Beachside antics
I somehow turned into an old foge who’s fine looking at the beach from under the shade of a palm tree. I don’t know how it happened but it happened. Dum dum dum… Why? How did it happen??
It’s not like the last time I came to Hawaii. Met a girl from New Caledonia, the next morning I found myself in a cottage on Ewa Beach, awoken by the sounds of clucking roosters.
Now, I’m ere in this $60 hostel, alongside other hostel mates, waiting for my phone to top up. What are we all doing here inside the hostel at 3 pm? Shouldn’t we be out on the beach? In the water? Going hiking? We could be anywhere but here. Yet here we all are, strangers from foreign lands just lounging around inside the hostel on our phones. I would have continued sleeping outside under the palms but for my phone which had no more battery and needed to be charged. So I walked back to the hostel to charge my phone and was very much surprised when I got back and saw the hostel room was 75% occupied (6/8 beds).

I just discovered that I can use my California EBT in Hawaii. Yay! I didn’t expect to but I guess it does make sense since the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is a national program. Still, the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) is also a national program and it’s not like you can use the same healthcare supplier/vendor across states.
So lucky me, I have some savings grace and Hawaii becomes “affordable” now. If you can afford a $230 RT plane ticket and a $60 per night hostel, then it’s not half bad… But who am I kidding, Hawaii is still expensive.
One day I will share how I leaned into FIRE but today I am just an ex-government man eating his lunch and drinking out of his brown paper bag.