I'm not disparaging the Midwest, I am defending them (and Hawaii). You are the one complaining about how things are. "Hawaii is not at all different, except in the minds of the locals" - in other words except in the minds of 80 percent of the population, so in other words reality? As for what they thought of me at SDSU, they thought I was uptight and not really into partying, fighting, or sleeping around, all of which I saw in the span of 24 hours at SDSU.
If your accomplishments spoke for themselves you would not have to write stuff like "f I could only give up being successful, having a nice place to live and enjoying all that Waikiki has to offer to those with money to spend I would be assimilated." Frankly, the tooting of your own horn probably illustrates the biggest difference between people that grew up here and those that did not. I would never move to NYC and presume to tell the people already there how they should approach life, always baffles me why people think its ok here.