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CityExpress! Route A, Kapi`olani Boulevard, Honolulu, Hawai`i
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Gratuitous exclamation point or not, this CityExpress! service rocks. It runs every ten minutes, hitting only a few stops, taking less than twenty minutes to get from downtown to the university and presumably the same to get back. And despite the smart route and this week's free fare promotion, there's always a few open seats. That's good news for me, but perhaps a bad omen for the service. It would just figure that something that perfectly fits my needs would be shortlived. I guess city buses haven't changed much. They still talk, but at least now the personality is a little friendlier. Instead of an awkward, crackly synthesized voice, each stop is enthusiastically announced by a recording, the guy sounding as if he was announcing a big sale at Safeway. "Now approaching Alapa`i and Hotel!" The voice sounds familiar, too. I'm sure the guy has a few local TV commercials on his resume. Passing the Board of Water Supply now... Um. Come to think of it, I'm not too sure where to get off. |
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Tuesday, 9:13 p.m.
Our Apartment, Makiki, Hawai`i
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Made it back to work — and home — alive, obviously. The CityExpress! had a stop at the top of Fort Street, so it was a quick trot back to the office where I quickly wolfed down the 'bargain bento' from Kyotaru downstairs. Our telecom contractor stopped by this afternoon to drop in the cables for the eventual expansion of the LAN. They had some extra time, so they also moved the live Ethernet jack used by my computer to the opposite wall. To make a long story short, a wire must've gotten crossed somewhere, because after they left I couldn't get on the network. No e-mail, no FTP, no internet. The soonest they could get a technician back out to fix it was tomorrow morning, so I spent most of my day hopping from workstation to workstation and asking my coworkers to print things for me. The building set a target date for completion of the expansion for Sept. 1, but I really don't think they're going to make it. As it stands, I can only pray that I'll have a place to sit when we get back from New Zealand. It was weird being on campus again. As the years drag on, as my course load dwindles, and as I become more settled in my identity as a full-time IT employee instead of as a student, the place seems more and more foreign. Today, as I walked among the backpack-toting, baby-tee-wearing varsity set, I really felt like a stranger in a strange land. To think I once thought I'd be a student forever, a permanent resident of the Manoa campus. I used to joke that my business cards would read "Professional Student." The idealist in me can still see the attraction to a lifetime of learning, of haunting the Ivory Tower forever, but it's just a stupid daydream. There's no question I need to just get the hell out already. Career and family are big factors, sure, but mostly I've come to realize I don't want to be Lazlow Hollyfield after all. The opening session of Brislin's class was entertaining enough. There were many familiar faces in the class, as is usually the case given the size of the journalism department. Allen Yadao, Wilma Jandoc, Olulani Bicoy, Jenny Duhaylonsod, Mikel Frederick and — from Oshiro's 415 class last semester — Dio Magispoc and Alice Keesing. Removed from the politics of the Board of Publications, Brislin can actually be a provocative and jolly guy. As is his tradition, he kept us for the entire 75 minutes even on the first day, but they weren't an overwhelmingly tedious 75 minutes. Instead of just reading the syllabus line by line, he went the "let's all introduce ourselves" route. The twist was, in addition to sharing something outside of journalism that we enjoy, we had to share what our names meant, and how we got them. There were several Ellis Island rewrites, of course. "Ever been there?" Brislin quipped. "The place is littered with 'O's from all the Irish immigrants, with 'ski's from all the Russians." I got to share that my name was supposed to be Bryan, but then someone with grade-school insight had told my parents my initials would be B.O. The 'B' was dropped post haste. When it came to "something interesting," I couldn't offer anything more than an unremarkable addiction to the web. Not surprisingly, my classmates were more interesting. There were movie buffs, Latinophiles (asked Brislin, "are you living la vida loca?"), many sports fanatics and a couple of piano players. One had five cats, another fourteen. No one could top Dio, however, who proudly said, "I really really like MTV, and I call every day just to request Limp Bizkit's 'Nookie.'" Toddler Development Milestone Alert #116: Katie watches refreshingly little television, but when she does, it's usually Blue's Clues on Nick Kids or the Teletubbies on tape. For the latter, she would start spouting "Po!" and shove the tape in our hands until we'd put it on for her. Today, with no warking, she picked out a Teletubbies video from the shelf, pulled it from the box, shoved it in the VCR, and nonchalantly plopped down to enjoy what must be her 1,419th lifetime viewing of "Here Come the Teletubbies." Of all the 'life skills' in which she could be ahead of the curve, why does it have to be this one? I swear, if Katie developes a premature affinity for Jen's cheesy, big-hair 80s rock, I'm just going to have to kick myself. |
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