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To the defense of Hawaii as business venue
Soon we’ll see how good a defense secretary Chuck Hagel really is: Can he defend Hawaii as a choice for an international conference?
The Aloha State has felt a bit wounded lately, with its business-venue cred being dissed, most recently by the National Conference on Public Employee Retirement Systems. A bunch of the pension administrators bailed out on a Hawaii meeting, fearing the perception that they were taking a junket on the taxpayers’ dime.
Now Hagel rides to the rescue, inviting the 10 defense ministers from member countries in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations to convene in Hawaii next year. We know Hawaii was picked on the merits — and hope that the glow from APEC in 2011 hasn’t worn off.
There were plenty of pigs, yesterday
A phrase that elicited laughter in the legendary surfing movie “Endless Summer” was when featured surfers Robert August and Mike Hynson were in Australia and virtually every surfer they ran into there would say, “You should have been here yesterday.”
That came to mind while reading New York Times writer Lawrence Downes’ article about pig hunting on Oahu that appeared in Wednesday’s Star-Advertiser. Downes, originally from Hawaii, spent a day with some veteran local pig hunters seeking their quarry yet came up empty-handed.
“I wish you had been here last week,” his guide Sonny Thater said. In other words, feral pigs are all over Oahu, unless you want to actually find one. As Thater also said of the pigs, “They’re very well educated.”