Hawaii, First 100 Hours

I recently got the opportunity to move to Hawaii, to the island of O'ahu for work, just for a year. It's been a long time since I've "blogged," either here or on other websites that shall not be named. Quite a few people asked if I would give updates on my life in the islands, so instead of shoving pictures down their throat every day/week (which is what I'm doing with my family), I thought I'd restart this blog with Hawaii updates!

So, here's my first 100 hours on the island.

(I have basically no pictures from then. Either it was just endless ocean, or I was taking a video for one of my seatmates.)

Walk off the plane. Pick up baggage^[1]. Pick up already reserved rental car.

Next was actually worse: I'm not usually a stressed driver, but I felt totally out of place on the streets of Honolulu. I usually hate city driving anyway (looking at you New York! why even spend money on painting lanes?), but a bunch of little things were just a little bit off:

• traffic lights were not always where I thought they'd be, especially for turning left,
• arrows everywhere: there were more arrow lights than solid lights, lots of straight-ahead arrows instead of the solid green ones like on the east coast

I did appreciate some little things too, like the dotted lines on most intersections for directing lanes of turning (or non-turning!) traffic, and the general beep from someone behind me to let me know the light had turned green while I was fumbling around making sure I hadn't missed my turn.

Because I'll be in my first hotel for a week and a half, I spent some time getting settled, unpacking and then re-packing my stuff in a less flight-focused and more car-focused way, and just relaxing after a long and boring flight.

After relaxing for a bit, I walked around in the nearby area between Ala Moana Regional Park and Kahanamoku Beach. I wandered around the various green spaces, saw the orange sunset, and then got lost in the dark tourist trap^[2].

At this point, it's evening becoming night here in Hawaii, but already the middle of the night back in Maryland, so I basically just went to sleep.

But my biological clock just wouldn't snooze. I actually don't remember what I did, but I'm assuming I got up and milled around my room until a normal wake-up time.

Apparently the on-site breakfast café is overpriced and not great, but luckily there's a Starbucks in the lobby! (That's where I am right now, writing this post.) While in line, I noticed Starbucks' line of Hawaiian coffee cups for sale. I also got what would turn out to be my regular order:

1. Grande iced caramel macchiato, no ice
2. Sausage, egg, and cheddar cheese breakfast (?) sandwich

Before, I feel like I never spent time in the hotel whenever I stayed at one for vacations, etc., but since I'm staying in Hawaii for a whole year, I feel like some relaxing is warranted (not that I'm going to spend the entire year just cooped up and not enjoying the sights and sounds of Hawaii, but I don't want to force myself to do things for the sake of doing things).

So, I went to the pool (poolside really, as I didn't touch a drop of water that day), working on rebuilding this website and then when my all-black laptop got too hot to touch, did some light reading under the sun.

Lunch was another sausage, cheese, and egg sandwich. (See?) I may have also had another caramel macchiato.

I also got to see some surfing in person for the first time. Is it usually that much waiting though?

Got back. Relaxed. Was ready for dinner? But apparently most places have already closed or were about to close. Not realizing how early food places closed around here, what was I to do for dinner? Luckily, I remembered that my mom was commenting how the 7-Elevens in Hawaii look more like those in Taiwan than on the mainland^[3], so I decided to go to the closest one and grab a bento box if available.

Unfortunately, at least at the one I went to, no bento boxes. It was a little sad looking. But I was able to grab a couple containers of Shin Ramen and Jin Ramen, and I saw a few cool things along the way there and back.

Same breakfast.

This is actually the first time I've gone into water since arriving. I walked to the nearby Ala Moana Regional Park's beach, and spent some time on the sandy beach and in the water, just acclimating (it'd also been many years since I went swimming).

I didn't have a time piece while in the water (my watch ran out of battery a while ago, and I just never felt like paying more than the price of the watch to replace the battery, but also felt like it would be a waste to retire the watch after only about a year of use), so I lost track of time. The Ala Moana Center (apparently the world's largest open air^[4] mall!) was right there, so I found a Sichuan restaurant and got an order of 麻婆豆腐 (ma'po tofu) and an order of 酸辣湯 (sweet and sour soup). It tasted alright, but I didn't get any rice, which was a huge pity for 那麽能下飯的菜！

Although I'm not starting work until Monday, I had some other loose ends and things to work on. I also needed to start taking a look at my financial situation to make sure I'll be living within my means.

Same thing.

This was the day I was having lunch with some future coworkers from

After spending more time than the others looking through the menu and then ending up just ordering the easiest thing to order (the Lunch Special at Restaurant Kunio), we talked about a bunch of topics for newcomers to the island and also the office/coworkers/work culture that I'll be starting in on Monday. It was pretty nice to talk to people in person and hear about all sorts of things like the difference between "Hawaiian" food and "local" food.

I do feel like I could've talked more though. I wouldn't say I'm shy, but when I first meet people, I'm too worried about impressions, and my mind is completely blank when it comes to things I should say or ask. In Chinese, this is called 慢熱 (lit. slow to warm up; can't think of if there's an equivalent phrase in English)

Right before I left, my family had actually looked at this on a map, and I had decided on a whim to circuit the east half of the island this day. We like to visit a lot of botanically relevant places (arboretums, botanical gardens, etc.), so I went on a scouting mission for when they may or may not come visit.

For the rest of the day, I drove around the island on the 83, stopping at Hale'iwa Beach Park, other beach parks, and also a Foodland in the northeast to check out what a local grocery store looks like.

Taking somewhat of a lazy day, writing a longer than expected first post after a long hiatus. Definitely easier than it used to be.

For the rest of today, post-first 100 hours, I'll probably find something to eat, walk around outside for a bit (although it's quite overcast today), and chill before tomorrow. Perhaps I'll try the $100 prime steak at the rooftop restaurant!

This post was made possible by metadata from photos and my Google Maps Timeline. Thanks Google for tracking everywhere I went, what I was looking at, and what I searched for!