Hale Kilinahe: The Journal

January 12, 2000 HAVE I TOLD you about the hell on earth that is New Year's Eve in Honolulu? New Year's eve makes me cranky to start with, but now I find myself among a large city full of pyromaniacs. The whole situation makes me want to pack up and go somewhere else; this on top of the Christmas homesickness that hit kind of hard this year. Am I whining? I hate people who whine in their online journals. There is nothing worse than a person who feels compelled to tell others how sucky his life is. Typically, their lives really aren't all that bad, but still, it just isn't good enough for these people. I guess depression is more interesting than contentment. Anyway, here in Hawaii, New Year's Eve is the time of the year when people drag out the artillery, as opposed to the rest of the country who shoot 'em off for Independence Day. But only imagine if a million of your neighbors have complete, unrestricted freedom to light up whatever the hell they want. Oh, sure, technically, you can't shoot off anything that flies, but hey, who's looking? So there's a little noise. Big deal. Oh, yeah? And the smoke. And things catching fire. Pets running away. People losing limbs. Piles of red paper (from those long strings of Chinese firecrackers) on corners. And supposedly, even a thousand dead birds. The air was so bad at 2 a.m. that--get this--it was ten times worse than the worst day in Los Angeles! They opened up movie theaters and schools for people with asthma and other respiratory problems so that they could spend at least one New Year's away from the emergency room. Some loser lit up a string of firecrackers outside the Mililani theater. The smoke blew into the ventilation system, the fire alarm went off, and everyone had to stand outside anyway. It's World War II. It's hell. It's so horrible that Ryan and I couldn't stomach another night like that, so we ran away to the big island to escape it. Why do we all have to act like animals to feel like we're celebrating our Asian heritage? < BACK | TOP | NEXT >