Oct. 23, 2010
Aloha friends and family,
I continue to love being here in Hilo, and am finally a ‘real’ Hawaiian…..I passed the paper and pencil Driver’s Test and am in possession of an Hawaiian Driver’s License!! Hooray!!! My picture on it is even a good one! One more sign that I am in the right place at this time in my life.
As acclimation to this new world continues unabated, I thought I would share some things that are now in my realm of awareness which you are missing. Let’s start with….
COQUI FROGS
You may or may not know that the Horned Toad or Horned Frog is the mascot of TCU. So, I am reasonably familiar and mostly comfortable with frogs in general. However there is a specific variety here that I had not encountered. The Coqui frog was accidentally brought to Hawaii from Puerto Rico. They are very very small frogs (less than 2 inches in length) which live within the leaves of plants where they can be hidden by folds and rolls of the leaves near the attachment point on the stalk. OK, so you say “what’s so bad about tiny frogs?” Since you asked, I’ll tell you. It’s the noise they make as they try to attract female companionship. For many people, the cacophony is sleep disrupting and quite annoying.
Allow me to describe an average evening here at my wonderful house on the cul-de-sac. These frogs sleep during the day….lucky little critters that they are. So, about 4pm or so they begin waking up and planning for an evening with friends. A few practice mating calls are heard, but they are sporadic and scattered over the foliage behind the house. By sundown the party is in full swing and hundreds of little frogs have begun to compete for the attention and whatever of the local girl frogs. These male frogs are hoping to strike it lucky with one or more loose women in the Coqui neighborhood. So they try to be louder and more interesting in their calling sounds. Squeaks, chirps, clicks (like a large toe nail clipper at work) and other variations on these sounds will be heard. Some sound like birds and can be misleading in that way. Friends from Austin who have heard them in the background when talking with me over the phone mention hearing a bird. No telling what they think when I tell them it’s not a bird, but a frog.
Now, I am not in the group who dislike the noise at night….and the joint is jumping through to early morning. Actually I sleep better with some type of ‘white noise’ in the background and usually have a fan on to create this very thing. So, the cocqui night club outside my open window actually contributes to this steady hum (?) of background noise. By about 2am the party has pretty much broken up, I assume because the guys got lucky or gave up trying because they were getting hoarse. Yet, there is usually one or two optimistic stragglers still calling into the darkness in hopes of hearing a returning….something….from that last, probably ugly, girl frog. Then things settle down for that day until the next night when the Coqui Club opens again for business. Check out Coqui frogs on Google, and they have links to sites where you can hear their calls.
PURPLE SWEET POTATOES
Yep, PURPLE Sweet Potatoes! Yesterday in the faculty meeting, my colleague, Laura, was eating one for lunch. The outside looks like a regular brown potato but the inside is the color of the TCU school colors. As I watched her eat it I had the strangest feeling. Do you remember hearing about a study done in which people were tested for likes or dislikes of regular foods which had been colored a very different color yet without changing the taste in any way? Green milk, blue mashed potatoes, etc.? People wouldn’t eat the foods or claimed they tasted different. Our perception of food and the taste of that food are closely linked to the colors we grew up seeing and eating. Right now, there is a move in America to introduce Red Celery to the public, but there is concern that people won’t buy it because of the unique color.
OK, back to purple sweet potato. I was almost getting sick watching Laura scoop out the purple potato ‘innerds’ and eat fork after forkful. She swears it tastes just like any other sweet potato. But as I was trying to pull my eyes away from this train wreck of a lunch, I remembered having ordered a lunch just a week or so ago that said it came with sweet potato salad. Sounded good. But when it arrived, it didn’t look orange. Instead it looked white with purple ‘stuff’ mixed in. Texture was all the same, but it never occurred to me that the purple ‘stuff’ was actually the sweet potato. OK, tell me why I could eat that salad, but not watch Laura eat all purple potato from its shell?? It’s a conundrum for sure!
MONKEYPOD TREES
Oh my heavens, these are gorgeous trees. They grow easily in Hawaii, and when they are growing in open areas of parks or greenbelts, they can get to be enormous. The leafy portion grows in a way that makes them look like huge umbrellas. They have a natural stop level for the lower branches so that they spread out with a horizontal edge at the base of the leaves, and a large corresponding sized arch of leaves over the top of the leaf section. Many of these are growing down near the Hilo Bay in the buffer zone of parkland that was established after the last Tsunami in the ‘60s.
Monkeypod wood is prized for use in wood working. You can pay quite a bit for large monkeypod bowls and trays, and such. They have a pretty grain so the wood item looks decorative and then the item itself is functional. If you come into possession of such a wooden décor item, treasure it. These are unique and will last a lifetime and beyond.
MORE FOR ANOTHER POSTING….
I’ll save the details about Paddle Surfing and Scuba Diving with Manta Rays for later. The former are fun to watch as these young people stand on their surfboards and paddle along on areas of calm water near the Bay. The latter is a nighttime tourist option in Kona, and Alisa says she wants to do that when she and Kathleen come to check on me at Christmas. I have elected to remain on shore for that little tourist attraction. Maybe on another visit…..yeah!!
Hope this finds you all doing well. School is moving quickly along here. My nursing home tour with students ends this coming Tuesday, and two weeks later, I get a new set of students who will go with me to the Cardiovascular Unit (read: Intermediate Step-Down / Telemetry Unit). That will be challenging and interesting. The unit is physically small, crowded, and has a high level of acuity (meaning very sick patients). It is very different from my comfy area at Round Rock Med Center…..but that is part of why I came over here. It will be interesting and I’m looking forward to getting more specific experience with that category of patients.
Hugs to you all,
Aloha,
Janene
Saturday, October 23, 2010
Friday, October 8, 2010
WELCOMING PARTY
Aloha
Lots of things going on here, and I’m staying in the middle of most of them. I love it here!
Let me tell you about the big party that was given for all new faculty at Univ. of Hawaii – Hilo and the Hawaii Community College – Hilo last week. There is a group in town that was formed specifically to create community links with and between the University / College and the businesses and public leadership of Hilo. One of the important areas they see in this role is that of making new faculty welcome to the community and helping us assimilate into our new hometown. With that in mind, they annually throw a party for the new faculty and have speakers, fun information about the cultures and cuisines of the area, and entertainment (what would a party in Hawaii be without Hula Dancers??) as well as a feast of local delicacies and traditional dishes that would make your hair stand on end. Speakers included the Chancellor for the University system Hilo facilities, the Community College chancellor, and the immediate past University Chancellor, along with the Mayor (he was a hoot) and other important community leaders. Several state representatives were there but, thankfully, they didn’t speak.
Now…..about Hawaiian dancing…..!! Let’s clarify something right off the bat. I can’t sing (some of you are only too familiar with that deficit of mine) and I clearly have no rhythm for dancing. Stick figures look more graceful. There were two dance groups who performed, and both pulled those of us sitting near the front up to join them for part of the …dare I say ‘entertainment’? It was hard, sad, humiliating, funny, embarrassing, and tons of fun. Swaying hips only look easy. It took me months to learn to Twist in the 60’s and about that time the dance fad passed on to other fads. But I can still Twist with the best of them…..which of course doesn’t help a bit with doing the Hula. The second group was a younger age group (young to me anyway) who had on tight black outfits with silver hanging spangles around their hips. They combined some of the swaying of the Hula, but added much in from Tahiti where fast and suggestive hip shakes are the norm. Now picture me trying to do a tamed down version of this exotic and erotic dance style……STOP THINKING, it will make you go blind. But, despite not being able to do line dancing, hula or Tahitian dancing, I did get up there and try!! That’s what counts, right?? Please say yes to that.
They also introduced us to unusual local fare of the various cultural groups. Each was supposed to be very different from the mainstream dishes known around the world, and were said to be favorites of the ‘real’ people of those ethnic groups. We were reminded that many of these dishes came from years ago and were the outcomes from economic needs to not waste anything from an animal consumed for food. I’ll just let your imagination run with that for a few seconds………ok? Got it?? Yep….you got it. Well, they wanted a new faculty member to come up to try each dish as it was presented, and the idea was that this faculty member was adventurous and a good sport…..cuz some of these things tasted awful. Ok, I’m game for some things, and when I heard the word peanut in the name of the dish, I volunteered to try it. My first clue about this error on my part was when I got to the table, the comedian who was doing the MC’ing of the whole thing said, with a big grin, to his partner “I bet she thinks there are peanuts in this!!” Uh Oh!!! Too late to go back now. Actually, it was a piece of meat….mystery meat for sure, but it looked like a small chunk of pork, and tasted like that…..Thank Goodness! It came with a single Okra which I also ate. Got my well deserved round of applause and a nice little gift for agreeing to be a target, and finally got to sit down. Some folks had things that were much worse, like Chicken Tail and other dishes made from the far end of the animal. One woman just said “It’s an acquired taste” when asked about her taste test. But all in all it was a rare chance to learn about some innovative ways to ‘use all of the animal’ so that none goes to waste. I gained a great deal of respect for such ingenuity and perseverance in times of need. Today those dishes are family traditions at gatherings and special meals. Sort of like some of our special dishes we fix for our family gatherings….maybe my Cranberry Salad at Thanksgiving and Christmas would qualify for this sort of category.
At the end of the evening, they instructed (begged) the new faculty to take TWO of the table centerpieces home with us. Each one was different, and had fresh local flowers done in a beautiful arrangement. I took two that had such flowers as Antheriums of red and white, Bird of Paradise, and various greenery. They are still beautiful a week later. We also were given a tote bag full of lots of fun stuff along with a Tee-shirt for our College or University. I did feel welcome and appreciated at the end of the evening, and that was a first for me in any teaching setting. I love this place!!
On a more somber note, tho, at the beginning of the evening I had seen one of my students there who explained her boyfriend was a new HawCC faculty member and she had come to see him introduced. A few minutes later after going through the appetizers (pu-pu) line, I saw someone rush up to the edge of the pavilion where we were and in a clearly panic shouted that she needed a knife quickly. One was immediately grabbed from the food line nearby, and she rushed off. Seconds later, Anna, my student was at my shoulder whispering that there might be a need for medical help out in the park area. I followed her out and we walked about 20 yards to a covered picnic table area where some men were cutting down a young man who had tried to hang himself. The issue was that the rope was still too tight around his neck and they were working to loosen it when Anne and I got up there. That was successful, and they lowered him to the ground at which time the young man began to jerk and writhe and wrestle with those trying to hold him down to keep him safe. It did not demonstrate the usual seizure movements, and with his panicked look and struggling against the men it was more apparent that there was either some O2 deficit issues and/or drugs on board factors. Police and EMS had been called earlier by bystanders, and police got there quickly. The young man had no friends or family who came looking for him, but did have a wallet on him. I left when the ambulance pulled into the parking area adjacent to that spot in the park. It was obvious he would survive the attempt, but at what cost to cognition and emotional status is only a guess. This was a first for me, and I am still thinking about it a full week later. I have since learned that suicide among the youth and young adults in Hawaii is very high. It is a sad fact of living in this beautiful and caring part of the world. My hope is this young man can get the help he needs and look past the pain of the short time to a better long time in life.
Enough!! School is going well, my clinical group is doing well except for one poor soul who is just too tunnel-visioned to see the RN-level of big picture. He has not been successful in the learning lab, and is likely to not pass this semester clinically. Others in the group are not having difficulties, and are fun, funny, and enthusiastic about this new career they are starting. They make it worth my time to be on site and alert at 6:30AM…..and most of you know I’m NOT a morning person!!
With that update on some of the things in Paradise that I’m enjoying, I will let you quit reading for now. I promise to get back with a blog about my drive up to Wimea and the breathtaking coastal landscape that I drove along to get there. This island is magnificent, and I am looking forward to more exploration soon.
Aloha to all of you,
Janene
Lots of things going on here, and I’m staying in the middle of most of them. I love it here!
Let me tell you about the big party that was given for all new faculty at Univ. of Hawaii – Hilo and the Hawaii Community College – Hilo last week. There is a group in town that was formed specifically to create community links with and between the University / College and the businesses and public leadership of Hilo. One of the important areas they see in this role is that of making new faculty welcome to the community and helping us assimilate into our new hometown. With that in mind, they annually throw a party for the new faculty and have speakers, fun information about the cultures and cuisines of the area, and entertainment (what would a party in Hawaii be without Hula Dancers??) as well as a feast of local delicacies and traditional dishes that would make your hair stand on end. Speakers included the Chancellor for the University system Hilo facilities, the Community College chancellor, and the immediate past University Chancellor, along with the Mayor (he was a hoot) and other important community leaders. Several state representatives were there but, thankfully, they didn’t speak.
Now…..about Hawaiian dancing…..!! Let’s clarify something right off the bat. I can’t sing (some of you are only too familiar with that deficit of mine) and I clearly have no rhythm for dancing. Stick figures look more graceful. There were two dance groups who performed, and both pulled those of us sitting near the front up to join them for part of the …dare I say ‘entertainment’? It was hard, sad, humiliating, funny, embarrassing, and tons of fun. Swaying hips only look easy. It took me months to learn to Twist in the 60’s and about that time the dance fad passed on to other fads. But I can still Twist with the best of them…..which of course doesn’t help a bit with doing the Hula. The second group was a younger age group (young to me anyway) who had on tight black outfits with silver hanging spangles around their hips. They combined some of the swaying of the Hula, but added much in from Tahiti where fast and suggestive hip shakes are the norm. Now picture me trying to do a tamed down version of this exotic and erotic dance style……STOP THINKING, it will make you go blind. But, despite not being able to do line dancing, hula or Tahitian dancing, I did get up there and try!! That’s what counts, right?? Please say yes to that.
They also introduced us to unusual local fare of the various cultural groups. Each was supposed to be very different from the mainstream dishes known around the world, and were said to be favorites of the ‘real’ people of those ethnic groups. We were reminded that many of these dishes came from years ago and were the outcomes from economic needs to not waste anything from an animal consumed for food. I’ll just let your imagination run with that for a few seconds………ok? Got it?? Yep….you got it. Well, they wanted a new faculty member to come up to try each dish as it was presented, and the idea was that this faculty member was adventurous and a good sport…..cuz some of these things tasted awful. Ok, I’m game for some things, and when I heard the word peanut in the name of the dish, I volunteered to try it. My first clue about this error on my part was when I got to the table, the comedian who was doing the MC’ing of the whole thing said, with a big grin, to his partner “I bet she thinks there are peanuts in this!!” Uh Oh!!! Too late to go back now. Actually, it was a piece of meat….mystery meat for sure, but it looked like a small chunk of pork, and tasted like that…..Thank Goodness! It came with a single Okra which I also ate. Got my well deserved round of applause and a nice little gift for agreeing to be a target, and finally got to sit down. Some folks had things that were much worse, like Chicken Tail and other dishes made from the far end of the animal. One woman just said “It’s an acquired taste” when asked about her taste test. But all in all it was a rare chance to learn about some innovative ways to ‘use all of the animal’ so that none goes to waste. I gained a great deal of respect for such ingenuity and perseverance in times of need. Today those dishes are family traditions at gatherings and special meals. Sort of like some of our special dishes we fix for our family gatherings….maybe my Cranberry Salad at Thanksgiving and Christmas would qualify for this sort of category.
At the end of the evening, they instructed (begged) the new faculty to take TWO of the table centerpieces home with us. Each one was different, and had fresh local flowers done in a beautiful arrangement. I took two that had such flowers as Antheriums of red and white, Bird of Paradise, and various greenery. They are still beautiful a week later. We also were given a tote bag full of lots of fun stuff along with a Tee-shirt for our College or University. I did feel welcome and appreciated at the end of the evening, and that was a first for me in any teaching setting. I love this place!!
On a more somber note, tho, at the beginning of the evening I had seen one of my students there who explained her boyfriend was a new HawCC faculty member and she had come to see him introduced. A few minutes later after going through the appetizers (pu-pu) line, I saw someone rush up to the edge of the pavilion where we were and in a clearly panic shouted that she needed a knife quickly. One was immediately grabbed from the food line nearby, and she rushed off. Seconds later, Anna, my student was at my shoulder whispering that there might be a need for medical help out in the park area. I followed her out and we walked about 20 yards to a covered picnic table area where some men were cutting down a young man who had tried to hang himself. The issue was that the rope was still too tight around his neck and they were working to loosen it when Anne and I got up there. That was successful, and they lowered him to the ground at which time the young man began to jerk and writhe and wrestle with those trying to hold him down to keep him safe. It did not demonstrate the usual seizure movements, and with his panicked look and struggling against the men it was more apparent that there was either some O2 deficit issues and/or drugs on board factors. Police and EMS had been called earlier by bystanders, and police got there quickly. The young man had no friends or family who came looking for him, but did have a wallet on him. I left when the ambulance pulled into the parking area adjacent to that spot in the park. It was obvious he would survive the attempt, but at what cost to cognition and emotional status is only a guess. This was a first for me, and I am still thinking about it a full week later. I have since learned that suicide among the youth and young adults in Hawaii is very high. It is a sad fact of living in this beautiful and caring part of the world. My hope is this young man can get the help he needs and look past the pain of the short time to a better long time in life.
Enough!! School is going well, my clinical group is doing well except for one poor soul who is just too tunnel-visioned to see the RN-level of big picture. He has not been successful in the learning lab, and is likely to not pass this semester clinically. Others in the group are not having difficulties, and are fun, funny, and enthusiastic about this new career they are starting. They make it worth my time to be on site and alert at 6:30AM…..and most of you know I’m NOT a morning person!!
With that update on some of the things in Paradise that I’m enjoying, I will let you quit reading for now. I promise to get back with a blog about my drive up to Wimea and the breathtaking coastal landscape that I drove along to get there. This island is magnificent, and I am looking forward to more exploration soon.
Aloha to all of you,
Janene
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