…Also, we have HAIL. So many people in Hawaii have never seen snow in their lives, let alone hail. But now lots have seen hail. I can’t believe it, we had hail the size of golfballs. And this morning, after I was very surprised and kind of in disbelief about the hail story my friend told me I got an email from Robin Lloyd, our reservationist, that a tornado demolished a nextdoor house in Lanikai! In 27 years I’d never …

What a night! I was lucky to be an extra for filming of Hawaii Five-O episode 216! It was a dream come true and I hit the newbie jackpot since all the principal characters were in the scene. Not only that, the scene was a black-tie affair. Our wardrobe was described as “think red carpet”. Imagine Alex O’Loughlin, Scott Caan and Daniel Dae Kim all cleaned up and in tuxedos! And Grace Park in her sleek ivory colored sequined gown …

I had my first tamale near Chapman University outside of LA (inside? Not sure, LA seems to include everything…). While waiting for my younger sister to finish her tour of the school, my dad and I pulled up to a convenience store where a sign was posted on the door “WORLD’S BEST TAMALES”. Dad was thrilled, he thought “How did we get so lucky?” We’d both never had tamales. So Dad ordered like a dozen. I thought they were terrible …

The legend of beautiful kupe’e begins like this… Long ago Kupe’e lived on rocks during the day. They were white and black, resulting from too little or too much sunlight. They were small, like the pipi’i, and lacked beauty. They were shunned by humans as ugly and without taste. The early days, the sun’s travel was erratic, sometimes fast, sometimes slow. People could not depend on it. Cooking was very difficult and at times the night lasted for a very …