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 Na Hoku Hanohano Awards, along with Kenneth Makuakane, and he's also up for Hawaiian Album of the Year. To top it off, my composition "Na Hoku 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 July for female high school students of minorities that are under-represented in Engineering. She's been a whiz at science and math from a young age, and was thrilled to get in.

Last week I had all but given up on the possibility of attending UC-Cork to pursue my Ph.d. Today the light shines brightly again for reasons I can't get into here. So both UC-Cork and Otago (New Zealand) are in play again, and I'm going to have to make a final decision pretty soon.