Entries from November 2007 ↓

Americans believe that a business should be allowed to require employees to speak English on the job. Or, so says survey results which seem to echo common sense.

Let’s say you’re in a warehouse and a stack of something big and heavy is about to fall on your head. Do you want to be warned in English, Spanish, or Canadian? What language do you speak?

In Connecticut, a company has been sued by five Spanish-speaking workers. The company ordered the employees to speak only English while on the job. Why? Safety concerns. That makes sense, right?

The workers and their lawyers argue that the rule is discriminatory and makes a workplace more hazardous.

Uh, how so?

The most important point is that workers be allowed to communicate effectively, regardless of language, and employers who demand that workers speak English set up a common ground for effective communication between all employees.

Back to those stacks about to fall on your head. A nearby employee yells at you to get out of the way as the stacks begin to fall. In Spanish. Quick, how do you say “look out” in Spanish?  See the problem? If a business cannot require a common language to be spoken by employees, only the people below the falling stack who speak (and presumably understand) Spanish would recognize the warning and get out of the way. Everyone else be damned. And squashed.

There is a reason why pilots of commercial airliners are required to speak and understand English. Safety. It’s not that pilots and air traffic controllers cannot speak another language, it’s just that effective communication between people requires something common, such as the language they use.

Guess what? Some Chinese pilots don’t speak or understand English. That could could make understanding and acknowledging instructions from air traffic controllers more difficult, right?

Apparently not. The French, for whom we named our favorite fried potatoes, could handle English-only for 15 days before succumbing to pride and throwing safety out the window.

A requirement for effective and beneficial standards should rise above national linguistic pride. After all, if you cannot communicate to me, and I cannot communicate to you, then one or both of us will be required, assuming we actually want to communicate effectively with one another, to reach some common ground.

I tried to explain to my mother and grandmother, one from the hill country of Missouri, the other from the dust plains of Oklahoma, that the waiter at Don Ho’s Restaurant in The Aloha Tower Marketplace was actually speaking English to them.

My mom replied, “That’s not any English I ever heard.” She was right. It wasn’t. But I understood the waiter’s English just fine. Go figure.

Don’t complain about the rain. We need it.

Remember, it was just a year or two ago when Hawaii received 40 days and nights of rain. We needed it then but complained anyway.

Well, we’ve used up all that rain and then some, and now we need more. Well, it’s here, so let’s not complain about it.

After all, we survived 40 days and nights of rain once. Wait. Twice. So, maybe we can survive another 40 days and nights of rain.

I wouldn’t mind the rain so much if it always came from the same direction as the trade winds. All too often we get muggy Kona winds. Humid, sticky, sultry Kona winds do not icing on the cake of rain make.

My arthritic knee is highly sensitive to Kona winds, rain or not. I can wake up in the morning and tell which way the wind blows. I’d gladly suffer through a winter of Kona winds if it brought a steady pouring of overnight rains.

I won’t complain about my knee if you don’t complain about the rain. Instead, lets both complain about something more common to the detriment of mankind.

Politicians.

I watched Channel 2’s news the other night. Joe Moore did it again. He called the University of Hawaii’s football team the, ‘Rainbow Warriors.’

Joe knows what he did was wrong. The name was changed to the ‘Warriors’ years ago. Joe knows that but doesn’t care.

Does it matter? After all, how many of us still refer to the team as the ‘Bows’, or the ‘Rainbows?’

It matters not so much that Hawaii’s most popular sports personality and news reader gets it wrong. He should know better. He does. But by all accounts, Joe doesn’t care.  What Joe wants, Joe gets. The only opinion that matters is Joe’s opinion.

Local boy Joe Moore’s rise in Honolulu television history is well known and documented. Over the past two decades Moore has become Hawaii’s most popular news reader and the principal personality of KHON’s television news.

But isn’t Joe the station’s news anchor? Hardly. Just ask the talented and experienced broadcast journalists at KITV or KGMB. Both stations have put together better quality, more professionally produced local news broadcasts than KHON, but only recently have begun to reap the rewards.

Joe Moore’s ratings at KHON are falling.

The end of an era is near. Granted, Joe commands an audience of avid watchers and supporters, though the numbers are dwindling as generations and habits change. Look at the differences between KHON’s one man show, and the team efforts to provide news, weather, and sports at KITV, KGMB, and to a lesser extent, KHNL. The team gets the job done.

At KHON, Joe Moore is the team. Soon, he will be a second place team of one. It’s all down hill from there.

Honolulu Mayor Mufi Hannemann signed five bills into law yesterday. Do you know what they were? How many bills signed by the Mayor into law this year can you name?

The new laws were numbered Bill 63, Bill 69, Bill 71, Bill 72, and Bill 73. The nearly sequential nature of those bills indicates that many others were signed earlier this year, and some bills didn’t make it to a signature.

Bill 63 sets up a curbside recycling project, including fees. Bill 69 rezoned land along Waialae Avenue. Bills 71, 72, and 73 get into real property tax appeals and assessments.

Back to the question. How many bills that have been signed into law this year can you name?

Contrary to popular belief, it does appear that the Honolulu City Council and the Mayor actually do some work, and some of that work might be to the benefit of the people. With all the press and television coverage provided to city and state government, why is it that most of us still don’t know of any specific laws passed this year?

Black Friday is the day after Thanksgiving. It’s not a bad day, like Black Monday, or a bad thing, like Black Bart.

Black Friday is the day which marks the start of profits for retail stores. They’ve led everyone to believe they’re in the red and don’t make money from January through Thanksgiving, so they hold huge sales for the month before Christmas to make their annual profits, and go into the black.

I don’t buy that.

What I will buy is that Black Friday has become an insane effort by shoppers to save money on products that are probably already overpriced, then discounted. Insane? Yes. There was no parking available at Ala Moana Center very early Black Friday morning.

Worse, some family members trekked to Waikele Shopping Center before midnight on Thanksgiving to get in on the very early morning Black Friday sales. Uh oh. No parking. They spent 90-minutes sitting along H-1 which became a huge off ramp for the Waikele exit, and when they finally got into the shopping center there was no parking. I assume that Pearlridge Center was equally crowded. We didn’t bother to find out.

Instead, what we did was venture to the newly giant Safeway grocery store on Kapahulu Avenue, which opened to huge crowds a week or so earlier. We tried to get into the Safeway parking lot two days after it opened, but couldn’t find a parking space.

How was Safeway on Kapahulu on Black Friday? It wasn’t deja ju all over again. There were plenty of parking spaces, wide open aisles, and a few very intelligent shoppers, most of whom figured no one would be at Safeway because everyone else would be busy circling around the parking lots at Ala Moana Center, Waikele Center, and Pearlridge Center.

Grocery store shopping is best done the day after Thanksgiving.

Today’s Honolulu Advertiser had a nice graphic which showed that visitor arrivals to Hawaii dipped in November.

With conspicuous timing, Hawaii’s hotels and resorts appear to need me again.

Just a few years ago we vacationed on the neighbor islands. First, the Grand Wailea on Maui, then an anniversary celebration at the Four Seasons Hualalai on the Big Island. Of course, we used the local rate. Who can afford their regular rates?

Over the past few years we’ve had a desire to visit the neighbor islands but simply could not afford to stay at the places we love best. Why? Get real. Four Seasons at Wailea wants $620 a night. That’s more than $25 an hour. The place is seriously nice, but not that seriously nice.

Times change. Fewer visitors to Hawaii are willing to cough up $620 a night for a hotel room, even if it a multi-star resort that’s within driving distance of Joe’s Bar and Grill. With fewer visitors to Hawaii willing to spend less money, the hotels and resorts dig into their little customer database and come up with names they haven’t seen for a few years.

Mine.

This week we received advertisements in the mail with a request to return to each of our favorite resorts on the neighbor islands. Frankly, I admit that it’s really nice to be wanted and needed again by the very resorts who’ve ignored me for the past four or five years.

Guess what? Even a 50-percent off Kamaaina Rate for local residents isn’t enough to get me to return to the Grand Wailea or a Four Seasons again. I can travel to Las Vegas for about the same as a nice resort on Maui, so why bother?

But it’s nice to be needed. Get me 50-percent off the 50-percent off Kamaaina Rate, and I’ll think about it.

Hawaii households make a lot of money. In fact, the Census Bureau says Hawaii was #4 in Median Household Income last year.

Is that good or bad?

As it is with most general statistics, it’s both. Maryland comes in at #1 with over $65,000 in median household income. Median is different than average. But why is Hawaii ranked so high?

The bottom five states include all those you would expect, because they’re somewhat impoverished states. Alabama, Oklahoma, Arkansas, West Virginia, Mississippi. Hawaii ranks just behind Connecticut and just ahead of Massachusetts.

These lies, damned lies, and statistics may not tell the true parts of another story, that of how many wage earners there are in a household, and how many jobs they hold.

Housing is more expensive in Hawaii than nearly any other state in the union. So is the general cost of living and pretty much anything and everything else except rice and pineapples. Hawaii’s households make more money because they need to, hence the low unemployment rate. Many householders work multiple jobs. Those jobs help to increase median household income and reduce unemployment.

Another interesting statistic would be a comparison of household income to the number of homeless in Hawaii.

The University of Hawaii’s football Warriors just won the WAC Championship by defeating nemesis Boise State in what is sure to be Hawaii’s biggest game ever.

Until next week.

This week, Hawaii’s football fans have me to thank for pulling the Warriors through a tough game against the Broncos.

Why me?

Call it the obvious influence of a dedicated armchair quarterback; the kind who guides the offense through a tenacious defense. After all, it was me who continued to stick with the Warriors though the lead changed hands time and time again.

Certainly my mental influence on the defense must have kept the pressure on Boise State’s struggling offense. I was right there on every defensive play, pointing out to my wife what the Warriors did right, what they did wrong, and encouraging each player not to tire despite being on the field all afternoon.

I probably dozed off during Hawaii’s two muffed extra point attempts, a lapse I won’t repeat again next week. Probably.

It was a hard fought contest but we pulled through, taking and holding a late lead thanks to my continued verbal and visual presence in front of the television screen, which obviously works in some sort of reverse electronic way, sending my positive vibes back to The Aloha Stadium.

No team wins without sacrifice, so I limited my bathroom break to halftime only, and when the ice from my drink was finally crushed, I waited until just before the beginning of the second half to refill.

If next week’s football game against Washington is a sell out, and broadcast on ESPN, I’ll be right there, leading the team to victory in the next biggest game ever. It’s what I do.

What’s the world coming to? Hawaii’s penchant for Pacific fusion cuisine has brought about a grotesque version of hybrid holiday dishes that is sweeping the nation.

Can you say tofurkey and turducken? Is it even acceptable to say such things in public?

Yes, Virginia, there is such a thing as “tofurkey.” Think of it as vegetarian turkey. It has to be as delicious as a vegetarian burger, what with all the tofu and other vegetarian delights heavy in protein.

I think of it as faux turkey.

What is so wrong with turkey that someone needs a vegetable version? Why can’t vegetables stand on their own and not be so intimidated by other foods that they have to adopt different names and flavors and tastes and cultures?

Yes, Virginia, there is such a thing as “turducken.” Think of it as Pacific fusion disease gone pandemic. Turkey. Duck. Chicken. Not Turd mixed with Ucken.

Turducken is the ultimate circle of fowl life, a turkey stuffed with duck which is stuffed with chicken. What would Nemo think?

Lucky you stay Hawaii.

At least local residents have a long history of blending and mixing popular foods from one culture into another. For some reason, banana lumpia is a just dessert following a dinner of lau lau. But not kalbi bbq ribs or noodles. It’s just wrong.

Are tofurkey and turducken the shape of foods to come? What’s next? Bepimb? Lamb stuffed into pork stuffed into beef?

Whatever happened to the Hawaii we once knew? It’s gone, changed forever, becoming new for another generation of Hawaii locals, residents, visitors.

What Hawaii means to a person depends on the person asked, and their response depends on their generation and status, because Hawaii changes dramatically every 20 to 30 to 40 years.

We drove by Moiliili Mochi the other day. It’s now in Liliha. Kaimuki Typewriter is in Moiliili. Diamond Head Plumbing isn’t anywhere near Diamond Head.

St. Francis Hospital is now Hawaii Medical Center. Aloha Motors is now a convention center.

The Hawaii we once knew is gone, forever changed by new yesterdays, and todays, and tomorrows. Expatriates visiting Hawaii after years elsewhere don’t recognize Chinatown or downtown. It’s more of a little Saigon or a mini-San Francisco these days.

Parts of the Hawaii we once knew remain, of course, but for how long?

Waiola Store still has shaved ice. So does Matsumoto’s in Haleiwa on the North Shore. What of Ala Moana Center? If you left the islands 20 years ago and returned for shopping this week you would be in for a shock.

There’s a Neiman-Marcus store where nobody local shops. Gone is JCPenney and Liberty House and Iida’s. The only part of Ala Moana Center that’s similar to the Hawaii we once knew is Sears which still smells like tools and tires.

Parts of the Hawaii we once knew are here and there. Zippy’s. Wailuku. Hilo. People still get lost while hiking. Sharks still bite, the lava still flows, Molokai residents still don’t like visitors, Kauai still doesn’t want change.

The Hawaii we once knew is still here. And there. But not everywhere.