MOLI VIEW™

Usually, my challenge when I travel is that I only have a few days in a place, maybe a week or ten days, to figure it out and write about it like a savvy insider. Hawaii is the only destination where that's different – I know it so well - I've lived there, I went to high school there (which apparently gives me the right to say I'm from there), I'm ethnically Hawaiian, and I spend about three months of every year hanging out there - I'm suppose to be an "expert" now. That's tough. Every time I'm there, its imperative that I discover what's new cause if someone knows something about Hawaii that I don't, I look like a total charlatan. But Hawaii is a dynamic place, with subtle shifting sands, tides and cultural rifts. It also marches to its own beat – it has its own music scene (witness the new "Hawaiian" category of The Grammys), and its own fashion sense. I'm constantly trying to decipher its many layers.

My friend Teresa, an editor at the Honolulu daily paper, helps me out a lot. She used to live in NYC, she's a few years older and more seasoned as a journalist, and she grew-up in Hawaii – she returned two years ago after lounging in obscurity in NYC. In Honolulu, she's a big star. But like me, she needs people who can bridge that NYC-Hawaii divide, just for her sanity, and there aren't that many of us around.

I asked her to meet me for dinner in Chinatown, now the center of the burgeoning bohemian arts scene and an endless number of swish lounge/bar/restaurants. I had flown in from Lanai at 4pm and checked in for my 11pm flight to Newark, leaving plenty of time for dinner with Lesa (who would tell me all the latest Honolulu gossip). I also invited a new east coast transplant to Hawaii – Travis, a personal trainer, who I met when I was working part-time at NALU NYC – a surf shop in Manhattan's trendy meat-packing district. My whole point in working there was to have people to talk to about surfing, and I ended up meeting four different guys I dated.

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