Wednesday/Thursday – Day 97/98
November 12, 2012
Today was back to the usual grind and it was harder than usual after such a long break! The work suddenly piled up again, with assignments coming in from all fronts. To top it off, by this point I was low on sleep, and had been trying to spend as much time with Dad as possible. I barely scraped through my classes today, thoroughly distracted and on my phone for much of them. I only barely made it through the goodbye, and this further stole away my focus.
The evening brought another onslaught of rehearsal and the announcement that the show had been postponed till Friday to allow us time to prepare and tech the show, which despite the hurricane, was coming together quite well. In addition, we were to add a matinee show to our offerings, and hope that the theater would fill up despite the late announcement.
Another part of my day was walk-shifting on Locust Walk, handing out flyers with such slogans as “You think my accent is awesome? Not as awesome as the Penn Glee Club Fall Show” and “Kiss me kangaroo and pickle me ginger – this is something mate, that you don’t want to miss”. Exploiting my accent turned out to be highly profitable and I managed to turn over one hundred flyers in thirty minutes. A record.
Rehearsal tonight ran again very late, with more chances to get close to everyone and enjoy the music and dance. Vanessa Lam, our stage manager and a wonderful, short, Canadian girl was having a hard time keep it all together as madness converged on the theatre, setting us all on edge.
Again, another late night of work followed and very little sleep.
Thursday was much the same, but by this point hell week was really starting to hit me. Physics and Operating Systems, my two harder classes, we both today, and I almost slept right through them. I pushed through some of my remaining work due Friday and slept an hour during the day before again, hitting the rehearsal block at 6. With Dad gone, rehearsals were even harder as I had no good excuse to take me away from the action (not that I so much regretted it). Our performance was improving radically and some of our songs were really getting to the point of excellence. Even our few dance numbers combined with Penn Dance had reached an acceptable level of performance.
Finally, at 1:03, I returned to my room, talked deliriously to Mum and Esther, a close friend back home, and got to sleep around 3:30.
Tuesday – Day 95
Dad was meant to leave today but judging from the look of things outside, no one was moving anywhere fast. As much as the hurricane overnight had left much of Philly safe and sound, the streets were still empty and much of the city was closed. Thankfully, including Penn. I spent the majority of the day again indoors working on the physics problem set due the following week.
After a good number of hours of hard work I received an email, rehearsal was back on in the evening from 4PM all the way past midnight. As much as I enjoy rehearsing with the PGC, so many hours is a bit much, especially on such short notice. However, the long hours did provide a good chance for me to get to know some of the people in Penn Dance a bit better. Of particular note for his awesomeness is Jon Diamond, a linguistics major of great intellect, matched only by his sleek movement and agile frame. His performance of ‘O Death’ wowed us every time and his friendly demeanor made him a pleasure to be around. Of note from the Penn Dance girl side is Jaynie Anguiano, a biology major, who was probably most comfortable with PGC, out of the entire dance crew. She too, is incredibly friendly and a pleasure to work with.
During the course of the evening I did take a larger than usual break for dinner with dad, and though he didn’t have so much time this evening, I was grateful for every minute.
After finally getting home around 1AM, it was hard at work for another hour before finally some sweet sleep.
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.