Red thai curry, homeless newspapers and sea scorpions

July 3, 2012

I woke up this morning, got ready for work and was about to leave at 6:45 when a deluge occurred. So I promptly decided to dawdle a bit till the rain slacked off. It soon stopped and I made it to work by 7:30. Work was a quiet day. My computer couldn't stay connected to e-mail for more than about 30 seconds then would drop and not reconnect for hours. Also, I couldn't get on the internet at all. Normally this wouldn't be a crisis but this is the second day like this. While we are waiting for the meeting on Friday with the branch chief regarding the sexual health survey (HSHS) I am helping Ann with odds and ends on her current projects. Today I was going to be working on references and finding links online to put on the Heath Equity national website. Kind of hard with no internet. So we requested IT come look at my computer and in the meanwhile I manually entered bibliography info on articles and resources we had at hand.

For lunch Emily brought her homemade vegan red thai curry. She makes it with chunks of tofu, red, yellow and green peppers, 2 types of mushrooms, zucchini (Japanese zucchini I believe) and coconut milk. It was SUPER good. She had stopped by a Korean BBQ place in Kahala Mall and gotten some rice to go with it. I was going to make rice to bring but by the time I got home last night after the ankle x-rays and all I was tired. Plus, we had a couple of new residents here and they were using the kitchen. So Emily was super nice and got rice to have with the curry. She also got a veggie plate and let me try those items also. Here is a picture of her delicious curry with the rice.

This is the veggie plate. It is a pickled seaweed (the dark green shreds) which was tasty. A sesame oil seasoned cabbage (maybe bok choy?)(the lighter green bigger pieces) which I really liked a lot. Long rice (the noodles) which I believe is seasoned with shoyu (soy sauce) or some type of other seasoning. I like long rice, I have had it before but with chicken, not as a veggie dish so it tasted different. This was better than the meat version of long rice. Plus kim chee pancake (the red stuff) which was very very good. It was a lot of new things and every bit of it was delicious. 

Emily also brought Okinawa ugly oranges. This is not a nasty remark about the oranges but their actual name. Ugly oranges look like a rotten regular orange. They look all sunken in and when they are ripe the skin is brown. I had one as my dessert and it was VERY good. The orange peel has a lot of hollow area inside and the fruit is very easy to peel. The edible portion is about the size of a clementine. They have seeds but they are easy to see. There is not a lot of orange flesh but rather it is mostly juice! It is like a little pocket of very sweet fresh orange juice. It was really good!

A super big mahalo nui loa (thank you very much) to Emily for bringing the food and being so generous sharing it with me. It was a delight getting to try the new foods and share the experience. I thought the vegan red thai curry was fabulous and the korean bbq veggie items I will definitely have again!

The afternoon went quickly. I worked on the bibliography a bit longer then IT arrived to fix my computer. Earl (the IT supervisor for this branch) discovered it was a problem with my IP gateway address (no idea what that means) and fixed it. In addition we did some updates and made some modifications to my computer setup. This took the rest of my workday but it will be good to go on Thursday morning. Tomorrow is a holiday (4th of July - Independence Day!) so I have the day off. I was heading out to walk home and Emily was leaving at the same time. She offered a ride home and I took her up on it to save unnecessary walking on the ankle. It was hurting a bit but not bad at all. MUCH less than previous days. The aircast is really helping a lot.

Since today is a short day without many pictures or information I wanted to share another little item of interest. Susan brought me a copy of the homeless newspaper for Honolulu called "Street Beat". Apparently the homeless population here put out their own newspaper. It has interesting articles about homeless people who have kicked drugs, alcohol or other problems that contributed to their homeless status. It also tells about laws, resources and various things that affect homeless people. It shocked me when I saw it - I had never considered that homeless people might put out a newspaper. There is such a large population of homeless here. I know very little about the situation here other than you see homeless everywhere. there is even a lady that lives in her car that I pass every workday on my walk into the office.

OH NO! Sayuri just came home on crutches. She got stung by a "sea scorpion" while surfing today. She is a professional surfer so is out surfing most of every day. Since the ancient sea scorpions are extinct I had to look up what this may have been. Sayuri speaks good English but she is stressed and it may be a literal translation from Japanese and we call the creature something else. I think it is referring to the Scorpion Fish (Scorpaenidae) which include a variety of fish with venomous spiked ridges. Some of these are lionfish, stingfish, devilfish and others. They hide in seaweed or coral. She is in a lot of pain so I certainly wasn't going to pester her about words. I hope she heals quickly. We are becoming the walking wounded up on this floor! This is a picture of a devil scorpion fish taken here in Hawaii. You can see how these camouflaged fish can be easy to mistake for coral or rocks.

I talked to Scott a bit but he was tired so went on to bed. I played a little DDO with Rob which was a lot of fun. I was trying to stay off my feet to rest my ankle. I'm pretty tired so I'm headed off to bed. I still haven't decided what to do tomorrow for the holiday. I hope everyone is healthy, happy and enjoying their week.

Aloha auinapou, (Goodnight (late after midnight))
~Melissa