Just packing more stuff, getting it shipped, finding some packing stuff etc. At least I found a couple of pounds of walnuts so I can keep feeding my birdies or eat them myself if I toast them first.
This is but one example of how different life on the mainland is. I find cans and cans of food, pastries, bread, fruit, veg, pasta, all kinds of things discarded/donated all the time. If, as a kid in the 1970s in Hawaii, I'd found *one* package of spaghetti, or one can of tomato sauce, it would have been a striking lifetime memory.
In fact in the 1980s, when I was in my first apartment and only working 8 hours a day, money was tight and I found a bunch of MREs in the apartment dumpster. I fished out as many as I could without climbing in (should have climbed in) and each day after work I'd go home and have an MRE.
Another thing that's struck me lately is, here on the mainland there's been a lot of effort and even laws passed to make welcome those who are "immigrants" (non-white) but who were brought here by their parents while their ages were still in the single digits and thus, grew up as Americans. They're called "dreamers" and it's been acknowledged that it'd be unjust and cruel to send them back to a country they didn't grow up in and probably don't speak the language of.
In Hawaii you can be 5th generation living in Hawaii (I've met a guy who was) and white and you'll always be an outsider. Hell we "local haoles" do that to each other. I thought my friend Pat was a mainland import but hope, he'd grown up in Hawaii as I had.
I, with my olive skin, could actually pass as more "local" than most. By turning up the Pidgin a little and wearing a dress code that's subtle but that no tourist will ever crack, I could be considered "pretty local". But I'd get tired of the old place pretty fast.
No comments:
Post a Comment