Can You Understand me Now? I SAID...

Its funny but after I posted my observation about all the white people with the Asian characters tattood on them, someone shared an article that was in the Washington Post about the same thing, that all these white people were getting Chinese and Japanese character tattoos and either they had no idea what the tattoo meant or the tattoo actually meant something totally different from what they thought (because let's face it, if you don't understand the language you're having tattood on, how can you know if you're getting the right thing). The real funny thing is that apparently anyone with slanty eyes can understand all Asian looking characters. I get asked about Chinese and Japanese characters a lot. I actually know a little of the Japanese but not much. It's not limited to just white people though (we call them haoles in Hawaii), I get dozens of job offers every year from Chinese, Thai and Japanese restaurants. Seriously. Like if I go to one particular one more than 3 or 4 times, the owner will often come over and ask if I need a job. See, its the slanty eyes again. The funniest thing anyone ever said to me about it though was a guy who asked me how I could see out of them. Come on, they're not THAT slanty, are they?

Okey, so anyway in the forums someone asked me a question about surfing. See, they were paying attention and noticed that I mentioned that I surf (I mentioned that in a blog posting last week I think) and they were curious about some stuff. You can go read the original question and my response in the forum so I'm not going to go into that here, but of course if you have any questions about any of that stuff for me, you can always ask okey? Anyway, the guy had a little pidgin in his note and it got me thinking about how I used to talk and write compared to now (pidgin is the way a lot of Hawaiian people talk among themselves). For example, you wouldn't say I have no money, you would say I no mo kala. Or you wouldn't say touch me there because it turns me on, you would say touch me deah, I going come mane'o. Basically its pidgin because its a mix of Hawaiian and English. Make sense right? Well, probably not unless you live there I guess which would make you a kama 'aina.

Anyway, so the point is that I went and reread an interview I gave to some adult magazine a few years ago and gah, I sound like so stupid. I've tried really hard to communicate in normal English and not use very much of the pidgin (though I definately fall back into it when I go to visit my hale and ohana (home and family). Seriously. Half of what I said was Hawaiian/English pidgin and I'm surprised they kept it like that. When I would answer emails or whatever, that still had a lot of pidgin in it too. It's a wonder anyone understood me here on the mainland, or maybe they didn't but they liked my little body so it didn't matter to them huh? So I guess as we'd say in pidgin, I've become haolefied which is to become like mainland white people, but at least people can understand me now.