BYTE MARKS
Web site's got insight on typhoons
By Burt Lum
A friend and I were having a chat when he told me how the surf in southern Taiwan was picking up. To get the aerial view, he suggested checking out typhoon2000.com.
Sure enough, Duggar was right. It showed two western Pacific typhoons, Koni and Imbudo, barreling down on the Philippines.
Obviously, all that ocean turbulence was going to kick up some big surf and that meant business for Duggar.
Fans of KTUH-FM, circa mid-1980s, might recall a show called Monday Night Live. The show is still running, but back then the team of Duggar and Dave Tong would mike up local musicians and broadcast live music from the studio.
I pretty much lost track of Duggar in the '90s. But in May 2000 I was in a southern town near Kenting in Taiwan, when I discovered he was working at one of the local seaside resorts.
Luckily, the Internet extends to the ends of the Earth, and Duggar's store in Kenting, called "Duggar Hawaii," is at one of those remote outposts. His Web site is a blast at hawaiithings.com.
Duggar is not one for words. He's a picture kind of guy and has almost 100 megs of pictures of his store and customers. The store is a throwback to the 1950s-style tiki bar, a style that has pretty much gone extinct here in Hawai'i. The lampshades, tiki dolls, surf memorabilia, bumper stickers, feather helmets and clothes are all classic.
Navigating the site is not intuitive, but the photos are captivating enough for you to endure the discovery process. The photos of the Paiwan village and Duggar's Vanominium are a must see.
As the story goes, Kenting is about the same latitude as Kaua'i. When Hurricane Iniki hit on Sept. 11, 1992, Duggar was on Kaua'i at the Westin Kaua'i in Lihu'e.
Iniki threw everyone's lives in to the wind, so to speak, and in Duggar's case blew him all the way to Taiwan.
I'm sure he would love to hear from friends in Hawai'i. If you're lucky, he might show you his store Web cam. This guy is an entrepreneurial delight. ;-)
Burt Lum is one click away at www.brouhaha.net.
