Hawaii: Where Every Day Is Opposite Day

I'm beginning to think that people here actually do make an effort to figure out what the best plan of action is, then they willfully do the exact fucking opposite.

I've been suspicious of this for a while now, but this week I really think I've come across irrefutable proof. Monday, January 10th, was the first day of class for all the schools in the University of Hawaii system. The first week to two weeks of every semester is marked by extremely heavy traffic around campus, impossible parking, and lines with waits of twenty to forty five minutes at pretty much every office on campus. The longest and most annoying lines are for student ID validations, textbook purchases, and financial aid office help.

Those first two things are located in the Campus Center building, which is also the student union. The book store is here, along with the ID/bus pass office, student government, university credit union, a major computer lab, all the meeting and conference rooms, the campus copy center, and most of the eateries available on campus. It's a lot of things in a large building.

UH decided that the weekend before class started was the best time to start massive expansion project on Campus Center. They also decided that walkways are for chumps and completely blocked off the entire center of campus, AKA the place with the heaviest foot traffic and the intersection of every path necessary to get from one building to another. For good measure, they also repaved the second busiest walkway on the other side of campus and blocked it off entirely, too.

So now to get anywhere, we have to make massive detours that don't make any sense, and you have to stalk in circles around Campus Center before you can find a way in. There is only one way in now, by the way.

And just in case no one cared that foot traffic was an ordeal, the city also decided to repave the major road that runs alongside campus and in front of all the dorms on the first two days of school, shutting it down. And because they also hate pedestrians, they made it impossible to cross without walking for two blocks in either direction of the major intersection at which we all normally cross.

Hawaii: You Will Run On Island Time Or We Will Fucking Make You Run On Island Time.