{"id":171,"date":"2009-02-16T20:27:07","date_gmt":"2009-02-17T03:27:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ajllewellyn.com\/site\/2009\/02\/16\/171\/"},"modified":"2009-02-16T20:27:07","modified_gmt":"2009-02-17T03:27:07","slug":"the-awa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ajllewellyn.com\/site\/2009\/02\/16\/171\/","title":{"rendered":"The ‘Awa"},"content":{"rendered":"

\nCurrent mood:\u00a0\u00a0giddy
\nCategory:<\/strong> Life<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\nAnyone who reads my books will tell you about my painstaking attention to detail since my stories are all set in the Hawaiian Islands. I like to introduce ancient lore as well as current places for couples to eat, drink and be er\u2026merry (I am including the hot sex here).
\nAnyway, an\u00a0interesting thing happened to me in Honolulu yesterday. I have discovered Kava or as the locals call it, \u2018Awa and in all the research I have done, the ancient Hawaiians loved to sip this stuff. Enough of it makes you quite euphoric\u2026well\u2026two bowls is supposed to be the bomb.
\nWhat they should really tell you is two bowls will get you bombed<\/em>. My mate Tony, his lover Antonio, my dad, his girlfriend and I decided to whizz by my new discovery, The Cove,\u00a0and partake before our Valentine\u2019s Day celebration last night.
\nI don\u2019t know why we were all so giddy, but I have noticed my friends and family have a tendency to pooh-pooh my new discoveries. Nobody believed me about the \u2018Awa so we drove down to Diamond Head and we each bought a bowlful.
\nNow, I was about to celebrate Valentine\u2019s Day\u2026me and two couples. Of course\u00a0l welcomed the idea of being euphoric and otherwise sublimely\u2026snuckered<\/em>\u2026since my own partner is across the country. I just didn\u2019t dig the idea they all thought I was full of shit.
\nBut I digress.
\nWe crammed into the place that caters to a very hippyish clientele who all looked mighty jolly. Lord knows how many pints of the stuff they all sucked down\u2026but judging by the weird art on the walls and the pseudo fashionable music they were listening to\u2026they\u2019d imbibed buckets of the stuff.
\nOur cute waitress served up \u2018Awa in coconut shell bowls. Like I had told my posse, it tastes like dirt and is very very cold. It is not a drink to\u00a0be savored. The Cove is only one of two places on the entire island that serves \u2018Awa and we all tried to be properly awed by the occasion.
\nI\u00a0felt the same way I did the other day when I tried one\u2026a tang on the back of the throat, numb lips\u2026followed by\u2026nothing.
\nWe all took our waitress\u2019s advice and ordered a second bowl each. She advised drinking it quickly. We chugged down a second bowl and left the place arguing.
\nWe drove to our dinner in Waikiki at the glorious House Without a Key at the fabulous Halekulani where the arguments continued. You\u2019re not supposed to drink on top of \u2018Awa\u2026it can apparently make you sick. Since I was the designated driver, I stuck to water, but the men in my family are damned showoffs. They ordered drinks and ten minutes into our night on the town\u2026complete inertia hit us all.
\nI don\u2019t remember the music or the show\u2026well\u2026embarrassing moments I do recall. I don\u2019t know who ordered pasta and fish for everyone or more bread and crackers\u2026but I remember seeing Tony crawling on his knees to pinch an extra basket of home-baked potato chips from the bus boys\u2019 station. Antonio and I sang a pretty embarrassing version of Tiny Bubbles – whilst Greek dancing. I was hammered, but good.
\nAn \u2018Awa high is not like booze or pot (yes of course I\u2019ve bloody tried it). You feel completely relaxed and at peace. You love everybody and everything tastes so good\u2026damn those missionaries for robbing ordinary folk of a bloody good time!
\nIt seemed to me since I didn\u2019t drink alcohol and I was the only one still awake that I should still be the designated driver. I was feeling very mellow after dinner and a couple of cups of coffee. We all remarked \u2018Awa was excellent\u2026then we got into the car.\u00a0
\nHey, you ever seen the episode of I Love Lucy<\/em> – one of the \u2018on the way to Hollywood\u2019 episodes – where she takes the wheel as Ricky, Ethel and Fred snooze and she drives for hours, winding up in the same spot?
\nI am here to tell you it is possible. Oh, yes, I drove away from the hotel at 8.30 and somehow managed to arrive back there at 10.02pm!
\nNobody could believe it. Least of all me. I know this evening will go down in our personal family history as a classic A.J. escapade\u00a0and will not make me look very good in years to come, but I look at it this way. I just got a slice of invaluable research that will go into my next book. Nothing I experience goes to waste\u2026it just breaks my heart that I will have to wait until I return to Hawaii to try my next bowl of \u2018Awa\u2026
\nAloha oe,
\nA.J.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n\n\n
\n\n\n
<\/a><\/td>\nCurrently\u00a0listening:
\nDon Ho – Greatest Hits<\/font><\/strong><\/a>
\nBy\u00a0Don Ho
\nRelease date:\u00a01990-10-25<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Current mood:\u00a0\u00a0giddy Category: Life Anyone who reads my books will tell you about my painstaking attention to detail since my stories are all set in the Hawaiian Islands. I like to introduce ancient lore as well as current places for couples to eat, drink and be er\u2026merry (I am including the hot sex here). Anyway, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ajllewellyn.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ajllewellyn.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ajllewellyn.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ajllewellyn.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ajllewellyn.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=171"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ajllewellyn.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ajllewellyn.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ajllewellyn.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ajllewellyn.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}