How’s that for a grabber?So Friday, day after Christmas, apparently I’m feeling suicidal because I decide to hit up the mall after work. I never do this, as I hate malls, but the Hawaii mall at Ala Moana not only has a cool name, but it has all these outside courtyards, which make it feel less like a mall, it’s huge, and it has a food court full of deliciousness to make you weep or split your tight Ant pants, you know whatever.
Anyway, mall was crowded, but not suicide ideation inducing. I was only there an hour (okay fine, you’re thinking it, Mom, I’ll just say it, I went for the food. I was dying for some food court nasty goodness and I got it). Anyway, bus ride home, I notice bus is going really slowly, but there’s no traffic. I look out the window, no traffic and apparently no lights either. All of Waikiki was dark and by dark I mean pitch dark.
Nobody knows what’s going on, not really, until I roll into my humble abode where I am greeted by the doorman who hands me a glow stick. “Aloha,” he says cheerfully, “our emergency generators are up and running, but this should help you get about your room.” I look down at my hand and then back up at him again. A glow stick, seriously?
“Oh,” he says, “are you over 21.” I sigh and nod. “In that case,” he adds with a grin, “our bar [Cabana Pool Bar, in case you’d like to marvel at a tribute to originality], is offering all its overage guests [he’s still looking at me skeptically], a complimentary alcoholic beverage for the inconvenience.”
Sweet. A black out. A glow stick. And booze. What else do I need? Apparently, dumb tourists. There are a few staying on my floor since it’s post Christmas/pre-New Years and they have to stay somewhere (one of the few hazards of living in a hotel). There’s a Midwestern woman with a twang, and might I add, not dressed particularly attractively, and she’s standing in the hallway with a confounded expression. She holds her hands out to me and asks me if I know how to make it work. The “it” is her glow stick. “You just crack it open and shake it,” I say helpfully and even manage a non-snarky smile. She looks down at her hands again. “Crack it open with what?” Okay, the smile disappears, this is just too rich. “Allow me,” I smile and I crack the lightstick with a saucy little flourish and give it a shake. I hand it back to her, and because I am evil and definitely going to hell when this is all over, I add “it’s magic.”
The glow stick is a poor flash light so I remove my contraband candles from their hiding place (haha, take that Ohana!) and light those suckers. That’s a little better. I open the balcony door and look out upon Waikiki, it’s dark save for the faint glimmer of light from power generators. It’s wild and quiet and there’s no traffic because police have put up barricades. The quiet doesn’t last though as my little rooftop cabana heats up. I don a necklace so I can latch my light stick to it and go investigate.
Aloha man at the desk was mistaken. TWO free drinks! Score! I get myself a drink and make myself friendly, moving around until I find a group of peeps talking about what happened to cause the outage. There are lots of wild theories (explosions, volcanic eruptions, assassination attempts on Obama who’s vacationing here this week). It’s none of these of course, but it’s still fun to think about.
There’s an odd mix of locals and tourists here and apparently one very sad thwarted pub crawl (Sorry, you Punch Bowlers!) that got stalled at our bar since no other bars in the area were serving. It’s all fun and then some clever cool kids take it to the next level finding some pails and stuff and start wailing on them, African drum beat style. This whole scene starts to remind of that Mojito commercial (you know the one, where the bartender is grinding mint leaves with the mortar and pestal, and everyone is grinding to the beat, and then he stops and people are all like WTF). Well it’s like that and people are starting to get rowdy. I hang around a bit longer, hoping someone will get tossed in the pool, but I’m started to get really tired of the pick up line “hey, nice necklace [gesturing to the glow stick], I have one just like it.” When I can no longer fake a laugh at this one, I excuse myself, retire to my balcony with candles and wine (and chocolate fudge poptarts).
Of course, my thoughts went out to President-elect Barack Obama, who had to rough it out in his 9 million dollar, five bedroom, beachfront vacation rental without power for a whole 7 minutes before his personal electric generators kicked on. Really, my heart just broke for him. To his credit, when the police chief himself showed up within ten minutes of the black out with two additional generators, Obama sent him away, told him to go help the Hawaiian people, and announced he was headed to bed (it was 10:30 pm).
I awaken at 5 am because this genius (points thumbs at self) must have flicked the light switches on while power was out, so when the power came on, yeah, my room was suddenly illuminated. Fantastic! I am a genius! I shut them off, went back to bed, and woke up later in the morning to find out that the culprit of the black out was a storm that hit the other side of the island. Apparently, there were flashflood warnings, the serious, legitimate kind, in effect all night. Of course I missed these. It struck me as amazing that a storm that was unseen in Waikiki was so destructive to take out the whole island and 900,000 people (residents and vacationers) lost power overnight. There are still some areas out as of 3pm on Saturday, but the Electric Company hopes to have everyone restored by this evening. Good times.
Please enjoy the pictures of my “magic” flashlight and some pics I snapped of my favorite cabana from my lanai (porch) including a very upset pre-teen by the pool who couldn't score two free drinks because she apparently looked even younger than I did.
