From our President

I'm on the mailing list...and here's the nice email that was sent out for Thanksgiving.

Friend --

Tomorrow, Thanksgiving Day, Americans across the country will sit down together, count our blessings, and give thanks for our families and our loved ones.

American families reflect the diversity of this great nation. No two are exactly alike, but there is a common thread they each share.

Our families are bound together through times of joy and times of grief. They shape us, support us, instill the values that guide us as individuals, and make possible all that we achieve.

So tomorrow, I'll be giving thanks for my family -- for all the wisdom, support, and love they have brought into my life.

But tomorrow is also a day to remember those who cannot sit down to break bread with those they love.

The soldier overseas holding down a lonely post and missing his kids. The sailor who left her home to serve a higher calling. The folks who must spend tomorrow apart from their families to work a second job, so they can keep food on the table or send a child to school.

We are grateful beyond words for the service and hard work of so many Americans who make our country great through their sacrifice. And this year, we know that far too many face a daily struggle that puts the comfort and security we all deserve painfully out of reach.

So when we gather tomorrow, let us also use the occasion to renew our commitment to building a more peaceful and prosperous future that every American family can enjoy.

It seems like a lifetime ago that a crowd met on a frigid February morning in Springfield, Illinois to set out on an improbable course to change our nation.

In the years since, Michelle and I have been blessed with the support and friendship of the millions of Americans who have come together to form this ongoing movement for change.

You have been there through victories and setbacks. You have given of yourselves beyond measure. You have enabled all that we have accomplished -- and you have had the courage to dream yet bigger dreams for what we can still achieve.

So in this season of thanks giving, I want to take a moment to express my gratitude to you, and my anticipation of the brighter future we are creating together.

With warmest wishes for a happy holiday season from my family to yours,

President Barack Obama


Kind of nice, don't you think?

Home Sweet Home

Happy Thanksgiving!

Made it to LA on Saturday, and it's been great so far. Just nice to be home and relaxing and comfortable after such a crazy month on the island.

Always thinking about how it's going to be to move back home, of course, but I just know I'll be totally ready for it come March. Without a doubt Hawai'i will be missed, but I'll be ready for that next chapter of that thing we call life.

Just planning on spending quality time with Mom, Dad, sis and the cat, and I'm excited. Also going to get to see Aya and hopefully at least a few buddies! That'll be nice too. One whole week! Yay for LA.

Life is so good that I get scared. Like, I remember Charlotte saying on one episode of Sex and the City...something to the effect of, "I'm afraid of being so happy because it just feels like nobody's ever this happy for long...and soon it'll all be taken away." When things are so good, who's to say it can go nowhere else but down? I know, it's awful negative. I just really love things right now, and I want it to so bad to be this way forever.

And then I hear stories of people, those people that your friends know: like the friends of friends. The ones that aren't happy because "life didn't turn out" the way they had planned, or wanted, or thought it would. My life always has been, in the big picture, near perfect up to this point. It's been everything I've wanted because somehow or other, I or someone or something made it happen. I've been privileged enough to have things that way so far.

Just trying to stop being so afraid...and going to just enjoy it all. While I can, you know?

Looking forward to a great, gluttonous Thanksgiving with family this weekend. No hosting! We get it all to ourselves this year.

Hope you all have an awesome weekend too.

Getting ready

So many things going on in the world, I feel like I can barely keep up with current events, when I can barely keep up with my own personal commitments as it is.

In that sense, thank goodness for the technology takeover making news and resources more readily accessible. Lots of talk about the new healthcare reform bill that passed the House, and I've been reading a bit about it via NAPAWF, friends' blogs, and Race Wire.

Leave it to Dennis Kucinich though, to tell it like it is!! There may be lots to celebrate with this one gain, but clearly it's not the be-all-end-all. Glad that there will be people to say this bill is not perfect -- there's a ton of work still to be done. Kucinich voted "No" - as long as healthcare stays private, it's not really going to be for the people.

Still, def happy about this first victory with this bill. I think it could do a lot of great things for our people - especially young people!

Lots of talk lately, locally, about the state of Hawaii's economy, and all of this furlough business going on. Didn't think it would, but it's definitely affecting state workers now, social workers out at the correctional facility included. It's really rough, and what can be done? I think to a lot of folks furloughs are doing more harm than good...but this state's economy and the mayor are most definitely between a rock and a hard place, to say the least. Even a hotel or two has had to close it's doors to tourists. I guess we all can only wait and see what happens next...and meanwhile make the most of the rough situation. The prison has kind of been in a mess, on the admin level too. It hasn't really affected us directly yet, but it's unsettling to hear that folks out there are having such a hard time.

Sometimes I can't believe we live in these times. Like things are so bad it gets surreal.

On a more personal note, just barely got through the weekend. In between a bad cold, and easily 10-12 hour days nearly everyday with taiko, I thought I was going to die, really. Taiko as a 7 day commitment just doesn't fly with me. I'm hoping it'll really settle after this Saturday, when we have the "percussive dance" project, aka bharatanatyam but not really because we're not very good.

Symmetrical SS went well on Friday, but there was def some internal group drama. Made me just one step closer to being ready to go home. Maybe I'm searching, but maybe I'm really that ready. Little by little I realize I can't stay here forever. Anyway, just feeling accomplished having gotten through the crazy week, and trying to stay alive for 7 more days.

To stay sane, I've just had to rely on hogging whatever sleep hours I could manage and immerse myself in good music.

Raiatea and 2PM will do it for me.

SEXY!!

From the Brain

I've been holding onto this a while, but I found this a few weeks ago in a NY Times article called "Held by the Taliban" by David Rohde. It was all about his experiences as a hostage in Afghanistan, and this excerpt particularly stood out to me:

One evening, Abu Tayyeb declared that the Taliban treated women better than Americans did. He said women in the U.S. were forced to wear revealing clothes and define themselves solely as sex objects. The Taliban protected women's honor by not allowing them to appear in public with their faces unveiled.

My captors saw me - and seemingly all Westerners - as morally corrupt and fixated on pursuing the pleasures of this world. Americans invaded Afghanistan to enrich themselves, they argued, not to help Afghans.

In some ways, it just totally works, this point of view. Objectified women in the West, and the self-interested country that is America. Anyway, I just had to share it.

I feel like I've been too mentally and physically tired out to really put down here everything I would really like to, because taiko is eating me alive. I keep telling myself, "Just a few more weeks!" but then it feels like I had been telling myself that since a few MONTHS ago. Hopefully it'll all come to an end soon, you know?

On the upside though, I can play Symmetrical Soundscapes now!! For those that don't know, it's a pretty challenging piece that Sensei wrote, and I'm just glad I can play the 4 person version. Performance of it is this Friday. [end brag session]

Most of all I'm looking forward to home time for Thanksgiving. Being home will be such great recuperating time.

Andy was gone for the past week, and I have never been so stressed out having to drive around the island to work with these kids. It wasn't even the work itself that stressed me out, I think it was the driving! But by the end of the week I think I had done it so much that I kinda just got used to it. Driving a Tacoma is not = driving Corolla like back home. Driving such a big car can be scary to maneuver, partic bc the bed of the truck is hard to judge...but luckily it all worked out! Thank God. (or you know, whoever)

Spent my Halloween weekend CHILLIN, no costume or festivities this year because I'm really that worn out. Did see Paranormal Activity though, and I must say, that movie is the SHIT!!!! Would definitely recommend it to anyone who's game. Absolutely in my top 5 fave Horror movies...and maybe even in my top 3!

Finally got to have a nice, long chat with my sis over the phone, I'd missed her and my family.

So another week of ridiculous taiko, 7 days this week as is now the usual (for the past 3-4 weeks), and I am trying my best to just hang in there!! I tell people to do it all the time, and I guess it would be good to try and take my own advice.