Saturnalia 2018

The Eve of Saturnalia proved uneventful as always. The gym closed early, which allowed for time to complete the dreaded laundry chores. There are still no coin-operated washers and dryers in the new building at the “old folks home” in Waikiki. Of course, there’s no way to enter the older building unless one of its tenants enter or exit.

The bus ride to and from Waikiki has become tedious. There is a dynamic strategy in play to use the routes with minimal passengers. Often, the strategy fails insofar as time constraints are concerned. However, extremely full buses must be avoided at all costs.

Ala Moana Center closed at 6pm. Therefore, dinner was procured at an exorbitant cost of $10 at the fast food joint on Ke’eaumoku Street. There were numerous homeless as well as the usual poorly behaved customers (read: “deplorables”). Dinner was substandard, but expectations were low to begin with.

International Market Place

The evening ended with the usual extended visit to the new International Market Place. The mall has essentially become a surrogate “living room.” The chairs on the second floor are comfortable. There’s no air conditioning, so the ambient temperature is tolerable. And, there’s free wireless Net access. Needless to say, most of the time there is spent viewing various RT streaming programs on the trusty iPhone XR. Incidentally, one advantage of being in Waikiki is that very few venues are closed during the holidays.

A circuitous bus ride was made to finally arrive at Kahala Mall on the morning of Saturnalia. Coffee time was courtesy the fast food joint in Kahala. The primary reason for the excursion to Kahala Mall was availability of restrooms. There were, by the way, myriad senior citizens (mostly “little old ladies”) riding the buses in town and at Kahala Mall.

Upon return to Waikiki at 2pm, a quick stop was made at the Enterprise® office at the Island Colony hotel. The membership in the CarShare program has been stalled because there is no way to log in with the current account information. The member card was obtained last week at the office in Kaka’ako. Attempts to use the on-line contact options has yielded no results.

The rest of the afternoon was a waste of time, including a useless excursion by bus to Ala Moana Center and returning to Waikiki to attend to personal chores. Then, another excursion was made to the fast food joint on Ke’eaumoku Street for dinner and back to Waikiki for an evening in the surrogate “living room” (i.e., International Market Place).

All of the aforementioned events spell out P-A-R-I-A-H ... a ridiculous waste of time in defiance of the status quo. There is no escape from the ramifications of the consumerist and “ownership” society. What is the difference between the listed itinerary and the typical itinerary of the homeless? Nothing!