Oahu: Honolulu: Laundry

In preparation for our move to the cruise ship, I dropped all our dirty laundry off at the Laundromat a couple of blocks away and paid a minor service charge (about what the Hilton charges for cleaning a single shirt) for them to do the washing for me while I went back to the conference. After the conference, I collected the laundry --now wrapped in a see-through plastic package (so customers could tell which was theirs) about a cubic meter in size -- and returned to the hotel.

Standing at the elevators of the Tapa tower, I observed two young executive types walk into the lobby. As one turned to go one way, the other started to join me at the elevators. "Where are you going," asked the first fellow, "we're over here" indicating a lesser tower. Somewhat sheepishly, he replied that "They've bumped me up to Gold Executive for some reason. I'm here now."

The other executive looked seriously taken aback. "What? Well, what floor are you on then?"

"The 35th." (That's the top floor.)

"Oh, we're on the top floor now are we?" responds the other exec, half mocking, but perhaps just the tiniest bit threatened to find his colleague being treated differently. "Getting all high and mighty are we? Middle of the tower not good enough for us any more, hey? The new golden boy are we?" and so on until the elevator came to whisk us away. Mostly it seemed good hearted ribbing, but....

So there's just the two of us in the elevator, me on the 34th and the executive going to 35. Slightly embarrassed by the exchange prior to boarding the elevator, he tries to make conversation with me. "Doing some laundry then?" he asks, innocently enough.

'Yeah," I say in a mock-bitter voice, "down on the 34th floor we have to do our own laundry, not like you Gold Executive types up on the 35th floor!"

The elevator doors snick open, and I step out and as the doors close, I hear this faint "I have to do my own laundry! I think. don't I?"

Okay, it was a bit mean, but when god hands you a set up like that, you just have to go with it.

Oahu: Waikiki: Doctors on Call

Breakfast was at Eggs 'N Things, a highly recommended restaurant a few blocks from the Hilton; we would certainly add our endorsement. And we were lucky, arriving just before the big rush, so we hardly had to wait. The portions were huge, more than I can eat (rarely the case for me), and the choice of half a dozen different fruit syrups made the kids happy with their pancakes.

Tigana (and her friend Lisa Basil) went off for a surfing lesson, one of the highlights of the trip for Tigana. I don't have photos because my little digital pocket camera could not possibly pick them out on the ocean, but Lisa's dad tells me he got some good shots with his telescopic lens, so I'll add those here when I get them.

And then I sent Mary to the pharmacy for my medicine, only to discover my over the counter drugs were prescription in the US. So, I suddenly needed to see a doctor.

As this was after the conference, the Hilton's on-site clinic had already closed (4:30) so I asked where I could find the nearest clinic, and the night manager gave me the number for Doctors on Call.

This was a very slick operation. I phoned the number and the receptionist asked where I was staying and directed me to a bus stop on the Hilton grounds. Ten minutes later, a Doctors on Call van pulls up and drives me off to the clinic. Once there, I have to wait about an hour in an over-air-conditioned waiting room, but that's pretty much par for the course anywhere. The paperwork was very straightforward and I noticed them processing people in English and Japanese with equal ease. When the doctor saw me, it took him about 60 seconds to confirm that I needed my prescription, and before I could even ask where the nearest pharmacy was, they had already dispensed the drugs, processed my credit card, and had me back in the van and on my way back to the Hilton. I was pretty impressed. Every city needs one of these! If you have ever wandered around trying to find an after hours clinic in a strange city, you'll appreciate how brilliant it is having them come get you.

One side benefit of the round trip to the clinic was that I got to see a lot more of Honolulu after dark. We were mainly driving on the main thoroughfares, so I got a good sense of Honolulu night life, at least at street level, and my first impression was very positive. People seemed to feel safe walking around after dark, the lights were bright and inviting, and everybody seemed to be enjoying the party, as it were. Considering this was the middle of winter, I could get used to the casual short sleeve evening stroll. With the kids on this trip, that is about as much of Honolulu night life I was going to get to see.

Mary, meanwhile, had to manage the our kids plus the Basil's two kids, this being our turn to cover for the Basils as they ate out. Mary organized a pizza party for the four kids, then took them to watch the fireworks which I believe are a routine Friday evening event at the Hilton Hawaiian Village Resort. I got back in time to help tuck everyone into bed.

Cross Cultural Research Conference (continued)

Given the previous blog entry, it should be no surprise that my favorite paper from today’s sessions was George R. Franke and R. Glenn Richley, Jr. (both University of Alabama) paper, “Mind the gap: The risks of bi-country comparisons in cross-cultural studies.” The basic thrust of the paper was that the very popular bicultural comparison format violates various principles of sampling and that at least 25% of the published papers using this technique were necessarily wrong. (Not that they could identify which were the wrong papers, just that given the nature of the techniques involved, statistically a quarter of the papers would have the reported relationship backwards.) Their analysis suggested that for even strong correlations, one needed a sample of at least 22 countries to ensure a reasonable statistical probability that one had depicted the relationship correctly.

But even here I still had the objection that they were using “country” as a proxy for culture, which may be acceptable for homogeneous cultures such as Japan, but very problematic for Canada – does a member of the Cree first nations respond the same way as a francophone Quebecer and a Mormon from Cardston, Albertan? Somehow, I doubt it! And given the very slobby sampling techniques often used (“I wrote to 22 of my colleagues on other campuses and asked them to survey one of their classes”) I am having a lot of trouble accepting the legitimacy of most of these quantitative studies. Scientific my ass! And yet the quantitative bozos that dominate management research have the nerve to question the validity of qualitative methods? what a sham!



Above: Tigana and Kasia in Christmas sleigh on Hilton grounds, one of innumerable Christmas decorations that make little sense in Hawaii's climate...

Cross Cultural Research Conference

Working day: We presented our paper at the conference, attended various other sessions. I found the presentations mixed: some were quite good, others kind of weenie. One I found kind of annoying analyzed articles on acculturation, but limited the study to three journals each in business and psychology, concluding that the majority of studies were quantitative rather than qualitative. There didn’t appear to be any rationale for the selection of the sample journals, and others in the room objected that even within business, how different journals approached acculturation could be radically different. I pointed out that sociology and anthropology might have something to say on the topic, and that those journals were more likely to have qualitative than quantitative methodologies. There just didn’t seem to be a point to such a limited analysis, which was too obviously a course assignment recycled for resume credit. I could even see the grad student doing it as a first experience at presenting at a conference, a legitimate use of conference time, in my view; but I found it pretty hard to take that the prof had added her name to this class assignment. If you’re a tenured prof and this is the best you can do, it’s a sad day.

In contrast, another grad student did a conceptual presentation, which she clearly identified as preliminary and informal, a kind of surrogate candidacy experience in which she was looking for feedback from outside the small circle of her own profs to see if she was headed in a fruitful direction. I thought her ideas insightful and likely to have very far-reaching implications, and we provided what suggestions and encouragement we could. In this case, the combination of her very current lit review and the introduction of her own ideas meant we were hearing from the very cutting edge in the field, and our time amply rewarded, in spite of the preliminary nature of the research.

The problem, then, is trying to distinguish between the time wasters and the relevant. Of course the peer review process is supposed to do that, but somebody signed off on that first paper, and I’ve been at other conferences without a grad student to be seen, as if no one below a PhD candidate had anything to offer.

And speaking of idiot reviewers, I was kind of offended at the reviewers’ comments on our paper questioning whether our comparison of English and French Canada was truly a cross-culture paper because it wasn’t “international”. So here we are at the Cross-Cultural Research Conference, and the American ethnocentrism is so dense that they assume every nation on earth is a cultural melting pot in the American tradition. Paper after paper provided “bicultural” comparisons between two countries: US and Japan, Spain and Germany or etc. Well, I’m okay with any comparison between say “Japan” and “Korea” because those are pretty homogeneous populations. But between Canada and anybody else, I’m going to want to know about your sampling technique, because a 100 francophone respondents from Quebec are going to be saying something quite different from a 100 Anglophones from Southern Alberta! And what was laughable about many of these bicultural studies is the samples were entirely accidental convenience samples: the 60 students in the grad class the research taught on their home campus in the US and on their exchange semester in Germany. Yeah, the 50 students in an MBA class are pretty typical of all Germans, eh? I accept that the MBA sample is a reasonable proxy for managers for research on business, though I strongly suspect that the textbook learning of the MBA gets modified as they gain actual experience which is likely to result in different responses, but if the study focuses on some strictly managerial issue, I could go with it. But I constantly saw people suggesting results far beyond what the sample size or its representativeness could justify.

Unusually good conference lunch (well, it is at the Hilton) and engaging conversation with a Russian graduate student studying in US on a basketball scholarship. They did come close to poisoning Mary, but I was able to recognize the shellfish in the sauce before Mary took a bite, and they very efficiently substituted a chicken dish from the neighboring conference for her. Of course, as these things always go for Mary, the chicken was in a wonderful mushroom sauce, mushrooms being her other food sensitivity, but hey, they tried.

For supper, we went to Roy's (with the Basils -- we split a baby-sitter and dumped the kids for the evening). I tried raw Ahi (tuna) for the first time. I couldn't believe that this intensely delicious food was any relation to the white stuff that comes out of cans. And I can't believe that I was willingly (read 'greedily') eating up raw fish. That is so not part of my self-image. I've told people for years that I hate fish (except for salmon), but I now see that this prejudice was formed growing up on the prairies in the 1950s, before air freight allowed for anything even approximating the phrase "fresh fish". Eating week-old fish or frozen fish sticks does not come close to eating Ahi caught the same morning and marinated in Roy's special spices. I could get very used to eating at Roy's.

Oahu: Le Mer

Wednesday evening we registered at the Cross-cultural Research Conference (at the Hilton where we were staying), and then Mary and I went out to supper at La Mer, a five star French restaurant recommended by the Basils (who were also kind enough to look after our kids for the evening so we could go). It was a superb meal in a superb setting with outstanding service. The second floor view out over the ocean reminded me of something out of a Bogart movie -- very Tahitian/Casablanca kind of feel. Mary and I tried dishes outside our usual comfort zone on the grounds that if you were going to try something new, it should be the five star version. (Mary and I both have horror stories of thinking we didn't like particular cuisines because our initial exposure was through a substandard example, e.g., I used to think I didn't like Thai, and Mary used to think she didn't like East Indian, etc.) Consequently, Mary ordered the goose, and I had salmon roe for the first time...

Low point of the day was Mary realizing that she had lost her driver's licence and credit cards. Lost, not stolen, since no one had attempted to use them when Mary phoned the credit card company, and she fortunately still had her passport, or we would have had real trouble over the next week getting through security at the cruise ship and getting home.

Oahu: Sea Life Park (continued)

In addition to the Dolphin encounter, we spent a couple of hours watching the dolphin show, touring the exhibits, and the highlight for me (second to watching Kasia with the dolphins, of course) was another interactive encounter, this time with Stingrays. Kasia and I joined Mary and Tigana wading into the stingray pool, but only Mary and Tigana snorkelled. But having the stingrays swim past and nudge me on their way to lunch was pretty darn cool.

Here, Tigana watches a turtle in the reef tank.

Oahu: Dolphins

Having arranged for a shark encounter for Tigana, Mary cast around for an equivalent experience for Kasia. (Four year olds were not allowed on shark encounter, and she wouldn't have been able to snorkel anyway.) Thus, the dolphin encounter at Sea Life Park, an hour bus ride from Waikiki. I wasn't sure how Kasia would react, but she positively glowed for the whole time. It was pretty cool! And we learned that dolphins shed their skin seven times a day, to keep their skin hydrated and free from parasites etc. Consequently, their skins are incredibly soft -- "like butter", Mary says.

Honolulu

Spent the day at the beach with another family attending the conference (The Basils). As former residences of Honolulu, they were able to recommend the best resturants, and we shared a superb Thai supper at one of their favorites.

I liked the bike racks available on Honolulu streets -- Kasia is climbing this one. (Note that I was using a new camera and hadn't figured out how to set the date stamp properly. Not sure why it thought it was August.)

And still had trouble with concept of hotel lobby without walls...birds flying through overhead...

Oahu: Penguins

For weeks prior to the trip, Mary had promised Tigana and Kasia the opportunity to see the Penguins in Hawaii, in reference to the movie Surf’s Up, at which I would invariably protest that there were no penguins in Hawaii, that they lived in Antarctica, and that their mom was pulling their leg. Mom would then argue back with the usual, “who you going to believe, me or Dad?” shtick, to the bemused amusement of all involved. At Turtle Bay, Mary presented the kids with two toy penguins to further confuse the issue, implying that these were the promised penguins.


Of course, the setup was based on Mary’s Internet research that the Hilton Hawaiian Village had a colony of penguins within its grounds. Thus, we conspired to find out where the penguins were located and to maneuver the kids to the compound at feeding time. It worked great (see photo of Tigana’s reaction.)

Turns out that only two species of penguins actually live at the south pole, and the others live in South Africa and South American and so on, though they are not of course native to Hawaii.

Oahu: Sharks

Tigana has long been fascinated by sharks, buying and reading every book available on the topic. Her interest in shark conservation was greatly heightened by seeing Shark Water, a documentary she highly recommends to anyone who will listen. So when Mary realized that there was an opportunity to see sharks in Hawaii, she arranged for Tigana to go on a shark encounter. Tigana and mom took a boat out to a spot in international waters at 6AM (when waters are supposedly calmest and sightings the best, but a voyage Mary describes as rollercoaster-like) where the boat lowered a shark cage and everyone doned snorkels and climbed in. Then the guys on the boat throw out fish for bait, and approximately 60 sandbar and galapagos sharks showed up, swimming right up to and banging into the shark cage.

Mary and Tigana going into shark cage somewhere off the northern coast of Oahu.

Tigana in shark cage as shark swims by.

A few of the 60 or so sharks that swarmed round the cage.

Waikiki

Transferred from Turtle Bay Resort to Waikiki. Repacking turned out to be problematic, as I tried to cram everything hurriedly back into our suitcases we had spent weeks scientifically packing before the trip, plus all the extra stuff we bought here (inexpensive beach towels, beach mats, etc., all of which seemed to be quite bulky). Ended up buying a cheap extra suitcase at WalMart, since we will have to check our baggage on the way back again anyway. Found our way to the Waikiki with only minor detours (suspected we might be off course when armed guards waved us down and asked us for ID before proceeding – but they seemed familiar with the concept of idiot tourists, and got us headed in the right direction again without too much hassle.)


Once settled in on the 34th floor of one of the towers of the Hilton Hawaiian village, we went down to the beach. I was greatly surprised that the beach wasn’t more crowded. I had always assumed that hotel beachfront at these resorts were a cheek by jowl kind of set up, but that wasn’t the case at all. There were certainly people about, but it was a lot easier finding a nice spot for ourselves here than on, say, the beach at Park Lake just outside of Lethbridge, and believe me, the ocean at Waikiki is a hell of a lot more impressive than our local lake.

Turtle Bay Resort, Oahu

After a day at Polynesian Cultural Center, took the day off for just swimming on the beach. Here Kasia tries out swimming with Mom. Tigana also tried snorkeling for the first time, and using a boogie board.

Tigana and I watched the sunset on the beach while a short distance away, a group of tourists were an annoying distraction with their flash cameras. At first I thought they were stupidly trying to use their flash to illuminate the entire beach as the sun set, but as we watched more closely we realized that they were in fact taking pictures of each other on sitting on a bench. Tigana and I were astounded that they shot picture after picture of each other against the blank wall of the hotel. The resulting pictures could have been from anywhere -- a bench and a blank white wall -- while facing the other direction was picture postcard Hawaii. What are we missing here? You travel halfway around the world to NOT take your picture on the beach? Very very odd.

 

 

 

 

 

Kids met Santa at a surfer
beach in North Oahu...the local community had just won a long campaign to preserve the shore district from further development and were celebrating with a Santa parade.

Oahu: Kasia

Giving Kasia her own digital camera for her birthday, just prior to the trip, has proved another brilliant move on Mary’s part. Not only has having her own tiny camera meant that she has not demanded to borrow ours – with all the missed shots, fingers over lenses, and ‘where did you put the camera?” issues that would entail --it has provided us with key insights into Kasia’s experience of the trip. We get that scenery and museums and the like may not hold the same appeal for a four year old as for the rest of us, but it wasn’t until I saw her pictures that I fully realized that a Kasia-eye view of Hawaii is very different. Here we seen Kasia’s view of our scenic car trip to North Ohun and our walking tour through the Polonesnian Cultural Center. Suddenly, we see why these may not be as engaging for her!
a Kasia-eye view of Oahu


Still, Kasia has held up amazingly well, partly because Mary has built in enough breaks so that we don’t burn the kids or ourselves out, and partly because Kasia seems to love it here. She has repeatedly asked why we can’t move here. When I asked her why, she answered “Because it is always summer here.” Can’t argue with that!

Polynesian Cultural Center, Oahu

We arrived at the center shortly after it opened, found our way to the right line up for our pre-booked tour. We were expecting the tour guide to escort us around on a 45-minute or hour-long overview of the facility, and then let us take in particular exhibits at our leisure as our inclinations and the kid’s patience allowed. But it turned out our small tour group (less then ten people per group) stayed together for the next six hours! The guide made sure we reached each exhibit at the precise moment the demonstrations for that exhibit were scheduled, got us seated in the best seats, and on several occasions, got us involved up on stage. At the conclusion of the six-hour tour, we were deposited at an excellent dinning room for– supper and then a two-hour show. It was a pretty sweet deal.

I was constantly impressed by the scale of the facility, it’s very high staffing ratios, and the overall quality. Every exhibit seemed to involve at least half a dozen dancers or warriors or drummers or whatever, and often much larger casts, and every “island” had its own shops, interpreters etc.

The shows were often very good, my favorite being the Samoan, a one-man show by the muscular gentleman shown here who was very funny as well as informative. He demonstrated how islanders made fire (in about 4 seconds compared to the “two weeks” or “never managed it” typical of North Americans in the Survivor series) and how to crack open and milk a coconut; a younger assistant demonstrated how to retrieve a coconut from the tree. All accompanied by a very funny running dialog. Great stuff!

I did, after six hours or so, grow a bit bored with yet another set of island dancers. Although not wishing to denigrate the importance of dancing in Polynesian cultures, there is more to a culture than dancing and drumming, and I would have liked to have seen more information on other aspects of the culture. There were, to be fair, some printed displays here and there that I was unable to access as the tour moved to the next exhibit, and one or two of the interpreters did mention other aspects in passing, but the visual appeal of the dances make them just too easy to emphasize. It’s what the Decore Report labeled ‘the dancing minority trick’ in its analysis of Alberta Social Studies materials, complaining that showing a minority member in traditional clothing and dancing is the easiest visual to add to a textbook, but it has the unfortunate cumulative effect of convincing Grade 6 students that all minorities are defined by weird clothes and dances, and when you come right down to it, why bother preserving those. The subtler and more profound cultural differences concerning, say, the nature of time, the different conceptions of ‘family’ or ‘honor’ or ‘property’ tend to get short shift in such treatments.

 

That one cravat notwithstanding, the day was a huge success. To our great surprise, it maintained even four-year-old Kasia’s interest throughout, her only falling asleep briefly during the evening dance extravaganza, but even there, coming awake again for the astounding and (slapstick funny) fire knife dances. We were on site for almost 11 straight hours, and thoroughly enjoyed every moment.


Highlights included the Marquise display at which I got to participate in a mock wild boar hunt to prove my worthiness to marry Mary; the tribal dances of the Aotearoa (New Zealand); and the very lavish Broadway scale evening show (I counted at least 60 performers on stage at any one time).




So, I’d have to say, I would highly recommend the Ambassador package to anyone able to travel to north Oahu.

Oahu: Turtle Bay Resort

4 AM and we get up and carefully examine Kasia. No new pox! We get to go!

We then have a short flight to Vancouver, a not too awful rush to collect luggage, negotiate American immigration and customs, and catch our 8 AM flight to Honolulu. The scheduling was a bit tight, but Mary had researched the turn around extensively -- the percentage of on-time arrivals, the average time through customs, etc., and determined that rushing a bit here was the better option of that or waiting around the Vancouver airport for an additional four hours trying to entertain a four year old. The flight to Honolulu was uneventful, if long (longer for Mary who had to wrangle the kids -- I offered to switch off with her, but Kasia insists on being with Mom, and the seats are three and one, so, the best I can do is try to entertain Tigana from across the isle). The plane hit some air pockets which caused the adults to gasp a few times, but Kasia and Tigana are going, "whee!" and "Again! Do it again!" so not exactly traumatic.

We arrive at Honolulu in the pouring, and I am surprised to find that it is raining inside parts of the airport because although there is a ceiling, there are often no walls. I have a difficult time taking in the concept of a climate where walls are redundant, and wonder momentarily how they deal with it in the winter, and then I remember that this is is winter. The other thing that strikes me at once is the number of individuals in uniform. Of course, Hawaii is an important naval and air force base (actually, a whole bunch of bases, judging by the road maps) but I did get the sense that American society is much more highly militarized in comparison to our own.

We rented a car and drove to the north shore of Oahu, and the third thing we noticed is how polite the drivers were on the roads -- as nice as drivers in Halifax. People would let you in, or give you the wave if you let them in. You don't always even get that in Calgary any more.

We stopped at a little beach on the north shore in the rain to give the kids their first run through the sand, and to watch these enormous breakers crash into the shore. The surfing championships were being held that week along that shore because this is the season for the most impressive waves. Then back into the car and on our way to the Turtle Bay Resort (with lunch en route at my first ever Jack-in-the-box restaurant.)

The resort was great, we got a great room with an ocean view, and took the kids down to the beach. Turtle Bay, particularly in the rain, reminded me strongly of Tofino, only, you know -- warm. We had an early and excellent super at the adjoining Ola restaurant where I had the house specialty (a salom dish) with sea asparagus which I had never heard of before but which is amazingly good. Mary also notes that they made the best Mai Tai ever. The kids surprised us by behaving extremely well throughout supper, especially considering the jet lag, how excited they were, and how long and tiring a day it had been. So, after supper, it was off to bed for all.