Tag Archives: moving to Maui

Try Wait

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Aloha!
I’m writing this tonight with a glass of champage and a shot of St. Germain by my side, so we’ll see how it goes. I discovered that stuff in France. Need I say more?

The need for alcoholic assistance came in the form of a trip to the Maui DMV today. Need I say more? Also, Mike is off-island on Oahu visiting his mother, who just flew in from Savannah to spend the summer (not winter) in Hawaii.

Huh? That’s the reaction I get when I tell them she has a house here that she only uses in the summer, but the mosquitos in Savannah are the size of Volkswagens and there’s a long tradition there of leaving in the summer to escape the heat. So she heads to the North Shore, and Mike heads over there to see her. I’m a big believer in the relationship adage “If you don’t go away, how can I miss you?” so I’m a happy camper as I tuck into a huge stacks of books while he’s gone.

Normally I don’t break out the bubbly, but like I said, I visited the DMV after dropping him at the Kahului airport this morning. The DMV is right next to IHOP, so I had a game plan: get my new driver’s license and then hop over to IHOP for breakfast. So I didn’t eat. Then I left my cup of coffee on the kitchen counter as I was rushed out the door because Mike was gonna be late. Those who know me know I don’t function in the morning, especially without coffee. Quote:”I’m incapable of anything other than marmalade and mumbling before noon. ” (10 am for me.)

Here’s the thing about the Maui DMV. They lie. Right to your face! I got there at 8:50 am and there was NO ONE in line ahead of me. There were about fifteen people seated, but I told myself that they were there to do everything from pay their Real Propery Taxes (as opposed to their phoney ones?) to registering their Maui cruisers. So when the girl at the front desk told me “It’ll be forty-five minutes, tops” I, like an idiot, believed her. I’d brought “Blogging For Dummies” along (I have the computer skills of a rock) and pretty little stick’em notes to notate stuff. I was all set.

Except I hadn’t had any breakfast. And I’d only had a half-cup of coffee. And there are all these new RULES in our increasingly bizarre post 9-11 world, the least of which is you have to bring your passport to the DMV now. Passport, check. (Put it in the car the night before). Then she told me I needed my Social Security card. Would you believe I’d put that sucker in the car to take it to the safety deposit box, unbeknownst to me that I’d be needing it? I jogged back out to the car, afterall, I only had 45 minutes. …

An hour and ten minutes in, I had to pee. I watched the marquee anxiously and the “A” window where I was supposed to appear wasn’t budging. In fact I began to suspect that whoever was in charge of the “A” window had gone to pee herself, because there is NO bathroom in the DMV. I had a dilemma. Do I jog halfway acaross the mall to the bathroom and lose my place in line, or do I risk leaving a puddle on the seat (I have a bladder the size of a gnat. My Mom and I are affectionately called “Tiny Tank” and “Tiny Tank 2”. We are loads of fun to take on car trips, especially together.)

I careened up to Window “C” as soon as someone left it and asked the VISW (Very Important State Worker)  if I could be excused. I felt like I was back in school and needed a hall pass. Now I had been there an hour and fifteen minutes. She checked her screen and admonished me to “hurry.”

EXCUSE ME. Isn’t the fact of them not hurrying what had put me in this pickle to begin with? And wasn’t I told 45 minutes, which I accepted in good faith? I ran. All around the building and through the mall, like the wind, which is tough with a full gnat’s bladder. I made it just in time, then ran all the way back, puffing in my rubbah slippahs. I screeched back into the DMV.

“Try wait”. It’s a bumper sticker you’ll see a lot here, along with “Slow down, this ain’t the mainland.” There is nothing that will hurry them up. They are on island time, which, just in case you were wondering, is not a myth.

An hour and a half later, hungry and cranky, I got my shot at the “A”  window. The VISW took one look at my paperwork and rejected it. Seems in all the confusion of “Where’s your passport? Where’s your social security card? Please deposit your firstborn at the next window”…I hadn’t filled out my application for a new license.

The VISW was not amused.

In all, it took an hour and forty minutes, but I now have a new Hawaii State driver’s license and my hair looks Mah-ve-lous, darling. Happens about twice a year on Maui. Must have been the wind-blown look from all the running.

Disclainer: All errors and typos on this page are entirelt the fault of the St. Grermain.

A hui hou (til next time). If you’d like to subscribe to this blog, please click the Follow button on the Home Page.

Aloha, Jamaica

You know you live in Hawaii when…

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Aloha!

You know you live in Hawaii when…

  • You find a dead gecko in your toaster in the morning and a slimy black lizard in your bed at night. The lizard was the hardest. I was dead asleep and felt something in the small of my back. Groggily I put my hand under there and it came up full of lizard. The geckos I don’t mind, but those black lizards look and move like snakes. I screeched loud enough to wake Pele.
  •  You get into your closed car on a summer day and your sunglasses steam up when you put them on. Now that’s hot.
  • If the menu lists macaroni salad as a vegetable, you know you’re in Hawaii. Locals go to the mainland and complain, “How come they no get plate lunch heah?” Plate lunches (with minor variations of meat) are: teriyaki beef or teriyaki chicken with two large scoops of rice and macaroni salad. They LOVE their starch.
  • You’re at the beach and there are chickens running around.
  • Everywhere you go people are eating and partying in their garages and car ports, not inside the house.
  • A local family has built a barn, planted a large tree or otherwise blocked out entirely their stunning view, completely oblivious. Meanwhile, the haoles are howling if someone plants a twig in front of a view they paid dearly for.
  • Termites are eating everything you own no matter what “guaranteed” method you used to control them. Our neighbors down the street tore down their thirty-year-old house and built another right on the same spot because the termites were eating it to the ground. Also, there are no Antiques stores on Maui. There’s a reason for that: the termites ate everything long ago.

A hui hou! (til next time). Thought for the day: There are no shortcuts to anywhere worth going.

Aloha, Jamaica

 

The Art of the Staycation – Part 1

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Aloha!

This is where I spent the weekend. Nice? It’s the Wailea Marriott on Maui. http://www.marriott.com/hotels/travel/hnmmc-wailea-beach-marriott-resort-and-spa/. Check out their website for great photos. Anyway, it took me years to convince Mike that there was any value in staying at a hotel on Maui when we already lived on Maui. In fact, he flatly refused to spend the money. So that left me bereft for the days when I used to come to Maui to vacation and just reeellaaaaxx.

In his defense, his parents had a home on the North Shore of Oahu near the beach and we used to go over there about three times a year, so I did have a getaway. Then a few things happened to knock the stuffing out of vacationing over there: Aloha Airlines went belly up and took all of our hard-earned points with them. No more free flights. Grrrr. And what used to be a $25.00 flight interisland became a $50.00 flight, then a $70.00 flight. Mesa  Airlines http://iflygo.com/ started the airline wars in Hawaii and they are the only ones who won. The people who live here can’t afford to “go interisland” anymore because a round-trip is now $160-$190 depending on the time of day. Times that by two people, and suddenly a Staycation was more in the budget than a flight. Mike said yes! Especially after his bout with blood poisoning…he knows I’ve been up to my a%* in alligators around here for a long time. We both were in need of a break.

I chose the Marriott for a number of reasons. Most of all, their Infinity pool

is to die for, and the best part is, it’s kid-free. They don’t call it the “Serenity Pool” for nothing. Also the Marriott is very small in comparison to say the Grand Wailea http://www.grandwailea.com/ or The Fairmont Kea Lani http://www.fairmont.com/kealani/. We took the walking path in Wailea, which is another reason I love to stay down there (Mike can walk again, yay!) and went by the Grand Wailea. It was just wall-to-wall chairs by the pool all the way out to the pathway. Way too crowded for me. I love vistas and open space, but that’s not to say those hotels might not be perfect for you. Here’s the path:

and also the tree in front of the Marriott on the path. What a great spot.

 I used to attend the Maui Writer’s Conference every year here, but they did a major, very expensive overhaul since then. I remember taking my lunch and sitting under this tree when it felt like my brain was going to explode from classes (particularly the Screenwriting Retreat,where they basically locked us inside and wouldn’t let us out!) From that retreat though I met a wonderful writer and true friend, who is now a bestselling author: Graham Brown. http://grahambrownthrillers.com/ Start with “Black Rain” and work your way through. You won’t be disappointed. He’s just a stand-up guy and so humble, and the best part is, no matter how big he gets (co-writing with Clive Cussler now, ahem!) he still reads my scripts! Highly unusual in my business. Thanks, Graham!

Another reason I love the Marriott is it’s within walking distance of the Shops at Wailea http://theshopsatwailea.com/ and that means restaurants, and that meant we didn’t have to get in the car for three days. We discovered too late that there is cart that makes a loop to the hotel and back, which would have been nice to know. I can’t get enough of the Crab Bisque at Tommy Bahama’s Restaurant http://www.tommybahama.com/TBG/Stores_Restaurants/Wailea.jsp Actually, I take that back. I order the cup of soup because it’s so rich. A bowl is too much!

I will be sharing more with you more about this trip in the next couple of posts. People have written asking for restaurant reviews and hotel suggestions, so here you go. All from a local-yokel.

A hui hou! (til next time). If you’d like to subscribe to this blog, please click the “Follow” button on the Home Page.

Aloha, Jamaica

No Worries

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Aloha!

I’m reading a novel and there’s a character in it that asks, “Do you think people on an island ever worry?” Her father answers: “They fish a lot. How much can you worry if you fish?”

Nice thought. Wish it were true. I have a friend who is considering a move to Maui, but says it’s “the last bastion I have where I truly relax, and I fear that if I move there, that will be that.”

And it is. I used to really be able to relax when I vacationed on Maui. It would take almost a week, far away from my super-busy California lifestyle, but eventually I’d sink down into relaxation, and like most people, I hoped it would carry over when I moved here.

In the beginning, every single time my mother called, she asked: “Are you at the beach?” with this hopeful giddiness in her voice (obviously living vicariously). I hated to burst  her bubble with No, Mom, I’m in the grocery store. I’m at the bank, post office, work…fill in the blank. But she really wanted to believe I was running around in a bathing suit all the time, living the good life. And perhaps if you are 20, don’t own a home (or have any aspirations to), if you are living in a three-bedroom house with five room mates, you could possibly have that life in Maui. But people quickly grow tired of that. Lahaina is a party town full of young people who don’t even own cars, just bicycles. But age keeps creeping, and eventually they wake up and realize they want more. So they move home.

The current state of agitation taking me away from the “No worries” island lifestyle  is a tax issue. (Yes, there really is a tax man everywhere, Virginia). Last year my accountant told me not to make a quarterly payment to the State of Hawaii because I was getting a refund, and she’d just roll it over. I told her this made me nervous, and she assured me she does this with “hundreds of clients!” That little voice inside nagged at me, but I said okay.

To muddle things further, I shredded my bank account statements this year for the first time ever, after reading yet another get organized article that stated “When did you last need a bank statement? And even if you did, the bank could provide it, right?” Yes, of course!

Guess what was the very first thing my accountant asked for when things went haywire with the State of Hawaii tax system? (COMPUTERS WILL BE THE DEATH OF US. Just sayin’.)

So yes, we can dream that life would be very different in Maui. And it is. Just not in the ways we thought!

A hui hou (til next time).

Aloha, Jamaica

Working on Maui

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Aloha!

A picture perfect day on Maui this morning. Sometimes when I ponder what to write, I wish you guys would write and tell me what you’d like to know more about. Daily life? Moving here?

This past weekend I attended a symposium with Maui filmmakers at the college. One of the speakers said he’d like to create a group of people who got together to support each other in their creative endeavors. He’s been trying to do that, but it’s a challenge on Maui. Why? As he said, when everybody’s working two and three jobs, how do you get people together? It makes for a fractured society.

One of the biggest surprises for me when I moved here:  75% of the population works in the hotel/visitor industry. In California, almost every weekend my group of friends got together for brunch, games, or dinners. Here, unless you work a 9-5 job, you are working evenings and weekends.  How do you plan a group dinner when both wife and husband are working the night shift, or weekend shift? I spent a year working at a law firm on Maui.Those people had a normal schedule, but if you’re in the medical field you are on call for nights and weekends. So there goes another big segment of the population. That leaves government or city workers with 9-5 jobs. Otherwise, it’s like Mike and me. He’s a boat captain, so he works the sunset sail and is home around 9 pm. I was a concierge, which gave me 9-5 hours, but I worked weekends. We rarely had the same days off or the same schedules.

There are the waitresses and bartenders, boat crew, massage therapists (quote: “you can’t throw a rock on Maui without hitting a massage therapist),  the hotel front desk worker and housekeepers, the grounds and maintenance guys for the hotels and condos, realtors…the list is endless, and all of them have non 9-5 jobs. And guess what? They all work holidays! Guests come to Maui specifically for holidays, so everyone must work. Again, a fractured society, when families can’t even be together for holidays.

Then there is the phenomenon of being “off-island.” I am part of two different groups of women who meet once a month, and am amazed at how hard it is to get five women together in one place. When you live on an island, as nice as it is, one of the goals is to get off the island. It’s a rock in the middle of the Pacific,and it can get small after a while. Those who can, leave as often as they can. Also, so many people are from somewhere else…and they go there to be with their families. So you call them to get together and they are “off-island.”

The island lifestyle sounds good to many who want to live here. The reality is, you have a heck of a time getting together with your friends.

A hui hou! (til next time). If you’d like to subscribe to this blog, please click the follow button on the Home Page.

Aloha, Jamaica

Lahaina Ranks in Top Seaside Towns

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Aloha!

No one that I know actually stays in Lahaina. They just do the “Lahaina crawl”: shopping, dining, taking a boat ride out of the harbor. They stay in Kihei, Kaanapali, Kapalua. As for my years as a concierge on Maui, my favorite dining experiences in Lahaina are: Io Restaurant http://www.iomaui.com/, Gerards (it’s French, he was a master chef from France) http://www.gerardsmaui.com/cms/index.php, and was awarded five stars by Forbes. If you go, ask to be seated on the veranda; the restaurant is in a lovely old hotel. For luaus, my favorite is the Feast at Lele http://www.feastatlele.com/ because the food is fabulous and you can’t get any closer to the beach. It’s small and intimate (about fifty tables) you have your your own table,your own server, and the price includes champagne if you desire. I always told my guests at the hotel that it was a great last-night on Maui celebration place.Be sure to take a sweater or wrap, ladies, it cools down on the beach after you watch that spectacular sunset.

Lahaina Sunset

Here’s the AP article on Lahaina from  the Maui News May 17th:

NEW YORK – Lahaina was ranked 10th on Coastal Living’s 15 “Happiest Seaside Towns.”

The survey is a first for the magazine that covers life along the coast and is celebrating its 15th anniversary. Beach communities from California to South Carolina were ranked as the “best places to live along the coasts of the United States.”

In an announcement of the ranking, the magazine called Lahaina, “the charming gateway to Maui’s world-famous Kaanapali and Kapalua beach resorts to the north.”

“Its banyan trees add a courtly air to the downtown, and its brightly colored Front Street, busy with shops and galleries, keeps things lively,” the announcement said. “Lahaina has nearly perfect air quality, and when you add its dry, sunny climate in a tropical paradise, that makes life pretty ideal.”

There were no other Hawaii seaside towns listed in the survey. The No. 1 “Happiest Seaside Town” was Kiawah Island in South Carolina, followed by Naples, Fla.; and Sausalito, Calif.

“It’s wonderful news,” said Lynn Donovan, executive director of LahainaTown Action Committee, an organization that helps promote the west-side town. “Our reaction is that we are thrilled that this is happening and that we are lucky that we live Lahaina.”

She noted that the honor comes on the heels of being ranked 21 out of 25 island destinations listed in a TripAdvisor survey and Front Street being named one of the “Great Streets of America.”

The Coastal Living ranking appears in the June issue, which hits newsstands Friday.

…So folks, how do YOU feel about Lahaina? Do you look forward to visiting it when you come, or do you avoid it and its crowds?

A hui hou (til we meet again). If you’d like to subscribe to this blog, please click the “Follow” button on the Homepage.

Aloha! Jamaica

Stuff you probably didn’t know

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Aloha!

I met my first fan. How cool is that? I was seated on an airplane when the lady next to me asked what I did and I said I was a writer…she asked, “what do you write?” and then she said, “I read your blog!” It was one of those warm moments that I’m sure Jennifer Aniston gets to have about 800,000 times per day (more on the embarrasing way I met her in another blog) and hopes to never have again as long as she lives. http://www.people.com/people/jennifer_aniston/0,,,00.html

I have been MIA from this blog because life intruded in the form of blood poisoning…Mike’s, not mine. I got on that plane in California and left taking care of my mom to come home to Maui and take care of him. The blood poisoning is not unusual in Hawaii. It’s a warm climate and cruddy stuff thrives. Mike’s a boat captain http://scotchmistsailingcharters.com/  and got a splinter in his bare foot off the dock in Lahaina. It festered and the blood poisoning moved to knee-high, as well as a strep infection in the foot. Not fun, and he’s been on crutches for over a week so far.

Another really fun thing that people get in Hawaii is Ciguatera poisoning: Ciguatera (say: “seeg-wha-terra”) poisoning: This happens when you eat a reef fish (any fish living in warm tropical water) that has eaten a certain poisonous food. This poison does not go away when the fish is cooked or frozen. The first symptoms of ciguatera poisoning include abdominal cramps, nausea, vomiting and diarrhea. Symptoms can then progress to headache, muscle aches and skin that is itchy, numb or tingly. You may notice a change in your ability to feel hot or cold temperatures. For example, you may think something feels hot when it is actually cold.

The lady on the plane was named Lisa and she asked lots of questions about what it’s really like to live in Hawaii. I also went to a BBQ while in California, and there was this guy there from Winnepeg. While not one person asked him “So what’s it really like to live in Winnepeg?”,they asked me so many questions about Hawaii, it got to be embarrassing that all the attention centered on me.

As our converstaion went on, I found myself sharing things like, “did you know that when they burn the sugar cane in Maui that they also burn the PVC pipe used for irrigation? Here’s a photo of the burning cane by Amanda Brightbill:

Approximately 32,900 children and 72,700 adults living in Hawaii currently have asthma.

• It costs Hawaii’s economy approximately $43 million each year to control this complicated disease.

• Each year approximately 4,000 people in Hawaii are rushed to the emergency department because of asthma.

• Infants and very young children (0-4 years of age) in Hawaii continue to make up the majority of hospitalizations caused by asthma.

• The asthma death rate in Hawaii remains above the national average.

I have asthma. I did not have it before moving to Hawaii. Just sayin’.

And the people at the BBQ  were surprised that we don’t drink the water. “Why not?” they asked.  “Because all the chemicals used to fertilize the sugar cane and pineapple run-off right into our water table.””And people think that Hawaii is such a pristine place to live,” they said.

I was especially naive when I moved here because I didn’t even know they burned the sugar cane. How could I not know that? Well, they only burn ten months out of the year, skipping January and February historically. Guess which months I had always vacationed  in Maui before moving here?

Well, I have a guy on crutches to attend to. One thing about it, living in Hawaii is never boring.

A hui hou! (til next time). If you’d like to subscribe to this blog, click the “Follow” button on the home page.

Aloha, Jamaica

Stuff and Nonsense

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Aloha!

All the guys I know on Maui who are homeowners, are hoarders. There’s something about living on an island that does this, and I kept trying to put my finger on it. Now, I know. THE BOAT MIGHT NOT COME IN!

When I first moved to the island and was living at the condo (see the previous “Moving to Maui” posts) I loved that I had brought only my bicycle and one suitcase. I felt free and unburdened from all my stuff back in California.I could really get used to this lifestyle, I thought. Then I met Mike.

I honestly think he kept it from me as long as he could. The “don’t ask, don’t tell” he was hiding from me wasn’t another woman, oh, no…it was his collection of “stuff.” A lifetime’s worth. The detritus of an adrenaline junkie’s sports equipment, to start with: About a dozen surfboards (google “Mike Turkington” or www.imdb.com and you’ll know why). He surfed professionally, and is an acclaimed board shaper. He co-owned “Country Surfboards”, the first surf shop on the North Shore of Oahu. Okay, so I’ll give him the surfboards.

But then he raised me the windsurfing equipment, enough to outfit six people. And the two motorcycles. And the two bicycles. AND a shop full (three bays worth) of tools, board-shaping equipment, and things I don’t even know the name of. I just know it takes up lots of room. What happened to my zen-like lifestyle? Gone, baby, gone.

When you’ve grown up on an island, you have lived through the reality of “the boat didn’t come in”  through dock-workers strikes, hurricanes, etc. You have lived through the infamous toilet paper and rice shortaages. You also know how expensive everything is to replace, so you never, ever throw anything away. In short, you hoard.

I had this illustrated to me personally during one Christmas, when I wanted to bake Christmas cookies and went to Safeway to get butter. I looked all over the store, and finally asked the produce guy: “Where’s the butter?” He answered in pidgin, with a straight face: “da boat tip ovah.” I just stared at him, expecting him to laugh. “No, really,” I said. “Where’s the butter?”

“DA BOAT TIP OVAH!” he said, more loudly than necessary, like I was deaf or something, and mimed a big ship going over.

I blinked. So this was how it was going to be.

Then there was the empty shelf at Long’s in Lahaina when there wasn’t a single envelope to be had. And the Foster Farms chicken shipment that never came in when I had planned to feed Mike’s visiting folks honey-drizzled almond chicken. Lesson learned: always go to the grocery store with a back-up plan. The shelves could be empty, and they often are.

I think I’m missing a huge opportunity here. I should create a new reality show: “Hawaii’s Hoarders”. I’d be willing to bet that the stuff they hoard on an island would be more interesting than the stuff mainlander’s hoard, and the islander’s stuff gets passed down from generation to generation, because they all know that boat might not come in.

Do you know where your backup stash of toilet paper is??

A hui hou! (til next time). If you’d like to subscribe to this blog, please click the “Follow” button on the right.

Aloha, Jamaica

Differences Too

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Aloha,

Happy May Day, which is “Lei Day” in Hawaii. The origins of Hawaii’s celebration of May Day as Lei Day date back to 1927, when Honolulu Star-Bulletin writer Don Blanding advocated for the creation of a day dedicated to honoring lei-making and the custom of wearing lei. Blanding’s co-worker at the newspaper, columnist Grace Tower Warren, suggested holding the celebration on May 1 and coined the phrase “May Day is Lei Day.” (HawaiiMagazine.com) Hawaiians stay busy trying to keep all the holidays straight such as King Kamehameha Day, Prince Kuhio Day, Statehood Day ( ironic, since Hawaiians didn’t want to be part of the States to begin with). Employers go nuts trying to decide whether employees should get Hawaii State holidays or Federal holidays off work.

So on this May Day, when I went to put my tennis shoes on this morning, I stuck my foot in without hesitation. I did not pick it up and turn it over, trying to shake out whatever critter might have made a home in there. Critter, meaning the lizard that one time, and the threat of centipedes, always.  I have nightmares about sticking my foot in a shoe with a centipede in it. Don’t judge me till you’ve had one slither over your foot at the dinner table.

The reason for this shoe confidence is that I am in Northern California, not Maui. I’m here taking care of Mom after surgery. So I was reflecting this morning on some of the differences, so far away from home. Home being relative, because Northern California will really always be “home.”  Home is where the family is, and this is where I spent a pretty happy 17 years.

Difference One: stuff dries here in this hot dry climate, unlike Maui’s hot humid climate. I hung stuff on the clothesline at 9 am this morning and it was totally dry by noon. In Maui that takes until 5 pm, and you’re lucky if it’s dry by then.

Difference Two: Allergies. California? Zip. Happy camper. Maui? Whoa. I really should buy stock in kleenex.

Difference Three: Seeing the apricot and peach trees setting fruit on the tree in Mom’s yard. I can’t wait for my first juicy tree-ripened apricot for the first time in years. Don’t ever bother buying a peach or apricot in Maui. You’ll be supremely disappointed. The papayas on the other hand, no contest. One time my stepdad and I decided to do a swap. He sent me a box of apricots and I sent him a box of papayas. We were really hoping they’d get through the post office, but I’m still waiting on those apricots and it’s been four years.

Difference Four: Heat. I’m always in CA in the wintertime (Thanksgiving, Christmas and Vog season in Maui) so I almost forgot what it’s like be hot, yet not sweat. I tool around all day without soaking through my clothes once. Bliss.

Difference Five: A completely different social life. It’s very hard to “break in” in Maui. I wondered why for a long time until my first Maui friend finally explained it to me: “the mainlanders move here and you get close to them, and then they break your heart by moving back. Most people don’t last two years. It’s happened over and over. After a while people just stop trying.” She also told me she’d lived in Maui for 20 years and had NEVER been invited over to someone’s house for dinner. This just made my head spin. Why?? I asked her, as she sat at my dinner table, her first dinner invite. “Food is very expensive here. Maybe someone will do a barbeque pot-luck, but a sit-down dinner, no.” Since I’d been the queen of the dinner party and brunch in CA, this blew me away. But it has held true. The thing I look most forward to when I get back to CA  is getting invited over to my friend’s houses for dinner!

Difference Six: You can get your fashion on here! Women in Maui have no reason to dress up. It’s so casual you can wear shorts to the nicest restaurant, and I mean really, how many ways are there to wear a sundress? Jewelry is just hot and scarves are a joke. And the women all complain that the guys in Maui dress like dirtbags. Surf shorts and ratty t-shirts. When you live in Maui you can spot a tourist because they are dressed nicely. I can practically pick them out in Costco with my eyes closed. Expensive purses, matching ensembles, and nice jewelry (which they will then wear in the ocean and lose. People have metal-detecting businesses in Maui just to recover tourist’s jewelry.) It does get boring after a while that most everybody dresses alike in Maui. So I come to California and get my fashion on.

And lastly:

Difference Seven: Noise and Safety. Maui is so quiet.And safe. I truly love that. This part of CA is a cacaphony of sirens, the boom-boom-boom of car stereos, and even gunshots at night. I’m talking close by, too. Mike worries about me while I’m here. He’s afraid I’ll come home dead.

A hui hou! (til next time). If you’d like to subscribe to this blog, please click the “Follow” button on the right.

Aloha, Jamaica

Moving to Maui– Part Five

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And the gods kept laughing…

About the time I really relaxed into Maui mode and thought if I just had some friends (Lahaina was a lonely place unless you hung out at bars, one of it’s mottos is: “Lahaina– a drinking town with a fishing problem”)… the owner of the condo I was renting from informed me that she was selling.

Would I like to buy it? she asked. YES, I’d  love to buy it– but I still had a house back in California to deal with. Purchase price wasn’t even the big issue, things were cheap then. It was the bleepin’ Homeowner’s Fees. For a one-bedroom condo: $1,200 month. I almost swallowed my chewing gum.

So I started searching for a place to live. I looked in the paper–this should be a piece of cake, right? Right. Maui was in the middle of a housing crisis in 1999 and there were no rentals. Craigslist didn’t exist yet, so the newspaper was the only resource.

The reason there was a housing crisis, ironically, was that things WERE so cheap. People from the mainland (listen closely here, because it’s the reason Hawaiians have no time for mainlanders) were coming to the island and buying things up faster than Lindsey Lohan lands in jail. So all the condos were disapperaing from the rental market, because the owners were buying them and them leaving them sit empty. They had been taken out of the rental pool and turned into vacation homes, effectively leaving the locals no place to rent.

I didn’t know this at the time, of course. I just couldn’t understand why every time I called on a unit it was already gone. ALWAYS. But I had about a month to look, so I wasn’t panicking. Yet.

The panic was to come later.

An acquaintance recommended a room-mate situation, and starting to get savvy to the way things worked on Maui, I saw that word of mouth would probably be my only hope. Getting desperate, I said yes. The guy offering the room was a well-known Lahaina realtor, about 65 years old, and the place had a view, was gorgeous, and cheap. (This should have been my clue.) I thought, why not? It’s an adventure, right?

The adventure turned to oh, *&%*!  when I stumbled out of my room that first morning and found him standing facing the kitchen sink, STARK NAKED. I tried to flee, but not fast enough, because he turned around in all his glory.

I hadn’t even had my first cup of coffee for the morning, and I was faced with a room-mate who was not only a pervert but a nudist. I had already signed a lease.

The smile on his face said it all.

My cute house back on the mainland where I had a business, and friends, and family was sounding better all the time. Maybe I was supposed to just cash in my chips and go home…

A hui hou! (til next time). If you’d like to subscribe to this blog, please click the “Follow” button to the right.

Aloha, Jamaica

Mahalos

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Aloha All,

In Hawaii people speak pidgin (well, at least the ones who grew up here) and it’s a kind of shorthand English, a mashup of languages constructed during the reign of sugar plantation days when workers were brought from Japan and the Phillipines and no one could communicate with each other.

So most people know that “Mahalo” means thank you. But “Mahalos” is pidgin, it’s like the shaka sign of thank yous. It shows you’re local and you know what you’re talking about, i.e. “Mahalos, man.” I know this because Mike grew up here and it is truly like living with a foreigner to have a girl from the midwest and a haole boy from Hawaii living in the same house. This man would eat fish three times a day. I’m a good cook, and it will never matter how great my French cooking skills become, that man is gonna want fish, preferably on the grill…or raw.

I remember the first time he came home with a big ahi tuna he’d caught it off the boat. He threw it , still flopping, down on the patio and I watched him carve that thing up so fast I thought I hope I never get on the wrong side of him, because he has some serious knife skills. I was to find out he has some serious survival skills, period. Like he could have been the original “Survivor” but without the ego or attitude.

As far as the pidgin, when Mike was in the fire department, the firemen used to tease him that as a haole boy he was more Hawaiian than they were. That was the highest compliment they could give.

I got to watch the pidgin in action when we built our house. Mike would send me down to Kahului for a plumbing part (I was the “Runner”–that was my official title and I took it very seriously!) or a pile of wood or whatever.Now you’ve gotta realize I’m Swedish-Irish with blondish hair and blue-green eyes. And I would gamely go into the plumbing supply store and try to get waited on. And I waited. And I waited. And I would be routinely ignored by the guys in there and come home without the part, no matter how politely I asked.

Mike would be quite aggravated that I hadn’t accomplished this simple mission. So we would jump in the truck together, drive back down the hill and go to the same place. He would speak pidgin. And in two minutes he’d have his plumbing part. Like magic.

Anybody out there had a similar experience? Because my friend in Kula looks pretty much like me, except she was a model so she’s much taller and stunning (okay, maybe she doesn’t look like me) and she had all the same problems when they were building their house. No pidgin, no part.

I write this to say “Mahalos” to all of you who have written to tell me how much you’re enjoying the blog. That rocks, to know that the time I put in is worth it. I hope to bring a little bit of Hawaii to you all as often as I can. But on that note, it might be a short while before I can blog again. Those of you who follow the blog know that I was gone from Maui for five months last year because my stepdad was dying of cancer and I went to California to care for him. Well, now my mom just had major surgery so I’m back on a plane to CA tomorrow to care for her. Once I know Mom is good, I’ll be back at this, I promise.

So Mahalos and Aloha for now. See you real soon! If you’d like to subscribe to this blog, please click the “Follow” button on the right.

Jamaica

Does ‘Oprah’s Farm’ mean Winfrey’s moving to Maui?

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Aloha!

Oprah Winfrey’s Maui house is just fifteen minutes from mine. She built a pretty unassuming farm-style house in Kula, after buying out the rancher.

Kula is in “Upcountry” Maui, on the slopes of Haleakala mountain. In January, several websites quoted a story in the National Enquirer saying that Winfrey had joked that she’d move to the Valley Isle to run an organic farm if her new cable channel didn’t work out. An article at:http://www.bizjournals.com/pacific/blog/2012/04/does-oprahs-farm-mean-winfreys.html also commented on this. Interesting. Oprah also had land in Indiana, not far from where I grew up, which she sold. The last issue of her magazine said she loves to cook. I wonder if she’ll start showing up at the Upcountry Farmer’s Market that we frequent at the crack of dawn every Saturday morning, selling veggies and herbs? Well, sure!

Doing the drive up to see Oprah’s house has become “the thing to do” for tourists. Oprah should have someone sell tickets at the gate and charge for tourists to snap photos. She’d make a bundle.

Oprah has hired celebrity chef Bev Gannon of Hali’imaile General Store(www.bevgannonrestaurants.com) to cook for her on occasion when she’s here visiting. I know this because my friend Wendy knows Bev. A saying you hear all the time on Maui is, “It’s a small island.” This means rumors fly, and also that you’d better mind your P’s&Q’s because someone you know just saw what you did.

The reason for the low (almost non-existent) rate of rape and murder on Maui? Because whatever you do, your Auntie or Uncle or “cuz” will know about it. And let’s face it…there’s no escaping off an island. They just simply shut down the airport.

It’s a small island. So how come I haven’t run into Oprah?

A hui hou! (til next time). If you’d like to subscribe to this blog, please click the “Follow” button to the right.

Aloha, Jamaica

Copyright Jamaica Michaels 2012. All rights reserved. May not be reblogged or reprinted without express written permission of author.

Moving to Maui, Part Three

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Aloha,

So I now had a part-time job on Maui and a place to live, at the Aston Maui Kaanapali Villas, which is a combination of hotel and condos:

I had brought along one suitcase and my bicycle. The condo I was renting had four plates, four forks, four glasses. Life was simple, and I was discovering I liked it this way. No boxes of unorganized Christmas decorations haunting me from the attic. No closet full of winter clothes. No grandmother’s china gathering dust.

Actually, my design clients in Maui tell me that that’s the very best part about a vacation home on Maui: no stuff. So if that’s what we all aspire to, why do we own so much stuff? The truth is, it owns us…

Anyway, I was settling in, and deciding what to do about my life back in California. Condo life was agreeing with me. Until, that is, the night of the infamous late-night condo cleaning incident. I’m pretty sure they still talk about it at the front desk there.

Here’s the scene: it’s HOT in Maui. So once the sun went down and it cooled off, I decided to do a little cleaning. I put on a thin white t-shirt. And that was all. Get the picture? Hold that thought.

I opened the door to the condo and tossed out the throw rugs to shake later. Now there are fire codes in hotels, and safety codes, and these all conspire to create self-closing doors. Big, heavy, metal self-closing doors. A huge gust of wind blew through and WHAM! The saying “don’t let the door hit you in the butt on the way out” was suddenly reality.

Except that now I was out. Locked out of my condo on the outside walkway three floors up in nothing but a see-through t-shirt.The only thing that could have made it worse would have been if I was out on a tiny ledge, like in the movies. If there was ever a time I wished to be beamed up, Scotty, it was now.

What to do, what to do?

I yanked my t-shirt down over what  I could cover, got into the (now functioning) elevator and rode downstairs. I moved like a lady in a too-tight skirt, mincing my way to the front desk. I stopped just short of it and called around a support beam: “Hey, excuse me! I’ve lost my key and I’m locked out.”

The night clerk was named Mary. Mary was suspected of doing a little nipping at the bottle she kept stashed behind the desk (actually, a lot of nipping) because the boss wasn’t there at night to know the difference. Mary looked over in a fog and tried to focus on me.

“Who’s that? Who’s there?”

I called out my name. I told her which condo I was in. But Mary didn’t know me from a tourist.

“Well, what do you want? I can’t hear you. Come over here to the front desk!”

I sighed, clutched my shirt, and began my slow journey into the middle of the lobby. At just the same moment that a tourist couple entered and wanted to check in. I sidled up to the front desk, turned my back to them and whispered loudly,  “I’m locked out. I can’t get in. Do you have a spare key to my apartment?”

“Well no, of course not. I’ll have to call the maintenance guys. I don’t know who’s on duty.”

The maintenance GUYS? Great. Just great. The gods who had come out of the sky in my deux a machina moment and given me a great apartment and a job were now extracting their pound of flesh. Literally. I was sure I could hear them laughing up there.

I yanked my t-shirt down as hard as I could as the tired tourists glared at me. I steeled myself for the moment my Savior With a Key would get his eye-full. Luckily he was a gentleman, and pretended that it was common-place for him to have to have to let stranded women in see-through t-shirts and no bottoms into their apartments. Let me tell you though, I made sure he walked ahead of me on my walk of shame.

Like I said, I’m pretty sure they still talk about this at the front desk, because let’s not forget, I NOW WORKED THERE!  And I know I made the maintenance guys’ Hall of Fame for stupid guest tricks at the hotel. Except, that is, that just the week before I had dropped my key down the teeny little crack in the elevator shaft and they had to rescue me from that.

What are the chances? And how could a woman who was smart enough to own a home and manage a business keep pulling these incredibly dumb stunts? Deux a machina.

And the gods laughed.

A hui hou! (til next time). If you’d like to subscribe to this blog, please click the “Follow” button to the right.

Aloha, Jamaica

Copyright Jamaica Michaels, 2012. All rights reserved. May not be reblogged or reprinted without express written permission of the author.

Centipedes and Cockroaches and Rats, oh my!

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Aloha!

So a group of us Maui ladies got together last night at a little restaurant to catch up on each other’s lives. What I’d like to ask you is this: Is it normal for a group of adult women to sit around and compare notes about how big the centipede was that we found in our kitchen?  Or under the bath mat?  To compare the color, the length, the width? I can’t be sure, but women in other parts of the country (especially the contingent that made the movie “Bridesmaids” a smash hit ) probably discuss other things at length. But there we were, like a bunch of guys after a day of fishing, where the fish just gets bigger as the discussion goes on.

But I held the trump card.

“Any of you ladies ever opened up your gas grill on your lanai and had a rat running around in there?” I asked. “Because that’s what happened to me Sunday evening.”  Lots of gasps followed. I’m not talking a mouse. It was a rat, with a nice long tail, and he wasn’t Ratatouille.  And I’m not ashamed to admit that while watching that stunned rat careen around on top of the grate that was supposed to then hold my steak, my appetite went right with him as he plunged off the grill and over the side of the porch rail. That sucker could move.

My friend Wendy spoke up: “I knew when I moved to Maui that I’d have to make peace with the bugs. I mean, really make peace with them. But a rat in the grill? No way.”

These things didn’t happen on the mainland.

I remember the first night I stayed in my new Maui rental, shared with two other roommates, who happened to be at work.  A green creature went running up the side of the bedroom wall and across the ceiling. I screeched.  It then made a weird chirping sound, and I was convinced it was a battle cry. I didn’t sleep that night, afraid it would run across the bed, afraid it would bite. I had no idea what it was. The next morning I described it in detail to my roommate, and insisted that he catch it and remove it from the house. He laughed so hard his eyes watered.  “That was a gecko.  They’re supposed to be good luck. Someday you’ll laugh about this.”

I didn’t believe him, but of course I did eventually laugh about it, kind of in the same spirit that Crocodile Dundee pulled out his knife and said, “That’s not a knife, THIS is a knife.” Because the gecko was nothing compared to all the other creatures I was going to have to learn to live with. I even went on to have a Jackson chameleon as a pet, and a Jackson is really just a bigger gecko with horns, which turns blue when it’s mad.

For now, just after the rat incident, I’m going to go have a nice green salad and think about how long I can go without grilling a piece of meat.

A hui hou! (til next time). If you’d like to subscribe to this blog, please click the “Follow” button to the right.

Aloha, Jamaica

Copyright Jamaica Michaels, 2012. All rights reserved. May not be reblogged or reprinted without  written permission of the author.

High-Heel Blowout (A Maui Valentine’s Day Story)

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If you move to Maui and try to bring your mainland lifestyle with you, you are in for a rude surprise. Nothing translates the same in Maui: not your job, not the money you’re used to making. Not your level of cleanliness—whether personal (three showers a day are the norm in Maui) or in your living space — wind, red dirt off the fields, and the persistent mold will see to that.

And then there are the other unexpected things, like your underwear rotting out in the blink of an eye, and the High-Heel Blowout. On Valentine’s Day, this year, for me.

You see, things rot here. Don’t ask me why. I grew up in the Midwest where the humidity could suck the life out of you in the summer, and we never had this problem. All I can think is that the ten feet of snow in the winter there kills off the mold so it never gains a permanent foothold.

Not so in Maui.

My friend Rita was a former New York model who moved to Maui with a whole cache of expensive La Perla underwear. One day she took what should have been a teeny, tiny pair of bikinis out of her drawer, and to her horror, found that when she held them up, they were about a foot wide. The elastic had rotted and stretched them out enough to fit a football player with the UH Rainbow Warriors.

All my underwear did the same thing, the difference was, mine hadn’t cost a hundred dollars apiece. Still, you get attached, and I was, and I mourned that underwear, especially when I realized I couldn’t even replace it on Maui. I had to fly to the Mainland to get new underwear! (Actually I went to visit Mom, but believe me, I stocked up on my favorite brand of underwear.) And don’t even get me started on how long an $80.00 swimsuit will last here, which is about two minutes longer than the underwear. You don’t even have to take it out of your drawer, or ever get in the water. It just magically disintegrates, right there in your dresser drawer.

So all of you guys out there…do you like shiny things, like cars? Expensive toys? Electronics, photography equipment? Better lock it all in a vault, and kiss that shiny car goodbye, because the red dirt in Maui will own you. Between that and the humidity, you can spend the rest of your life trying to protect things from damage and keep things clean. First piece of advice I got in Maui?  “You will spend your life cleaning.”

Ha! I’m gonna spend my life at the beach, sister.

Right. That worked out well. Tourists who visit Maui have no idea, because they check into a hotel room that has been cleaned by a professional Maui hotel housekeeper, whose main objective in life is to make you believe that red dirt does not exist, so you will bring your tourist dollars right back here next year. So she shines and sweeps and wipes down every inch of the lanai furniture so you can sit out there in your nice white shorts. There’s a reason why you don’t see white shorts on locals.

Red dirt+wind+humidity=mold. Commit this to memory.

So where was I? Oh, right: Valentine’s Day. I pulled out my red high heels to wear to the restaurant. Haven’t had them on in a year, of course. Slipped them on, took two steps from the closet and almost fell flat on my face. The straps had started the rotting process and had stretched out so much they wouldn’t stay on my feet. This is not the first time this has happened. There was the unfortunate Upcountry farmer’s market incident with a pair of clogs, where I was just walking along minding my own business and my entire shoe collapsed like a mini atomic mushroom cloud. I had no other shoes with me. Now, I’m wiser, I’m a local, and there’s always a spare pair in the car.

The next incident was rather more embarrassing and significantly more important. I was at the Maui Writer’s Conference (I’m a writer other than this blog–we’ll talk more about that another time) and it was my turn to get up in front of an auditorium full of people and give my presentation. I got out of my seat, made my way up front, and… Pow! Blowout. My cute little kitten-heel black sandals had chosen this moment to succumb to the Maui humidity curse. I stumbled, my ankle twisted, I turned all shades of red. After I’d righted myself, I galumped up to the podium, one shoe on and one shoe off, pretending that nothing had happened. Because everyone in that audience was from the Mainland, and who would believe that my heel had just rotted off, simply from living in Paradise?

It’s just a darned good thing my underwear didn’t choose to give out at the exact same moment.

Aloha till next time, and hope you had a Happy Valentine’s Day.

P.S. These were NOT my black kitten heels, but they’re cute, don’t you think?

Copyright Jamaica Michaels, 2012. All rights reserved. May not be reblogged or reprinted without express written permission of the author.