Wonders outweigh the glitches

By Mike Leidemann
Advertiser Staff Writer

Hawai'i is a place of abundance. It overflows with assets and aloha. We're blessed with an abundance of beauty and good people. In many ways, we're the envy of the world.

And yet ... for every silver lining, there's a cloud. Or at least a shadow.

I was drifting on a kayak in Kailua Bay on a beautiful, windless holiday when these half-empty thoughts started creeping up on me. Nowhere to go but out; nowhere to come but back, as the pessimist said.

I should have been counting my blessings, but instead all I could think about was:

• Why did they build 16 movie screens at the Ward Entertainment Center if they only plan to show six different movies, none of which is very good? Of the 10 new screens at Windward Mall, four of them were showing "Pearl Harbor."

• We've got 750 miles of coastline, but somehow there's never time to explore them; we end up at the same old beach every weekend, if we're lucky.

• Our cable providers offer hundreds of TV viewing options, but the only shows worth watching are "West Wing," "NYPD Blue," and "Xena, Warrior Princess." Maybe I should get HBO to see what all this "Sopranos" fuss is about. Nah.

• Honolulu has hundreds of parks scattered here and there in every neighborhood. Yet it seems like everyone heads to Ala Moana on a Sunday afternoon.

• We've got miles and miles of bike paths on O'ahu, but the government seems incapable of linking them.

• Kids this summer can take their choice of hundreds of schools, classes, activities, camps, parks and the like, but you can bet that by the Fourth of July they'll all be whining that there's nothing to do.

• There must be thousands of restaurants in Honolulu, but we keep going to the same old places over and over. Then we moan about eateries that came and went before we had a chance to try them.

• We've got thousands of hotel rooms all over the Island, many of them empty on any given night. Still, no one ever offers to use them for our homeless population.

• Our interisland airlines have lots of empty seats on their planes. But the days of cheap stand-by fares are a distant memory.

• The tourists have Waikiki, but the residents ...

"Pssst! Look over there," my wife said. She was on a kayak, too. A sea turtle was floating on the water, drifting across a beautiful reef. The Ko'olau mountains loomed majestically on one side; the Mokulua Islets winked on the other side. I made eye contact with the turtle, and it dived for safety.

As I was saying: Hawai'i is a place of abundance. It overflows with assets and aloha. We're blessed with an abundance of beauty and good people. In many ways, we're the envy of the world.

There are no ifs, ands and yets about it.

Mike Leidemann can be reached at 525-5460 or mleidemann@honoluluadvertiser.com.