Sunday – Day 93
October 31, 2012
Hurricane Sandy is coming! Bolt down the windows and door, keep your children close! This morning also marked the start of PGC hell week and boy was it going to be a whole lot of hell.
I arose early to get a little work down before a lovely breakfast with Dad at ten thirty. Unfortunately it was then we discovered that his flights had been cancelled and together we spent the next two hours trying to get hold of someone at the airlines with the ability to get him from Philly to San Diego in the next three days. At 1PM I had to run to load-in (set up for a show) at the Iron Gate theatre and worked my butt off till 5:05 when we had a forty five minute break. Yup. A long rehearsal. I arrived back at the hotel room to find two things: first, classes at Penn had been cancelled for the next two days and, Dad was no closer to finding a flight out of the city. I grabbed a quick dinner downstairs with him and at 6PM returned to the theater.
A few hours in we were informed that the theatre would be closed for the next two days, thus denying us the 6-12 rehearsal that were planned for every day of the week and that as a result, we would be cancelling our Thursday performance debut! In addition, to compensate for the lost rehearsal tonight ran till one AM. That’s a whopping 13hr rehearsal!
After that I most surely went to sleep pretty promptly.
Tuesday/Wednesday – Day 88/89
October 26, 2012
I woke up today to my final beautiful morning of holidays, again quite late. The order of play for the morning was to get another good bulk of work out of the way before enjoying my afternoon. I opened up my Ruby project and got so caught up in working I hardly noticed lunch time pass me by until, I received an SMS from Paul G. of the Penn Glee Club, wanting to know if I was free for a late lunch. Off to Sitar again we went!
In my interview with Paul I much enjoyed our discussion on mathematics, as with his talents in the area he had many interesting thoughts to share. Additionally, as a long standing oldman of the group he had a better insight into some of the people in it than did many of the others I had interviewed.
Following lunch I met up with Melody Cooke (of skateboarding goat fame) and went to go find an appropriate grand piano for her to teach me how to play and me to teach her how to sing. Unfortunately I was running a little low on time as I’d promised Alexis, a close friend from Hillel, that I would have dinner with her and Arianna. Dinner at Hillel was not nearly so exciting but, it was my last chance to chill before getting back into the routine as at 9PM there was the regular scheduled PGC rehearsal till 12.
One particularly exciting thing that came out of this rehearsal was the presentation of a new piece for our fall show. However, it was a piece that I know well by the name of ‘Baba Yetu’, an arrangement of the swahili text to the Lord’s Prayer, composed for the opening title of ‘Civilization IV’, a computer strategy game.
Wednesday the stress ramped right back up again as I received a number of major assignments to be completed within the next cycle of work. Of particular note was the release of the specification for PennOS, the operating system that I will be building for one of my classes. It is expected to take the remainder of semester and must be completed in group of four. It seemed very daunting. Additionally I received another physics problem set and another programming assignment for algorithms.
The evening was not nearly so exciting as I had another regular PGC rehearsal and what was meant to be a gig but without my dry cleaning that was a few hours late, I couldn’t perform. Following rehearsal I had an interview with Baker Beers, a lovely Texan guy who was really down to earth. Had a great and unfortunately too short meal before getting lost on my way to the Performing Arts Workshop where I had hours of work to fulfill for the Penn Signers.
I arrived half and hour late, sweaty and tired from running around looking for it but soon got to work with putty and a knife filling cracks in various items. Over the course of my two hours there I also had a lovely time chatting to Suzie from Korea who came to the US with a passion for performing arts, something she couldn’t satiate at home. After most of the time had elapsed I switched onto painting a door and was finally set free to go back to Rodin and work for as many hours as I could.
At 1AM I skyped a close friend from home and we talked for around an hour, making me quite happy, but very tired and before I knew it, I was back in bed and fast asleep.
Friday – Day 84
October 22, 2012
Friday morning I woke up not so wonderfully, but the weather was too nice and the workload too light for the day not to be wonderful. I made it through my classes in the day and had another helpful singing lesson! Rehearsal for Legally Blonde was cancelled in the afternoon, providing me with more free time to go do some pre-Shabbat shopping and just enjoy myself a little.
Shul was at chabad with a tiny minyan, turns out the entire OCP (orthodox community at penn) had left for fall break, which started today! Thus, I had not planned for food on Friday night, expecting to eat at Hillel which, unfortunately was closed. Thankfully Alyse, a Drexel student, opened up her home to me and I ate dinner with Arianna, Alexis and Zack, some of my favorite people at Penn. After a lovely dinner and a good walk with them it was time for a good, long, sleep.