Jul 04 2008
Bringing Home the Fragrances of Hawaii

Walking along
Jul 04 2008

Walking along
Jul 03 2008
My husband, Crystal and I spent a whole day at the 
We watched the Rainbows of Paradise water procession where the performers, students from Brigham Young University, showcased the dances of the Polynesian islands. There were the lovely tropical women in their bright costumes with the flowers tucked behind their ears. The men wore grass skirts and performed hip-shaking dances while showing off their ripped muscles and six-packs. If you don’t care about social studies, you can still visit the Polynesian Cultural Center for the hot Asian guys….and girls.
In one of the many demonstrations that we saw, a native performed on the Hawaiian steel guitar and then gave us an insightful history of how Hawaiian music has helped shape American country music. The Hawaiians’ techniques for playing the steel guitar have been picked up by many visiting country musicians who have gone on to Nashville. Who would have thought that country music, perceived as being as all-American as apple pie, owes some of its sounds to the innovations of Asian Pacific Islanders? Visit www.scottysmusic.com/hofplq.htm for a list of some country artists in the Steel Guitar Hall of Fame.
We had a luau dinner buffet with the show of the attendants getting our roast pig from the outdoor grill. The roast pig rocked the meal. After dinner, we watched an amazing live show in the 2,800-seat Pacific Theater. Highlights included more hula girls, men throwing rings of fire at each other, warrior dances, stick dances, all accompanied by lively Polynesian music.
We had a fabulous time.
Only one thing baffled me. While we were riding back to our hotel, I mentioned to Crystal how odd it was that the native performers spoke so affectionately of the missionaries who had taken their land. After all, the missionaries were part of the group that disposed of the original Hawaiian monarchy, imposed their religion onto the natives, and threatened violence in response to resistance. Then

Picture of evening show and roast pig from www.hawaiiactive.com Picture of male dancers from www.polynesia.com
Jul 02 2008

Picture from www.geocities.com/napavalley/9874/
Living along
It was dinner hour and we had to wait about half-an-hour before we were seated. But watching all the locals stream in and out of the place reassured us that this place was the real deal. When we finally sat down and studied the reasonably-priced menu, we decided to share our food family-style. I savored the slow-roasted kalua pork (or pig, as the locals refer to it)-the meat was juicy and salted to perfection. Sorry Wilbur. I also had some Hawaiian-style beef jerky called pipikaula, obviously well-marinated and way superior to the rubbery beef jerky at the supermarket check-out I’d find back home. I was too busy stuffing myself to care that the chicken long rice soup came lukewarm. The lomi lomi salmon, made from freshly diced tomatoes and raw salmon would have gone well with some tortilla chips, but this ain’t a Mexican restaurant. The only item I felt a bit eh about was the poi-it’s a Barney purple mash made from taro. The poi’s texture was rather pasty, but I still took in a few good spoonfuls of this this nutrient-rich dish. For dessert, I had some haupia, a jiggly cube of coconut gelatin- it’s luscious creaminess wrapped around my tongue and left me wanting more.
I left the restaurant satiated from the authentic Hawaiian dinner and later dreamt of sipping on pina colada, inhaling the sea breeze along the warm, tropical coast, then rolling around on the sand with a tan, broad-chested surfer dude-his name starts with a K- all the while with happy ukulele music playing in the background.
Jul 01 2008
When my husband and I went to
…After my massage, my husband and I walked on over to the crowded beach. He sat on a rented beach chair and read while I stripped down to my bikini and headed straight for the shore where the kids were wading in the water. I sat my butt down and waited for the raging white waves to crash into the shore and hit me so that I would roll over and toss around in the sand. A few waves were so ferociously strong that when they slammed against my body, my legs would get thrown upward so that my butt would be suspended up in the air for a few seconds. Then I’d howl in exhilaration. Good times, good times. When I returned to my husband, he said that the people around him were laughing at me. I said, I don’t care.
Jun 30 2008
Lori Taylor is a makeup artist based in
How long have you been doing makeup?
Lori: I have been doing makeup professionally for a little over a year. I’ve always dabbled with it and decided to become a pro at by taking a course in
What do you like the most about being a makeup artist?
Lori: Being able to enhance a woman’s own natural beauty and to help build their confidence. I also love the fantasy makeup that I get to do from time to time—it enables me to let my creativity flow.
What makeup colors or styles are popular this summer?
Lori: For days at the office or anywhere other than the beach, look polished but not overly made up:
Wear bronze-brown eyeliner along your lash lines and top it off with brown gloss mascara. Keep color to the top lid only if you are trying to cover dark circles. Color on both top and bottom lids and lashes creates a more dramatic, but heavy look. Bronze eyeliner is really what’s hot this summer. It defines your style, your attitude and your eyes by how much or how little you use.
Add a bronzer with some shimmer, but be frugal with anything that glitters during the AM hours. You don’t want to look like you got ready in the dark.
A cream blush in a nude, pink or peach shade gives a nice, fresh flush of color. Complement your look with a lipstick in a nude shade.
There isn’t one perfect bronzer that could serve all the different skin tones out there. So what things do women need to think about when they are shopping for a bronzer?
Lori: This is what I recommend—
Fair Skin: Use Honey colored bronzer
Medium tone: Enhance by using a rose-bronze or gold flecked bronzer
Dark tone: Use tawny or amber bronzers, can also shine with a gold flecked bronzer.
When applying bronzer, use an angled bronzer brush- this will help to give even application without harsh lines. Apply in baby-steps, a little at a time building slowing because it’s easier to add on the bronzer than to try to take it away. Apply on top of forehead, temples, top of cheekbones, bridge of nose and tip of chin.
For dry skin choose a cream bronzer as powder will only look chalky on dry skin. For Normal/Combo/Oily skin use pressed or loose powder bronzer.
What’s your advice for summer brides who want to prevent their makeup from smudging or melting off on their wedding day?
Lori: ALWAYS use a primer over moisturizer and before foundation. A primer will provide longevity to the wear of the foundation. After foundation, set it with a translucent powder.
Name 3 cosmetic brands or items you couldn’t live without.
Lori: This is what I like—
Laura Mercier’s Foundation Primer-It’s a lightweight, creamy gel meant to be used prior to foundation, creating an invisible layer that acts as a buffer to outside
Laura Mercier’s Eye Basics (in Wheat)- It’s a perfect canvas for the eye, just as a primer creates a canvas for the face
Clarins’ Instant Smooth-Its magical melting, invisible texture perfectly smoothes the skin by leaving an imperceptible veil over its surface. Wrinkles and fine lines are visually minimized to guarantee a flawless complexion.
When you’re not working and doing makeup, what do you like to do to Indulge Thyself?
Lori: I LOVE having a full body massage, pedicure and manicure!
Jun 26 2008
Growing up, Norman Rockwell’s art had often caught my eye as they popped out from the covers of the Saturday Evening Post. Rockwell was gifted at capturing the wholesome essence of the American spirit in his pictures of families, military servicemen, everyday people and children. I remember looking at the pictures of rosy-cheeked children with their vibrant expressions of wide-eyed curiosity and feeling like an outsider looking in. I didn’t exactly have a sleigh-riding-kite-flying-aw-jeepers kind of a childhood. Mine was more of a sit still and be quiet or I’d really give you something to be cry about kind of an upbringing. So perhaps Rockwell’s work appealed to me because I saw something in his painted people that I didn’t have. The first Norman Rockwell print I purchased was The Shiner- the painting is of a young girl with a black eye sitting outside the principal’s office. I’d like to think that someone had pushed her around, and she pushed back-hard. Having done something a “good girl” doesn’t usually do, she has a huge triumphant grin on her face. The idea of surviving a fist fight, then patting yourself on the back is an inspiration for me to knuckle up more often (but only for metaphorical fist fighting). 
Years ago, I viewed a touring exhibit called Norman Rockwell: Pictures for the American People at the Corcorran Gallery of Art in
Jun 25 2008
This is already the second time in a month that my husband and I have eaten dinner at Santa Clara’s Café Amilia, the new American bistro replacing the extinguished Flames coffee house.
e split a Chef “Cesar’s” Famous Salad ($6 for a half order) made with fresh romaine lettuce and an anchovies dressing-I usually don’t care for anchovies, but this dressing was an exception. For my entrée, I had the signature Amilia steak ($18) which was prepared on a flat iron. My steak came pre-sliced with melted blue cheese butter on top. It sat in a gravy-like sauce from its natural cooking juices and it tasted so tender and juicy, I was too b
usy relishing each bite to make conversation. But I became chatty again in time for dessert- we had the tiramisu ($7). It was a sizable block of moist cake and rich chocolate cream accompanied by the aroma of rum. And it tasted just grand. Besides the chain diners, there are few American restaurants in Santa Clara, so Cafe Amilia is a diamond in the rough.
Jun 24 2008

Usually when I come across books on skincare, the models in the book are all of European descent. Yet I’ve often wondered if there is a difference between appropriate skincare for European skin and ethnic skin. Fortunately, Jeanine Downie, M.D. and Fran Cook-Bolden, M.D., with award-winning journalist Barbara Nevins Taylor, answered that in their book Beautiful Skin of Color: A Comprehensive Guide to Asian, Olive, and Dark Skin. And according to this detail-oriented book, YES, ethnic skin is different from Caucasian skin, and it’s not just the pigmentation that’s different.
From reading this book, I learned that we ladies of color have skin that is more sensitive, more prone to dark marks or hyperpigmentation left behind by icky zits and cysts. People of Asian,
Jun 23 2008
There is no such thing as the perfect bronzer that would give natural-looking faux tans to everyone. Because we all have different skin tones, a bronzing product that might look real and sexy on my friend with the olive complexion might look totally icky on my fairly light Asian skin tone. So in my quest to find a good bronzer, I tried out more than one product before I found one that was right for me:

Bare Escentuals‘ Warm Radiance ($18) is a complexion enhancer intended to deliver a healthy golden bronze. I already use Bare Escentual’s mineral makeup and typically dust on some Warmth after I brush on my fairly light mineral foundation. While prepping for a day trip out to the city, I put Warmth aside and dusted on some Warm Radiance instead. I thought I looked okay in my window-less bathroom mirror. But while riding in the car, I checked myself in the mirror again and realized that my face looked like a copper penny with a cheap spray-on tan. These minerals might fare better with a fair-medium complexion.
BeneFit’s 10 ($28) reminds me of a freshly opened box of Neapolitan ice-cream where the blocks of chocolate, strawberry and vanilla ice-cream sit harmoniously next to each other. The powder comprises of a “strawberry” blush and a “chocolate” bronzer….both for my “vanilla” cheeks. I gently sweep the brush over the powder so that the pink powder ends up on one half of the brush while the bronzer ends up on the other half. With the pink side on top and the bronzer on the bottom, I sweep the powder across my cheeks for a bronzing effect with some soft pink highlights. But even without the pink highlights, the bronzer still adds a pleasant, natural honey glow to my pale cheeks. With this stuff on, I look like I’ve just finished a late morning jog along the coastline. I have a winner!
Jun 19 2008
I love literature-I’m not just referring to the snooty “literary” stuff, as I also enjoy sugary chick lit, random genres, and edgy young adult lit. I’ve always liked reflecting on books and short stories, but I don’t actually know too many people who just like to sit down to discuss fiction. Though I was an English major back in school and had sat in on plenty of classroom discussions about all the old-school literary hot shots from Austen to Yeats, I was often cut off by the vocally aggressive students who were so adamant that they knew for sure what Charlotte Bronte was thinking when she chose the color red for the room that housed Rochester’s crazy wife, what was going through Shakespeare’s head when he crafted the great Othello as a murderer, or how simple objects in a story, like a chair or a tea cup, had to symbolize something else rather than just a chair or a tea cup.
Recently, I attended my first book club meeting. I found out about this group on the Internet- they meet every last Saturday of the month at a bakery. The spotlighted book of my first meeting was Jeannette Wall’s The Glass Castle- it’s a fascinating and well-written memoir of a girl who grew up in poverty under negligent parents. Before the discussion began, the moderator had us go around and introduce ourselves. Then she emphasized that we had to be respectful of others’ comments during the discussion. She came prepared with her own list of questions to jump-start the discussion, and then she let the dialogue take off. Lots of stuff came up- people touched on the topic of abused children, the awful parents the author had, the James Frey-like extremities of the story (but I think this story is true), and the kind of person the author is today. The first time I tried to speak, I was immediately cut off by someone else, and the moderator-bless her heart- acknowledged I had something to say after the other person finished and then she gave me the space to share my thoughts. Here are some of my thoughts shared during the meeting:
1. Some people in the group wondered if the author’s purpose in writing this book was just to show how horrible her parents were. But I pointed out that the author never says explicitly “my parents were horrible”- she was quite adept with the “show, don’t tell” method of storytelling. And in spite of the disastrous conditions the author was raised with, she didn’t seem overly resentful towards her parents. So maybe her purpose in writing the memoir was just to share the story of her unconventional upbringing.
2. A good story grabs your emotions. I felt angry near the end of the story when the author, as an adult, learned that her mother had ownership of a piece of land valued at a million dollars. I couldn’t help but to go back to the beginning of the story where the author records one of her earliest childhood memories of watching her starving brother munch on ice cubes.
3. I wonder how the author’s upbringing affected and still affects her relationships. In the book, she wrote about only one friend, Dinitia. Where are the others? We know she had divorced once. Is there some emotional baggage that she has held onto which has kept her back in relationships?
So what if I don’t hold a PhD in Literature- at the meeting, I said what I wanted to say. I didn’t necessarily agree with everyone’s perspectives, but it was still enlightening to listen to others’ interpretation of the book. The meeting, which was an hour-and-a-half, flew by in a heartbeat. I don’t need to go bungee jumping for some recreational stimulation when I can just read a book and then just find some open-minded people to share my thoughts with.