official

it's official: i accepted a position with a new agency. here is my welcome email:

Hi Joseph,
I just received great news from HR Director that you have accepted the position with us. I and the team look forward to be working with you!!!
I understand that you will have about 3 weeks for transition from your former position. When you know more about your first date here with us let me know.
In the mean time if you have any other questions, please also let me know.

Have a great weekend.

so i need to go tell the branch manager now...

wish me luck.

fyi

fyi: the film we worked on will be screened at this event. here is their flier. Click on the image to see details.

job

i applied for a new job. i will let you know what happens. no pictures to accompany this post; i tried to take a picture of me working on my resume, but it was blurry. so here are some good resume help sites i found:

http://www.southworth.com/page.php?id=137

http://www.bestsampleresume.com/social-worker-resumes.html

but my friend katie is the best resume helper ever.

Laos

i am proud to announce: my blog got its first hit from Laos ever (see below). on january 31st 2007. this is what i've been waiting for all my life. i am finally reaching my target audience.

refugees

i don't know how they can continue to question that these hmong people in thailand are political (not economic) refugees. thailand has attempted to illegally deport a group of them, thus forcing the hand of the usa and australia. read below:

read this article for some background...
http://www.amnestyusa.org/news/document.do?id=ENGASA260012007

read this article for the backdown...
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070131/wl_asia_afp/thailandlaoshmongunrefugees_070131075719

read this article for the usa backup...
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,21146779-1702,00.html?from=public_rss

break down

this website gives a nice break down on Laos... notice the jump in gni... and look atl the number of people still living on less than $1 a day.

http://www.alertnet.org/db/cp/laos.htm

it's not tahitian...

it's a tokelauan dance... for more info:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokelau

i am leaving hawaii for snowy seattle tomorrow. this will be my last post until i get back to the northwest of whatever. so i close out with natahli and ko'olina performing "pate pate" - (this is from sunday night - and this dance aint easy) but, once again... it's not tahitian, it's tokelauan.

for more on te vaka, the group that performs this number:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Te_Vaka

2006 in review

wl: here is some of the better pictures of john and the family from 2006. (i stole em off his computer's hard drive while he was at work.) these are posted pretty much in chronological order - starting with january (a new year's dance i think?) through christmas this year. well, i hope this meets your demand...

gone off island

off island tomorrow with john and ivona (to some place called "mow-eee;" i tried to find it on the map, but it weren't nowhere) so no big post today...

and, shawna, if you are looking at my blog, i promise i will post that video soon! maybe sunday? sometime in the evening? check back again!!!

the polynesian cultural center

this is ivona's nephew, byron, up in the coconut tree. he's really high up there, but my zoom don't portray that too well.

at the new zealand village, throwing sticks at each other.

tom and jenni stopped in to say hi.

"i wanted to play the drum," said tom.

what white people do for fun

a certain family (that will remain nameless unless you can read really small print: the toblers) gets together every other year in florida for christmas, and they come up with some amazingly creative competitions for their five sons (four sons this time around - jake, the youngest is off in canada?? i think.) - and this year aint no exception:

a drive-by shooting contest

(or also known as: what white people won't do to get that warm and fuzzy feeling of growing up in inner-city america).

limited editorializing needed...

here comes the bullets...

run forest. run.

someone should tell jeff not to look back when they're after you. (this is clearly his first time).

"a direct hit"

thanks to amy for these photos that i am posting without her written consent (or verbal for that matter...)

yall are awesome. wish i coulda been there.

more from the north shore of oahu

for jayleen

posted by special request from ko'olina:

she took this one herself

'ailana is the one about to fall to the ground. ko'olina is a great pusher.

scavengers

this was the scavenger hunt for the "big" christmas gift the nieces got for christmas. kinda fun if you're into scavenger hunts... and this one is a little different. (thanks to digital photography and easy printing). natahli was in on the gift... she knew what was up, and so you can see her ineffective attempts to play along- and (at her dad's request) her attempts to slow it down outside...

so if you got nine minutes to kill... watch the nieces duke it out to the finish... complete with twist and turns... and a surprise ending...

birthday

nieces

try an avocado, bacon and cheese burger... the weird yello color is the light, not the burger...

kua'aina burger is good. up on the northshore... nothing like it...

the hills are on fire...

here we are on top of this mountain thingee where the remains of an old hawaiin temple resides. the sun was quickly fading. not much of a "dusk" here. the sun goes down quickly.


gifts are good, even if she did give me a christmas ornament she got off her sister's dresser.
i also got some cazimero cds and cocoa samoa (which kinda gots me nervous, cause it may be mistaken for little bags of opium when i am trying to clear security at the airport.)

warning: not just beaches...

katie, beware... there is at least one picture on this blog that you will not wanna see...
everyone else, there may be two pictures you don't wanna see...
but here are some pictures of a few oddities i discovered to give yall a view of the other side of the islands--

a mean santa claus

burnt dinners... so post a comment and tell me what this was supposed to be, and the first correct (or closest) answer gets a box of chocolate covered macadamia nuts...

feral cats have their purposes too... this is the remains of fivel, an american tail... notice the tail in the bottom right (along with a tuft of fur); we determined the organ up top left must be its kidney.

this needs no caption. but how do you spell big?

this also needs no caption... (the best oddity of all)

scroll down for hawaii...

sorry to do this, but for those who care, i gotta let you in on a new book coming out soon...

"I, Little Slave"-- maybe i can make it down in january to hear him read from the book... and i can give you more details. for now though this is all i know:

(edited from the columbian, article by tricia jones)

On a good day, Bounsang Khamkeo could collect rainwater to splash on his face. On a very good day, his makeshift trap would snare a rat, and Khamkeo could enjoy meat for supper.
Such days were few in prison. More frequently, the hours in the jungle "re-education camp" were marked by suffering, abuse and sickness.
Many died in camp, or went insane. Khamkeo refused to do either. He survived seven years of confinement, returned to his waiting family and escaped his native Laos to start a new life in the United States.
Now a Vancouver resident, Khamkeo has written a book he believes to be the first of its kind, detailing the persecution he says he and others endured under the rule of Laos' Pathet Lao party. "I Little Slave: A Prison Memoir From Communist Laos" (Eastern Washington University Press, $21.95) was released in November.
Its pages chronicle the chaos and corruption accompanying the country's political revolution in 1975. Khamkeo writes of his arrest in 1981, and his life in two filthy jail camps that were notorious for mistreatment.
They were also regarded as deathtraps. Khamkeo said he entered the camps knowing that the Laotian government claimed to be above mistakes. Most prisoners therefore faced life sentences.
"So I told myself, 'If they want me to die in prison, I don't want to die,'" recalled Khamkeo, 66, whose family owns Vancouver's Royal Cuisine restaurant. "'The date I get out of prison, that date I will be the winner.'"

Despite its accounts of physical and mental persecution, Khamkeo's is not a venomous book. It's true that his forthright sentences contain some anger, and occasional profanities. But Khamkeo's deepest wish clearly is for justice for his country, and not personal vengeance.
His message is effective because Khamkeo is not a whiner, says Ivar Nelson, director of the Spokane-based Eastern Washington University Press. Nelson said "I Little Slave" transcends its setting. It could come from Chechnya or Guatemala or an Iraqi prison, he said.
"It's a human story of perseverance through incredible difficulties and maltreatment ... and (ultimately) living well, without rancor," Nelson said.

So began Khamkeo's seven years, three months and four days as a political prisoner. He said he wore handcuffs for 18 straight months. He was forbidden to communicate with his family and didn't know that his wife had bribed officials to send him letters and provisions. None ever arrived.
"I knew my wife and our four children loved me and waited for my release," Khamkeo said. "To deserve their love, I told myself to be strong, to endure and to return home."
Eventually, the political climate shifted, and Khamkeo was freed. He and his family fled Laos for Thailand six months later. They emigrated to the United States, settling in Tennessee and Maryland, before arriving in Vancouver in 1992. Of their four children, now all adults, only the youngest still lives at home.
Khamkeo said he chose Vancouver because a friend of a friend mentioned the Portland area might offer a variety of employment prospects. Starting over in his mid-40s was the most difficult adjustment for Khamkeo, who speaks three Chinese dialects and five other languages. Between the restaurant and his addiction counseling at OHSU, the family is scraping by. Khamkeo said OHSU hired him to work with Asian clients who have alcohol, drug and gaming problems. But few Asians are willing to seek help, because most have been raised not to speak of such issues, Khamkeo said.

Khamkeo said his book is the first to be written about human rights violations in Laos, by a Laotian in English, and published in the United States. Nelson said he believes that's true.
Although Khamkeo naturally hopes the book will sell well, he says he wrote it from a burning need to tell the truth about human rights violations in his homeland. His survival depended on his belief that he would be able to do so.

Did you know?
"I Little Slave" was a formal style of address in prerevolutionary Laos, used in place of the word "I," to address an elder or person of higher social standing. The communists scrapped the phrase as an insult to members of a classless society, but then forced political prisoners to use the term as a form of humiliation.
The Pathet Lao began as a communist movement in Laos in the mid-20th century. After communist forces prevailed in Vietnam and Cambodia, the Laotian coalition government collapsed, and the Pathet Lao took power in Laos in 1975. The country is known today as the Lao People's Democratic Republic.

look for it on amazon.com (to be released in february...)