Dry Skin vs. Mosquito Bites
Fall is rapidly approaching here in New York. Leaves are starting to fall and demand to be raked up. We took our air conditioners out of the window and put them into storage until next summer. Pretty soon we will need to turn on the heat inside. Outside, there are still a lot of mosquitoes at dusk, and we haven't had a good frost yet to kill them off - maybe tonight. I look forward to when I no longer have to apply repellant and when you don't worry about screenless windows.
Also with the cooler weather is lower absolute humidity. No more problems with mildew for a while. Towels that are damp will dry nicely without smelling bad. Pollen allergies are much less of a problem until the spring. Your skin also will dry up a little - I consider it a small price to pay for the better weather and bug reduction.
In Hawaii, the weather doesn't change. It's always allergy season. Unless you got sunburned, you rarely get dry skin. And did I mention year-round bug bites?
Atari is not Japanese
I'm old enough to remember when home computers (hobby computers) were just coming out. Radio Shack had their TRS-80 (often referred to as "trash 80"), Commodore had its PET, Ohio Scientific had its Challenger (the one I got because I thought it was a better value for what it cost). Apple was showing it's quality (and price) above the others even then. By this time, Japanese electronics had a great reputation - in many ways being superior to American products. So why not make people think that they could get a quality home computer - a "Japanese" product from Atari. It sure sounds Japanese, but is actually Californian. Atari is Japanese for "hit" like a hit play on stage. I think the choice of name was effective - there didn't seem to be a drawback having the public think it was getting a Japanese product.
Eventually Atari did find its niche and was highly regarded for its video games (Pong and Asteroids to name two).
I'm not sure what my point is here. Japanese-Americans are really American made but are often perceived as Asians. For electronics, this connection is adventageous. I'm not sure if there are advantages for Japanese-American citizens. Look at what happened during World War II...
Pleasures of Fall Weather
Fall is my favorite season of the year. Unfortunately, you never get it in Hawaii. Cold, brisk mornings. No more high humidity. The bugs are finally getting killed off with the frost, albeit only for the season - they come back in the spring (although in Hawaii, they never go away).
In Hawaii, how do you escape? Find places with air conditioning. Why go outside in the heat when you can stay where it's air conditioned - cool and lower humidity. Go to a movie - most movie theaters are air conditioned. Lots of restaurants are also - and it's gotten better since they stopped allowing smoking in restaurants (something that New York did earlier). stay in where it's air conditioned is a luxury.
In Hawaii, most houses don't have airconditioning (or heat) - always having trade winds going through the house, so that keeps thing more under control temperature wise. But theirs always humidity and the resulting mildew. You have to have screens to keep the bugs out. And since the windows are usually open, you get a lot of dust, demanding frequent sweeping and mopping.
And another benefit that you have here in New York - the fall colors. The leaves are beautiful. But then they all fall (that's why it's called Fall). In Hawaii, there's nothing like the amount of leaves that you have to rake up here on the mainland - one drawback, but I still think it's worth it. I think it does the tree well to have the trees flushed out every year - and there's fewer places for bugs to live.
Languages and the Brain
I've always admired people who were able to speak more than 1 language. Wouldn't it be neat to have the ability to converse with many different people speaking different tongues flawlessly shifting gears as a well-tuned car? I occasionally have dreams where I have multilingual capability. I guess learning languages has always been something I like to do - although one stumbling block is my built-in defense of not wanting to appear stupid in public or making dumb mistakes.
In high school, Russian was one of my best subjects. I remember my teacher remarking how unusual it was for a mathematician (Math was my best subject) to be good in languages. Perhaps two different areas of the brain are involved. However, I found Russian to be a very left-brained language. Lot of the grammar is very well defined - once you get through the barrier of an unfamiliar alphabet, things are not too difficult. In Russian, most things are pronounced how they are written, unlike French, (which I've had trouble with pronouncing the right sound). I find written French is so much easier to decode. Fortunately, English is my native language because it would be a bear to try to learn as a foreign language with it's irregulars in grammar, syntax and idiom.
I've heard that each language learned opens up a new part of the brain. I've also heard taht the brain is terribly underutilized. Diseases like Alzheimer's destroy the brain so it makes sense when you hear about academic folks who have more knowledge and have opened up more brain channels are more resistant to this disease. Being versed in music in many forms and playing different instruments might also help.
This might be motivation enough to keep at trying to learn foreing language or learning more music theory.
Vermont trip
During the summer we visited some spots in the state of Vermont. My wife, son and I picked up my daughter at the end of her basketball camp in the Adirondacks (about an hour north of Albany) and took a side trip to Vermont, New Hampshire and Massachusetts.
At least in Ithaca, Vermont has a great reputation. The state is known for being "green". Environment has a high priority, the mountains are named "Green" (heard of the Green Mountain Boys?). We noticed that there weren't billboards on the highways - Vermont actually has a law against them.
Ithaca also has a reputation for being enlightened and environmental-conscious. We've had recycling of many items on the county level long before it started catching on (in Hawaii, they've only recently started deposits on bottle - it's ashame really, Hawaii is so dependent on tourism and they should be more proactive about taking care of their solid wastes - now that my Iolani classmate Mufi Hannemann is Mayor of Honolulu I expect things to get a lot better.)
I've heard of a lot of folks leaving Ithaca to retire in Vermont - and not only because the skiing is better, it's more the attitudes of the communites.
Vermont is also know as a place for upstart entrepreneurs (everyone has heard of Ben & Jerry's ice cream - we visited the factory). If I didn't already have deep roots in Ithaca, Vermont might be attractive for me in many respects - although I haven't researched the Asian-American aspects, the glimpse I had on this past trip showed limited Japanese influence.
Is 13 unlucky?
Some folks consider 13 to be an unlucky number - and I find it almost amusing how some people go so far out of the way to avoid using this number. Look at buildings without a thirteenth floor...this is even sillier when a building has a ground floor and a first floor or multiple lower levels. Why bother skipping thirteen? For me thirteen is a fine number - my wife and I were married on the 13th of August and we just recently celebrated our 29th anniversary.
Our country started with 13 colonies and thus, there are 13 stripes on our flag. Of course, it wasn't long before we grew and the number of stars on the flag changed from 13. But look at it this way - they used to change the number of stripes as well, but since this got to be too many, it was switched back to 13 for good.
The moon mission, Apollo 13 was the one which had problems - but the crew returned to earth safely. Speaking of the moon, there are 13 full moons in a year - it's possible that the calandar was originally 13 months but evolved to 12 months to eliminate 13.
Friday the 13th in any month is considered unlucky by many (although all it means to me is that the 1st of the month was on a Sunday). But look how well the series of movies with that title did at the box office. And it's the 13 that people don't like, not the Friday. TGIF.
Anyway, it can't think of a reason that Asians would dislike the number thirteen. Maybe it's my ancestry which makes me adamant about how there's nothing wrong with the number. On the other hand, my daughter sustained three sports injuries in a row (1 sprain and 2 minor fractures) in the month right after her 13th birthday which put her out of commission from softball for seven weeks. Go figure...
Jan Ken Po
Doesn't it just grate on your ears when you hear kids talking about playing "Rock, Paper, Scissors"? It's "Jan Ken Po"! How could it be called anything else? In Hawaii, kids learn this game even before learning to read.
This game which is more effective than a coin toss consists of players chanting, "Jan Ken Po," as they swing their closed fists three times from side to side, in time to the chant. At the "Po" each player will display an open hand (representing paper), a closed fist (representing a stone), or two fingers (index finger and middle finger) in a scissors. Scissors beats paper, paper beats stone and stone beats scissors. You can do this effectively with three people as well as 2 (or even four people - but it gets a little complicated with more). No coin needed. Ties, rematches, eliminations, etc. all take place in seconds.
When people on the mainland play Rock Paper Scissors, the chant is "1-2-3". No wonder the game never caught on and they insist on flipping coins.
Private School
I'm continuing on the subject I started in the last posting. I'm so fortunate that my parents had the foresight to send me to Iolani and not Waipahu High School (there wasn't a Pearl City High at that time so we would have been bused to the school one town farther away from Honolulu). My parents focused their attention on education - my older sister and brother also went to private school - my sister to St. Andrew's Priory (Iolani's sister school - Iolani was boys only at that time); my brother also to Iolani. And even if they sent us to Punahou, we would have gotten a great education. Seriously, Punahou and Iolani are both extremely highly regarded, above all the other private schools in Hawaii. There is little argument that these are the two best schools in the the state, but it's controversial which one is better. I
know Iolani is better, but I may be biased.
For the Nisei, my parents' generation, one of their primary goals was to provide for their children so that they could rise up in status through a good education. In his book
Kodomo no tame ni: For the sake of the children (1978), Prof. Dennis Ogawa discusses the Japanese-American experience in Hawaii from the original Issei immigration to the time period that the Sansei (my generation) were getting older and the Yonsei were just starting to be born.
I'll alway be grateful of having the opportunity to attend Iolani - otherwise I would not be attending the schools on the East Coast (MIT, Columbia and Cornell). I would not be living in New York, reflecting back on the cultural differences with Hawaii.
School Time
My daughter started 8th grade today. Fortunately, we have very good schools here, and we really have no reason to have to send her to private school.
When I started 8th grade, it was my first year at a private school (Iolani) in Honolulu. Although the commuting distance was only 16 miles, this was over an hour to drive in the morning rush. I credit my 8th grade English teacher in helping me start to read books outside of the assigned readings in class. I remember that my 7th grade year, the last year I spent in public school, was pretty much a waste. Before going to Iolani, I took typing and 8th grade math in the summer so I could be accellerated in math. I was still behind in foreign language and didn't benefit in having 7th and 8th grade Latin.
My daughter has a choice of three languages: Spanish, French and German. She's taking German (this is her 2nd year) and Spanish seems to be the most popular option. All the students have foreign language instruction in New York. In Hawaii, there is no absolute foreign language requirement (it's lumped as an option with Fine Arts or Career Exploration!). A fairly large portion of Asian-American families send their kids to private or even Catholic schools to get a better education and a better chance of getting into a good mainland college.
Even though I don't go to school now, I always liked the beginning of the school year. You have a chance to start anew. Although I spent a lot of time planning the courses and disciplines of study while I was a student, looking back now I probably would have done a lot of things differently.
I'm a believer in self-study. One thing I learned in school is how to learn. You can always study anything at any time - there are so many more resources available now than when I was younger. You aren't limited to the school or public libraries or the bookstores in your town anymore.
Advertiser's 150 Year Retrospective
When I wrote the previous post, I found information about the Lani Bird satellite from
The Honolulu Advertiser Hawaii's daily newspaper for over 150 years. On July 2 this year, the paper issued a
special issue celebrating the 150th anniversary. There are six special sections covering events in Hawaii. They are divided as:
Monarchy to Annexation;
The Territory of Hawai'i;
World War II and the March to Statehood;
The 50th State;
20th to 21st Century; and
Hawai'i's Culture and Society. I was not aware of this special issue and am excited about being able to go back and review it.
When I was born, Hawaii was still a US Territory. Statehood occurred when I was four. The only thing I remember was that the cars license plates changed from a red one to a green one. I don't even remember the 48 or 49 star US flags.
I'm especially interested in going back to the earlier events involving annexation. I remember learning Hawaiian history in elementary school and how great it was the the US took over Hawaii and about the "Big Five" Corporations. I know better now - the monarchy here was overthrown by the US and things were not so "nice and smooth".
TV Football
Sunday afternoon is a traditional time to watch NFL Football. Because of the time zone difference, my Dad and I used to watch football games starting early Sunday mornings. We would usually watch a couple of games, being done by early afternoon. In Hawaii, we usually watched games featuring West Coast teams: SF 49'ers, Oakland Raiders, LA Rams, SD Chargers.
I remember when the telecommunication satellite Lani Bird first allowed live TV telecasts to Hawaii. Note: To pinpoint when this took place, I looked up Lani Bird - here's what was on the nasa.gov website.
Intelsat II-A, also called "Lani Bird," was the first communications satellite of the Consortium's Intelsat II series. Lani Bird was launched in October 1966 to transmit transpacific communications, but failed to achieve synchronous orbit. It was named by the Hawaiian press; "Lani" meant "bird of heaven."Although the satellite was not completely successful, it still would work for certain time periods. One of the early football games which was televised was a college game featuring Michigan State. (Recently, The Honolulu Advertiser ran an
article by Mike Gordon reminiscing about this event. The motivation was that three players on this National Champion team were from Hawaii. Another game shown was the Army vs. Navy game, which was a popular rivalry at the time. I remember Roger Staubach as being the Navy QB then. We were also able to see the Super Bowls live, starting with the first one.
At first when I moved to the mainland to go to MIT, I got out of the habit of watching football regularly on Sundays. But at the end of the season, I always watched the playoffs. Later when we moved to Yonkers, I started watching a lot of the New York Giants. Moving to Ithaca, I still liked the giants, but started liking the Buffalo Bills (this was when they went to four straight Super Bowls and lost all of them). Finally, I stopped watching Sunday afternoon football when my daughter got busy with soccer games on Sunday afternoons. I still watch the Super Bowl and some of the playoff games, but not much else anymore.
