Category: Aotearoa

Getting Māori Language Programming Outside of Aotearoa

Since I began study of te reo Māori a bit over a year ago, I’ve enjoyed watching Māori language TV programming. But it hasn’t always been enjoyable. I first used a VPN connection from my phone, but, well, it’s my phone. I was able to accomplish the same thing on my computer, and also used chromecast to stream the programming from my phone to our TV, but that neither satisifying nor elegant. I also experienced buffering and less-than-optimum video quality on our TV. The Easy Ways There are three relatively easy ways to accomplish this. I’ll only provide a brief…

He Roa Te Wā (It’s Been A Long Time)

It’s been nearly four years since I’ve done anything significant with this website. It was hacked a few years ago and it took some effort and a lot of help from the folks at Pacific Pro-Tech Services to get it ressurected. I noticed that most of the graphics are broken and I’m working with them to get them working again. The only significant new post here was my development of a Hawaiian keyboard for Chrome OS, which can be found in the ‘Ōlelo Tech area above. In May 2020 I started a new journey in learning Te Reo Māori (the…

He Ahupuaʻa Ke Mele

I was thrilled to have my paper, entitled “He Ahupuaʻa Ke Mele: The Ahupuaʻa Land Division as a Conceptual Metaphor for Hawaiian Language Composition and Vocal Performance”, published in the journal Ethnomusicology Reivew today. I started it over five and a half years ago in a single 10 hour (or so) writing binge that started at about 2 A.M. on a cold morning in Dunedin, N.Z. After many revisions and much restructuring, and trying to weave western academic theory with a Hawaiian conceptual model (the ahupua‘a) it was finally ready to see the light of day. Mahalo palena ‘ole to…

Hawai‘i, Sweet Home

view original Originally uploaded by keoladonaghy My wife, daughter and I began our sojourn last week Saturday. From Dunedin we flew to Auckland for a connecting flight to Sydney, Australia. Our baggage was considerably overweight, and Air New Zealand happily reduced my checking account by $200 for the privilege of getting all of our things home. It was an omen of more bad things to come. We were also informed that they could not transfer our bags to Qantas for the flight to Sydney – we would have to pick up all 6 bags, haul them to the International terminal,…

Goodbye, Dunedin

Things were quite hectic during our last week in Dunedin. We needed to vacate our flat last Monday and move into a motel for the last few days. Though the Accommodations office had tried to get us a bit more time, they needed to prep the unit for the next tenants so we packed up and moved a few blocks to the Cable Court Motel on Cumberland avenue. It was a very comfortable place with a very nice couple who managed it. We will miss our little flat (at left; we had the left half of the house. While I’ve…

Enjoying Our Last Five Weeks…

Our family met on Friday evening to discuss our various return options, and we decided to catch a flight out of Dunedin on Saturday, June 28. We’ll spend two days in Sydney, Australia, then head back home to Hawai‘i on June 30. June 29 is my birthday and June 30 is Marie’s, so it will be a nice last present for us before we return home and deal with all of the things that we were able to put off until our return. M?lia wanted us to leave on the 27th so that she didn’t have to perform a hula…

Last Week Of Instruction at Otago

One of the more enjoyable aspects of our semester in Dunedin was the opportunity for me to act as a teaching assistant in the Department of Music. The classes here are structured a bit differently than back home. Monday is the big instructional day, and the class instructor, Shelley Brunt, would lecture on the week’s topic. On Tuesday, small groups of students would make presentations on the week’s set reading, and their fellow students assessed their work. On Wednesday, Shelley and I would split the class in half for tutorials – she would take half to a different room, and…

Seasons Change In Dunedin

This is the first real change of seasons that Marie and M?lia have ever experienced. By US mainland and even Dunedin standards it still has been relatively mild. We’ve had some nights drop below 30F, but by and large the weather has been tolerable. It seems that things will be fairly stable for the next two weeks, then a steep drop in temperature around May 25. We found out that the timing of our trip to Queenstown could not have been better – there was a considerable amount of snow there a few days after we left. The one aspect…

Rain, Snow and Hail In Dunedin

We’ve experienced a preview of winter weather in Dunedin today, with some rain, snow flurries as well as hail. Temperatures have been dropping into the 20s at night and not reaching 40 during the day. The hail was about the size of buckshot and was coming down quite heavily at times. Things are supposed to warm up a bit during the week, but this is certainly a sign of things to come.

Dunedin Notes

While we have been here for just under four months, my mind has already begun to think about making plans for our return to Hawai‘i in late-June or early-July. With the turmoil in the airline industry I don’t want to wait too long before making arrangements. I also need to talk to M?lia’s school here and make sure that everything is in place so that her classes will transfer properly to her school back home, though we know already some classes won’t. Time has certainly flown by here, but I still do have a lot of work to do on…

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