#11: Living in Hawaii for six months & What it feels to belong

is it even possible to feel at home, but also know it's time to leave?

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This post is longer than usual and more of a personal reflection than actionable advice. It’s about my experience living in Hawaii and it may give you a chance to reflect on what you want, where you want to live, and what belonging means to you.

Out of the last ten months, I’ve spent six of them living in Honolulu, Hawaii. When I first visited Oahu last August, it felt like a risky move since there were so many unknowns. I wasn’t sure who I would hang out with, what I would spend my time doing, or even if the wifi was good enough to do my job. As someone who was newly lease-less and deciding where to live next, I felt simultaneously adrift and open-minded about what could come next. If it wasn’t for my friend Jacky who had moved to Hawaii a couple months prior, I probably wouldn’t have even considered Oahu as my next destination. I didn’t know anyone else so I thought in the worst-case scenario, at least I would have one friend to hang out with. I still wanted to de-risk the decision so instead of signing a lease and staying longer, I paid the premium of renting out a private studio in a hotel (like a timeshare) for one month. The place didn’t even have a kitchen, but at least there was a mini fridge and microwave. I ate meals that could be prepared without a stove - oatmeal for lunch and for dinner, a salad consisting of Costco rotisserie chicken, spring mix, and bell peppers. Although the food I was eating was repetitive and bland, my days were quite the opposite. Everything was new to me and I felt my curiosity present more than ever, pulling me towards the next thing. Between post-work surf sessions, gnarly hikes that were somehow always just a short drive away, and meeting new people, it felt like I was on a month-long rollercoaster.

August 2021 was just a test run during a time when I didn’t feel a strong pull to any one place. In previous months, I felt like life was stagnant and I was being apathetic. In the days leading up to leaving Hawaii, I couldn’t help but think about all the things that I still wanted to try like spearfishing, new surf breaks, and crazy hikes like Three Peaks. But I would’ve been equally content to just continue doing the same things that had become a part of my new routine like beach volleyball at Ala Moana on Wednesdays, brunch at Thai Temple on Sundays, and surfing whenever possible. As soon as I got home, I started browsing Facebook Marketplace for sublets so I could come back.

A bit of a pattern has started to form with my second stint being for two months between October and December 2021 and this third stay being for three months (I’ve been here since April). For the two times I’ve had to leave Hawaii, the decision to return has been guided by an unfamiliar feeling of belonging and gravitating towards where I’ve felt happiest. As a type-A personality who values logic and organization, I thought choosing where to live would follow some sort of framework and resemble a Notion table of locations with columns like cost of living, weather, and activities. So when I decided to come back to Hawaii twice based on emotions, vibes, and gut feeling, I was entering unchartered territory in how I usually make decisions.

Cities whisper their ethos

In Cities and Ambition, Paul Graham explains how cities send us messages on what we should value and how those messages vary from place to place. Those messages are signaled to us in subtle ways based on what people spend their time doing and what’s valued.

A city speaks to you mostly by accident — in things you see through windows, in conversations you overhear. It's not something you have to seek out, but something you can't turn off.

New York tells us we should make more money, Silicon Valley says we should be more powerful, and Paris whispers for us to do things with style. This idea that where we live influences what we value and shapes who we hang out with and how we spend our time has been top of mind for me lately as I’ve been living semi-nomadically.

My initial attempt to characterize what message Honolulu sends was a failure. I thought that the message was to work less and live better which is similar to what Graham says about the city of Berkeley. While we made dumplings, my friends Stanley and Kallen who were born and raised here explained that Hawaii has the highest rate of people working 2+ jobs and the highest rate of both parents working. I was also already aware that Hawaii has the worst housing crisis in the entire country and is also the most expensive state to live in so the message of working less didn’t seem compatible with the tough realities that Hawaii is facing. I’m aware of the immense privilege I have to be able to live and work in Hawaii and from talking to Stanley and Kallen, I realized that the message that Hawaii sends had to be something that resonates with the general community, not just me.

As we bounced ideas off of each other, we agreed that Honolulu (and Hawaii in general) whispers that we should be healthier and spend more time outside. Being a tropical island, Hawaii has the optimal environment that enables an abundance of outdoor activities like surfing, hiking, sailing, canoeing, paddle-boarding, running, and much more. On the other hand, there’s also less nightlife and other things that would keep people indoors. I’ve observed this firsthand in how I spend my time in Hawaii. On most days, I’ll do two forms of physical activity which could be yoga in the morning and then lifting in the evening or surfing in the morning and surfing until sunset. I didn’t plan in advance to structure my days like this, but as I got better at surfing, I started to enjoy it more, and that made me to want surf even more. I also discovered the GOAT yoga studio Power Yoga and began practicing yoga 3-4x week. I’m currently the healthiest I’ve been in many years, maybe ever, both mentally and physically.

I strongly believe that our environment and the people around us shape the decisions we make in gradual ways that compound over time. In Hawaii, I’ve noticed subtle cues and signs that encourage me to devote more time to things that I already enjoy doing like surfing and yoga. Some might call this by the more scientific term: vibes.

When it comes to getting started in surfing, there are many nearby surf shops where you can buy, rent, or repair. Getting a used moped with a surf rack off made surfing much more streamlined in terms of getting to the surf and never having to wait for a parking spot since I can park just about anywhere. As I started to get into surfing more, I started to talk about surfing with my friends more and watching surfing videos. My roommate Kora gave me some tips to point my shoulders and look at where I want to go which helped me go down the line. I felt like I had made a major breakthrough once I could go down the line and was stoked to begin progressing on other techniques. As I’ve met more people, I’ve also found more buddies to surf with which is another positive feedback loop to keep getting better, but more importantly to enjoy surfing even more (a lesson from Surf’s Up which I recently watched).

With the local studio Power Yoga, the yoga is pure in the sense that it challenges my flexibility, strength, and balance rather than being a bastardized corporate version of yoga like Corepower which attempts to mash together an overly repetitive series of warrior series and up/down dogs with a bunch of ab crunches. There are other men in my classes and the instructors remember my name which makes me feel less of an outsider. Even the subtle fact that I can mention I do yoga to my friends here (who don’t do yoga) and they don’t hesitate or flinch is a tiny detail that matters. In other cities, it might be met with a “wow, really?” in a friendly, but slightly judgmental way.

The value of health goes beyond what I gave as two personal examples of surfing and yoga. Everyone here seems to have their own health-centric hobby that’s a part of their core lifestyle. It ranges from beach volleyball to hiking Koko Head 4x week to zen meditation to climbing to running. Regardless of what the activity is, everyone seems to have something going on in their life that keeps them moving and staying healthy.

What does it mean to belong?

Even though I’ve only lived in Hawaii for a few months, I’ve never felt a greater sense of belonging. Analogous to painting, the feeling of belonging doesn’t surface itself in the positive space, but rather in the negative space. It’s the absence of having to think or second guess my identity and values that makes me feel comfortable and safe here.

The fact that Asians make up the majority demographic (38%) is certainly a major factor, but it’s not as simple as just looking at the demographics. It’s nice to see people who look like you when you’re walking down the street, but it’s more nuanced than just having a ton of Asians around me. Growing up in Northern Virginia, if I saw an older Asian person, I would always assume that they were the parents of an immigrant who came to America for their education or career. It wasn’t until I moved to California for college that I heard an older Asian person speak fluent English and my mind was blown.

Although we look similar, Asian immigrants and Asian-Americans have completely different values, cultures, and mindsets. I was raised to value freedom and individualism whereas most Asian cultures value social harmony and collectivism. As a result, when I’m in China visiting relatives I don’t fit in, but I also didn’t feel a complete sense of belonging growing up in the suburbs of Northern Virginia. There are things that only fellow Asian-Americans may ever understand; like the pervasive tension I experienced as a kid struggling to juggle fitting in with everyone else while also trying to latch on and preserve some sense of my Chinese heritage. Perhaps it was possible to do both, but it didn’t feel like that when Chinese school is on Sunday, but so are all the birthday parties, sports practices, and playdates.

During my time in Hawaii, I haven’t had to think about being Asian-American (in a good way because being Asian-American hasn’t collided with anything in my life here. Here, the Asian-American experience is not only common, it’s also embedded into society. Everyone (including the haoles and other non-Asians) knows how to use chopsticks, kids call unrelated adults aunty or uncle, you take your shoes off when entering someone’s home, and soy sauce is called by its Japanese name, shoyu.

It’s not as straightforward as saying I want to be around other Asian-Americans. It also comes down to shared interests and values. When I see the uncles surfing next to me, it’s like I’m staring at one of those Snapchat filters that make you look old since I hope to see myself still out in the water when I’m 60. When I’m lifting at the local 24 Hour Fitness, I see older jacked Asian Americans which I never saw in the Bay Area. Also, people in Hawaii have a relationship with work and their respective jobs that matches how I feel about mine. I don’t even know what some of my friends do for work and I like that. On the surface, it might seem that this suggests I lack a deeper understanding of these friends, to which I would counter with the hot take that we often grasp at superficial straws like where we work and where went to school in the hope of finding shared connections.

Two Types of Community

Hawaii tells you above all that you should be healthier and spend more time outside, but as my friend Ted points out, there are other messages too; like you should spend more time in your community. I think there’s two actually layers of community. There’s the primary community of who you hang out with and spend your time with, but also the secondary, peripheral community of your neighborhood.

I know less people here than in San Francisco, yet paradoxically, it feels a lot easier to make plans and hang out. In San Francisco, if you want to catch up with a friend, you need to reach out three weeks in advance, offer multiple activities (coffee, happy hour, or dinner) and multiple spots for each one. Once you decide on a time, you’ll need to send your friend a calendar invite to their email so they can keep track of it. And to top if all off, you’ll need to shoot a confirmation “Hey are we still on for coffee tmr?” text because people will flake or forget. In Hawaii, people don’t plan as far out and as a result are more flexible. Sometimes, things happen on the fly like when Kora asked me if I wanted to join a surf photoshoot at 2pm the morning of. Or when Jen invited me to her pool party in the afternoon when I ran into her at yoga in the morning.

As a recurring visitor, I’ve realized that there’s aspects of living here that I’ve only gotten a glimpse of. Stanley has gifted me mango, guava, and lilikoi from his backyard and even said he’s not used to buying mango from the grocery store because his neighbors will usually share. Another time, I went to the west side to spearfish with Louis and we parked at Jacob’s house which is right on the beach. As a token of our appreciation, Louis gave one of the two fish he caught to Jacob, but Jacob also had some extra mangoes to share. It’s moments like these that I observe from nearby as a bystander, feeling a brief sense of community, but also recognizing that I would feel a greater sense of community if my time here wasn’t always so ephemeral and transient.

The second type of community requires being aware of your surroundings and is more subtle. I’ve noticed that when getting into the elevator in my apartment, we’ll usually say hi to each other. I don’t know all of their names, but I see the same people frequently when I go to Power Yoga or surf at Kewalo’s. One time I was at CoffeeTalk looking out the window when a man walking by smiled and waved to me. Another time at CoffeeTalk, a presumably homeless man came in and had a grocery basket filled with his belongings and plopped down at a table. He helped himself to some water and as he rummaged through his stuff, a bunch of random trash kept falling out of his basket. He wasn’t disturbing anyone, yet I was pleasantly surprised that none of the staff tried to kick him out. Maybe I’m the only one, but I can’t help but think that it’s sad that the default is to assume that we should force the most vulnerable people out of establishments like coffee shops. In San Francisco, coffee shops have locks with pin codes on the bathroom doors and require you to purchase something in order to use the bathroom.

Ala Moana Beach Park

My favorite place here is Ala Moana Beach Park because it’s a microcosm that I think is representative of Hawaii or at least Honolulu. Just on the outskirts from the touristy resorts of Waikiki, this is where the locals go. Being fortunate enough to live across the street, I come here several times a week at different times of day and notice that there’s always so many different things going on. There’s always people laying out on the beach, barbecuing, or enjoying a picnic. In the water closer to the beach, there’s swimmers and paddle-boarders going side to side and further out there’s surfers and bodyboarders playing. Sometimes there’s even people doing yoga on paddle-boards.

At Ala Moana Beach Park, there’s something for everyone. I’ve seen people doing HIIT classes, playing spikeball, doing yoga on the grass, or reading in hammocks. Last week, there was a huge crew of bikers that were also campaigning for BJ Penn who’s running for governor. Yesterday, there were tons of families laying on blankets waiting to watch the 4th of July fireworks over the water.

Sometimes I see an older version of myself when I’m next to an uncle surfing. Other times, I see a younger version of myself like on a Sunday morning when I was running and passed a chubby Asian boy with his mom walking in the park. He was wearing one of those Adidas polyester shirts from Costco - the kind that’s an older style, cheaper, and looser fitting than what you’d see at the mall. I know because I used to be the kid that would get his clothes from Costco.

Once you start to go to the same place consistently, you start to notice how it ebbs and flows. You start to notice how much life and energy one place can exude like one afternoon where there were two weddings going on next to a yoga class with nearby surfers riding at Bowls (below).

Through the mediums of surfing, running, playing beach volleyball, or listening to an audiobook while walking at Ala Moana Beach Park, I’ve started to become familiar with some of the regulars like Aaron and Nolan, or the couple of uncles who always smile and says “How’s it!” to me.

Exploration vs. Commitment

Although I’ve been living the nomad lifestyle for two years now, it’s been through my time in Hawaii where I’ve realized the value of committing to one place and putting down roots. I’m learning that there’s value in staying in one place and investing time and energy into relationships.

It’s taken many sessions surfing at Marinelands and watching the ocean for hours just to understand this one break. It takes reps to piece together things like the fact that there’s two waves that come together with one slightly slanted and when it’s low tide, you want to paddle out in a slightly slanted path to avoid scraping rock with your hands or fins. From dozens of sessions, I’ve learned that shortboarders usually sit further in for the centered wave while longboarders tend to prefer the shoulder break. When you surf the same break over and over you see the same people and start to keep track of who’s chill, who’s friendly, and who surfs more aggressively.

When you start to visit a place consistently as a local would rather than the tourists who only visits each place once, you’re able to observe change and as a result feel more connected. When going to the North Shore, we usually swing by the coffee shop Mana + Pua to get some work done before surfing. I noticed the first time there was a tiny puppy, but on subsequent occasions it wasn’t there. Then I learned that the girl who works there lives on a farm nearby with cats, dogs, roosters and all sorts of other animals. During a stretch when the surf was particularly good on the North Shore, we were able to watch a painter create a new mural outside the Volcom shop from start to finish. There’s also a new banana bread shop next to the mural that I know only just opened because I’ve been coming to Haleiwa consistently for the past few months.

Ultimately, there are tradeoffs that come with being unrooted and avoiding commitment to one place. As the remaining months turn to the last month to the last few days, I feel like I have to try and cram everything in before I leave. I surfed five days in a row knowing that once I leave it’s going to be one of the things I miss the most. It would be nice to have a set routine with lifting and yoga so I don’t have to think about when I’m going to schedule these things every morning. And it would be nice to finally start accepting punch cards at coffee and boba shops knowing that I’ll actually be able to fill them out.

Moments

There are some days that simply wouldn’t be possible to recreate anywhere else. Like the three day strech when I hiked the Stairway to Heaven backside on Friday, surfed for five hours across two sessions on Saturday, and then hiked Three Peaks and surfed until sunset on Sunday.

On one Sunday, I woke at 6am so I could sneak into a 5k across the street at Magic Island at 6:30am. By 8, I was at Power Yoga and by 9:30, my roommate Kora and I were on the way to the airport to pick up his friend who was visiting. By 11:30, we had gotten coffee and breakfast at Local Joe’s and were snorkeling at Electric Beach. Following a late lunch at Sushi Bay, we swam at Ko’olina, tossed a football, and played a few rounds of spikeball before rushing to the west side pillbox hike to catch the sunset. We made it home by 8:30pm for a late dinner and were in bed by 10. It’s these kinds of days when I go to bed completely exhausted (in a good way) that make me feel like I could stay here forever.

Feeling like you belong, but also ready to leave

Going back to Paul Graham’s Cities and Ambition:

Unless you're sure what you want to do and where the leading center for it is, your best bet is probably to try living in several places when you're young. You can never tell what message a city sends till you live there, or even whether it still sends one. Often your information will be wrong: I tried living in Florence when I was 25, thinking it would be an art center, but it turned out I was 450 years too late.

Some people know at 16 what sort of work they're going to do, but in most ambitious kids, ambition seems to precede anything specific to be ambitious about. They know they want to do something great. They just haven't decided yet whether they're going to be a rock star or a brain surgeon. There's nothing wrong with that. But it means if you have this most common type of ambition, you'll probably have to figure out where to live by trial and error. You'll probably have to find the city where you feel at home to know what sort of ambition you have.

It’s a strange feeling to begin feeling a sense of belonging only to know that it’s also time to leave. If this current chapter of my life has been centered around leisure, rest, and finding a healthier relationship with work, then I hope the next chapter can be focused on exploration, adventure, and honestly speaking, pushing myself. I want to know what my limits are and I don’t think staying in Hawaii is where I can do that. It’s been three years since I’ve traveled outside the country and there’s all these things I’ve been waiting to experience. There certainly is a juxtaposition with knowing that I could see myself settling down one day and raising my family in Hawaii, but also knowing that it’s time to leave.

When I think about my favorite moments of Hawaii, it isn’t some crazy hike or picturesque view. It’s surfing in the afternoon until it gets dark, because the best view of sunset is out in the ocean, not from an expensive beachfront restaurant or five star hotel with ocean-facing balconies. I like that the best sunset views are accessible to everyone.

I’ll miss dinners with friends, whether we’re making sushi at home or going out to eat. I’ll miss these dinners that start at 6 and go on until midnight.

I’ll miss the feeling of not having to sacrifice my wellbeing or health for work or any other obligations.

I’ll miss the feeling of belonging.

A hui hou // Until we meet again 🤙

P.S. I got my phone back and other than the back being very very cracked, everything works! For context, I dropped my phone from the 15th floor of my apartment’s elevator shaft on May 10th (over 50 days ago!). I ended up going over a month without a phone and wrote about it. I’m glad it worked out and that I could still return my new phone since I was still within the 14 day return window. We’re out here in a recession, a dollar saved is a dollar earned, kinda.