Shabbat – Day 250
April 12, 2013
The next day I arose bright and early to the warm sounds of Pink Floyd’s stunning album, “The Dark Side of the Moon” as Dan had seen fit to wake us up with is beautiful valve amplified stereo system. I was a little jealous. From there, the rest of the day was divided between singing and walking for me. First up was a full club rehearsal at some studio in midtown.
Rehearsal was a subset of club, joined by a subset of the alums, one of whom was from the Penn Class of ’70! The alums were split 50:50 between those who had continued singing after graduation and those for whom it had ceased to become a meaningful part of their lives. Regardless, all still retained their fine voices and musicality and I am proud to say that our sound was truly excellent.
Following a few hours of rehearsal, I, the older gentleman and Shohom Basuthakur (the vice-president of PGC) walked down to our performance venue. The club had arranged for us to sing inside the grand echoing chambers of the German Evangelical Church on 28th street, only an hours walk away!
The concert was surprising full, and a certain clubber even convinced a guy he message over ‘grindr’ to come see us. One highlights of the show in my opinion were Franz Biebl’s Ave Maria, in which a smaller counter choir sang down from the pews located upstairs, while I and the larger choir sang below. The resonance of the final chord was truly majestic and I only wish I had a recording of it! The other highlight for me was “The Brotherhood of Man” complete with choreography in the church.
Following our performance, Shabbat was out, so the two Dans, Kirk, and I all headed back to his apartment. Him for another exciting evening with friends and us for a night at Reuven’s (also known as ‘Jewbacca’ or ‘Taco’), an orthodox Jewish PGC alum who traditionally hosted fantastic after parties replete with top class mashke (alcohol). I had a very interesting chat with him about how he managed to be ‘frum’ (religious) at the same time as travelling with the club and partaking in all the activities. One thing he mentioned that was of interest to me, was how back in his day, the religious community at Penn was very much insular and un-accepting of diversity. I proudly told him how things had changed and it somewhat seemed to set his mind at ease.
I left the party with one very drunk Clubber in tow, shipping him back to the apartment before flouncing down on the couch for another night at the Pincus Emporium.
Monday/Tuesday – Day 231/232
March 21, 2013
I’m really noticing now how long I’ve been away now, starting to miss home quite a lot. The prospect of staying longer for an internship while still appealing has lost a little of the shine and I’m investigating ways to come home at least for a little before starting something of that nature. Physics tutorial was cancelled today due to our professor being on travel, thus I slept in a little later. Almost decided not to go to Networking but thought it might be wise given the upcoming release of project 2. Turned out it wasn’t really worth my time, slept through most of it.
Then it was back to my room for another interview with a big tech company. I’m slowly getting the hang of them but I still wasn’t confident that I aced it. However, I did have an interesting conversation on the rate of convergence for a Taylor Series computation of the root of a real number. Turns out at the end of the day it’s slower than the Babylonian method! Who knew! This was also the last big firm thus far not to turn me down so I was pretty hopeful.
Recitation this afternoon was fun, as I violated the ‘don’t play with food’ rule by demonstrating the importance of version control using jam, candy and pictures made out of the above. The rest of the recitation was a workshop on git and DVCS.
The night was made up of my usual gruelling rehearsal schedule, no rest for the baritone in me!
Tuesday started with a pre-recorded lecture from Prof. Mele of physics as he was still away on travel. A quick break for lunch at Hillel and then a singing lesson which was pretty good today, I’m slowly improving at transitioning between primo and secondo passagio. Also had great fun playing with more of the musical subtleties in the jazz numbers I was performing. Things are going very well on that front.
Office hour, nothing special to report, but that all my funds from working so hard this semester have been guzzled up by the Glee Club. Out of all the money I’ve made, a paltry $12 remains after dues, tour payments and unexpected fees that were levied from last semester. I’m not exactly super excited about that, but I guess the price of admission is worth it.
Tonight’s rehearsal was far too short, only and hour, and was marred by a full club meeting discussing disciplinary issues within the club. More of a sad meeting than anything. It also ran substantially late. No rest for the wicked.
Singing Valentines Preview
February 15, 2013
I don’t have time to do a full post as it’s almost two AM and I’m completely exhausted but here is an article from the Daily Pennsylvanian (the Penn Newspaper) on what I was up to today, complete with a quote from me!
http://www.thedp.com/article/2013/02/glee-club-brings-love-embarrassment-to-valentines
Take a read and I’ll fill out more of the details in the days to come after the show!