Thursday, August 28, 2008

Age-Activated Attention Deficit Disorder

I was in Honolulu for a week. I was planning to take my laptop with me, but the crazy last-minute-packing day found me with a sore back so the thought of lugging that not-so-light laptop was not appealing...not to mention I couldn't find the carrying case. It seems I'm forever looking for things these days.

My Maui friend Karen made my day today. She sent me a funny forwarded email. Ordinarily I don't care for forwarded emails, especially the mushy/threatening type (oh please forward this sentimental loving message to 10 friends OR ELSE YOU WILL HAVE TEN YEARS OF BAD LUCK, YOU SELFISH OAF!). Karen, however, can be counted on to forward only the FUNNIEST or most informative of forwarded emails. Today's email made me feel NORMAL. I could've written it! The following is a shortened Colleen version of the forwarded email entitled "Age-Activated Attention Deficit Disorder":

I'm packing for Honolulu. "Vitamins!" I remember. I head for the kitchen to pack up a week's supply of vitamins. I have two dozen different bottles of supplements to go through. Before I begin, I realize that I'm running low on calcium, tumeric and COQ10. I can't order it while I'm away, so I have to do it NOW before I forget. I go to the computer to order it online from Swanson (GREAT company!). As soon as I turn on the computer, I hear the email alert. A friend in Honolulu is emailing to ask about getting together for dinner. Hmmm, I'd better phone my mom FIRST to ask her plans before I make dinner plans. I phone her, she reminds me to take her some Miracle Soap. I go to my boxes of soap. Running out of soap! I'll have to order more before I go to Honolulu because it takes a month to get here! I'd better make a list. Where's the pen? Oh, there's one on the diningroom table. I go to the diningroom and see the mess of newspapers on the table. Oh hey, I forgot to read the Garden Island this morning. I sit down to read. The first article I read mentions Hawaiian Airlines. Omigod! I should be packing! Now where was I?
"Vitamins!"


As I said, that's a SHORTENED version. The real version lasts all day and thus explains why it takes me all day to pack. AND--I'm not making this up--explains why while unpacking in Honolulu, I looked in my carryon bag and was shocked to find that I'd inadvertently packed our cordless phone from Kauai! WHAT THE...?!?!

Swanson has both Gingko Biloba and Bacopa Monnieri--great supplements for brain/memory support. Which reminds me, I never did put in that Swanson order!

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Striving for Excellence

I'm sure I'm not the first to ask this, but I will anyway: Why are the Chinese able to deliver stunning Olympic facilities, jaw-dropping opening ceremonies, and an incredible gold medal tally and yet export tons of defective products? I'm impressed that they are so successful in athletics and obviously have the attitude of "gold or nothing." (After all, when I think of Chinese jewelry, it's all about gold and jade. Silver? What's that?) They strive to be the best, they want to impress the world, etc, etc...and yet does it occur to them that the 1)crappy DVD player we got at Walmart that lasted a couple of months 2)laptop cooling pad which lasted one week and 3)earphones that would only please someone deaf in one ear, might be more significant an indicator to us of their worth than their Olympic accomplishments? Ah well, I suppose it's easier to cultivate 39 gold medalists than to manage the millions of laborers in their manufacturing plants. Hopefully now that the Olympics will soon be over, they can turn their attention to improving their reputation as manufacturers.

On the local front, hubby was given a Mel Rapozo campaign sign by a friend and being a very accommodating fellow, promptly put it in front of our driveway. I questioned this because I thought he was considering voting for another candidate. He said oh, he'd be happy to put up almost anyone's sign. Well, I'm not sure whose sign I want in front of our house yet, so I said maybe I should letter in "Colleen Toyama does NOT approve this message" on the sign. He said "Well look, now we have a good sign for our next garage sale...just put 'GARAGE SALE' over Mel Rapozo". I brightened at that thought since our garage sale will be in a few weeks.

Yesterday we got a Bernard Carvalho campaign postcard in the mail. Hubby said he's thinking of taping it onto the Mel Rapozo sign. "Look," he pointed out. "Bernard is saying 'Together we can!' so it'll be funny to stick it on the Rapozo sign, like they'd be working together!"

Later on he came into the house and reported that the neighbor was selling avocados in front of their house and their "Avocados for Sale" sign looked suspiciously similar to our Rapozo sign. Now he's thinking of more uses for our sign like selling tangerines.

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

ESP Must Need Vitamins

I've been having a dry spell. I haven't had a "coincidence or not?" moment in a couple of months. I won't go so far as to claim I have ESP, but a couple of years ago I started to write down some "coincidence or not?" moments. I do believe in the "paranormal" and you have to admit that there are forces in nature that we have not yet defined, much less understand. Here are a few of my interesting moments from the past 3-4 years:
  • My husband was mowing the grass on the easement between our yard and the street. I crossed the street to check the mail and because the grass by the mailboxes was long, thought "He should mow over here by the mailboxes!" Then I thought "Well why would he do that, he'd never cross the street to mow! Crazy!" That night on the way home from a party he said "I mowed by the mailboxes today!" That was the first time he ever did that.
  • After almost FIVE YEARS of wearing braces, Jordan's braces were supposed to come off very soon. The day she was scheduled to visit the orthodontist, I thought to myself "Even though it took almost 5 years, at least we were lucky she didn't have to wear headgear or rubberbands." When Jordan came home that afternoon, not only did she still have her braces on, she had on RUBBERBANDS!!
  • On a visit to Honolulu my husband and I had a conversation about Woolworth's Waikiki where I was an assistant manager almost 30 years ago. Although I had worked with about a dozen other managers, the first "I wonder what happened to..." that I thought of was Cornell Lam. I'm not sure why since I hadn't been any closer to him than the others. Well just a couple of days later, we went to Ross, one of our favorite Honolulu stores which we always shop at. I was on my way out after paying and noticed a free-standing sign near the door saying "Store Manager: Cornell Lam".
  • We went to Mini Garden Chinese restaurant on another trip to Honolulu. I was hanging my purse on the chair back and thought "I'd better zip it closed in case the waitress spills food on it". I don't recall thinking like that before. Well before our food arrived, a waitress dropped a milky drink behind me which splashed on me.
  • On the ABC news show "20/20" they featured a story on Dubai and how the city is developing in such an ostentacious fashion. They showed workers who were virtually slaves from other countries. I thought to myself "I should write to Essar to warn him against going to work in Dubai." Essar is an internet friend of mine from Pakistan who talked about wanting to emigrate somewhere (he never mentioned Dubai). The very next day I checked my email and found he'd written me a couple of days ago saying he was living now IN DUBAI and enjoying being in a new environment. Happily, he was employed by the same employer he'd been working for in Pakistan (TV company).
Now before you think that I'm able to ask for things and they happen, fuggedaboudid! I go to Vegas every year and no amount of imagining myself winning a jackpot has ever paid off!!

I have more stories similar to these that I shall share later. Meanwhile I'll try to think of reasons I haven't had as many of these cool coincidences this year...I may be lacking some essential nutrient (ice cream, I hope)...or maybe not exercising enough?
Right now it's past midnight and time to read my Stephanie Plum!

Sunday, August 10, 2008

Beijing Ceremonies

Someone ought to hire me to be a consultant because I sure have a lot of cents I want to put in about a whole lot of stuff. That's probably why I started this blog. As my idea piggy bank, my steam catcher...hmm that's catchy.

I watched our recording of the Beijing Opening Ceremonies last night. We went to the last bon dance on Friday so we had to record it. The ceremonies were spectacular! How did they do that performance of the printer that formed characters? It was mind-boggling when you consider all that detailed planning was so brilliantly executed, but still I had--to the slight annoyance of my husband--some cents to put in:

First of all, why oh why, didn't President Bush have an advisor on his left? So ok, he doesn't want to look left (haha), then put Laura on his left and the advisor on his RIGHT. What is with Laura Bush anyway? What kind of wife is she? If my hub were prez, I would've nudged him and said "Eh, the other Presidents still have their coats on! Sit up! Sit still! Have some class!" Maybe she was thinking, "Oh heck, he's on his way out, who cares if he looks as dopey as usual?" I mean please, someone should've told him to keep his coat on or at least to look more presidential . It seems he was the only head-of-state to take off his jacket and look all slouchy. The camera even caught him checking his watch during the parade of athletes!! Oooooh shame!! And so ok, he had his jacket off. He had ample time to put it on just before the U.S. team arrived. But noooooo he's over there putting on his jacket while they were coming in. Why why why must we look so disorganized? Imagine the Chinese had all those details to worry about: 2008 performers at a time on the floor, for example. And all Mr. Bush had to worry about was his one jacket and he couldn't put it on in a timely manner?

While I'm on the subject of sweaty presidents, if the Chinese could spend 300 million dollars or whatever on that one night, couldn't they have at least given each dignitary one of those little handheld battery-run fans? Jordan brought one home from Special Olympics. It was made in China and REALLY effective. President Bush would've loved one I'm sure!

I feel sorry for those athletes who have to miss the opening ceremonies because they have events the following day. Why don't they start the events on the third day instead? What's one more day? Ok, don't tell me another hundred million dollars. But gee, did they really need all those fireworks? Surely they could have saved a few bucks by cutting back on them, not to mention less smoke would've been added to their already choking smog problem. DUH!

Sweden is the coolest country EVER!! I love Swedes!! In my chatting days I met a lot of Swedes online and the first person I met from the internet REALTIME was a Swede who visited Hawaii. They are nice people, good-looking, intelligent, POLITE, and they make Volvos (which reportedly do not crumple easily). And the reason I'm writing all this is because the female team members were wearing Chinese cheongsam-inspired uniforms! I tell you, we should all be Swedish. They are awesome!

And please, why wasn't I consulted when they tossed out the name "Zaire"? That was one of my favorite country names. The country is now named the Democratic Republic of Congo. There were so many countries we'd never heard of before, but I've decided not to get too attached to any country names because who knows when they'll change it.

I found out that there are 56 "officially recognized" ethnic groups living in China (NOT counting residents who were born in other countries), while the United States has 7. On the other hand, the U.S. has 6 time zones, China has 1. I guess it only shows the mindset of China's governing system. Keeping everyone in line with one timezone, identifying every "minority" to possibly keep better track of them? It's pretty amazing since the majority of Chinese are Han (92%). Can you imagine 56 choices on those application forms--they'd take up one whole page!

I think it'd be pretty cool if the United States, democratic pioneers that we are, would simply do away with race labeling and on those applications we fill out, there'd be just one choice "human". Why not? Are we going to leave it to the British to be the first to do this? Or the cool Swedes? It will come to this sooner or later. I know a lot of people who don't know what box to check already and that is a GOOD thing. Come next year our own President will likely be the first U.S. president who does not have a box to check!

Friday, August 1, 2008

Just a cute story

Feedin' my blog, just feedin' my blog. I remembered a cute story that I thought I should write down before it inadvertently gets deleted from the limited capacity of my braincells:

Several years ago we had a picnic down at Lydgate Park, which is 3-4 miles down the hill from our house. Hmmm, I did read somewhere that the vast majority of Hawaii homes are just 3 miles from the beach. ANYWAY...we got to the park and we realized we'd forgotten something...errr ok so now I've once again forgotten what it was we'd forgotten (at least I'm consistent!). It's puzzling to me now that I didn't send my husband to go back home to get it, but maybe in those days I actually enjoyed driving so I decided to drive back home alone to get that twice forgotten item.

When I was a half mile away from our house, I noticed two young boys on the opposite side of the street thumbing a ride. I never pick up hitchhikers, but they looked like 9 or 10 years old...cute little boys decked out for a day at the beach. I thought, "Oh how cute, I'll pick them up if they're still there on my way down."

After retrieving the forgotten item from home, I headed back to the beach and saw the boys still trying to hitch a ride. I pulled over for them and they hopped into the car, thanking me. Once in, the first boy says to the other, "See! I TOLD YOU if we took off our sunglasses someone would pick us up!"


I was polite enough not to burst out laughing and instead just said solemnly, "I would've picked you up even with sunglasses."

Maybe I should have just agreed instead, since they may have liked the notion that they looked "gangsta" and intimidating wearing sunglasses. Anyway, they were just too cute.

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I would like to give heartfelt condolences to the family of Alan Nakamatsu who recently drowned while fishing on Oahu. I worked with Alan for a couple of years at my first fulltime job at the Waikiki Woolworth's. We were both assistant managers. He was a very very good guy. I have to say "very very" because when someone passes, people will routinely say nice things, but Alan really WAS a good guy. I took a lot of "stuff" as the only female manager out of nine, and Alan was one of genuinely nice coworkers who was kind, hard working, and dependable. Aloha Alan...I will think of you at tonight's bon dance.