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Ya gotta’ love Samoan semantics: Not too long ago a Samoan friend asked me, ua vali ea lou ulu? which more literally translated means, “do you paint your head?” The Samoan word, vali, however, can also mean makeup or dye — as in hair dye — so in a kinda’ Samoan way she was really asking me if I dyed my hair.

I have to admit, her question made me think of those cheesy TV commercials where the guy spray-paints a balding head to make it look like a “fuller, thicker head of hair.”

Granted, these days my hair is pretty much gray around the temples, and if someone were to really dig through it they would find a lot more silver up there…but mostly my hair appears brown — EXCEPT when I put some mousse or gel on it, in which case it pretty much appears dark brunette. And the kind of mousse I use keeps it that way most of the time. Hence the question, I guess.

But turn-around is fair play, so I answered her: Leai, na’o le ga’o lava. “No it’s really only ga’o,” the number-one definition of the last Samoan word meaning “lard” or “fat”…

…and since we were both of an age, referring to the good old days when guys used to use greasy pomade that came in jars and tubes, giving rise to the term “greaser” — someone who usually over-oiled his hair and combed it in the flamboyant styles of the day. It also made me think of the can my mom used to keep on the stove where she poured off hot grease and made her own lard when I was a kid. But I digress.

Plenty of guys used to rub pomade into their hair when I was growing up, but I never really cared for it; and while ordering ga’o in a Samoan store back in my missionary days in the mid-60s would get you some cooking lard, even the smallest country stores there also almost always carried fagu ga’o or small glass jars of sweet-smelling, greasy pomade.

Now days by far, I prefer my Paul Mitchell medium-hold coconut-scented mousse in a spray can…even if it does make some people wonder if I “paint my head.”

The Temple of Heaven was one of the places in Beijing, China, I really liked . . . probably because in addition to lots of shady green places, there were people throughout the large park-like compound engaged in various cultural arts — some in which anyone could participate.

The Tongans welcome the young couple
into their lives and community

The Polynesian Cultural Center, where I have worked off-and-on in various student, full-time and freelance capacities for the past 41 years, premiered its latest night show — Hä: Breath of Life — on August 14, 2009. During those years I’ve seen almost all of the previous productions, and in a word, I think the new show is fantastic. (more…)

After attending the Polynesian Cultural Center’s Te Manahua 2009 festival of kapa haka or traditional Maori songs and dances (as examplified by Jerusha Wallace Magalei, pictured at right) on August 8 in Laie, Hawaii, it got me thinking of New Zealand — a great place.

So, I started going through some of my old photos and journal entries, and thought you might enjoy a few of them…not in any order, just kind of as a picture-and-thought occurred to me: (more…)

[NOTE: I mentioned in an earlier posting that my China stories were published earlier, based on my participation in a 2006 BYU-Hawaii Study Abroad trip that spent four weeks in Shanghai and one in the Beijing area. In Shanghai our group of 11 students, accompanied by Drs. Chad Compton, David and Yi-Fen Beus and members of their families,  stayed at the six-story Fudan University Guesthouse [picturted at right], which is located next door to the international student language center. The guest house is essentially an old hotel (think of rooms like the Laie Inn, but perhaps not quite that nice), and I thought you might be interested in more about our lifestyle there]: (more…)