Wednesday, May 28, 2008

PARADISE NOT

Do you know what spam musubis are?

In a word: Disgusting.

By definition: Spam and rice wrapped in seaweed.

A musubi is a delicacy (if you know anything at all about me, you know the sarcasm with which I just used that word) one can purchase at pretty much any convenience store in the place were I went to college.

The place where I did my university education and husband-locating (the last inadvertently) was Hawaii.

Though I loved the education part of my stay and the fact that I came away from it all with my mate, I most certainly did not fall in love with the location. If you’re me, and as luck would have it I am, Hawaii is a charming place to vacation if you’ve never lived there and an awful place to make your home.

I have friends who still live on Oahu and professors who have been there for decades—people I have loved and respected and have come respect that much more because they can stand to live in such a place . . .

I take issue with a place where “Driving with Aloha” means driving really slow because you’re trapped behind a line of slow-moving vehicles on Kamehameha and can’t do a thing about it except curse and that doesn't even do any good. The pervasive dropped and rotting fruit smell makes me gag. Not every beach is a haven; the sand on some beaches sticks to you for days, and learning which beach has the right kind of sand is a trial and error experience. Slack-key guitar music makes my ears ring. I prefer showers without toads. The biggest bruise I ever received was from running into a wall while fleeing from a cockroach the size of my palm. Island fever is very real. Family is a five-hour flight away. But more than all that, I take issue with quite bit of what's available to eat.

While in school, one of the clubs I was a member of decided to make spam musubi for the semi-annual food festival. As an officer of the club, I had little choice but to roll up my sleeves in the president’s kitchen, clip a clothes pin on my nose, double glove and get to frying up the spam. (I gag as I write this.)

When I walked into my first dorm room on move-in day, my new roommate, a native of Kaneohe, was munching raw crab and poi.

Mango is yucky. Papaya freaks me out. Chicken long-rice looks like worms. Just remembering the texture of haupia induces another gag reflex. And again, the spam musubi.

So you can have it. You can have it all. Take the island. Have the waves. Eat the musubi.

I'm going to nestle in my mainland stucco house in a place where the wettest month's average rainfall is 1.06 inches and one can't find musubi for miles.

And I'll be completely happy.

4 comments:

Sue said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Ashley Thalman said...

i agree completely that the disgusting fish smell and sick beaches could deter pretty much anyone from seeking residence. i could add all kinds of grief to that list like, crime rate, laziness, trashy houses... but i spend a pretty huge amount of my time dreaming about how to make it in and on hawaii.
the humidity,
the slow pace, (laziness)
fruit, (give me mango, give me papaya)
sun and sea.

M to the E to the R to the I said...

Musubi is my Mom's favorite food, no lie. She eats sheets of seaweed for fun though, so there you have it. My parents served a mission for a year at BYUH and my Mom gained 10 lbs eating that cat food wrapped in fish poo stuff. YUCK.

cat+tadd=sam said...

You are uncultured. Except for that seafood stuff, regarding that, you are right.