Our Week in Hawaii (part 2)
After a longish journey filled with many of the normal travel annoyances, we have landed on Oahu. We've got a nice little "cottage" inland, but with a pool, which is like a guest house type deal.
People here actually say things like "Muhalo" to each other, which is like some sort of rejoinder/achnowledgement; but nobody has said "Aloha" in my hearing. On the other hand, half the businesses use it: Aloha Travel, Aloha Taxi, Aloha Mini-Mart. I also heard one surfer-looking dude address another as "Bra".
We walked past a comic shop so I took Rita in to show her the latest issue of Red Star. I didn't warn her first, so she was suitably surprised. They had the new books in taped-up bags, but the nice man opened it for me. Then I felt I should buy something, and so sprang for the whaddya-call "alternative cover" version, which is just white with red letters. Very collectible I'm sure and worth twice the price. This was a shop about two times the size of Sven's with about half the store devoted to Warhammer stuff: figures, paints, games, models, etc. Meanwhile, there were, I would guess, about 35 kids there playing Pokemon, many of them on the sidewalk outside.
We went to the Salvation Army store to get some real Hawaiian clothing. My wardrobe has always lacked in the colorful short- sleeved shirt area anyway, so I bought a couple and some shorts too. There was a really snazzy red-and-green number with gold buttons and green thread, but it was a little tight on me, and besides with was polyester. I almost bought it for you, as I know you love these garish native items...but polyester? Blah! No breath too good.
There was a remarkable number of heavy flannel shirts on the racks, I suppose tourists or soldiers who decide they just ain't goin' back stateside and such. I doubt they sell many of these.
Mostly so far we've just loafed and recovered from the long trip.
I've been chewing through a John Le Carre novel ("Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy") which I picked up in an airport on some past trip and never read. My first Le Carre -- and a chewy morsel it is. I remember once digging into one, but dropping it, and I can see why. This one starts slowly and densely -- filled with allusions and references to facts not yet in evidence, and absolutely riven with obscure and dated English slang terms. That and a contorted plot and English manners, and yet, it really IS gripping, what? I might be bitten: halfway through and I'm already thinking about reading it again...how's that for engaged.
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