I have officially experienced the nastiest week of Hawaii. A week where I looked around and said to myself, "Gross."
I always feel bad when we have bad weather, because I know that several thousand tourists have shelled out big bucks to come visit paradise - and paradise resembles Chicago. But this week was by far the worst.
I was reading the paper on the ferry in to work and came across an article about the big volcanic action going on on the Big Island. Subsequently, I came across the word 'vog'. Now, initially I just assumed that the largest newspaper in the islands had a major misspelling, because that is what I have come to expect over here. These are people who use the words 'da kine' so liberally it's amazing the society hasn't collapsed. For all you haoles (pronounced HOWL-lees) out there, 'da kine' is pidgin, and can be used in place of a noun or verb. Such as "I da kine the mountain" or "I would like da kine." It's like the pause in a sentence where someone on the mainland says 'uh' and then replaced the 'uh' with the word they were trying to think of. Only over here, the word is never correctly replaced. Try to imagine what it would be like having a conversation where everytime someone says 'uh' they never input the right word. Welcome to Hawaii! It's like you have to be telepahtic just to figure out what anyone is trying to say. It's especially fun when your boss gives you instructions that way ("Get me da kine."). I imagine this has lead to several misunderstandings over the decades. ("What, you wanted a bathrooom in your house? I thought you meant a weasel farm.")
Supposedly, this form of communication (pidgin) arose from the varied ethnic backgrounds of the pineapple plantation workers. The different languages come together to form simple, Asian-English hybrid sentences that everyone could use. So that's why it's around. However, I find it interesting that the Asian workers' decendants have since mastered the English language, while the Hawaiians still seem to be stuck on the plantation.
As you might remember, this post is actually about the vog in Hawaii. Vog is basically the volcanic ash that blows over from the Big Island. This particular eruption managed to coincide with an absence of the tradewinds, which meant nasty, grey ash clouds hung over the island for a week. It was gross. David and I sat around inside and wondered if you could get lung cancer from the vog. Or maybe it affects your brain. That would explain a lot. What if the hula is actually just a neural disorder of vog poisioning manifesting itself!?
My, I do seem to be on the digression train today. Anyway, I didn't take any pictures, but I thought I would re-create the event for you in photoshop:
BEFORE
As you can see, it was less than appealing. Sorry, tourists! Don't let the cancer get ya down. But it all goes to show - no place is perfect. Even paradise has its off days.
