Day: March 4, 2013

Hawaii Life TV Show

~ K ~ 4 Comments

Yesterday, I managed to watch another episode of the TV show “Hawaii Life”.  This one involved a former pro surfer who was moving back to Oahu (Hawaii).  Oahu is called the “Gathering Place” island and roughly 85% of the state’s population lives on Oahu.  That is about 850,000 people.  As you can figure out, the State of Hawaii has about 1 million people.  This doesn’t include the tourist population that is coming and going throughout the year.

Now, you might now that my parents still live on the island of Kauai (know as the Garden Isle) and that I lived there for a while in my youth.  I attended Kapa’a High School on Kauai.

When you tell people you went to school in Hawaii, everyone thinks it must have been totally awesome.  Warm weather, the beach, the kick back lifestyle.

As a teenager, it wasn’t as fun as you can imagine.  I’m a haole boy (a Caucasian) so I got picked on.  Part of the problem I was a big kid, not fat mind you, just physically big.  I swam, mountain biked, and lifted weights (me Incredible Hulk, me strong…not really).  I was a pretty good target for local boys that didn’t like haoles.

Not all of my experience on Kauai was bad.  I did have some great friends and did a lot of fun activities.  I was just careful on where I went and who I was hanging out with.  If I had my big Hawaiian friends, I was able to go to some rougher areas.  If I was with my haole friends, we went to the more public beaches.

When I watch the “Hawaii Life” show, I enjoy it.  The show “Hawaii Life” is well done.  It is fun to see sunshine, surf, and the beaches here in the comfort of my Seattle home.  Hawaii is a wonderful place and after watching this type of show I get a bit homesick.  The weather looks wonderful, the beaches look inviting, and the family (buying the house) appears to be very happy.

SAM_1334kevin

To combat my feelings of moving back, I quickly watch a few episodes of “Dog the Bounty Hunter”.  Nothing like Dog chasing down some meth head or bail jumper to snap me back into reality and wake me up!  The reality being that Hawaii is like everywhere else.  Sure, you have great weather but you also have drugs and crime, good times and bad times.  Life is what you make of it.

In the meantime, I plan to whine about not living in Hawaii and not buying a house like the folks on “Hawaii Life”.  Boo hoo.  Poor me!  What am I going to do.  Perhaps I should start a donation site in which people (like yourself) could contribute to my family’s move back to Kauai.  What do you think about that?

Being a Loser is a Great Experience!

~ K ~ 3 Comments

Remember that time when you lost to that other kid at school?  Of course you do.  Everyone is a loser at one point in their life and if you are lucky, you’ll be losing a lot more in your life.  You’ll probably be more of a loser after this article than you deserve to be.

What does winning teach you?  Nothing.  Winning teaches you to hold onto that one moment when you thought you were a winner.  Sure, you were a winner at that one moment in time.  That brief moment you were a champion.  You were the best.  And you hold onto that moment forever.

But what does it mean to lose?  Losing teaches you that your best just wasn’t good enough.  You didn’t make it to the top of the heap.  But you survived.  You got up, shook off the defeat, and move forward.

You aren’t reliving the glory years of “how your team won the championship that year” inside the local tavern over a warm beer.  You aren’t retelling the same worn out story every time you see your friends of how you caught that game winning touchdown pass.  You didn’t catch that pass.  You lost and you moved on.  You didn’t dwell on failure or defeat.  You learned from the losing experience and it made you a tougher person.

If anything, you should have learned why you lost and took steps to improve yourself and your ability to succeed next time.  Losing is a learning experience and motivates us to do better, to strive for improvement.

“It is better to play than do nothing”
 Confucius quote

So be a loser and move forward with your life!  But before you do that, make sure you “like” this post.  Don’t be a winner, be a loser and push the “like” button.   And be even more of a loser and subscribe to my blog so I can feel like a winner.  Thanks for reading!