{"id":2161,"date":"2011-10-15T10:14:04","date_gmt":"2011-10-15T16:14:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=2161"},"modified":"2011-10-15T10:14:04","modified_gmt":"2011-10-15T16:14:04","slug":"more-notes-on-a-victorious-vacation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=2161","title":{"rendered":"More Notes on a Victorious Vacation"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m easily delighted. It’s one of the benefits of driving as much cynicism out of myself as I can. Cynicism is a kind of cowardice, in that it seems to consist of a morbid fear of being delighted. Screw that<\/em>. Dare to be happy; it doesn’t hurt that much!<\/p>\n

Case in point: The morning after we arrived in Honolulu, Carol and I took a walk around the immediate vicinity of the Hilton, looking for a breakfast that wouldn’t cost us $20 a head. McDonald’s might not have been my first choice, granting that I have a fondness for Egg McMuffins. But I like their iced coffee a lot, so when we stumbled on a McDonald’s, I ducked inside to get an iced coffee.<\/p>\n

OMG: They had a spam and eggs breakfast plate<\/a><\/em>!<\/p>\n

We ate at McDonald’s. I was delighted. Their breakfast plates are a Hawaiian thing. Hawaiians of Polynesian ancestry seem to like spam, and whereas I have no least trace of South Seas blood, I too find Spam delightful. I didn’t have it every day (though I had it a lot) and now that we’re home from Hawaii, I probably won’t have it again until the next time we’re there. That way I won’t get tired of it, and it will retain its power to delight me.<\/p>\n

Immediately adjacent to the Hilton Hawaiian Village is the Fort DeRussy Military Reservation<\/a>, which these days is an R&R facility for current and retired military. This includes the Hale Koa Hotel<\/a>, which is limited to military and retired military personnel, and several restaurants and bars, which are open to the public. I bought a tube of Pepsodent at the PX before I understood what the store was, and in doing so may have violated their policies; not sure. Their little outdoor fast-food restaurant (I forget its formal name) was spectacular, and the lunch I had there consisted of the largest and juiciest deep-fried chicken breast I’ve ever had. Like the Pepsodent, it was lots chapter than it would have been elsewhere.<\/p>\n

I observed a phenomenon that I’ve observed before, and seems to be getting more common: talking on your cellphone in public as though no one else can year you. Granted, I was walking behind the young woman in question and there was no one immediately in front of her, but sheesh–we were on the grounds of the Hilton Hawaiian Village. I wasn’t really listening, but at her volume it was hard not to hear: “…yeah, and I scraped my f—ing pedicure off on the sand!” I only had to twist poor Bobbie Burns a little:<\/p>\n

\n

Oh wad some gift the Giftie gie us,<\/p>\n

To hear oursels as ithers hear us!<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m easily delighted. It’s one of the benefits of driving as much cynicism out of myself as I can. Cynicism is a kind of cowardice, in that it seems to consist of a morbid fear of being delighted. Screw that. Dare to be happy; it doesn’t hurt that much! Case in point: The morning after […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[52,37,78],"class_list":["post-2161","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-travelogs","tag-culture","tag-food","tag-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2161","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2161"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2161\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}