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Smith117 -> RE: Car Price Question (8/19/2008 5:59:54 AM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: L8bloomer
Oh buddy, you don't know how &#*****'n annoying it is to hear that. What country do you think Hawai`i is part of anyhow? It's been a state for almost 50 years! I hear this all the time at work from mainland tourists..."will this go back to my doctor in the states?" If it weren't for expectations from my employer, I'd be asking them what f*cking country they think they're in.
Actually, I know exactly how annoying it is to hear that. It's roughly as annoying as living in Hawaii for 3 and a half years and hearing nothing but "the evil US took over our homeland" and "end the illegal US occupation" and "go home hoale."
You see, when I first got to Hawaii, I though "Wow...paradise, finally. This makes taht year I spent on that speck called guam so worth it. I must have lucked out to get this assignment."
Roughly a month later, that began to change. The culmination of this was when I stopped at a 7/11...... a SEVEN ELEVEN......a NATIONAL chain and was told "we don't have a bathroom you can use." Bullshit! There is nowhere else I have ever been in this country where SEVEN ELEVEN.....a NATIONAL chain....had no bathroom. Yet because I was white, I wasn't allowed to use it.
So yes, I call the states, the states and I call Hawaii, Hawaii. When I get corrected, or when someone, as you put it, asked me what counry I thought I was in....my reply was always "well, I thought originally I was in the US, but my experience here has shown me differently. You want to be the 'US?' Then ACT LIKE IT.
Part of my job while there was to scour the local papers for news about my service/base. There wasn't a DAY that went by I didn't read some letter to the editor talking about the evil US and how we should go home and give Hawaii back to its people.
Let me end my thread-jack reply with this:
King Kamehameha is CELEBRATED for "uniting" the islands; despite the fact that one of the great battles of his "unification" was pushing the opposing army off the Pali Lookout to their deaths.
The US made a DEAL with the Princess to make Hawaii a state, killed NO ONE, and yet we're the big, bad, evil US.
My time in Hawaii is largely responsible for my disillusionment with all the "America haters." That's where I learned that the US will be damned if we do and damned if we don't and the ones who hate us will hate us.
I left Hawaii thinking to myself "Yes, we should give Hawaii back. We should leave those islands. And with us, we should take every highway, every street sign, every single remnant on that island paid for by US tax dollars. Let 'em go back to canoes and coconuts and be vulnerable to whichever country wants to take them over next."
So yes, I know how annoying it is to hear "back in the states." It's roughly as annoying as it was for me listening to the "locals" while I was there.
---------We now return you to your regularly scheduled thread.---------
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