Mahalo Rudi, for all your support to the Honolulu Festival

Rodolfo "Rudi" Ocampo has been video taping the Honolulu Festival for the past three years. Videography is his hobby...his passion! Rudi started to videograph Honolulu's cultural events for Hawai'i's 'Olelo Television about five years ago. He does it for free. The television network teaches those who are interested in videography. 'Olelo also lends their equipment to those who have taken their courses.

Rudi at Filipino Fiesta

Rudi has become quite famous and gets calls from community event organizers to tape their festivals that usually happen on the weekends. That is perfect for Rudi because during the week he is a fulltime employee for The Bus.

Rudi and I keep in touch during the year. He informs me when 'Olelo will be televising footage of the Honolulu Festival. I realized that I have been working with him for three years and I don't even know anything about him. So I emailed him to get together for lunch. He sent me a "cryptic" message back saying that he works Monday through Friday from mid morning to the afternoon and has no lunch breaks, that he's out in the field. I wondered what kind of work does not allow any lunch breaks. Well, it turns out that Rudi has been working for The Bus for over 20 years as a system analyst. Okay, so what is that? Basically, Rudi rides the bus as a passenger and tallies the number of people that get on and off the bus on a specific route. These numbers are analyzed to make the bus system better. I wonder if our mayor uses these studies to analyze the future of our rail system.

Rudi was born in San Carlos, Pangasinan, in the Philippines. The former Consulate General from the Philipiines to Hawaii, Mr. Ariel Abadilla, is his classmate from Ateneo de Manila University. That's pretty neat. His background is in computers. He has worked in Saudi Arabia which I thought was interesting. His love of running marathons has taken him to many corners of the world. He settled in Hawai'i over 20 years ago because he loves the climate here.

So I asked Rudi what he thinks of the Honolulu Festival. Rudi loves the variety of the performances and cultures that Honolulu Festival offers. He loves to meet the performing groups and get to know them, especially those that keep coming back. He gets many requests from them to tape their performances. He then edits it and sends them copies for a nominal fee (just the cost of the tape). Rudi received an award from 'Olelo Community Television for his work that he did for the Honolulu Festival in 2007. Great job!

Rudi, on behalf of the Honolulu Festival, thank you for all your time and hard work. We hope that "Papu" ("patriarch" in Filipino) will continue to support this annual event. Salamat po!

By the way, we went to eat nabe at Ichiriki, right on Piikoi across from Payless Shoes. I know, why would we eat Japanese nabe when it's so hot outside? Well, Rudi was feeling a bit run down so the hot pot was perfect. The restaurant is beautifully decorated in a modern Japanese style and it is air conditioned. Their lunch menu is really reasonable and delicious. Healthy too with lost of veggies. We chose the Ichiriki and pirikara broth. We had tsukune, chicken, and all sorts of vegetables.I should have taken more pictures of the food as we slowly cooked our meals by ourselves but I got carried away talking and eating. Sorry about that. We shared the ujikintoki for dessert, a mountain of finely shaved ice soaked with bitter green tea, topped with azuki beans and a blanket of condensed milk, and dotted with mochi balls. Yummy! If you have never been to Ichiriki...gotta go. Aloha.