The Aloha Shirt

I have news for all you mainlanders, the aloha shirt isn't just for awkward corporate luaus, awkward high school phases or vacations to Florida. They are worn here on a daily basis by everyone. They are the uniform for grocery stores like Safeway, all the bus drivers wear them and they are totally acceptable work attire. I've been temping at a bank here and on the first day they gave me the dress code and it explicitly said that aloha shirts were "appropriate business wear". I think on any given day I see more men wearing aloha shirts than I do regular dress shirts.

One of the coolest aloha shirt shops here was visited by Anthony Bourdain when he came to Honolulu. Fast forward to about 2:40. It's about 3 mins long. Mark really wants the airplane one. We actually walked past this store a couple of weeks ago. We didn't go in but we will make in it there eventually.

time to catch a limo...?

I have seen more limos in the last month than the entire two years I was in New York. Granted I wasn't in prime limousine territory living what Mark calls "basically Harlem". Usually when we went down to Time Square we would see one. Mark's uncle, who's been coming to Honolulu twice a week every other week, says they (the limos) try and pick people up for fares like cabs. As long as the limos here don't start honking at me like the town cars did in New York I'm fine.

We've decided that one reason for all the limos is that Honolulu is all about the destination weddings. Speaking of weddings we see so many couples (mostly Asian) posing for pictures on the beach. We once saw 5 couples in matter of about 90 minutes.

trust no one

Since leaving New York Mark and I have noticed a few things about ourselves. Out of many one we noticed recently is our heightened suspicion of those around us. Saturday night Mark was walking home from the church building (we live about 5 blocks away) and he grew more and more suspicious of some guy walking behind him with a grocery bag. He was convinced that the guy was going to mug him and take his electronics and put them in the grocery bag with all the other electronic devices he had taken. Mark got himself all worked up until it hit him that the guy was probably just walking home from the grocery store (there are 3 within those 5 blocks).

When he got home and told me about it I totally understood what he was feeling. There is something about walking alone down the street that makes a person really pay attention to anything that goes on around you. In New York you do that constantly. An empty street most likely meant that you were going to get mugged. Here people just don't walk around as much.

It's just one more thing we have to get use to.