you can say that again.

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30 march 1997

1:28 a.m.

Dear diary, One problem with Spring Break I've recently discovered is this: Every day feels like a Saturday. This is a problem particularly when it's really Friday -- Good Friday, no less -- and you drive up to campus to do research for a paper you should've started on Monday (which also felt like a Saturday, even on Kaua`i) only to find the library closed. "Ey," you might say to a random stranger leaning against the door, "This sign says open Saturday from nine to five!" "Well," the stranger might reply, "It isn't Saturday." The problem would be made worse if you went home and puttered on the computer the rest of day (even spending a few hours redesigning a nameless radio station's web page for no good reason), forgetting still that it is not Saturday and is, in fact, Friday... when you were supposed to be at work earning time-and-a-half. Oh well. At least Franchon, deejay extraordinaire, liked my design. Hopefully within a few days he'll have it up at the official site. I've got a day left to write a Hawaiian paper that counts for a good 85 percent of my second midterm grade. Why do I get the feeling I won't see a very big paycheck for this particular week? Since it finally was Saturday, I finally got into Hamilton Library. After suffering a near heart attack upon discovering the Pacific Collection room closed for the weekend, I discovered the book I needed to use was also available in the general stacks. It turned out that the particular copy I grabbed was available for borrowing, but I got one of those pesky twangs of guilt, and ended up adopting a study table on the fourth floor and quietly copied the parts I needed by hand. (Yes, I knew there were photocopier machines on every floor. I just... forgot.) Our assignment over the break is to find an `olelo no`eau, or folk saying, and to write our own short story that features it as the "moral" (for lack of a better term). We had read a folktale in class a while back, the lesson of that story being, "There is no beauty in laziness." This book had a collection of about two thousand `olelo no`eau, some of them simple Hawaiian cliches, others thick with a dozen different meanings. I found several I could probably use, though as of this moment I haven't decided which one.

Na ka mikimiki mua no ka loa`a.	The first on the spot is the one who receives.
E `olu`olu i ka mea i loa`a.	Be contented with what one has.
O ka i`a i ku kona waha i ka makau `a`ole e `apo hou ia mea.	The fish whose mouth has been pierced by a hook will never again take another.
Of course, there were some particularly... colorful poetic sayings that I wrote down for my own reference.
I manai kau, i pua ho`i ka`u, kui `ia ka makemake a lawa pono.	Yours the lei-making needle, mine the flowers, so let us do as we wish.
And my own personal favorite:
I nanea no ka holo o ka wa`a i ke akamai o ke ku hoe.	One can enjoy a canoe ride when the paddler is skilled.