Entries from November 2007 ↓

Check out the web sites of Honolulu’s two daily newspapers, then compare them to the sites of Honolulu’s television stations.

What’s the difference?

Not much. Newspaper web sites vs. television station web sites. Both contain local and national news. Both have streaming audio and video. Both feature company “personalities” as columnists. Both have plenty of advertising which supports the site. Both are read by local residents and Hawaii expatriates.

The business model differences between newspapers and television stations are substantial, though both lean heavily on modern technology to maintain their respective positions in local media. The newspaper prints news and information. The television stations broadcast news and information.

In the age of the internet, there’s little difference in their online products.

In the future, will there be a difference? Will newspapers cease to print on paper, in favor of online bits via bytes? Will television stations cease to “broadcast” over the air, and instead become essentially ‘cable only’ media outlets?

One of the top news items today had to do with ticket scalping, that time-honored process of buying low and selling high.

The University of Hawaii’s football Warriors play Boise State at The Aloha Stadium Friday night in what is billed as the most important game in Hawaii history.

The stadium is sold out and ticket scalpers are selling their tickets for hundreds of dollars more than the ticket cost. I won’t buy one.

Tens of thousands of Hawaii residents won’t go to the stadium but we’ll watch the game anyway. For free, thanks to ESPN recognizing that someone still watches live football at midnight on the East coast, even if the teams are Hawaii and Boise State.

I’ve always had some difficulty figuring out the value of watching a college or professional football game.

First, you can’t see squat way up in the stands. The players look like high school kids running around and falling down. Second, it rains. It usually doesn’t rain much, but it rains. Always. Just enough to make everyone a little miserable.

Well, those who are miserable are the ones who don’t drink, and $8.00 for a paper cup full of warm beer only adds to the misery. Maybe I should just pay the piper and be a little less miserable during a near-drunken stupor like too many other fans in the stadium.

Did I mention the noise?

At home, with air conditioning, surround sound, a wide screen TV, an even wider sofa, and a nearby refrigerator and microwave for cooling and warming affordable snacks, football watching reaches a zenith, a near utopian experience. Instant replay brings close and arguable plays to the screen in slow motion and from twenty seven eleven angles.

What’s not to like?

Fortunately, the Warriors-Boise State game is sold out, which means it’s also on ESPN, which means we won’t be among the fortunate few who paid $250 for a ticket to sit in the wind and rain with 50,000 other fans there to witness football history.

History is at home.

What is there that’s not to like about Zippy’s? For the uninitiated transplants or tourists, Zippy’s is Honolulu’s local place for breakfast, lunch or dinner.

What you won’t find at Zippy’s is high prices, slow service, or anything but local ambiance. What you will find at Zippy’s is variety on the menu; a taste for every face.

Individually, Zippy’s menu items may not rank among the best in Honolulu cuisine. Collectively, Zippy’s menu items form the basis for a tasty meal, quickly served, modestly priced, dine in or take home.

Last night we were giving consideration to dinner. While driving. That’s always a dangerous situation when no single suggestion takes the lead. We can drive around for an hour simply trying to decide where to drive to.

Wendy’s? Nah, out by the airport, too far. Panda Express? Just went there a couple of weeks ago. Chili’s or California Pizza Kitchen? Nope. Too late, gotta wait in line.

While the discussion continued I made an executive decision and drove to Zippy’s between King Street and Young Street in Makiki. Nobody grumbled.

I went for Loco Moco; tasty and heavy on the protein with ground beef and scrambled egg. I asked for gravy on the side with extra butter for the rice.

Butter? Yeah. Haole, is why.

I should have skipped dessert but a Zippy’s bill usually leaves a little extra change and dessert is worthy of consideration. Big mistake. We ordered the Fried Banana something or other, thinking it would be like banana lumpia.

Did I mention that it was a big mistake?

I saw our waitress in the back working diligently on a dessert dish and wondered if it was ours. By the way, everyone at Zippy’s works “diligently.” She placed a large dish on top of a larger dish, loaded it up with some obviously fried something or other, then poured on chocolate fudge until the whole thing leaked, added some vanilla ice cream, then a few sprays of whipped cream, and sprinkled something else on top of that.

“That’s not banana lumpia,” I said to myself, thinking it was someone else’s dessert. I was right. It wasn’t banana lumpia. I was wrong. It was our dessert.

If you order that thing, whatever it’s called, don’t eat Loco Moco first, and make sure to take along a friend or two.

See? Just another meal at Zippy’s.

I read online recently that Hawaii 8th graders lag far behind their peers in science and math, with test scores comparable to students in Romania, Serbia, and Jordan.

The news report noted that the U.S. ranked 10th in math, well behind Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea, and Taiwan. Are Asians simply better at math? The U.S. fared similarly in science tests, as did Asian nations.

Hawaii ranked 4th from the bottom, slightly ahead of New Mexico, Alabama, and Mississippi. 8th graders in Massachusetts were tops in math scores, and tied with Japan, which was ranked 5th.

Hawaii is one of nine states ranked below the Basic level in science. That group includes Alabama, Arizona, California, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nevada, and New Mexico.

All the states with low rankings in math and science also have large African-American or Hispanic populations except Hawaii, which, presumably, has a large percentage of students with Asian heritage.

So, why the low math and science scores?

In those countries with high test scores, math and science are important to the culture, and important elements to education and success. Math and science are not important elements of some segments of U.S. society, including Hawaii.

So, what is important?

I don’t know if most homes are sold through ads in the newspaper’s Real Estate section, but they sure generate a healthy list of properties which seems to generate plenty of sales.

Want Ads in the newspaper seem to work the same way. The better the economy, the more jobs go unfilled, the more ads show up in the newspaper want ads section, the more opportunities exist for job seekers.

The City and County of Honolulu is recruiting emergency medical technician trainees. Applicants can only apply online. There’s no C & C telephone number to call and no address to send a resume. It’s online or no try.

Of course, the City provides free public internet access from all State libraries to the University of Hawaii’s public computer labs and at various district park locations, so finding online access can’t be that difficult. But showing up at an office in person to talk to someone in Human Resources and then fill out an application has become so, uh, well, it’s so 20th century.

Welcome to the 21st century.

Interestingly, the EMT trainee position starts at $2,917 a month. That’s almost $36,000 a year for a trainee. Not bad for what amounts to an entry-level position, huh?

No matter how you look at it, traffic in Honolulu has reached epidemic proportions. Cars, trucks, vans, SUVs, and buses are everywhere you want to be.

It’s not that traffic congestion was much less 10 or 20 years ago. It was less just five years ago. It was less just two years ago. What happened?

Two words: rail system.

Is it possible that all the recent snarls in Honolulu traffic are the result of one or both of these two scenarios?

1 -  There are too many vehicles. Land is finite, but residents and businesses continue to buy new vehicles, more per household than ever, which clogs city streets and highways, which have not been upgraded to handle the increased number of vehicles. Or,

2- A conspiracy is underway by proponents of a fixed rail system to provide strategically placed traffic aberrations, which, in turn cause massive traffic jams, which, in turn changes public opinion about said fixed rail system. Toss in HPD’s penchant for closing down H-1 whenever a car hits a bump, Hawaiian Electric’s penchant for all but closing a main city thoroughfare every few months for “upgrades” and conspiracy theorists have something to chew on.

I smell a rat in Honolulu’s seemingly increased traffic congestion.

Are there alternatives to a fixed rail system? Yes, but not good ones. The Bus is as close as a city can get to competing with an automobile, and that’s what has to happen to move hundreds of thousands of Oahu residents into and out of the city.

How about bicycle lanes? Be serious. The number of bicyclists in the city at any given moment during the day probably equals the daily ridership of The Boat. In other words, negligible, nil, near zilch.

What alternatives are left? Not much. Even the fixed rail system is not an attractive alternative because it cannot compete effectively with the car or truck, or even The Bus.

Traffic watchers? The future is grim.

So, you think you had a bad day? Read the story of Reginald Comilang who was accused and charged with sexually assaulting a child.

Comilang was a licensed massage therapist working at the Outrigger Reef hotel in Waikiki. During the Labor Day weekend a year ago, a 14-year-old tourist told police that she was sexually assaulted by Comilang.

Assume for a moment that the 14-year-old girl was lying, and Comilang was completely innocent of the crime. He was charged anyway and spent a year walking slowly through the criminal justice system. His case finally went to trial by jury and Comilang was acquitted of the charges.

Was justice served? Probably not.

Would you let your teenage daughter receive a massage from Comilang? See? Justice was not served. The pain, the trauma, the stigma, the injury will haunt Comilang for the rest of his life.

It’s the 21st century. The scarlet letter was not placed on Comilang’s chest, as it was for Hester Prynne, but on his heart, his mind, his life, and the very shadow behind his walk.

So, you think you had a bad day?

To say that parking is a problem in Honolulu is to understate the problem.

Do the math. 60,000 new automobiles hit Oahu each year without a corresponding increase in parking spaces.  From what I can determine by the purely scientific measurement of “Whoa, where we gonna park?” at Ala Moana Center, the parking problem is about to hit holiday shoppers as never before.

Ala Moana Center and the area surrounding the state’s largest shopping arena has never, ever been an event in pleasurable driving during the holidays. This year will be worse.

How do I know? I tried to find parking at Ala Moana Center this weekend, a non-holiday weekend, a weekend weeks away from a real holiday. Parking was ludicrously difficult to find. Shaded, covered parking required a relative to feign illness and fall down comatose in an empty parking stall just to prevent a kid-packed SUV from slipping in ahead.

Wal-Mart is a block away. Walgreens just opened a block away. Kapiolani’s answer to Crazy Eddie’s Furniture City is a block away. Four huge condominiums opened in the past two years. They’re a block away. Kapiolani Boulevard is rife with potholes, speed bumps, and Hawaii Electric trucks and equipment, placing more pressure an a nearly gridlocked grid around the shopping center.

With luck, the huge Nordstrom’s store won’t open their Hawaii doors until later in 2008, long after dozens of people went missing while leaving Sears or Macy’s in search of their vehicles and were never heard from again.

If you think parking at Ala Moana Center is bad now, just wait. It will get worse before it gets better.

A day of reckoning is coming. After May 1, 2008, Honolulu City and County’s ability to use the Waimanalo Gulch landfill will come to an end.

Where do we put the trash?

Got Mufi? Honolulu mayor Mufi Hanneman wants an amendment to the State Special Use Permit to extend the city’s right to use the landfill until 2010.

Ok, after 2010, where do we put the trash?

The answer is easier than you might think. It’s math. The new landfill will go where the least number of people live. For obvious reasons, Oahu’s Leeward Coast residents don’t want the Waimanalo Gulch landfill extended, and they don’t want a new landfill anywhere along the Leeward Coast.

Ok, so where do we put the trash?

Energy conversion? Not by May 1, 2008. Recycling? Not by May 1, 2008? Ship the trash off the island? Maybe by May 1, 2008. If we lived in Las Vegas I’d bet against the latter.

How about the Ala Wai Canal? Perfect. Rubbish trucks would simply drive to the Diamond Head end of the Ala Wai, preferably late at night and with the headlights off, and dump the day’s haul of their trash right into the canal. By morning, all the trash will be safely washed out to sea, and nobody would know the difference.

Hey, it worked for raw sewage.

Nearly one in 10 passengers aboard the Pride of Hawaii cruise ship were stricken with the deadly Norwalk virus during a recent cruise between Hawaii’s islands.

The Norwalk virus isn’t really deadly. But if you have the virus you may wish you were dead. Nausea, stomach cramps, and diarrhea are the basic symptoms, sure to ruin a trip around the islands, easily exacerbated by the cramped quarters and motion of a ship at sea.

I feel a sense of empathy for tourists when it rains for a week in Waikiki. After all, they’re paying a few hundred dollars a day to sit and watch it rain.

Cruises, though, are a bargain compared to being cooped up in a Waikiki hotel room with nothing to do and no place to go. Contracting a virus and being sick for days on a cruise ship is far less expensive, on a per-day basis, of course.

Waikiki hotels, to the best of my knowledge, don’t issue ‘weather vouchers’ to their patrons during a storm. Bad weather isn’t the fault of the hotel’s owners, right? So, why did Norwegian Cruise Line issue a ‘voucher credit’ to those afflicted by the paradise virus?

Was the Norwalk virus the fault of NCL? Of course not. Why do they have to pay up when passengers don’t wash their hands? Besides, the virus probably came from diseased citizens of Norwalk, Ohio who are solely to blame for its occurrence.