chuck, chuck, bo-buck, banana-fanna...

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last seen: regretting the katsu

14 january 1996 10:29 p.m.

I've only been away from UH for three weeks, but it feels like I'm returning after ten years, three kids and a mortgage. I actually thought to myself, "Wow... it seems as if almost nothing has changed," before mentally smacking myself upside the head. Insanely short vacation or not, though, things most certainly haven't changed. Coming up University, I got tangled in the usual traffic jam to get into the parking structure, which was backed up all the way onto the freeway. The usual mob of forlorn looking students were pressed up against the bookstore doors, where they'd pay $70 for a 70-page textbook their professor wrote to help pay off a '94 Lexus. The usual four grumpy cashiers were there to relieve us of funds at the cafeteria, taking time to make sure each bill in each register drawer was facing the same way, despite lines that curled around the entire serving area. It's insulting enough that the food would prompt a civil rights suit were it served in a prison, but to have to wait fifteen minutes to pay too much for it -- only to find no place to sit and having to eat it outside off your lap -- is absolutely, unquestionably... well, Marriott. And nothing makes you feel your age like having no fewer than three people make a beeline directly to you to ask how to find a building on campus. Hell, I've been here five years and I still can't find half of them. Makemake au e `olelo Hawai`i! I'm probably going to be adding at least one other class, maybe two, but more than anything it's great to be studying Hawaiian again. Since it's a morning class, everyone was fighting off yawns and saying, "Maluhiluhi au!" That means, roughly, "It's too fucking early." While I wasn't exactly bright-eyed and bushy-tailed (I drove all the way to campus this morning before realizing I'd left my school stuff at home), compared to having to deal with jumpy patients and grumpy nurses at seven in the morning, the return to school life was very much a relief. (I'll have to tell you about the new bulletproof glass some time.) More importantly, since we're use the second half of the same textbook we had last semester, there's no need to brave the screaming madhouse that is the campus bookstore. Only those who've personally experienced (and survived) such hell can truly appreciate what a blessing that is. Word of the Day: "student" haumana (how- ma- na) Nui na haumana i ke kula nui. "There are many students at the university." (Many are students at the university.) Last year, when I was trying to figure out which section of Hawaiian 102 to take, a friend of my instructor who was visiting my 101 class advised me to avoid one particular teacher at all costs. Coincidentally, the same instructor's name came up in a scathing review someone had e-mailed me. I couldn't imagine how so strong an opinion could have been formed... 'til everyone had to introduce themselves in class yesterday. There's one student in my section who apparently came from the instructor I was warned about, and his introduction wasn't pretty. Bits of English and Hawaiian thrown together, like he learned everything out of a pocket dictionary. In fact, he didn't even have a Hawaiian name. "Aloha. Um, ko`u inoa... um, is Bob. No Salt Lake mai au... um, and I'm taking this class... no ka mea... noho au in Hawai`i." (Name and hometown changed out of respect for the doomed.) I didn't make it through the first day unscathed, either. After class, my kumu asked how I got my Hawaiian name, and I confessed I'd made it up. She looked at me as if to say, "That figures." It's not a proper name, she said -- which I knew, but I guess what's cute in 101 is out of place in the second semester. She said I should get a new, real name. As my kumu, she could give me one, which I guess is the traditional way to get a name, but I told her I wanted to come up with it myself. Rather, I think I'll steal one. Despite the implied pretentiousness of the translation ("the call of the heavens"), I've always been fond of Kahealani. I have a cousin with that as a middle name, and one of the better students in my 101 class had it too. I figure maybe I'll be able to absorb a little of her mana. Duplicate names aren't uncommon in Hawaiian classes anyway. Any group of 30 students will have two, maybe three guys named Kawika, and for women, Maile is quite popular.