Iokwe, Aloha, and Welcome

 

 

Hello, my name is Kekai Palafox and this is my personal webpage, created for Music 240: Beginning Music and Computers. On this page you will find my projects for MUS 240, as well as some information about myself and my interests/hobbies.

About Myself

            My name is Kekai Palafox and I am in my junior year here at the University of Hawaii at Manoa working towards a major in Biology, a minor in business, and possibly a minor in music as well. I have been here for the past two and a half years kind of just wandering with no real direction, but this year I think I’ve finally figured out what I want to do for the rest of my educational career. Growing up I was influenced by several cultures and as a result I have many interests, which is probably the reason I took so long to choose a major (I just decided to switch from a business major to a biology major this past summer).

            I was born at the UCLA hospital in Los Angeles California on April 30, 1984. However, California is not where my home was. When I was born my father and mother (Neal and Janis Palafox) had been living in the Marshall Islands for three years. The Marshall Islands are a beautiful atoll-island nation located in Micronesia in the south pacific. You may have heard of these islands before, they were frequently in the news during the 1950’s and 60’s as they were used as a test center for the United States Nuclear Weapons Testing Program. After I was born my parents and I lived with my maternal grandparents for about three or four months and then returned to the island of Majuro, the capital of the Marshall Islands. It was only twenty-two months later that my family and I would repeat our journey to California for the arrival of my brother Kele (who is also in MUS 240). Once again, we stayed in Califonria for several months with my grandparents, and then we returned home. In 1990, my sister Kahoku arrived, however we did not go up to California this time for the birth. Instead, my sister was born at the hospital in Majuro, which to this date still has very poor facilities, but since my father was a doctor there he was able to frequently check in on my mother and sister to make sure everything was moving along smoothly. My family and I continued to live in the Marshall Islands until the summer of 1992 when we moved to Baltimore, Maryland where my father attended the John Hopkins School of Public Health for his masters in public health. We lived there for a year and then drove from Baltimore to Los Angeles over the summer. While in California we stayed with several of our relatives on both sides of the family and then at the very end of the summer we moved to Oahu.

            Oahu has always been a second home for me. My father was born and raised mostly on Oahu, and almost all of his family members still live here. While I was growing up in Majuro, my family and I would come to Oahu at least two or three times a year for about a month or more at a time to visit my relatives. When we moved back to Oahu in 1993, we went to live with our paternal grandparents in Aina Haina, and attended Wailupe Valley Elementary. After a year we moved to Maunawili on the windward side and attended Maunawili Elementary. After sixth grade I attended Kailua intermediate through eigth grade and then attended Maryknoll High School for all four years of my highschool education. After graduating I was accepted to the University of Hawaii here at Manoa, and have been here ever since.  

 

 

 

 

Projects

Project 1: Theme and Variations

Frere Jacques

Project 2: Sound Composition

Sixty Seconds of Noise

Project 3: Max/MSP Composition

Piece

 

 

Interests

 

Photography

Out of all of my interests, this is the one hobby that I have not had any instruction on. I'm not even gifted at taking photos, but I enjoy trying to take well thought out photos, even though they usually come out looking very elementary.

I have no professional equipment, just a Canon Powershot s400 that takes photos at a relatively good quality. If you are interested in buying a digital camera, I would recommend getting a Canon, I've found that they work very well. You can visit the Canon homepage by clicking here.

 

Music

I like all kinds of music and have been heavily influenced by different types of traditional, classical, and contemporary styles of music as I moved around growing up. Today, I listen to all different genres of music, but have found that I sometimes prefer some of the music I listened to when I was younger. However, it can be difficult trying to find that music since a lot of the casettes and cd's that the songs were on are now out of print. However, I have had a great deal of success finding a lot of them at Amazon.com and Ebay. If you ever have a hard time finding music you are looking for, I would recommend visiting these two sites, both have very large selections.

 

Motorcycles

One of my favorite things to do is cruise on a bike. It's really relaxing, and at the same time it keeps you on your toes more than driving does because of the amount of control you have over the bikes' movment. My brother, father, and I all ride motorcycles. My father has two harleys, and my brother and I have Yamaha R1's. The Yamaha R1 is a really smooth riding bike, and if you are interested in bikes at all, check out Yamaha's motor website by clicking here.

 

Diving

Growing up in the Marshall Islands, I had a lot of diving experiences. We lived right on the lagoon's edge and we went swimming every day. We would also occaisonally accompany my father and his friends on their diving outings. In the Marshall Islands, diving is a very important part of the culture. In pre-contact with western civilization times, diving was the main source of food in the Marshall Islands and continues to be a very important source of subsistence today. Sadly, much of the fish supply is being diminished due to overfishing by large commercial ships that frequently come to the islands.
Here in Hawaii, I have also had many experiences with diving, mostly at night. It is not just for sport, we usually eat all of the fish we catch, and if we don't we give it to our friends who are always happy to have fish. Diving also gives me an opportunity to buy a disposable underwater camera and take more amateur pictures, which I'm sure would come out looking great if they were done by a trained photographer.
I have only been skin diving up to this point in time, however, I plan to get my diving liscence for diving with equipment before the summer. You can visit a nice website for diving equipment here.

 

Snowboarding

Snowboarding is my favorite sport. In fact it is probably my favorite physical activity. After I went snowboarding for my first time I was hooked. It's a lot of fun, so if you ever get the chance to go, take it. Over winterbreak my father, brother, and I drove from Santa Ana in Orange county to Lake Tahoe for a snowboarding trip. It was one of the best trips I have ever been on. While in Tahoe, we spent most our time snowboarding at the Heavenly Ski and Lodge Resort, which you can visit online here. Heavenly is a very large and beautiful ski resort, and I would definitley recommend it as a snowboarding destination.