Hike to the Maunawili Falls

Me and Jordan took a trip to the Maunawili Falls. I had a research project to do and needed some photograph documentation of the plants in the area. I made a couple of videos specially for you guys! :)

Morning Glory

Happyness is waking up early to sneak out in the kitchen and have breakfast watching a TV series that is lame but I still love it (for me that's Veronica Mars), then going back to the bed where my boyfriend is sleeping with his back to me because he will turn around when he, still asleep, notices me next to him, and put his arm around me as I fall asleep again.

Exciting!

Wow. That's all I feel right now: Wow! I just got to know about an amazing volunteer oportunity, how to bring home the position, and possibly a little help from a new aquaintance. I can't say more at the moment because I don't want to jinx it and I don't want anyone else to steal this idea from me.

You can't even imagine how excited I am at the mere thought of getting this volunteer job. And I need to get it; I will get it. End of discussion. All I need is to get a CV together, read several scientific articles, and write a kick-ass letter. Piece of cake!

I'm nervous. This could mean so much for my future career. It's a possibility to gain experience and end up doing what I want to do. What I always wanted to do. I really want this, and I normally get things that I feel this way about.

However there is also the tickeling scary feeling of not getting it; of failing. I have not lived up to my own expectations the past two years. What if the downward trend in prestation quality will affect this too?

No ways! I've just been lazy. This volunteer job belongs to me and I will take what is rightfully mine. Moahahahahahaha!

(Yep, I'm a nerd...)

Awesome Slam Poetry

Taylor Mali on What Teachers Make. He's a great poet and at the moment my favourite. :)

Midterm Mumbo Jumbo

This is my current view:

My computer and backpack (yes I wear a backpack, you would lay off your Prada bag too if you took the bike to school), and the jungle mixed with a bunch of bambu.

The sun is not shining today and I see that as a good thing, it reflects my mood. I just came out from a midterm and I prefer cool clouds to hot sun that would melt whatever is left of my poor worked-out brain. It feels like my head is full of mashed potatoes (hence the Mumbo Jumbo content and headline of today's blog).

Friday is what I'm looking forward to right now. Joan and Saffe are coming with me to downtown and we'll get free massages, manicures, and pedicures at a place that needs the publicity (and doesn't mind the tips). I look forward to it like a cat looks forward to destroying your living room couch. Meow!

Coffee, Candy, and Creativity

Covered in books and with eyes that are square from staring at the computer screen for too long, I am for the first time in a long time proud of a single handedly composed essay.

I still have a buttload of work this week-end but I am feeling confident that I will get to the end of it in time and it has put me in a good mood. With the mochachino and the cherry-flavored sweets left over from today, three more days of school work will be a piece of cake.

After I gave the essay a last touch-up, me and Jordan went down to the hot water jacuzzi and relaxed for a while before it closed for the night. The warm water was wonderful for my muscles, soar from stress and carrying home heavy bags of groceries. The cozyness of the night is now complete with my cats sleeping beside me and Jordan sitting on the couch in front of me playing one of his new songs:

"Where did you get your colors lady
You are shining oh so bright
I have seen you in your best before
But you have outdone yourself tonight"

Midterm coming up

Right now I'm really living the boring part of a student's life; I am studying. It feels good to finally put procrastination behind and actually get something done. I did bad on my last midterm in Marine Ecology so I really have to Ace the one coming up on Tuesday. Plus, there's a bunch of homework to do before that. This week-end will be productive.... *sigh*

The Place

Tuesday is My Monday

This is what I would like to do today:

This is where I would like to do it:

But I'm in a classroom. It's Tuesday but it sure feels like Monday, presumably since I didn't have class yesterday. The school had a black out and I only had one class. :) I spent the night watching a horror movie with Jordan. When it started to get scary, he hugged me saying "It's okay, I'll protect you." In reality, he was the scared one. :)

Prove me wrong!

We just watched a youtube video of Neo-Nazism in Russia. Jordan got all upset and kept on saying "Did you hear that?" or "Did you see that?". I did hear and I did see but I wasn't shocked or even slightly surprised.

There are videos showing live humans being decapitaded by two men using a manual saw, there are young balled men declairing their pride for being white/Russian/Hawaiian/Swedish/whateversuitsthepurpose, there are old balled men sig-hailing and holding speeches for the young balled men, there are flags with symbols, gang behavior, and all the other things that I (as many of us) have seen over and over and over again.

I thought that we were past this, lets see... oh yeah, 20 years ago! But no, as soon as an economical recession comes around people have to fall back into the easy trap of "its not my fault that I have no education and no job - it must be somebody else's fault. Let's blame the immigrants/jews/muslims/blacks/whites/Japanese/communists/whateversuitsthepurpose".

What strikes me is how factual and well informed these people sound, until you listen to what they say that is.

They really know how to present bullshit in a persuasive way, but it's still bullshit.

In the case of the Russian neo-nazis, I wonder if they ever considered all the Russians that died of the hands of Nazis, in war, concentration camps, and as targets for soldiers in training. But then again, rasists aren't really famous for their intelligence of knowledge of history.

I admit that I am a humanist. But I am also a scientist in training and I am trained to think like a scientist, which is why the loop-holes in nazi logic disturb me so much. If you want to persuade me of something, you need good arguments based on solid, peer-reviewed, published research that used correct and unbiased research methods. I would totally convert to neo-nazism if anyone would give me that one simple thing. And I have looked for it for years but without result (the rasism-supporting science from the first half of the last century is proved wrong long ago).

Why is it so hard to give a base for racism in the same way as anything else is given credibility: provide adequate litterature reviews, come up with an experiment that tests your hypothesis, perform the experiment, evaluate the results, and let other scientists remake the same experiment to see if they come up with the same result?

Let's put it in a way that is easier to understand (just in case a neo-nazi is smart enough to read this but not smart enough to understand the last paragraph): get your facts straight and get them from reliable sources. Oh right that causes a problem, because there are no such sources and the facts needed do not exist.

I am open to change and if you think that you are capable of it then I urge you to try and prove me wrong.

Pretty in Pink

I have my favorite dress on, guess what color it is?

Sometimes everybody has doubts, about anything. About relationships. I had my doubts and this will sound like a total cliché but talking about them helps. I wondered if things will work out with Jordan. Are we too different? We want different things in life, are those things compatible? How large is the risk that we won't be together forever? Is it worth trying anyways? Are we taking the wrong way and doing the wrong thing?

Much of my concerns can probably be explained by my upcoming period. But I think that all of us have doubts sometimes. And you know what, it is okay to doubt your relationship. Of course Jordan was hurt by my thoughts but how can one be sure if you never wonder?

How can you claim to have the answer to a question you never asked?

I shared my thoughts and fears with the one person that could help me figure them out: Jordan. We talked throughout the night, I cried a lot (and I totally blame the period for it), and we solved things. I had carried my doubts around for a while and it was a relief to finally air them. Hiding things like that from your partner only makes it worse.

I don't doubt anymore. I'm fine, more than fine. I am great, so great that today became a pink day. :)

Ocean Boulevard

This picture is taken on the east coast of O'ahu, which is the island that I live on. But it reminds me of Maui and makes me want to go there. Jordan's family lives on Maui and I love it everytime we're there. The plan is to move there in June and hopefully we will.

I have a wierd fascination of roads and pictures of roads. They symbolize life. I am especially intrigued with forks in the road, indicating that a decision has to be made. The road on the picture goes next to the ocean, hopefully straight to a job at the Pacific Whale Foundation on Maui.

Tom ran away the other day. Or so we thought, until we found him locked into another apartment. I don't know what those people had done to him but he was smelling horribly and he was all sketchy. Jordan opened the screen door to the apartment, got Tom, and brought him home. Now he's fine but he was exhausted when he came home. He scared us again two days later when he didn't come home for twelve hours. No more going out for him until we move out of downtown.

We live in Korean town and they say that cats get cat-napped and cooked. I don't really believe in it though, it sounds too much of a myth to me. I am just happy that he's home and safe.

Arctic Flower

As if some little Arctic flower

Upon the Polar hem

Went wandering down the latitudes

Until it puzzled came

To continents of summer

To firmaments of sun

To strange, bright crowds of flowers

And birds of foreign tounge

Fuck Moral

Don't you just hate the fact that people that do everything you're taught not to do gets everything served on a silver plate? I do.

A friend of mine, we can call her S, is a stripper. To pay her rent she only needs to work 20 (!) hours. Not 20 hours a week, 20 hours a month. That is not even four nights. Now I grew up thinking "poor girls, they have to dance naked to survive". Bullshit! She has a working visa and can get whatever job she likes, just like anyone else. She's not poor, not in any sence of the word.

I was in the computer center the other day and she waltzes in in her brand jeans, her glitttery top, and nice shoes. I myself haven't been able to go shopping in months. She parties all night long and I can't even rent a movie without a bad conscience.

Now I am not mad at this girl; she has all the right in the world to do what she does. I really don't judge her and I am sure that she has her own kind of moral. It just sucks that my moral doesn't pay off. Want to succed in life? Be a hustler!

Seeing her smiling and having no problem in the world made me think: Why am I not a stripper? For myself? Not really. I couldn't care less what people think, and it's obviously not that bad of a job seeing how much this girl loves it. You can't be a stripper for your whole life, but it's a great income on the side of whatever else you're doing.

So why am I not a stripper? Although I don't care about what strangers think I guess that there are some people whose opinions are important to me. My boyfriend and my father, for example. And I guess that I wouldn't want it in my record since it could damage my career decades after I quit. Quite honestly, I don't think that I could tolerate anything about that kind of job, thanks to my moral.

The truth is that moral is fucking expensive. It costs about 60 dollars per hour for a student with no degree. Money isn't the most important thing in life. It would be nice, though, if moral would pay off a little faster.

Top Of Waikiki

Yesterday I was supposed to meet up Emma in the morning to go longboard surfing down in Waikiki. Since I spent the previous evening watching standup comedy on Netflix, I woke up at noon. By then, Emma was already in the water so we decided to meet up at six that night instead.

Ten minutes after six I left my aparment and took the bike to waikiki. It was late, but a lot of people are late here. They even have a term for it: Hawaii time.

Biking through Waikiki I realized how crazy that place is. There are spray painters, living statues, real statues, fire, fountains, hip-hopers, surfers, gold-diggers, tourists, and mokes. The mokes are the local bad-asses. With local I mean that they are from here and not white but they are not necesssarity Hawaiian. Some are Tongans, Samoans, Portugese, or Philippinos.

After hanging out at Emma's place for a while, we ended up at the "Top of Waikiki". It is the closest to "the restaruant at the end of the world" from "The Hich-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy" that I have experienced. It looks like a space ship and is located at the 20th floor. The restaurant is circular with glass walls and it spins (!) 360 degrees in one hour. The restaurant is built in three floors so that no matter where in the restaurant you are, you still have a great view. The bar is in the middle at the highest part of the place. We had a great time having exotic drinks and chatting. I haven't spent a lot of time with girlfriends lately and it was so nice to have a girls' night out.

On my way home I met fice Australian girls. They were here for vacation and had the exciting spirit that I had myself the first time I came here. All of a sudden, and out of nowhere, two guys in tiny shorts and body pained like tigers attacked our group. The Australian girls got all exited, a camera appeared, and pictures were taken with the girls and the tigers posing around them. Then the tigers continued their hunt further down the sidewalk. As I said, Waikiki can be a little crazy at times.

The men in my life

 

The Viscious Tigers Leo and Tom                        

Me and Jordan <3

Me Me Me

My name is Vicky and I live five minutes from the beach in sunny Hawaii. After having lived here for two years I miss family and friends in Europe so I started this blog so that, even though I have no idea what you guys are up to, you can keep track on my life. Blogs are wonderful.

I am studying Marince Science at Hawai'i Pacific University until I graduate in May. Then I'm going to Maui to kick-start my career.

I believe that anyone can fulfill their dreams. If you really want somethin and work your ass off to get it, then destiny will fill in the missing pieces.

My biggest dream (next to world peace, being gorgeous, rich, and famous) is to be a leading scientist of marine mammals. Until that happens (wake up destiny) I'll take any job available.

The love of my life is Jordan. He's a tall dark Maui grown haole-boy. He is also an awesome musician and you should check out his music on myspace.com/emily2thousand. My favorite song is "The Sundress". The two other men in my life are Tom and Leo, our vicious tigers.

I hope that you will enjoy my blog. Feel free to come buy any time you need some sunshine in you life. I am sure that you will feel comfort knowing that, when it is cold and dark in Europe, the sun is shining on me.