The chances of our family relocating to Cork in September increases every day. I’m awaiting answers to a few important questions, but they should be settled soon. One nagging question is what to do with my 16 year old daughter while we’re there. I’ve been told that we would need to pay for her secondary level education while we are there (as I’ll be there on a student visa and the government doesn’t want to pay for her education), but no one seems to know what it will cost us. Bernie suggests that we leave her out of school for…
When It Rain It Pours – And It’s A Good Thing
They say bad news travels in threes, sometimes good news does, too. First, I found out late last week that I’m on the final ballot for two N? H?k? Hanohano Awards, along with Kenneth Makuak?ne, and he’s also up for Hawaiian Album of the Year. To top it off, my composition “N? H?k? Pio ‘Ole” was selected as the theme song for the 30th anniversary celebration for the awards. Over the weekend my daughter found out she was one of thirty students who have been accepted to attend the Curie Academy at Cornell University. It is a week-long program in…
Fulbright mtvU
In my last post I mentioned a new program that I was applying to in order to fund my Ireland studies. Well, Wired Blogs has let the cat out of the bag, it is the Fulbright-mtvU program. The story is a bit late for new application – it requires letters of reference, project proposal and a fairly long online application. Also, one of the submissions, either the online app or accompanying documention, need to be received in IIE in NY by March 26 – this Monday. Fortunately I did not have to start from scratch as I had submitted for…
Obligatory Post
I’ve decided that whether or not I have anything to post, I will make at least one post per month here on Culture Hack. Actually I do have things to talk about… While my Fulbright application for UC-Cork was turned down, it apparently isn’t the end of the road. I learned about a new program with a focus on music which may allow me to pursue studies there, and I am preparing an application for it. I’ve also continued my discussions with the folks at the University of Otago in Aotearoa (New Zealand). They are excited about my tentative research…
No Joy In Fulbrightville
I just received the sad word that my Fulbright application was “non recommended”, which means that it will not be sent to Ireland for consideration by their selection panel. While I’m disappointed I’m not really surprised; the scholarships are highly contested and I’m certain that the applicants that they selected were deserving. Unfortunately they provide no feedback whatsoever, so I have no way of knowing what the strengths and weaknesses of my application were. Not that it matters much. My daughter will be a senior in high school in the 2008-2009 year (the next Fulbright cycle), and we both would…
Hau‘oli Makahiki Hou!
Aloha k?kou and hau‘oli makahiki hou i? k?kou a pau (Happy New Year to all of us). 2006 went by in a blur and I imagine 2007 will go by even faster. We spent the last week of 2006 on Maui visiting my parents, brother and his family, and my wife’s family as well. I was expecting a lot of rest and relaxation but it was more of a working vacation. I did get to meet up with many old friends, colleagues and former collaborators, and planted seeds for a number of new musical projects. Of course, Kenneth already has…
Great Balls of Fire!
I really need to get my act together and update this site on a more regular basis. It seems I alternate bursts of activity between here and Nahenahe.net, and Nahenahe has been receiving all of the love recently. I have also spent a lot of time helping my friend and songwriting partner Kenneth Makuak?ne get his website launched in anticipation of his upcoming CD release, which will feature anywhere from 10-15 of our joint compositions, in addition to a few that he has written himself or with others. We’ll be performing together (or more accurately, I’ll be backing him up…
Signs, signs, everywhere signs.
If this had happened tomorrow (St. Patrick’s Day), I probably would have fallen flat on my face… One of our Hawaiian Studies majors came into our office with a young part-Hawaiian woman, perhaps 20 years old. He introduced us, and she explained that she had lived in Cork off and on from when she was eight until she was about 16. Apparently her father is from Cork and she has many relatives still there. We talked about our experiences there, and her eyes grew large when I explained that I was considering pursuing a Ph.d. at either UC-Cork or QUB.…
Ulster Irish study group at Yahoo Groups.
Go raibh míle maith agat a Chionaodh! While I’ve been working through Learning Irish with the gang on the Cois Fhairrge group, I didn’t realize that a similar group had just started working on Ulster Irish. As it seems that Queen’s University-Belfast is my most likely destination for Ph.d. work if I do indeed make it to Ireland next year, working on the Ulster dialect makes sense. Someone in the group located this great resource on the Cumman na Gaeilge site. The audio there sounds much more like the Donegal Irish I heard at Oideas Gael, though there still seem…
Signs pointing to Belfast?
I don’t consider myself a particularly superstitious person, but I do look for signs in my life that sometimes help guide me in one direction or another when making decisions. Of course I don’t feel compelled to take a particular path, but I have noticed that when I see these signs and ignore them, I later wish that I had paid them more attention. I’m faced with the decision of choosing the school that I will attend to pursue a Ph.d., and have made a commitment make a choice by the end of this semester. As I have mentioned (more…