Blogging - Wow.

Cliche, BUT I never thought I'd be here, putting my thoughts on the web for all to see, like a public diary.  Oh well, onwards.

Ah yes as for my moniker, born and raised in Hawai'i along with so many generations that have come before me.  And now, I'm a transplant.  The only one in my family that is.  Oh wow lau lau can you say culture shock? :P  I've been here for over a decade and sometimes I STILL cannot believe the stuff that people do here.  AND there is no Aloha Shoyu where I live.  The last time I came home I mailed like 6 gallons and the people at the post office looked at me like I was crazy until they saw the address on the box and said OOoooHHH and I said YeeaahhhHHh so gimme a break.  Okay okay I'm done monku'ing about dat kine stuff.

People here are a trip when you live in an ocean of mainland people.  I've been thinking about it more and more lately.  I don't think it's just because I miss home.  I watch the news and watch how people treat each other here.  You're going to have to be patient if you start reading this because the first few posts are going to be me sharing and really just MONKU MONKU MONKU'ing.  I'm just being honest.  At the end though I guess I'm looking for a productive, open and honest forum on how to move things forward from where we are.

I guess you kind of take it for granted when the minorities make up the majority.  You never think about it.  Localz Rule and we didn't have any plans on letting the mainland impede upon our culture.  We all grew up knowing something about everybody else, that's just the way it is.

What I'm trying to say is that the rose colored glasses have COME OFF.  I don't look at people the same way any more and it breaks my heart.  When I left home when meeting new people I always just saw a person.  You know, there are nice people, icky people, etc.  You don't really see in color.  Almost everybody at home is brown, hapa or so many different things you can't tell anyway.  We're all just LOCAL, does it matter?  I don't see people that way on the mainland so much any more.  I've had so many experiences here on the mainland that my perception has changed.  So much that I've started doing a lot more reading about history and its societal effects on the mainland

I've lived in a lot of places and I'm a friendly person.  Making friends is not a problem for me.  The west coast was cool, not a lot of local people but folks were cool.  A lot of different people from everywhere, very laid back.  Then I moved to the midwest.  I wish someone would have told me before I went.  Here is one example - I lived about an hour outside of town.  On the weekends I used to go to town to go to the club, on the way back one night I stopped at one of the smaller towns to get something to drink.  You know, it was right off the highway, well lit, didn't appear to be a danger to a woman alone.  I go inside and there is an old white lady and 3 old white men standing at the cash register.  I get the drink from the cooler, walk to the cash register, pay and they are all just standing there staring at me so I smile.  The old lady throws the change at me.  Yes, I said throw.  I just stood there and looked at her while the men chuckled.  I didn't know what to do, I was in shock.  So I picked up the loose change and left, wondering what happened the rest of the way home.  I went to work on the following Monday and told my friends what happened.  They said, "oh we should have told you but we thought you'd be okay".  Okay?  They explained to me that this town used to be a major Klan town and bad things happened there in the past.  So I went online that night to go look it up.  The "they thought I'd be okay part" was because I'm not black.  So they told me don't ever stop there if you can help it.  WHAT?!?  I know.  That's right, Yonsei.  It was my first experience with racism.  Ugly, and in your face.  It is palpable, not just the act of throwing loose change, but the way that people look at you. 

You know that saying "the other side of the tracks"?  It is FOR REAL.  Can you believe it?  I drove into town one weekend, just driving.  It was a poor part of town and really, everybody on one side of the tracks was white and everybody on the other side was black.  I saw white people looking at black people like they were DIRT and calling people names when they were ALL BROKE.  What the HECK?  How are you  going to call people racist names and think that you are better than someone else when you don't have anything yourself?  I just went home and cried.  It was like something out of a bad movie.  But it did get me thinking.

Okay, that's enough for today.