hawaii

anybody here live in hawaii? I need some answers, because it seems like a sick place to live

how expensive are houses?
how bad are the bugs?
what are laws on weed? recreational and medical, or just medical?
is honolulu nice?
what other big cities are there?
good schools(specifically unis)?
in general, is it nice to live there as far as irl stuff goes?
how pretty is the water, and how much would a house near the shore cost you think?

 

@Kono

 

my dad lived in hawaii for awhile before he did the whole dad thing (kinda wish he/we wouldve stayed there but oh well)

very nice, wouldnt recommend a house directly close to water for flooding reasons

 

thank you, I'm planning on getting an apartment if I do move there

 

ya know, when you posted this I literally thought "maybe I should lurk in IJAH for a bit" but didn't get around til today.

Never looked but renting an apartment can get up to 1.5k a month. I hear a house gets up to 1.5mil but it depends where you're looking for. Honolulu can get around 800k-1.3mil. Hawaii Kai gets more expensive than that. Ewa Beach is cheaper than Honolulu. Ewa and Waipahu are a bit less developed than Honolulu. In my opinion, just go for an apartment. They're not bad. There are some condos in the high-end business district (Ala Moana, Ward) around 1 mil but the views are nice.

If you have O-type blood, mosquitos are a pain in the ass. Roaches are a pest and get pretty big; nothing a slipper or shoe won't fix. Most pesticides for ant problems fix themselves in the city. In the more suburban areas, fire ants can get pretty nasty. Other than that all bugs are barely noticeable. We're not Australia.

Medical only. You get fined for possession of it. You didn't hear it from me but if you know a guy, it's not hard to come by apparently. I don't do it by the way.

Lived here my entire life. It's nice. It's just really expensive. People here are nice. They get nicer if they start getting to know you. I cover some about the politics later on.

So every area on Oahu is under the city and county of Honolulu. Off the top of my head some big areas are Waipahu, Aiea, Hawaii Kai, and Kaimuki. Honolulu's just one big city with smaller areas in it. Go in one direction and you'll probably find something then that something connects to another something. Other than those areas there's North Shore (very popular surfing spot), which is far away from the main settlements, and Kailua.
Besides that on the Big Island, Hilo's pretty nice and the settlements on Maui and Molokai aren't bad either if you're looking for a more suburban lifestyle.

I'm pursuing my master's at University of Hawaii at Manoa. Most of the colleges fall under the UH system. Besides that there's Brigham Young (Mormon school) in North Shore, HPU (expensive ass school), and Chaminade (meh). I went to UH Manoa cause residential tuition's cheap. It really depends what you're planning to study. UH Manoa has a really good business program. If you want to get into research, there's little competition from your peers (not a lot of undergrads go for research, just grads really) and we output a lot of research on renewables and natural sciences (geothermal, hydro, electrophysics). The lab I work for designs food preservation systems.

Yes but it's expensive as hell. I don't like getting into politics but our governor hasn't really been doing the best in terms of COVID response. The mayor isn't doing much either. They've been prioritizing getting tourists here over their own people. Sure tourism is our main industry but there's been some hypocrisy in getting tourists to beaches while we haven't been able to see our families and friends. We're issued citations for going to beaches while tourists are able to roam freely without masks. Thankfully we elected a better mayor.
The best thing in my opinion is the food. If you like Mexican food, we don't have that here. I really like Filipino, Chinese, and Japanese food which we have too many restaurants for. We also have our own fusion cuisine based off old plantation culture.

The water is very pretty. I hear when people come here they just gawk at the sunsets over the water. It got old for me. If you're planning to get a house near shore, I'd have like 3 mil saved up before I even think of doing that.

 

thank you so much, much love