The Globetrotting Geek

Back to Basics

August 28, 2014

Friday was hectic and exhausting. I woke up at 3AM from jetlagged and tossed and turned, unable to get back to sleep. First order was getting my ‘PennCard’, ID and access card that I needed to get in anywhere. There I ran into an old friend (what would soon be a common occurrence), Amanda Bell, who I had met in my first week as an exchange student. From there I walked out to West Philadelphia to the ‘Cricket Wireless’ store for a new phone a SIM card. Part way along my walk I began to realize that the neighborhood I was walking into perhaps wasn’t ideal in terms of safety, but I stayed cheery and was in and out of there in almost no time.

International Student check-in was a horribly boring repeat experience of what I had already gone through twice before on my prior visas. No new information there. Introduced myself to a few other international students but the only real value there was in the tea.

Rehearsal took a good chunk of the afternoon, and what it didn’t was consumed by a long afternoon nap.

Shabbat dinner at Hillel was lovely, lots of old faces and some new ones too. However, I didn’t manage to stay particularly long before I was tired out and walked slowly back to my room in Harrison.

Wednesday/Thursday – Day 247/248

April 10, 2013

Today started in the usual manner, classes that were unremarkable for the most part, the usual stresses of work etc. However, in the afternoon an exciting gig was planned

We were meant to be performing for the resignation party of the CEO of a Fortune 500 Company, UGI Energy, and being paid a hefty eight thousand dollars for the privilege. Supplementary to that, we were being offered spots and the party and our travel covered.

Unfortunately for all us lay-clubbers, this turned out to be a clever April Fool’s joke perpetrated on us (and even the business manager!) by the President Scott Ventre. However, as I will not detail here, this had far reaching repercussions. One must be careful about taking pranks too far…

Thursday was meant to be a little more relaxing but my day was packed full again! In the morning I proctored the CIS-121 midterm on which my students did pretty well. I also watched a pre-recorded physics lecture on electrodynamics and the derivation of optics from first principles. Fascinating stuff.

The afternoon was packed full with the usual work, but mostly trying to get as much of my group project work done as possible, before my study for the Physics midterm, upcoming on the next Tuesday.

Dinner post-hillel dinner, with the Glee Club was at Zach Costa’s (our Publicity Manager) family’s restaurant; The Blind Pig! Famous for their Thanksgiving Balls, they served pub style foods that were greatly enjoyed by the PGC. I for one, had a delicious cider that was on tap. However, dinner was slightly marred by internal politics within the PGC, that although eventually came to nothing, were worrying for a short time.

I got back far too late, and had far too much work to get done, but midterm grading was to start early the next day and so I took a relatively early night.

Friday – Day 242

March 31, 2013

Passover has made my posting a little sporadic in the past few days, but I’ll do my best to keep it up. Friday I got up late, worked in my room for a while and then headed to Hillel for a good few hours to eat as large a lunch as I could manage. It didn’t keep me very full, as I kept eyeing food all afternoon.

After that I went to my office, coded for a bit, sat thinking for a little. Research is difficult. At 3PM I headed to my TA meeting, where Val Tannen decided to announce my news to all the TAs, embarrassing me greatly, though I had to give him a little leeway given his status as my referee. TA training was mostly unexciting, however I did compose a neat little one liner (plus variable instantiation outside the function) for recursive calculation of fibbonacci numbers with memorization. Hooray for ternary statements!

Made it to shul on time tonight and had a pleasant dinner with the usual crew. After dinner the Shabbatones and the Penn Bloomers were performing. The Bloomers were surprisingly excellent, and their skits as an all female musical comedy troupe were actually funny enough to laugh out loud!

After the performances, I chilled with Ariella, Hannah Dardashti Madeline Brown and Alexis Block for a number of hours, telling stories from my travels! Made it to bed well past midnight.