Some nights ago I was sitting on the roof of my parents apartment building down in Waikiki, on Mother’s day.  Dad was at the grill, grilling up the Chicken Satay skewers that I had prepared the day before and the vegetables that he prepared just before coming up to the roof (clearly I would have no part in preparing vegetables). I was sitting at the table, enjoying the sunset with mom, Grandpa and Carol.  Grandpa and I were talking about my upcoming travels, and he asked me why he had not seen any blogs of mine recently.

My grandfather doesn’t have a computer, so usually my father prints out any posts I write that he thinks my grandfather will particularly enjoy.  Clearly there have been none of those recently.  So he asked me if I’d be blogging on the road for the next two months.  I told him I wasn’t sure, but that I could promise five posts before I left. I only wrote one.  I have failed him so.  At his age, I’m sure he is used to broken promises (I know at only about a quarter of his years into my life I certainly am). That does not make it easier, so hopefully I can make it up to him somehow.

I’m pretty sure my grandfathers inquiry was intended to encourage me to write some posts so that he could look forward to reading some tales of my adventures.  I’m not sure the adventures I plan on getting into are the adventures that my grandfather would enjoy reading about though.  This excursion on the mainland isn’t so much about indulging my inner Odysseus, but more about reminding myself that there is a world out here.  That there are people out here. That despite my great efforts to remove myself from the bulk of this world, I still love much of it. That despite my great efforts to remove myself from much of the people in it, I still love many of them. That despite how logic-bound I am at times, how much of my life appears to be governed by to-do lists and calculated risks, despite how borg-inspired the title of this post is (yes I did catch the new Star Trek flick today), that I am in fact human after all.

My dad went on a trip to Japan a few months back and being the nice father that he is, he brought me a few gifts.  He knows better then to get his OCD-zen-purging son anything that can’t be consumed, used up, or resold.  One of his present sat dormant for quite some time (since I already had several comparable items already open), but now that I’ve used a few of them up, it’s ready to bring out the big guns.

Sunkiller - Daily Comfort - Kiss Me

The Japanese are notorious for using English in their own creative and ever-confusing way. It is something I have always appreciated, on a superficial level as a native speaker of the language, and on a deeper level as a child who once called their islands home.  I’ve even had the joy of spreading their Engrish gosper to fellow appreciators via importing shirts with botched English on them to sell to friends and members of the online forums I frequent.

With that said, my father couldn’t pass up the opportunity to present me with this bottle of protective lotion.  Not only is it called ‘Sunkiller’ (I think we may want to leave the sun alive for a while my friends from Nippon, as all of life relies on it dearly), but the words ‘Daily Comfort’ are scrawled within the confines of the sun icon (the same sun that I will be killing with the lotion?  Something about the juxtaposition of confining comfort with the soon-to-be-doomed shape of the sun seems uniquely Japanese). As if that wasn’t enough to tickle my fancy, it’s SPF 27 (way to round to the nearest 27!).  Not 25, not the more commonly seen neighbor known as 30, but 27. Also, ‘Kiss Me’, for I am the killer of Suns.