Intro: 

Four miles south of Malama Bay 'Oahu (so it says) , hot, young things are enjoying spring break on a boat. 

Oh no, Tongan pirates! First sign this can't be true...they wear slick, all black Prada when they hijack a boat. I would imagine real Tongan pirates wear whatever is lying on the floor. 

Cops arrive on boat...hey, it's what's her Korean face from Battlestar Galactica, and what's his Korean face from Lost. Yay for Koreans!

They unveil one of the "pirates." Palangi actor who I don't recognize says "this guy looks local, he could be Tongan." Oh, right! Because palangi's are known experts at telling ethnicities apart! Haha! 

Korean actor chimes in, "If he is, it could be the work of Tongan pirates. They've been on the bulletin lately for attacking boats up and down the coast."  [Here's an update for you Hollywood, we Tongans are now landlovers! We hug the coastlines like your ancestors once did. We abandoned voyaging ages ago after we settled the Pacific.]

Meanwhile, the dead Tongan pirate looked so slim in his black, until they pulled off his mask. Yikes! He really is Tongan. [Or Polynesian] 

The cops find Susan hiding in a closet, a survivor on the ship and one of the ship operators. She tells them the ringleader was a slim Pacific Islander. Hah!

She reunites with...WTF....Nick Lachey. Oh hell, Susan is Vanessa Minnillo, and Nick plays her fiancee. Can this get any shitier? 

The two palangi actors get more screen time, they go out on fun adventures in Hawaii that does very little to advance the storline, while the two Koreans in the office and do all the hard work and are actually moving the story along. 

The cops raid a home in Mililani, and none of the inhabitants look Tongan, but let's just make believe they are. They all sit around like it's no big deal. LOL.

Cut to an interrogation scene with a "Tongan" that looks like the Polynesian James Brown. Turns out the dead "pirate" is his cousin Vai. (RIP Vai - may your Tongan Pirate heart rest in peace)

Tongan James Brown says "Eh, I only rob tourists, I don't kill them. I'm Mr. Aloha." These pirates are starting to embarrass me...

Meanwhile, at a random hotel, worried, rich parents are angry about the investigation and wondering where their spring breakers are. So far, they've only showed brief clips of them held hostage somewhere. 

While the two boring palangi guys continue to run around Hawaii interrogating the locals and drawing in white viewers, the two Koreans make a break through. Oh, seems like there's more to the "pirates." 

He kills one of the hostages, someone name Justin. Cut to scene with melodramatic parents with their sprinklers full on. Wah, wah..boohoo. (They need to take lessons from Korean dramas).

More blah blah blah, and "pirate" leader wants Susan to make the drop of the ransom money collected from the rich parents. But why Susan of all people? OH...ohhhhhhh! OHHHHHH! I really smell where this is going. 

Susan is all "wah wah wah, I can't do it." They wire her up anyway and send her on her way.

Susan walks in, the "pirate" leader is indeed white, and I can tell though the mask that those unusally thick lips for a palangi belongs to that fool Nick Lachey. SURPRISE! They planned it along. But SURPRISE back at them - the bag is full of telephone books! Susan, you couldn't tell from your bulky bag? You sho' is dumb. Hollywood is dumb. This whole episode is DUMB! 

Ok, so....oooooooohhh, 'sploshions, concussion grenades, smoke...KABOOOOM! YES! And Lachey gets shot...YES!! Shoot him again please. Awwww, poor Susan is arrested.

And like Scooby Doo, the cops gather around and someone asks "how did you figure it out?" And I was waiting for a Tongan pirate to say "If if wasn't for you pesky kids...I woulda got away with it!" 

The rich kids get their happy reunion with their rich parents, the cops grin at each other, and nothing is ever mentioned again of the "Tongan Pirates." I assume they are too busy terrorizing the shores of 'Oahu - you know, when they are not busy being parents, or being entertainment monkeys for tourists, or trimming bushes and manucuring lawns of fancy hotels or whatever. 

Hollywood, Hawaii Five-0, Nick and Vanessa, this is what I think of you!

The end! 

I started drinking "Green Smoothies" on January 2nd, and will do so for 100 days. Today was my 4-week weigh in and I like the number the scale projected at me: 18 lbs lost in 4 weeks. And I haven't implemented a work-out routine yet! Not bad, not bad at all.

Now, I'm not going to evangelize the many, many benefits green smoothies or advocate this as a lifestyle or diet. It's too soon. I think that's best for you to research and figure out. And there are plenty of websites out there with that information, so ready, set, Google! (Here's a good place to start)

In four weeks, here's what I've learned thus far: 

• Like any kind of abrupt changes in your habits, your body will say "what the hell?" And the first week was hell. I was about to go insane until a friend invited me along to a local raw foods restaurant. That night changed my attitude and I learned that raw foods can be tasty, and obviously, nutritious and I have a lot to learn about the raw lifestyle.

• On my 2nd week, my nephew was baptized and we celebrated my mom's birthday, so I was up against Poly foods and the Poly foods kicked my butt. Ok, truthfully, I could've put up a stronger fight, and because of that, my indulgence showed up on the scale a day after. For the rest of that week, I had to work hard to erase a 4 lb deficit. So, really, if it wasn't for that, I would've lost 22 lbs today. However, I do have to say there's nothing like a deficit to motivate you to get back on track. (But then again, there's nothing like sipi, stewing in a tomato/onion/garlic broth for hours until the meat falls off the bone, right? LOL) 

• The original idea was to be 100% raw with green smoothies. I haven't reached that point yet, but still working on it. I've adjusted my regimen to this: I will try my best to just have a green smoothie as my only main food source for the day, BUT, I also will pay attention to what my body is telling me. So, I do have days when I absolutely must have additional protein, especially for someone as big as me. (BIG!) So, I've found that a caesar salad with chicken, or a cobb salad usually does the job. Sometimes, I'll even have a piece of chicken with kimchee. I don't do this everyday - probably 3-4 times a week. I expect this will taper off as I continue. 

• Snacking on seeds and nuts is very helpful. Somedays, I feel like a damn bird. I found this mix I found at Walmart that contains pumpkin/sunflower seeds, soy nuts, almonds and cranberries. It keeps hunger and cravings at bay.

• Speaking of Walmart, in the freezer section, they have this bag of unsweetened pineapple/mango/peach/strawberry mix for $8. I love it. I don't have to worry about slicing/dicing fruits. They also have a bag of unsweetened raspberry/blackberry/blueberry/strawberry mix for $4. Love that too. I've wasted a lot of money of fresh fruits because I'm not using them fast enough. This is a much better solution. Sure, it is processed. Yes, it's not fresh. But I'm not concerned about those issues. Yet.

• Yes, Green Smoothies get BORING. I ain't gonna lie. So I've learned to change up the recipe and found some delicious recipes online. I do one with mango/banana/peach/kale or strawberry/banana/blueberry/spinach. Throwing in some ginger or mint leaves adds nicely to the mix.

• Bananas are a must, to sweeten the smoothie. Dates are also recommended, I'll have to try that too.

• I like that I don't have to cook.

• I've saved money by not eating out all the time.

• To enjoy the maximum benefits and taste, you should consume it right away. If not, keep it cold and consume the batch you made that day.  Don't save for the next day, it will start tasting and smelling like grass. 

• Green Smoothies are highly nutritious, highly alkaline (that's good) and very energizing! I'm very alert at work and have plenty energy to tackle my work load. I actually have too much energy - sometimes I can't sleep at night! But the good thing is that I usually wake up early in the morning, refreshed and before my alarm goes off. 

• I've noticed (and other people) a lot of improvement in my skin. 

• Do take a multi-vitamin daily.

• And lastly, and MOST IMPORTANTLY, let's talk about poop. There were some initial concerns about the abundance of fiber causing digestion/elimination problems. Not at all, Malina Wolfgramm. In this aspect, this is a much better improvement to when I was doing Atkins and that other crazy diet I did but won't mention to give her free publicity. Green Smoothies are loaded with the right amount of fiber to move things along and also to clean my ngakau. I ain't kidding - for the first time in my life, I can actually go to the bathroom, do a number 2 and not have to reach for the Lysol or a match! 

So that's the 4-week report, boys and girls. 29 days down, 71 more days to go! Check out the recipe for green smoothies in the post below. 

As promised, here is a report on my first week of going “raw.” 

My research into raw foods led me to this blog, but more specifically, a profile on a 400 lbs man, Clent Manich, who went on a raw food diet and shed over 146 lbs in 23 weeks. 

I know in the previous post, I mentioned a past experience with radical weight loss, and this would qualify as bat shit crazy weight loss. Why am I going this route again? 

I really have no reason, other than I'm crazy, I like lots of vegetables and fruits, and I’m dangerously curious. Clent’s experience with green smoothies, and the story of the Boutenko family and how they used raw foods as medicine to cure diabetes is also intriguing. Food as medicine is a dialogue not happening in the USA and it needs to.  

Of course, the health benefits of raw foods can be debated. But I’m not interested in a debate because when I look in the mirror or step on the scale, bottom line is, my ass is fat, big and tall fashion sucks ass, and I’m sure with my current size, there are obesity related co-morbitities lurking around the corner. I’m a walking time bomb and I don’t like that feeling. This has to be better than eating processed shit fed to us since the industrialization of food. 

I gave myself a timetable of 100 days, a reasonable timeframe in my estimation, to test out this raw food lifestyle and Clent’s green smoothie remedy.

Clent’s green smoothie recipe is 60% dark, leafy greens - spinach, kale, other greens (chard, collard, parsley) and 40% fruits and vegetables. I add hemp seed for extra protein and omega fats, flax seeds and a scoop of the product pictured below, which I bought at Sunflower Market for no reason other than I noticed it contains Hawaiian Blue-Green Algae. 

The first 3 days, I was coasting. I was able to enjoy my smoothies at regular intervals - one for breakfast, three hours later I’d have another for lunch, then three hours later, I’d have one for dinner. In between smoothies, I snack on raw nuts and seeds, an apple or orange and drink lots of water.  I was content and felt satisfied. 

On the 4^th day, I hit some bumps. I was mostly in meetings at work, which messed up my feeding schedule. I didn’t want to take my smoothies into the meetings, so I went for hours without food. By lunch time, I was starving and a smoothie was the last thing on my mind. Thankfully, more meetings and tasks kept my mind occupied, and I survived but I did not escape unscathed. Doubts entered my mind and I almost gave up. 

Luckily, I learned about this nice raw food restaurant in my hood, and my friend Telu and I went and checked it out. All I have to say is that the dishes we ordered was so damn good and it gave me the confidence to go on and also to revise my 100 day plan to include more than just smoothies.

The 5^th day was another demanding day at work and, again, I was not able to stick to my feeding schedule. I ended up eating a plate of veggies and chicken at Panda’s for a very late lunch. It was the better option to Wendy’s down the street.

And then my nephew was baptized on Saturday, so that meant more naughty food, then on the way back to Salt Lake City, we stopped at Iceberg for shakes.

Today was weigh in and I wasn’t hoping for the best. But to my surprise, the scale showed that I lost 10 lbs. I even came back 5 minutes later just to verify. Yup, 10 lbs. It could have been more, considering I weighed myself on the 5^th day and the scale showed a 9 lbs loss. But still, after all that junk food on Saturday, the results wasn't bad at all. 

Alas, this was was a temporary victory because we celebrated my mom’s 63^rd birthday a couple of hours ago, and my willpower lost to a big pot of sipi, some honey glazed ham, taro, eggrolls  and ‘otai. MAJOR FAIL on my part.

So, tomorrow - it’s back to the green smoothie schedule. I bought other ingredients to change things up a bit - cucumber, sprouts, melon and mint. This week, I’ll try and stay to a steady feeding schedule, even if I have to take it into a meeting and gross people out. I’ve also decided that I’m going 80/20 - meaning breakfast and lunch are green smoothies, and dinner I’m going to eat a raw food dish. I found a lot of good recipes on this site. I might even consider eating salads with a cooked protein source, haven’t counted that completely out yet.

A quick bullet point of things I learned:

• Stick to a feeding schedule to keep your body constantly nourished and you’ll be fine
• Keep hydrated, avoid tap water if you can
• Take a multi-vitamin every day
• Snacking in between smoothies is important
• This green smoothie recipe is only 500 calories, not enough for person my size. No wonder Clent lost all that weight so fast. I don’t want to go this route, so I’ll have to supplement it with more snacks and a healthy, sensible non-smoothie dinner.

What I like about it: 

• That I don’t cook as much
• Clean up is easy
• Increased alertness and vitality
• Nutritious, yet acceptably tasty
• It’s real food, not some franken-food made in a laboratory
• Lots of fiber but doesn't make me bloated

What I don’t like: 

• It’s boring
• I miss chewing
• Organic can be pricey
• The headaches from toxins being released
• Puts the kibosh on your social life
• It draws strange looks and “ewww, what is that?”

And finally, here’s Clent’s green smoothie recipe:  

Green Smoothie

Base Greens:
Big handful of mixed greens
Big handful of spinach

Additional Greens (add any one of these)
4 leaves of kale
4 leaves of collard greens
l/4 bunch of dandelion greens
1/4 bunch of parsley
Handful of beet leaves

Fruits & Veggies:
1 banana
1 large tomato or 2 medium tomato's
1/2 avocado
1/2 lemon squeezed
1/2 lime squeezed
1 apple
4 large strawberries
2 tbls ground flax seed

2 cups of pure or filtered (clean) water
1 cup ice

Mix it well in a blender, makes 48 ounces, enough for one day. 

I don’t like slimy smoothies, so I cut the banana down to 1/2, I added kiwi fruit, switched out the strawberry one day for blueberries...you can make substitutions as long as you adhere to the 60/40 ratio of greens and veggies/fruits.  It’s also important to rotate your greens. For more info on green smoothies, read here.  

Finally, I'm not here to advocate for a certain lifestyle. I'm not saying that raw foods is the cure to everything. This is simply a 100 day experiment and I'm sharing the results and observations on my blog. 

NEXT: Why are Polynesians so fat? (A question once asked to me by a skinny palangi girl)

Yeah, yeah, I know. Every new year, we make resolutions that fizzle out by Valentines Day, some before the first week of January is over. I’m guilty of all the above. So just to warn you, this blog post has NO nuggets of inspiration (mmmmmmm…nuggets) or declarations of renewal. That’s what OWN is for. 

Those that know me know that I’ve been going to war with weight loss for a long time. So far, I’m 0 for - hell, I ripped up that score card long ago. 

I had one - just one - bout of success in 2007. I shed 80 lbs in 5 months, went down several sizes - but it came with a cost. The lack of dietary fat resulted in chronic constipation, hemorrhoids from pushing out dry-as-cardboard poop, thinning hair, dry, flaky skin, nosebleeds and headaches. (Sorry for the details)

Eventually, I was advised by a health professional to stop and never do anything that stupid again. Lesson learned. Speedy weight loss, sold by a crook , is never good and can lead to severe health problems. (Read that link, it’s quite a story in itself)

Fast forward to 2011 and another resolution to healthy living. 

Any kind of a “diet” is hindered by the fact that I’m a die-hard foodie.

I LOVE FOOD. 

I love discovering new flavors, new foods and the whole ritual of cooking and consuming food. I’m a devourer of food porn in various media forms - from NPR’s Splendid Table every Sunday, to the classic PBS shows with Julia Child, Lydia Bastianich, Jacques Pepin, to anything Nigella Lawson, to Anthony Bourdain and the other food shows on the Travel Channel or the original Iron Chef series with the bad dubbing. Oh, and when Paula Deen rubs butter sticks on turkey breasts, that’s some hot shit right there..oh yes, YES! YESSSS!

And that’s just foreplay - remember the Two Fat Ladies? I went into a mild depression when their show ended. 

I now know that my love for food isn’t the problem. 

The core of my problem lies within a lifetime of consuming bad foods - foods with very little nutritional value - and I have no one else to blame for that but myself. Sure, there could be other factors, but, ultimately, being the only fat ass in my family tells me that no one put those bad foods in my piehole but myself. 

It doesn’t help my case that at a very young age, I was the designated chef of my family after my father passed away and my mom had to work extra long hours so we can a roof over our heads. While my peers were out playing, as normal kids do, I was cooking meals from a vintage Better Homes cookbook for my family, and feeding my face along the way. 

With that said, where do I go from here? How do I reconcile all these issues and make it work for me in 2011? 

Before 2010 ended, I started looking into the raw food movement. Whenever I mention raw foods to others, they make a stink face while they chew on greasy pizza, assuming that I’m eating raw mammal flesh or something weird. 

Simply put, raw food is eating uncooked, unprocessed foods that contain living enzymes. Namely, it’s a lot of organic greens, fruits, nuts, seeds, sprouts, legumes, grains, etc. There are better sites out there that explain the raw food lifestyle. You can find them here and here. 

There’s much about the raw food movement to learn and I am far from being a raw food evangelist, nor do I want to be. What interests me as a food lover is that amazing, healthy food can be made with such a limited list of ingredients. 

For my requirements, this is a win-win. I learned that for myself when I dined at Omar’s Rawtopia in Sugarhouse last week and had a delicious raw pizza, tabouli salad and hummus. It was a bit pricey, but hot damn - the intense flavors of the dishes, the freshness of the ingredients sent me to the sky.

That meal alone assured me that I’ve overcame one hurdle - deprivation - and that is a major step in the right direction. 

Now, to figure out what to do about New Zealand butter, Polynesian food, French pastries at Gourmandise, a Crown Burger and dim-sum. Another challenge for another day! 

Next blog entry: My first week of 100 days of drinking green smoothies, raw foods...and bumps along the way

Testing out Adobe Premiere Pro CS5, mainly, the basic editing tools. I think I like it! There are so many things it does better than Final Cut Pro and seems more intuitive, easier to find my way around, esp. for those of us familiar with Adobe software and how they lay out their tools. 

Shot with Canon EOS Rebel T2i & EF 50mm f1.8 lens
Edited with Adobe Premiere Pro CS5
Song by The Ting Tings "Be the One"

In 1888 Hawaii lives the beautiful Victoria Ka’iulani, a half Hawaiian/half Scottish Princess, the daughter of King Kalākaua's sister, Princess Miriam Likelike.   

This was a turbulent time in Hawai'i's history. Greedy American bastards, descendants of Christian missionaries, staged a coup to overthrow the sovereign nation of Hawai’i to further their own business interests. 

Ka’iulani, whose mother had passed, is then whisked away to England by her father, where she endures racism and other “isms”, told in typical Hollywood textbook fashion. But she wins them over with her smarts and charm. Imagine that, she’s actually a likable person. Those Brits are either gullible or the storytelling is just shitty. (I pick the latter)

And sorry to be so simplistic about it, but that's pretty much how the story unfolds and you kind of get an idea of what the rest of the movie is like - 90 minutes of beautiful scenery to offset the simplistic, lazy storytelling. 

In England, she develops an uninteresting romantic relationship with Clive, a freckled Brit with ugly teeth. Think of a younger, dorkier Hugh Grant. Maybe Robert Pattison was not available. This romatic storyline feels so tacked on, because in the world of box office revenue, romances sells more than historical depictions of American imperialism and greed. 

While she’s living a blissful life as Victoria, making out with Clive in lush Jane Austen-esque scenescapes, her uncle King Kalākaua dies and Liliuokalani steps up as acting Queen until Ka’iulani returns. When she finally finds out through telegrams that were hidden from her, she is distraught. 

But we never invest in her plight, feel her pain, or even empathize, because the director never took the time in the beginning of the movie to develop her character, to create that bond between the audience and the subject the movie is named after. He assumes that because it’s named “Princess Ka’iulani,” we should care. 

So, now Victoria has to make a difficult choice - marry Clive or return to Hawai’i and fight for her nation and the kanaka maoli. Should be a no brainer, right? C’mon, you are Hawai’ian ali’i. 

But not in Hollywood. We must have drama and little bit of misogyny. The native/indigenous woman can’t make up her own mind without outside prodding. Conveniently, Clive, the nice man that he is, decides that it’s best to leave her, so, the choice of returning to Hawai’i is much easier to make. Of course, she doesn’t know that...she’s just a woman blinded by romance, so the drastic measure of getting rejected by her man is one of many cheap plot devices sprinkled through out the film. 

(There are shitty plot devices, and then there are some TRULY shitty plot devices)

But, alas, our forsaken heroine recovers and reclaims her Hawai’ian name Ka’iulani, and with that dickhead out of the way and her clarity restored, she knows what she must do! You go girl! Nothing like empowerment through rejection, right? Ho hum. 

So she embarks on a trip to the USA to have tea with President Cleveland and petition on behalf of Hawai’i and the Hawai’ian people. She charms the britches off Cleveland, and America, or at least that’s what we are led to believe. 

She finally touches Hawai’ian soil, visibly upset by the changes on the Hawaiian sea front. Kilcher does visibly upset good, by the way. 

She meets her aunty, Queen Liliuokalani, in a very forgettable moment that had potential to be a powerful scene in this movie. Shame. 

She feels helpless and pitiful, for herself and for the Hawai’ian people. We are also reminded that this story has no other place to go, because we all know how it ends for the once sovereign nation of Hawai’i. 

But the director had to insult us one more time by reframing a pivotal moment in Hawai’ian history - the right of native Hawai’ians to vote. The Bayonet Constitution imposed by the initial coup favored the wealthy and disenfranchised most native Hawaiians from voting.

At a dinner for visiting American statesmen, Princess Ka’iulani finally gets her moment to shine, which led to giving native Hawaiians voting rights. But then we are reminded that poor, pitiful Ka'iulani can't do anything without the help of white patriarchy, and in this case, Sanford Dole, who suggested to Ka’iulani that she use the moment to curry favor away from pro-annexation-greedy-bastard No. 1, Lorrin A. Thurston. (Google him...he's quite a pig)

When the brilliant Ka’iulani accomplishes this feat, Thurston runs outside defeated, and strokes his beard like all villains do, while Dole, in a wink-wink, nudge-nudge moment, exchanges victory smiles with Ka’iulani. 

Of course, we are never told that Dole was also a part of the coup, therefore, making him also a greedy, land stealing, imperial American sunnuvabitch, but we don’t want to interfere with the feel-good ending, right? 

And this my problem with the movie - shitty story telling, clichés galore, and passive treatment of Hawai’ian history, not to mention the fascinating life of Ka’iulani and other characters from this period in Hawai'ian history. 

Kilcher, who is Swiss and Peruvian, grew up in Hawai’i and is familiar with the story of Ka’iulani. This is evident throughout the movie, as you can tell she was forced to draw upon this knowledge because the director had nothing to give her and us. 

I'll stick with real history on this one. 

-----------------------------------------------

Princess Ka'iulani is currently playing at The District in South Jordan. Catch it while you can. 

The GYS is a group of Tongan parents in Glendale, who banded together to make a difference in the lives of their children. Glendale is a hotbed for crime and is the turf of the Tongan Crip Gang (TCG). Day by day, this community is losing their Tongan kids to gang banging and several have paid dearly with their lives. 

One factor identified by law enforcement and GYS is a common theme of parental neglect. Tongan parents are either working too many hours, fathers are spending way too much time at faikava houses along 1300 South, or in some cases, some parents have given up and would rather have their child incarcerated. 

GYS hopes to fill this gap, by identifying these kids and making sure they have all the support and tools they need to succeed. 

I took these photos to reflect the mission and goal of GYS. Sadly, there are no stock photographs of happy, normal Polynesian families. Our representation in the stock photography world fits the general stereotype of our people - we are either dancing in a luau setting, surfing, showing off our machismo via tribal tattoos...you get the idea. 

These photos and future photo shoots for the GYS will be my contribution to changing the status quo.