| Monday, October 16, 2006 |
| still alive |
this is me telling you that I am fine post earthquake.
Here are the deets:
Woke up at 7 in the morning when whole house starting shaking. Thought it was a train at first but then it clicked 10 seconds later that hawaii doesn't have any trains (im not a morning person). Rather than do the sane thing that ppl do like run outside or get under a doorframe i went back to sleep despite the fact that my ceiling fan which is positioned directly above my head was starting to rock a little too hard to the left and right (the quake lasted at most 30 seconds). Woke up a few minutes later with earthquake number two which subsequently took out the power which made me feel a little safer knowing that if my ceiling fan was to fall on me, at least it wouldn't be spinning. Subsequently went back to sleep.
Woke up at normal time (9am) and did a quick survey of my rooms. Things were scattered on the floor but nothing broken. Checked in with other tenants and we did runs to the local supermarket, the only supermarket open within a 10 block radius and had to line up forever to get in and after some long waits, managed to escape with a couple candles. Lack of electricity pushed everyone in the neighbourhood full force outside, bbqs lit on cue with families everywhere cooking up their spoils. Passed the day just chillen on the balcony and out running in the rain to stay cool.
It's now half past 11pm and the electricity has just been restored to our neighbourhood 10 minutes ago which means that in all likelihood i will be going to work tommorow rather than braving post earthquake mini tsunami like waves (damnit they only come once every 23 years!). But yeah thanks for checking in on me to see if i'm alright. Only damage done is to my bankaccount or possibly to my digestive system if i'm too cheap to throw away my spoiled fridge and freezer food. Note: Don't spend your savings at SamsClub on a months supply of frozen goods the day before the power goes out. What the issue is now is reconstruction and seeing how long it takes hawaii, which like the state speed limit is slugslow, picks itself back up again. |
posted by DarrenGene @ 5:14 AM  |
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| Thursday, October 12, 2006 |
| just my luck |
On my way thru a hiking trail in rural hawaii to meet up with the kids at the taro farm (biweekly field trips) i had to pass by a couple bungalos in the countryside, many marked with private property signs like (Get Out Ass!). Not your typical hawaiian aloha welcome. But yeah the first lot i passed by was pretty much a big open field with a lot of barking. I'm thinking to myself, Good thing that there's the fence seperating me from the firecrackers in there. But Oh wait there's an opening up ahead. As i'm walking past the opening, out come two screaming mutts coming at me full gallop attack mode without leashes on. On instinct I break into a sprint but i can only go so fast in flipflops and the mutts are gaining on me fast and im thinking, there's no way im going to outrun these dogs without runners on so i turn around flip off my pack getting ready to take a swing at the first dog when out from the field i hear the owner (who i can't see) yell a resounding "NO!" to which both dogs, within striking distance, stop in their tracks and turn the corner. Too close a call. I'm on my way down the trail passing yet another house with an unleashed dog lying at the entrance. She sees me , stands up and begins to growl. But i get past her without her snapping at me by walking real slow with reassuring chants of "easy girl, I'm your friend". i'm Thankful that I've managed to escape k9 cruelty twice and continue on along the trail. 5 minutes later I'm at a gate. There's not supposed to be a gate. I see a lady working in the garden (she's holding down her barking dog to prevent me from getting attacked) and ask her if this was the trail to the farm. She says I'm on the wrong trail and need to backtrack to the start. Just my luck.
What can i say? Not all dogs love me. All mosquitos do tho no matter where I am i catch em trying to make out with me. It's as if I'm as popular as the king of the (west) Nile. |
| posted by DarrenGene @ 5:50 AM |
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| Wednesday, October 04, 2006 |
| slowww day |
so the kids are out of school for the week at the school I'm working at for fallbreak which has reduced the level of chaos from red to yellow but on the flip side, Lost has moved back here and set up permanent camp right below us and will be here it seems indefintely. How fitting since today marks the season premiere. Cause today is a slow day with me dealing mostly with paper and not people, Ive had the opportunity to sneak in and out of work to peer in on the set from atop and to talk story with the film crew. Some observations:
~ Evangeline Lily is a hotty bombotty. There was one scene which involved our heroine stripping off her clothes but they had to reshoot that scene several times cause they just couldn't get it right. Shucks.
and yeah, that's all that's really worth mentioning at this point. Again, I gotta start posting some real posts of real consequence some time soon. |
| posted by DarrenGene @ 6:03 PM |
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| Tuesday, October 03, 2006 |
| On Being a "Nice Guy" Diplomat |
I remember talking to Kat about this one time about the notion of being "too forward" and just felt like sharing this little diplomat tool with yall. This is called the "I don't mean to be" grammatical rule. Real easy to use. If you have, for instance a real racist comment inside of you that you feel like you need to blurt out, all you have to do is to preface it by saying "I don't mean to be racist but (is this dog meat in the fried rice?)". Come on now. If you didn't mean to be racist, you wouldn't say the racist comment at all. Prefacing it with "i don't mean to be racist" essentially does the job of removing malicious intent. If it comes off as racist, it's because of ignorance and that's it. And there lies the beauty of the rule. It does the job of hiding your intent by publicly removing the most obvious reason of why you are saying what you are saying.
Or how about the ever popular (and i've used this too), "I don't mean to be too forward but do you want to have dinner with me on the weekend?". If anything, altho you might be explicitly saying that you don't want to be forward but regardless what you mean, the action itself is pretty forward but what the preface does is that it sugarcoats it so it's not so aggressive but moreso passive aggressive. This means, for many cases, the exact same thing as "Hey Baby let's kick it" except with half the shock value.
This tool can be used in two ways: To differentiate youself from what you're not or just to blatantly lie to cover up your true intentions like "I don't mean to be an ass (but i really do mean to be an ass)" (hopefully more of the first and less of the second cause if everyone does the second than no one will ever believe anybody trying to use the first... confused?). For the most part this tool is real effective in "Nice Guy Politics" cause nice guys are, generally speaking, careful about what they say to the point that they don't offend someone. Check out the varying degrees of niceity in just asking a girl out to the movies.
From plain straight up neanderthal: You Me Movies Tommorow Night Be There
To our explained approach: I don't mean to be too forward but would you be interested in catching a movie with me?
To superduper nice almost borderline "what is he asking?" approach: I was wondering and would like to know your thoughts on this, if at anytime in the next few weeks, you'd might do me the favour of accompanying me to watch a movie, but don't feel any pressure to say yes or no right now. Just think about it and mull it over and let me know when you have time.
while the explained approach lacks the length and thought put into the superduper nice approach, i think it'll probably score you more movies. sooner or later im going to need to write something of consequence. haha |
| posted by DarrenGene @ 6:55 AM |
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