Hiatus

Hi Sticks and Stoners,
I am going to be taking a hiatus from blogging (if you haven't noticed my lack of updating). I have way too much on my plate right now, and I'm sorry to have to cut blogging from my to-do list, but it's pretty near impossible with the way my schedule is going. Work has been insane, I'm taking a web design class that sucks up my Wednesday evenings, and the homework for it sucks up any other moment outside of work and physical therapy. If you'd like to subscribe to my blog via the RSS feed, you will be notified once things slow down a bit.

Sadly yours,
Hana

I'm back for my 100th post!

I need to go sit under this palm tree again.

 
Nuggets of wisdom learned in Hawaii:

• It’s nice to have people pronounce your name on the first try. Now I know what it’s like to be one of the Sara’s and Megan’s and Jessica’s out there.
• Hana (my city – yes, I am now embracing this) contains one restaurant, and three shops that have more dust mites than merchandise. While the trek was not as life-threatening as I had imagined, the town was sure a let-down for all the fuss it took to get there.
• Rinsing off after going to the beach is essential, unless you want to find sand in crevices you never thought they’d be (like ears, eyebrows and the like).
• Failing to rinse after a beach session will also cause you to find salt dried to your face in a not-so-glamorous crusty fashion.
• If you get proposed to with an onion ring, say yes, even if it’s just pretend.
• If you get seasick on the snorkeling boat, jump in the water immediately. Your barf attracts sea life, so you’ll get to see some cool things up close.
• Sea turtles are amazing. Just don’t touch them or you’ll be hauled off to PETA prison.
• If a two-foot wave succeeds at pulling you under water while taking your bikini bottoms hostage, you should probably have some nice friends to cover you up, while sending out an Amber alert for your missing companion.
• Sharing condos with friends is the only way to visit Hawaii – you save lots of money, and you get to mooch things like those q-tips you forgot to pack, and split giant bags of chocolate-covered macadamia nuts, so you don’t overdose alone. Safety first!
• Open bar luaus only serve drinks with 1000+ grams of sugar.
• OMG KALUA PORK!!! (This was said after consuming a luau drink).
• Insist to the waiter that you truly don’t want dessert, even though every morsel of lobster, rice and garnish has been consumed from your plate. After the waiter leaves, offer to finish the crumbs on the plate of your significant other.
• Double rainbows never get old – especially if they’re on the road to Hana.
• Take video while you are on the Road to Hana – you’ll not only capture the beautiful greenery outside, but also green shades of your passengers, in addition to some road rage. 
• Being separated from my puppy for eight days is really hard :(
• Coming back to snowy weather after being Hawaii absolutely blows.
• Finally, go to Hawaii with those you love- you’ll never forget it and always want to go back!

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words cannot describe how much I’d rather be back in Hawaii than sitting at my desk. GAH!

Aloha!!



My "you-survived-Christmas" reward

In less the 24 hours I will be Hawaii-bound! This will be my first trip ever to Hawaii, and I have been anticipating this Maui vacation all year long. The first thing I’m going to do is hunt down a celebratory Mai Tai for getting through the hectic holiday season.


Even though I have never been there, I have had a life-long, love/hate relationship with the islands. With a name like Hana (which means many things in many different languages), and my ambiguous racial appearance, most people who meet me for the first time assume I’m from the town Hana in Maui, or that my parents named for me for the Hawaiian meaning of “work.”

I get really offended by this assumption for many reasons:

A) I’ve never been to Hawaii, so I’m not a freaking islander. It’s the equivalent to assuming every white person you see is from Sweden. “Oh my god! Have you been to Ikea?!”

B) My name means flower (and nose, but don’t tell) in Japanese and not something as heinous as WORK.

C) I am black, Japanese, and white. My dad does have some roots in Hilo, Hawaii, but they are so far back that I’m only 1/16th Hawaiian. Which leads us to:

D) My tan skin is from my African American side. But people don’t believe me when I tell them I’m black so they need to associate my tan skin with something they can cope with.

When I was younger, and unscathed by idiocracy, I did include “part Hawaiian” in my answer to “What is your ethnicity?” (But usually this question comes in the form of “what are you?” to which my response is “Human. What are you?”) My sister and I even joined a hula group and learned how to do the traditional Hawaiian dance. It was a lot of fun (and MUCH harder than you’d think).

But after a year or two, we quit hula, and I started getting sick of people assuming I was from a town I had never even been to. It reminded me of the scene in Juno when Ellen Paige meets the dad who plans to adopt her baby. He says, “Oh Juno. Like Alaska?” Ellen simply says, “No.” She doesn’t explain and lets him sit there awkwardly. She simply points out he is wrong. That is my life story in a nutshell.

If people aren’t assuming I’m Hawaiian, they’re assuming I am trying to be cutesy with the name Hannah. First of all, I can’t even comprehend how many times I’ve heard, “Ya spelled yer name wrong HANNAH” and subsequently having to tell people my name rhymes with Donna. Secondly, don’t be rude and just ask me how to pronounce my name. If you don’t know, ask. It is much safer for you to admit your ignorance than to botch my name and pay the consequences (in which case you will refer to me as Muhana Ali).

I have come to a point where I will let it slide if someone calls me Hannah if I’m never going to see that person again. You can call me Nancy if you can handle that better during our one-time rendezvous. But I have joined the facebook fan club, “Everybody f**** up my name” to cope with my anger.

So as of tomorrow, we’ve come full-circle. I will inhabit the island that contains the famed town of Hana, and I have not come to the conclusion if I even want to visit it. It would be all dandy to take a picture in front of this town I’ve been hearing about for most of my life, but not visiting it feels like giving the proverbial (and satisfactory) middle finger to everyone who has ever assumed wrong about me. We’ll see what happens when we get there.

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but I’ll break yours if you call me Hannah.

Ode to the Company Christmas Party

Hanson gets me in trouble AGAIN!! I swear this is not turning into the Hanson blog.

 
I have been involved in some pretty epic company Christmas parties; some of which have involved blacking out and ending up across town at a Denny's somehow, bringing drunk co-workers back to my parents house and explaining in a slur that my co-workers would be dead if my parents kicked them out, and my favorite - getting the company banned from ever returning to the hosting facility.

These experiences happened during a time when I wasn't making attempts at establishing a career. 

Now that times have changed, I am in a smaller, more conservative department. So it was without surprise that this year's shin dig was not made up of rowdy behavior as in years past. BUT I started going there and decided to open up my mouth in an epic way.

First of all, you know I'm drunk when:
A) I am constantly smiling.
B) My incessant laughter starts turning heads.
C) I don't stop talking.
D) I am talking about things I shouldn't, sans filter.

All of the above occurred last night.

It all started when the Backstreet Boys came on. I was being transported back to middle school dances (you know the ones- its your first time slow dancing with a boy and you both dance with your arms out, elbows locked. If you're really good, your legs are straight with your knees locked too. You teeter totter back and forth. When the songs over, you run back to your girlfriends giggling and start rumors that your dance partner is now your official boyfriend and then you get your heart crushed when you find out his friends dared him to dance with you - oh that didn't happen to you? Never mind).


I of course announced that the BSB were bringing back middle school memories, and other co-workers confirmed experiencing similar time warps. Somehow, this paved the way for me to start blabbing about my former Hanson obsession.

My boss's boss, amused, asked, "Did you have posters on your bedroom wall?"

I of course said, "By posters, you mean SHRINE?! OH MY GOD YES! I HAD A WALL SIZED POSTER AND A BUNCH OF POSTERS FROM TIGER BEAT ALL AROUND IT!" (I was talking as loudly as I am typing).

To which everyone started making fun of me. Once again, flashbacks of school mates teasing me about Hanson started to occur. I kept trying to emphasize that it was a former obsession but my enthusiasm about it was indicating otherwise.

Somehow my boss's boss changed the subject and somehow started talking about playing spin the bottle as a kid, to which I said yelled, "Oooh! YOU'RE A P-I-M-P! WOO!!" My small department of eight stopped talking. The bar fell silent. Everyone looked at me and suddenly burst out guffawing, as I had officially blown my "playin' it cool" cover.

"Yeah...I'm going to stop drinking now." I wasn't so tipsy that I didn't realize the path on which I was headed. Yikes! Who on earth in the corporate world, tells their boss's boss - not just their boss- that they are a P-I-M-P? And yes I spelled it out like Jay-Z.

This morning I came into work feeling completely fine, but everyone was like, "How ya feeling? HARDY HAR HAR!"

And my boss's boss came up to me and said, "So! Ya still sauced from last night or what?!"

Hardy har har.

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but stick to O'douls if you want to avoid your boss's boss singing Mmmbop or Jay-Z to you from down the hall.