Interview with a tropical botanist
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Fire
When I helped Mahdi move to his new apartment, I was intrigued by several gallons of kerosene stacked near the front door; by that and by a dancing pole in the middle of the living room. It turns out that his new room mates are fire dancers.
Lodging is getting hard to find in Honolulu and Mahdi ended up living with perfect strangers. Little did he expect that he would be greeted by people twirling flaming staffs in his own backyard.
Aside from setting stuff ablaze just for relaxing in the middle a of an otherwise perfectly standard compliant party, the Honolulu fire performers gather every Tuesdays in the amphitheater in Kaka'ako park near Ala Moana. There, they stack metal cannisters of white gas and sooty sticks while awaiting the sun set.
Live Aloha
2007-08-01
Tags: hawaii
'Live Aloha,' you hear around here. It's a statement against fast paced life, it says that we should live and let live. Hawaiians live by this statement. They won't honk if you take a few seconds to fold your map when the light turns green. They take time to savor life and avoid stress.
Some people think it's because of the climate but it's actually because of the footware. The vast majority of Hawaiians wear flip flop sandals. You can't run with those. What good would it do to honk when a pedestrian is crossing the street? He can't rush it, even if he wanted to. The live and let live part is embedded in the Hawaiian legal system. Motorcycle helmets are not mandatory in here; your life, your choices. Your choices might be stupid but you have the right to be stupid.
I thought I understood Live Aloha, but now I know that the true meaning is only revealed after you cross the Pali highway in the back of a pickup truck.
More Hawaiian Food
The Island of Oahu is one of those American places that fully embraced the car half a century ago.
If you are in Waikiki, you'll find everything in a walking distant. A bit pricey, but you can walk to it. Things are different in Manoa or in Kaneoe. You have to walk 15 minutes to reach a café, 30 minutes for a bakery, one hour for an Irish pub and I have yet to see a cheese shop. And there are many streets without sidewalk. There is a decent bus system, but things are so far apart that it is hardly convenient, except for the daily commute to the beach.
Fortunately, there is more than the suburbuian shopping malls. Here and there, if you know where to look, there are many family owned shops with a lot of warmth, humanity and cachet.
In the middle of Mo'ili'ili there is Da Spot, an exceptional smoothie and plate lunch snack bar. "Do you mind if I do it myself? Things are still in the same place?" A customer steps behind the counter to prepare his own special kind of smoothie. Is it possible that he can't find the one that he wants in the impressive list of 20 or so flavors? "Taste this sample while you make your mind." Chocolate, haupia, and something else with an exotic name. This one is not advertised yet, it's in beta.
Ako and her husband Ahmad seems to know all their customers by name. "Hello Mahdi, did you find an apartment yet?" The food they sell is quite unique too: Egyptian with a touch of South Pacific. Traditional middle eastern meals are augmented with tropical flavors. Coconut and pineapple meet curry and fava beans. They cook whatever they feel like that day; the menu changes all the time. There is always a vegetarian meal and there is no spam in sight.
For 6.50 USD you get a medium plate meal, a smoothie, and a baklava. That's good enough for me. I'm a strong supporter of mass transit. But, the bus from Kaneohe drops me at Ala Moana mall. If I need a car to go to Da Spot, so be it. Live Aloha.
On Hawaiian food
There are many strange and unexpected things in Hawaii. There are no mosquitoes, McDonald restaurants serve rice and homeless people are shaped like body builders. I guess there is no way around it when you surf all day. Usually, you can explain the unexpected by the remoteness of the young islands. But I still don't get why there is so much Spam.
Hawaiians love Spam. Grocery stores hold industrial quantities of it, and they have a comprehensive selection too. Spam is even served in restaurants. Almost all plate lunches come with a complimentary slice of Spam. Only the fish plates are free of it.
Who am I to complain? If they like it, good for them. I'm not a cultural fundamentalist either, far from it. I even eat poutine with chop sticks. But it gets too far when they replace salmon with Spam in maki sushi.
Hiking Hawaii: the Kalalau Trail
I'm back in Hawaii for a few weeks. The weather is great, the water is hot, everyone smiles. If one manage to get away from the beach, there is an amazing world to discover around here. Last week I decided to head for some back country hiking on Kauai, the oldest of the main Hawaiian Islands.
I was lucky that my post on the Hannah Stove got so much attention. Jim Thompson, a scout leader on Oahu, liked the instructions and he advised me on the best hikes to do around here. I'm on Oahu but hoping from one island to the other is like taking the inter city bus in Montréal. Outside rush hours, flights cost between 9$ and 39$ and bring you to destination in 45 minutes or less.
Kauai is five million years old, five times older than the Big Island. It had more time to be beaten into shape. Valleys have voluptuous curves, beaches are wider, the reefs more populated and colossal canyons intensify the landscape. Volcanic rocks have soft edge and there is a lot of the Hawaiian typical red clay.
On Firestarters
There I was, overlooking the Kilauea, one km above sea level, 3700 km from the closest continent, in the middle of a vast treeless lava field. There was a pleasant yet strong breeze making the tropical Sun easier to stand. It was lunch time and I was looking forward for a hot meal after all the rough hiking.
I was well prepared with my, mostly homemade, ultra-light backpacking gears: Cobra Stove, aluminum foil wind screen, mesh pot stand and camping saucepan. Everything was perfectly calculated: with 175ml of alcohol I was good for six meals, all what was needed for an overnight back-country trip with a generous margin for errors. I had a watertight matchbox with a capacity of 20, that was more than enough. Right?
Compared to other Zen Stove designs, the Cobra is more fuel efficient. Construction is as simple but you need a primer pan (video by Don Johnston) in order to reach the inner pressure that makes the jets burning by themselves. The principle of the primer pan is simple: you let your stove sit in a (really small) bath of alcohol that you set ablaze. If the bath is too small, the stove won't get hot enough and you have to repeat the procedure, no big deal here. If the bath is too big, the stove gets too hot and you might have noticed that design don't include a relief valve. If you are lucky, you waste all your fuel in a few seconds of 50 cm flames, otherwise the stove blow up. Obviously, I tend to make small primer baths.
Walking on Lava
It is kind of time for another round of pictures from Hawaii. Since everyone prefer lava and since Hawaii in the only place in the world where tourists freely roam on an active volcano, only a few centimeters from glowing lava, I shall start with the pictures of my hikes on the Kilauea.
But first, since this is a geek's blog, I will do some technical rambling. Digital camera manufactures boast that their products can capture a large amount of megapixels. Is this any good for the user? I say hell no! I'll be talking trough my hat since I only used one digital camera seriously but I received enough pictures from others that I'm confident that what I say is true.
Do you recall those new parents who sent you an email with only a few pictures totaling several megabytes? Why do they do that? Don't they know that you are using a monitor that can't display such a large image? Do they expect you to zoom in on this youngling to convince yourself that its eyes are closed? Do they expect you to print this picture? A cheap printer with cheap paper can't match this resolution and sorry buddies, I won't take your pix to a print shop. I'm not saying that parent should not send emails with pictures, what I'm saying is: please, no pictures larger that 300k!
Big Island part 1
Even though there is a lot to say about the CASS and about Oahu, I can't find the time to post updates. I will do a good summary when I can but this weekend was the field trip to Big Island and many asked for updates so here is a quick summary.
We left Oahu early Saturday morning. The inter-island flight is less than an hour, we just climb up, get a scenic view of all the islands and go down in the cloudy Hilo. Big Island is really young, less than a million years old. Erosion has only dug rocky rivers and there are waterfalls everywhere. We were ahead off our schedule so we had time to do hiking in the morning. Around Hilo there is heavy rain forest, as we climb up on the Mauna Kea we cross many different eco systems, from deciduous forest to shrub lands and tundra.
While getting acclimated at the Onizuka Station we went for a hike on cinder cones. The station is above most of the clouds, the view was breath taking. The oxygen lean air gave us a good buzz, a diluted preview of what to expect at the summit. We had the honor to get dinner at Halepauhaku, the small lodge where astronomers and support staff are hosted.
CASS Day 1
I'm finally in Honolulu! The flight was long and event less. I had a lot time to meditade on the landscape. My first idea was the Montreal really turned into a sprawl but seeing Los Angeles reassured me a bit.
My first day was relax since jet lag made me too sleepy to do anything. Just a bit of stargazing on the beech. The air is really dry in Honolulu. The beech is in dowtown Waikiki but you can see many stars. I don't see that many when I ride 45 mins away from Montreal.
On the second day we went surfing. Mahdi is a great surf teacher. I took a longboard (as recommended by Mahdi) and after 30 minutes I was able to catch waves and stand-up. When you look at surfers it all seems easy and relaxing but its actually pretty demanding. You need to paddle a lot, and fast, if you want to catch the waves. Friction with the board is kind of bad too. My nipples are still burning, I grabed one of those lycra shirts, lets hope that it will fix that. The beaches are really impressive (yes that me in the water). Temperature is perfect and the water is extremly clear.
w00t!
I'm accepted for the Computational Astrobiology Summer School in Honolulu!! The Hawaii Astrobiology institute has an impressive team, I really look forward to work with them. What is astrobiology? Kind of hard to tell before I attended the summer school but it has something to do with the study of environmental samples from extreme conditions like undersea volcanoes and the evaluation if such a resistant lifeform could live on, say, Enceladus. It looks like I'll have to learn to surf. :-D