Just driving along minding my own business.

Driving is easy. Really. I thought it would be much harder. It is especially easy in the US where you don't have to worry about some manual transmission making it all needlessly difficult. You got two pedals, one to make the car go forward, and one to make it stop again. Seems logical. In Denmark it would seem nuts to go on the freeway within the first hour of driving (ever), but in Hawaii that's just the way we roll. Feeling very safe with my mentor Flemming sitting next to me I took the wheel and drove the Golden Lightning up to the Northshore, and back down to Kailua on the freeway. Driving to the Northshore is quite easy as there is one very long two lane road that takes you all the way. I did fiddle around with a bit of backing up into traffic in Haleiwa, but still very manageble. The tricky thing seems to be to get some feeling of how big the car actually is. When you are in a Buick and a Hummer comes towards you (it happens all the time over here), you start to wonder: "How wide is this road? Was it really made to accomodate to tractor-size cars approaching each other?" So I end up in the very right portion of the lane quite a lot. It is equally tricky to stop yourself from turning in the direction you are looking. When looking over my shoulder, as ay good driver does when turning or changing lanes I inadvertantly turn the car in the same direction, which caused a bit of trouble. And a bit of panic on the part of my co-driver. Well we made it back alive and hopefully I shall soon be ready to face my biggest driving challenge so far: The Hawaiian drivers test!

What are the odds?

...that I would ever take a statistics class? Very freakin' slim I would have said not to long ago. But here I sit 12 hours after my first statistics exam wondering how that went. Answer is; Not to well probably. But in this case passing in itself must be considered a great succes. The class in question is COM 6070 and this is my story:
Actually the full name for the course is Quantitative methods in Communication and when I enrolled for it I honestly thought that qualitative studies had more to them that just doing statistics. Apparently they do not. I have been sitting for two months now crunching number in a program I don't understand (SPSS 17 anyone?) and getting result I can't read: "Unstandardized Coefficients: B = 6.847 Std. Error = 1.004" anyone? This relates to a popular analysis called a regression in which we try to predict future behaviour. But i'm getting ahead of myself. The major problem with this course, apart from the fact that its mindnumbingly boring, is that is normally requires two pre-requisites. One that introduces the student to the study of statistics and one that introduces the student to SPSS 17. As I have had neither I am royally screwed. This fact dawned on me quite quickly, because it felt as if I had missed quite a few classes even at the very first lecture (those of you who remember "Sproglig analyse" will know how I felt). People were cheerily conversing about Chi-Square functions and the difference between independent samples T-tests and dependent samples T-tests. And I said: Ok ok the professor can't hear you right now so give it a rest!. And i've been lost ever since. But did I give up? No sirreeebob! I purchased "Statistics for people who (think they) hate statistics" (SHS) and started reading. This amounted to pissing on a wildfire however, and so I secretly developed a tactic that would get me through this devious course. SHS has little guides after each chapter explaining how to compute data, regardsless of how well you understand the input and output. So this entire midterm I have crunched numbers I don't really understand and given answers I don't know how to enterpret. I am like a little baby mimicking the behaviour of the adults. I now write things like: "And the exact probability that a t-score of -2.449 was obtained by chance is .022 = very unlikely." Odds of passing are relatively slim I predict with my new found understanding of probability... Thank god I have found a new and even more lowbrow statistics book:

Sustainable blogging

Maybe its time I wrote a little bit about school. "But school is boring!" you say? Why yes it is, but its also very enlightening at times, and today I shall attempt to share just a little bit of the educational process I have undergone in the last 2 months with you dear readers. My favorite course at HPU, and the only reason I im not pissed beyond belief that I have to study so hard, is Ecological Economics and Sustainable Developement (EESD). I think I have mentioned this earlier but now, two days before the dreaded midterm, I feel like I finally know the course well enough to explain why I like it so much. Reason nr. 1: Its economics. "Well THATS not a very good reason" you say? Normally I would agree, but the interesting thing about approaching ecology and sustainability through economics is that you get to share the economist's (who rule the world!) point of view. And more importantly you learn how to argue within their frame of reference, and possibly even win the argument. Put shortly the main difference between classical economics and ecological economics is that The Classics do not recognize the environment as having any impact on the economy. Resources are abundant and forever, and if they run out we shall simply invent a technology that gaps the lack of said resources. Also The Classics have no opinion of equity of distribution, which Ecological does. As I mentioned its very interesting to become familiar with the terminology of the economists, but so far I must say that Ecological Economics carry a rather suspicious resemblance to Socialism og at least Social Liberalism (as i think Venstre coined the term back home). I'm sure we simply havn't gotten to the section of the textbook where someone explains to me how rampant liberalism and sustainable development can live happily together ever after... The other awesome thing about EESD is that we get to do Public Affairs. I know I have mentioned this earlier but I just think it demonstrates purpose on the side of the lecturer to run a course on Ecological Economics and combine it with some practical hands-on experience with the PA and PR aspects that we are most likely to be working with in real life. I'm doing a policy memo on geo thermal energy in Kenya (thank you Iben) for next time. Who would have thought?



Until next time: Keep it green y'all! (Oh and don't drive Buicks. Its bad for the environment)

PS. If you are reading the Humu-blog why not become a subscriber "or "fast læser" as the danish term is? I love when I can see if anyone is actually reading the damn thing ;-)

The American dream is wrapped in tan leather

I can assure you straight away; This wont be a dirty post. I apologize to those of you who were looking forward to finally getting som American dirt under your fingernails. The title of this posting was inspired by my first ride as a car owner yesterday. Technically its my boy Flemming who ownes the car but later this week my name will be on the certificate. I shall assume ownership of the mighty American Buick because my superior age gives us access to cheaper insurance. And because the Buick is mine, MINE you hear? We bought the Buick of an US army dude living in the massive military base in Kaneohe. The base is basically a town in itself. It has a Safeway supermarket, two bars (in which plenty of post-traumatic-stress-fist-fighting takes place apparently), and a huge private beach with some of the best surf on the east shore. The guy seemed on the level, although he did have "fight holes" in the walls of his appartment, and two "trained? waddayamean trained?" pitbulls runing around the premises. We were a little concerned because we got the car way to cheap, and when Flemming called me yesterday and said "we didnt get of to such a good start..." I got really worried. Turned out the fuel-line burst the second the car left the base. Fortunately it turned out the guy actually WAS on the level, and came out and fixed the line straight away. Nice. After that Flemmning and I drove around Kailua for a while, reflecting on the similarities between a golden Buick Century with leather interior, and the good ol' United States. Theres someting about the way a Buick is built and the way it drives thats undeniably American. Its pointlessly big. Not so much on the inside as on the outside. So they had to put a massive engine in it. Not that that makes it move very fast, but it does make for a very big car with a very big engine. Just because they can you know? It sails rather than drives. It is the very embodiment of cruising. This car is about comfort and bigness at the expence of practicality and reason. And when you couple that with full tan leather interior that makes the inside of the car seem more like a living room in the Playboy Mansion that a car cabin I feel confident that we are dealing with a significant statement about America. Im not sure exactly what the statement is, but im getting there.

Until next time: Wrrrrrooommm (7 km på literen, suk)

Its a bird, its a plane, its a Buick!

There has been yet another dramatic development in my persuit of motorized transportation. After prolonged consideration I have decided that its unpatriotic to drive a scooter. Its drives 50 miles a gallon, it only has two wheels. And even worse: Its sofisticated. Its just not american. Therefore I have decided to invest a vehicle that truly represents America and the american dream: A gold colored Buick Century from 1998. Here we have a car every american senior citizen would be proud to drive onto a golf course. And its just does not get any more american than that. But actually it was never my decision. The Vespa and Buick decided the issue among themselves: Check it out:

The China Town manifest

Sometimes it seems as if Hawaii was only developed to accommodate tourism. Which is not so strange beacuse it basically was. But I just cant help but wonder; Where did people live before the seventies? Every structure in south Oahu seems to ave been erected in the golden age of Hawaiian tourism and possess about as much charm and soul as a slab of concrete. In Europa every major city has an 'old town' district with some sort of history to it. Untill recently I simply assumed that all housing in Hawaii was erected after the sixties, and before that people lived in tiki huts and tents. Then I stumbled upon the China Town district, and behold, it would seem as if this little corner of town was actually founded pre mass-tourism. The buildings look like something out of an old Louisiana district, and you can almost imagine an old schoool western shoot out to have taken place here once. Im sure it never did, as the wild west was no where near this far west, but you know what I mean.





The China Town district is home to the usual range of weird asian shops and minimarts that sell crappy suveniers, cheap pirated DVDs and exotic food. Hate gifts basically. I sometimes wonder if the asian themselves shop here, or they leave that to the stupid tourists who think theyve found a little bit of Asia in America.








China Town however is also home to some of the trendier bars and clubs in Honolulu. This seems to be the place to go if you are not in the market for the particular brand of "young-fun-extra-power-all-night-long-banana-boat"-partying that Waikiki has to offer. People here wear tight jeans, mac books and fancy hair. Usually that gets old pretty quick, but in this case its actually a welcome change. Sis, Emma and I went to a bar called Manifest and were pretty surpiced to notice that this bar might as well have been situated in Berlin or Copenhagen for that matter. Nice to know when you have snobby european guest. I could have done without the tribal-logo myself, but apart from that it was a pretty damn cool little bar.

The great tzunami hoax of 2010

As you have no doubt realised by now the Hawaiian "tzunami" of this saturday was in fact nothing more than a clever publicity stunt thought up by the good people of the Hawaiian tourist association. How do I know this? Well first of there was no tzunami now was there? I quote from the newsbroadcast during the time the alleged tzunami struck: "Oh I think I see the water receding. Yes yes im sure there was more water before. Something is definitely going on here. Oh wait the water is back. Ladies and gentlemen; We have just witnessed a tzunami striking the shore of Oahu." Ok some might argue that they did see a tzunami, all though I sure did not. I do however have more compelling proof of the great tzuami hoax. The day after the great tzunami we came back to Waikiki, still heavily traumatized, only to discover that most of the shops were already selling "I survived the tzunami of 2010" T-shirts! Now if this is not evidence to my theory I dont know what is.




On the day of the tzunami the danger felt pretty eminent, since there was no way of knowing the devious ways of the people of the Hawaiian tourist association. We simply had to assume that the threat was real. This gave me an opportunity to make some interesting observations on the way different people handle the prospect of danger. Being the scientist that I am I shall devide my observed specimens into three groups:

1) The ridiculously panicky: I am ashamed to say that the little ragtag band of survivors that I was with on the day falls into this category. We fled from the 15th floor (!!!) at 2.30 a night (8 hours before the earliest possible tzunami impact) into the hills where we spent the better part of 14 hours sleeping on the ground. We were safe as shit no doubt, but behaving like you are in a Roland Emmerich film is just not very cool.

2) The sensible: One of my friends packed his lunch and some water and headed up Diamond Head mountain 1 hour before the alleged tzunami struck. From the top he watched as nothing happned while he ate his sandwich and went back down.

3) The heroicly calm: A guy named Chris from my sustainablility class was very hungover and slept the day away in his first floor appartment by the waterfront. That guy is my hero.

Until next time: Dont trust the media!