impressions: Europe

No menstrual products in restrooms 

Few usb charging ports

Each person gets their own pizza

Fork and knife pizza

Barcelona

Primitive graffiti

Catalan is #1
No announcements at airport

Vienna
No customs entering
Quiet transit (trains, "buses")
Honor system transit
Bathrooms like Germany - top to bottom doors, toilet brush
Bathroom door / occupancy are an issue lol
No menstrual product dispensers
Un obvious sidewalks, so low
Blind accessible crosswalk
Expensive, $ even for some churches

Clean

Bratislava
Lots of youth out at night
Different architecture
Very walkable old town
More uphill than downhill, lol
Sanitary bags in restrooms, even hotel restroom
Self seating at restaurants
Restaurants open at noon
Portion weight, drink size in ml
Salad comes after pizza
Bidet / towel warmer
Frequent transit at least on old town

Clean

Budapest

Baths

Bit more run down
Mostly Honor system transit
More pressed penny machines
More panhandlers
More smokers
Many trash cans
Narrow transit seats
Paid restrooms - can use cc

Croatia

Very salty breads

Fluffier pizza dough / crusts

Actual queen beds

Split
Rubber ducky shops

Electric cart things that people stand in the front of to maneuver 

Dubrovnik

super clear water

too many tourists, sheesh

Ireland

Round abouts everywhere

Friendly

Belfast
Yellow light flash before turning green
Walk indicators on same side street

Dublin

lots of immigrants, but still very predominantly white

all double decker buses

a lot of puke in the ground

Towel warmer

More homeless

Beer culture

Commonly advertised drinks:
Aperol sprit, campari, hugo
Tequila sunrise, negroni, cibra Libre, gin tonic
Ling island iced tea, mojito,

september / october 2025 donation

it's september! so you know what that means (or, most likely, you don't, lol), it's long beach gives time! which means that i donated this month to algalita, and credit my october donation to moore institute for plastic pollution. 

i actually started my monthly donations because of algalita. early in the pandemic, my boss gave me $300 to help with the times, i guess. i didn't really need the money, and i knew non-profits were really struggling, so i started donating about $25 a month, for about $300 a year. so thank you, katie, for the money. it's the gift that keeps giving.

june 2025 donation

 

this month i donated to the molokai heritage trust which is trying to reacquire land (from colonizers [my term entirely]) on molokaʻi to return to native hawaiians. 

living in hawaii has been really educational! i didn't know basically anything about native hawaiians, their culture, or their history before coming here. i still don't know very much (tho i have read two books about hawaiian history), but of what i do know, i feel like mainstream americans can learn a lot from. 

impressions: hawaii

speed humps and speed tables (longer humps, like a mesa)

speed table and intersection painted "warnings" of jaggedly lines on the ground

wobbly striped roads, lol. so few lane lines and dashes

well paved roads (so few potholes), and quite a few road closures due to either construction, or more often, tree trimming

fewer street lights and sometimes very yellow ones, to create a more dark sky environment

many 2 lane roads with 1 lane bridges

fewer asshole drivers when merging (either ending lane or merging lanes) 

slower speed limits (nothing higher than 55mph!) and people pretty much respecting them. ...also speeding tickets are only like $137, ask me how i know, lol

very few official police cars (most are personal vehicles with a blue light bar on top)

many abandoned cars on the side of the roads

corrugated metal roofs in hilo

so many small churches with very pointy steeples

glass shutters instead of paned windows to help with air circulation during rain

has something like 10 of the world's 14 climate zones (unclear how many climate zones there are, and even less unclear how many hawaii has, lol)

more local ads on tv and radio (fewer "big box" stores, after all)

island music on the radio. many stations.

chickens everywhere, and rooster farms!

affirming signs: smile, enjoy life, you rock

lack of 18 wheelers

trash / transfer stations / stores

bilingual announcements in hawaiian language / most road signs and place names in hawaiian

asian influence - food, snacks, 7/11!, language (auntie / uncle)

lots of thai food. outside hawaiian, american, and japanese food, it seems like the most popular cuisine 

sweeter foods (including bread), plate lunches, heavy, dense food without veggies

roadside fruit / food stands. many of which are outside homes, in little wooden stands, and a lock box for the honor code

ridged aluminum cans (article about why)

screened lanais

kapu signs all over

irregular business hours

lei fridges in almost all big grocery stores

tsunami warning sirens

foot push pedals at some crosswalks

kauai - "try slow" hand-painted road signs

may 2025 donation

this month i'm actually pausing my donation :( life has been very expensive lately: taxes, ER bill, flights to maui and kauai, manta ray snorkeling... it was the nearly $1500 ER bill that really did me in. i got it sort of unexpectedly 3 months after the fact. i was billed for the urgent care visit (to get the stitches removed) about a month after whole thing so when I didn't get anything for the ER visit, I dunno... i thought my insurance would take care of it. ...but it didn't.

at that point, i had already paid my taxes and paid for flights to maui and kauai. and after paying off the bill, i reimbursed t for j and my manta ray snorkeling thing. so it was a lot of money leaving within a month.

i may go back and donate anyway. what's $25 really? i can "afford" it. i'm just feeling a little cash poor right now. 

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i recently got a little cash infusion so am donating to NPR because they do amazing work and recently got their money taken back by the fucking govt who instead of using tax payer money to fund the tax payers and out general well-being, wanted to use it to make our lives demonstrably worse. (7/31)

 

april 2025 donation

this month i donated to random national parks. we've visited a few here in hawaii:

haleakala national park
hawai'i volcanoes
kaloko-honolohau historial park
pu'uhonua o honaunau historical park
pu'ukohola haiau historical site

i always try to go to the visitor center at each park to buy a postcard or something, and when checking out, the machine asks if i want to donate so i always do. between $1 and $20, depending on my mood, lol.

btw, i'm VERY happy i purchased an annual national parks pass! it's SUCH a good deal if you go to places like this. national parks are like $30 a pop, so if you go to just three a year, you've already "made your money back." the national parks pass lets you into any national "park" system for free, so national monuments, historical parks, forests, etc. plus, they all do great work and it's important to support what you believe in!