will be going. It is Wednesday and normally I would have gone tot he zoo tonight, but the music is kids playing and I figured I could rest my ankle another night :)

I woke early today to what? You guessed it... rain! However it ended very shortly thereafter. I got ready and headed into work. I arrived at 7:30, so I could be ready to go downtown at 8 for a meeting at the Hawaii State Capitol Building. the building architecture is to remind people of the state. Here is a section pasted from the link about the building:

• The building is surrounded by a reflecting pool, symbolizing the Pacific Ocean.
• The two legislative chambers are cone-shaped, symbolizing volcanoes that formed the Hawaiian Islands.
• The columns around the perimeter of the building have shapes resembling coconut trees. There are eight in either side of the building, representing the eight main islands of Hawai'i.
• The Capitol is built with an open-air design, allowing sun, wind, and rain to enter; the central rotunda opens to the sky.
• When standing in the center of the structure, the chandeliers from both legislative chambers, which represent the sun and moon, can be seen through the glass walls, while the area that is normally reserved for a rotunda in most capitol buildings is left open to the sky. It is said that the sky is Hawaii's capitol rotunda.

I also took a few photos from the inside where we had our meeting. The meeting itself was on services for immigrant populations. This information and opportunity will serve me well during my time in Hawaii, at home in Kentucky, and anywhere I end up in the future.

After the meeting since we were downtown we rode with Lisa and went to have dim sum at Golden Palace in Chinatown.

Dim sum is food items served in bite size, or small size portions or pieces. The meal came with jasmine tea, which was delicious. Each plate or steam basket was only $1.98 so we ate a LOT of items. Shared between 3 people it was super cheap, only $8 each once we were all finished! Having never had dim sum before I cannot compare it. Most of the reviews say this place is good dim sum but not the best you'll ever get. However the bathrooms are described as: "A place you'd go to try meth just once..." I didn't go to the bathroom, thankfully. The servers spoke almost no english and if you even looked at something they would try to put it on your table. You just had to say NO politely but firmly and they'd remove it and not charge. We had a variety of dishes:

This is what we started with - you can see individual pictures below. You can also see the teapot with the jasmine tea.

 I was told this is a shanghai something. Shanghai dumpling maybe? I'm trying to find pictures but it looks like a dumpling so hard to say. This tastes exactly like what we call potstickers (dumplings) at home. This has the ginger, pork, and scallions that is what i am used to getting at Chinese restaurants.

 This had seafood inside. 

 These are shrimp dumplings made with rice flour. It is a sign of a talented chef to make the dumplings translucent. "Though common, steamed rice-flour skins are quite difficult to make. Thus, it is a good demonstration of the chef's artistry to make these translucent dumplings." The shrimp inside are pink, so it was quite a pretty, and tasty, dish.

 Same wrappers as the shrimp, but with spinach, green onion and scallops.

The one on the left (Lisa took the photo for me and it is upside down! But I appreciate her taking it so I could post the image here) is pork and spices in a different type of wrapper - I think this may be the thin wheat wrapper maybe. It also has some sort of yummy sauce. The one on the right was... I dunno. Something good.

 The dessert and fried item cart they brought around. I didn't get a picture of the steamed item cart, which was also very neat!

 Jellyfish! I did try it. It is odd but not bad. It is like a rubber noodle that is not mushy. It actually crunches when you chew, but it is chewy. There isn't a lot of flavor so it is mainly a texture with whatever sauce you add.

Manapua! The sweet fluffy roll with the char siu (sweet BBQ pork) stuffed inside. YUM. We also had a taro dumpling made with mashed taro, mushrooms, pork and spices and deep fried. It was delicious. I forgot to get a picture before we ate them! We also got a fried eggplant stuffed with fish cake. It has a super thin batter and was crispy on the outside. It was covered with a black bean sauce. No picture - sorry. It was very tasty and I liked it!

Ok, these were some sort of steamed rice wrapper with shrimp inside. They are served with a generous coating of sweet soy sauce. The shrimp was good and the wrapped had a good flavor. However, the wrapper was kindof weird... almost slimy but not completely. Not my favorite but it was tasty.

 This is an egg tart. It is actually a sweet custard served in a flaky crust. It was very good.

I want to go back! Tomorrow! There are about a million other dishes I want to try!!! After eating we went back to the office. Ann needed to catch up on some things so I went to my office to get some data results to show her. that is when I realized I didn't have my phone. Luckily after about 25 minutes I found it in Lisa's car where I had set it down to put on my seat belt. WHEW. I showed Ann the data I had and we discussed some things for me to work on tomorrow.

I left a few minutes early so I could come home and make some calls. I also got to video conference with Scott, Michael, Jeff and Rob while they opened the package I sent home. Some of the items needed instructions (DON'T try to chew the seed on the Le Hing Mui candies!), some needed descriptions on what it is used for, and some items were for specific people. I am glad the package arrived and they got their items. They seemed to enjoy it :)  Happy me! I feel like the Pacific Island Santa Clause !

Also, when I got home there was a box waiting for me. Scott had sent me a package with A stuffed Odie (dachshund), a six-pack of Ale-8 and some Blue Monday candy bars to share at work, a box of pain patches, a BELT (WOOHOOO seriously needed that), some sunblock (70+) and lip balm with sunscreen (NEEDED!), a box or organic Chai tea, two big chocolate chip cookies and a snickerdoodle type muffin from the BBB (Bakery, Blessings and Bookstore - my favorite every Thursday haunt at home!), two DVD's - Men in Black and MIB II since I have never seen them, and the Darth Vader and Son book which is cute.

Then comes the GREATEST GIFT OF ALL (and funniest). Scott and Donna gathered bags of the kitties hair when Donna brushed them. They stuck them in ziplock baggies and labeled them, so I would get a giggle and feel like I was home (Scott joked that I could toss it around my room to feel like home). Then he and Michael found the Crafting with Cat Hair book!!!!! This is freaking awesome. I know this is probably not funny or fabulous to anyone else but I think it is such a wonderful thing. My friends and I have joked for years that with all the spare cat hair I should knit a sweater or something. Now I have instructions on how to make it into felt and make crafts from it. Too freaking funny for words. They even included baggies of cat hair for me to make something. For those of you who are allergic I am sorry, the very thought of this probably makes you cringe. However, it is no different that wool for those people allergic to wool. It is just super super cool to me and makes me uber happy!

Here are some, not all, but some of the adorable projects in the book. Just too cute! Mahalo nui loa!!! (Thank you very much!!!)
Finger puppets!

 Book covers!

 Portraits!

 Knickknack boxes!

 Badges!

 And the super fabulous mobile!

I am all full of happy smiles and giggles. I am going to curl up and rest my ankle one last night. I think I'll watch a couple of episodes of Angel on Netflix and go to sleep.My very best wishes to everyone who may be reading this. I may know you or may not, but regardless I appreciate you sharing this time with me. Aloha ahiahi ia oukou! (Good evening to all of you!)

Malama pono, (Take care)
~Melissa