On Tuesday morning, we had a chance to meet with Alice Inoue who spoke to us a bit on dealing with every day “noise” and how it affects us in our daily lives.  Learning to filter what will actually be beneficial to you is one of the most important things someone can learn to do.  Adjusting your outlook and perspective are keys to maintaining balance and understanding.  Anyway, to keep this short and sweet, one of the things that stood out to me was the fact that we are bombarded every day with five times more negativity than we are with anything positive or reaffirming. 

I found that a bit disturbing although when taking a step back and looking at it, I discovered that to be absolutely correct.  And, not only are we hammered with this every day, we’re the ones who are sometimes dropping the hammer!  So, when one of our long time regulars and I were talking he paid us one of the greatest compliments we could get when he said that he always enjoys coming here because of the great food and service.  He can always count on us to take care of him and his guests.  At the end of our conversation, I walked away from that table with my head held a little bit higher, a bit more of a bounce in my step and a different outlook on how tonight’s service was going.  It was the perfect reinforcement to what I had learned earlier that day.

- Kerry Ichimasa, General Manager at Alan Wong's Honolulu