About Me

This page is a vestige of the generation of websites from when I was in middle school. Today, not many people have personal websites, much less “about me” pages. Of course not, because we all have profiles on social networks!

Keep in mind that I do not update this page very often, so the information found here is more often than not out of date.

Basics

Name

Jordan

High School

‘Aiea High School. Go Na Ali‘i!

Nickname

Bruce

Favorite Japanese TV Drama

I’ve loved this Japanese drama called “Making It Through” (the Japanese title is Wakaru Seken wa Oni Bakari) since I was little. I blame my grandparents, who used to watch this show religiously. Unfortunately, this long-lasting show ended recently after 10 seasons. I’m going to miss it a lot.

Favorite Radio Programs

I enjoyed the original Prairie Home Companion quite a bit. I’m also a sadly sort of obsessive follower of Newshour and Witness from the BBC World Service.

Favorite Music

Anything and everything, from pop to R&B to rap to rock to bluegrass. I am also a pretty big fan of Ariana Grande’s music.

Hobbies

Writing, reading, coding, gardening, but mostly work

Interests

See my interests page.

Random Fact #1

I consider myself to be an anachronism (defined by Wiktionary as A person or thing which seems to belong to a different time). Evidence of this includes the fact that I sometimes like to listen to old music and have a passion for nostalgia outside of my own lifespan (e.g. I love the 1930s and 1940s–it’s amazing to see how life was during the Depression and World War II. This period really helped defined America today).

Random Fact #2

When I was a senior in high school, I took the AP Comparative Government test from the College Board and I received the highest score in the state of Hawaii! (Well, actually, I was the *only* student in the state of Hawaii who took the test, but who needs details?)

Random Fact #3

My sister used to play golf for HPU and she was a freshman sensation. See also this.

About this Website

The origins of this website go back to the year 2000. One of my friends, Faye, had just put her own website online through (what was then a free-website service) Homestead. I immediately jumped on the bandwagon: not long after Faye put her own site online, I followed and put my own site online through Homestead. The site was untitled and it had everything on it, including: several pages on my own interests (mainly volcanoes and an anime that was popular at the time), a few pages on my friends, and a couple pages about myself.

By early 2001, I realized that the homepage tried to do too much in too little a space, so I basically split the site into three different websites: an anime website, a science page, and a personal website. The science website dealt mainly with Hawaiian geology and biology, and remained online until 2002. The anime site remained online until 2009 when GeoCities was taken offline by Yahoo. Finally, there was the third, personal website, which was launched in May 2001 and was named “Kewlies!” So, of the three websites I built out of the old one, only this site remains.

Where did the name “Kewlies!” come from? In short, I need to give credit to Faye (the same Faye I mentioned above) for coining the word. Back in intermediate school when I was first building this website, the word “kewlies” was her catch phrase. I stole it from her to use on this website. Um, I think she’s still salty at me for stealing her word.

Kewlies! originally had only three major sections. Over time, the site evolved from one focused on my friends to a site that focused on what I was interested in as a person. The website’s gone through many periods of neglect and I’ve never been able to maintain it as well as I’ve wanted to.

The site has jumped from host to host through the years–it jumped from Homestead to Geocities to Topcities, until I finally purchased a real hosting plan back in 2005.

Why does this site have a cloud motif? A couple of reasons. First, I grew up in an ahupua‘a named “Kalauao,” which is Hawaiian for “the multitude of clouds,” which probably referred to many clouds that congregate in the mauka part of the ahupua‘a. Secondly, the clouds in the translation serve as a metaphor for the site’s theme of nostalgia as well. When I was in middle school, my friends and I used to spend a lot of time just staring at the clouds lying on a hill near “C” building. As kids, we generally did not have huge worries on our mind, so we could afford to just sit around staring at clouds during our lunch hour. It’s fun to think back to those simple times.