In Which I Suit Up For The Heat
September 8, 2014
Today was boiling hot and stiflingly humid. I dressed for the weather in the morning and attended physics, trying my best to make friends with a few of my classmates.
After class I walked back to Hillel for lunch and during my meal received an urgent text message. I was required at Platt Performing Arts Center for Glee callbacks, so that I could help demonstrate quartet singing. This required me to dress up in full suit and bow tie, which given the sun beating down, was not the most ideal of outfits.
Following my dress change, I speed walked over to Hill House to meet a potential piano instructor for lessons this semester. The first meeting went pretty well and I was looking forward to actually learning to play properly for the first time. However, the entire time, I was sweating in my outfit and must have looked quite amusing to the instructor who was in jeans and a tshirt.
Much of my afternoon was spent singing the same song over and over, trying to maintain nuance for the different auditionees. After that was over, I had a brief break for dinner at Hillel, followed by Newman night. A ritual of induction that I won’t go into on this forum.
The night ended surprisingly early with our intro social event starting ahead of time. This left me a few moments to gather myself before another nights rest.
PhD Adventures
August 26, 2014
For those of you who haven’t noticed, I’m gone again. For the long run this time.
I haven’t entirely decided on a new format for the blog, and I’m currently toying with a few design ideas. May ditch the custom themes for a bit.
This is all tied in with my latest new beginning, the third ‘era’ of my blog: my adventures as a PhD student. It will serve first as my diary, as a way for people I know to find out about my life and then, for other prospective PhD students to get a bit of an insight into what life is like. I plan to write at least weekly through the entire degree and chart the highs and lows of ‘grad school’ life.
For those who don’t know, I’ve just started my doctorate in Computer and Information Science at the University of Pennsylvania. It’s currently looking like I’ll be working on a project in computer security, but more on that later.
The flight over was unfortunately more eventful than I’d planned on. On leaving, I had already accrued enough points of Aegean Airways to merit Start Alliance Silver status, so it all started well. I paid the extra $100 for my second suitcase and departed for my first leg MEL-SYD. That flight was fairly empty with nothing special to report. The next leg however was packed full. SYD-LAX departed on time, with me seated next to two elderly folk from California who insisted that the only way to get through a flight was with the assistance of copious amounts of alcohol. Every time the drink cart came by, it was another two whiskeys for him and another few mini bottles of wine for her.
When I arrived at LAX, I made it through security pretty smoothly, however once on the other side, it was clear things weren’t quite right. A slew of flights were delayed and people were rushing about madly. Another normal day for United Airlines I guess. Both flights to Philadelphia for the day were delayed. The first waiting for another flight to arrive and the second as a result of mechanical failure. I put myself on standby and kept racing between the two gates in case one or the other boarded first. Finally my flight was scheduled for boarding, but it left only twenty minutes for my transfer to my final flight. LAX-DEN was not very successful from a logistical perspective. After a good forty minutes on the tarmac we finally lifted-off.
I was in a cheery mood despite being fairly sure I would now miss my connection, so I decided to be friendly and say hi to the flight attendants/stewardesses, no doubt they were having a rough day too with a plane full of now cranky passengers. They ended up being friendlier than expected, and soon enough I was up the back of the plane with Natalie, Kat and Amanda about life and travel. Natalie was even kind enough to offer me a place on her couch should my flight be delayed. One of the other passengers brought some Indian bread along and soon there was a small picnic in the galley, supplemented by some of the Cadbury’s chocolate I had on me.
When I landed I raced across the terminal, only to see that the gate for my flight had closed three minutes prior. Close but no cigar. It took me another hour and a half at the airport before I was all sorted with a flight the next morning to Philadelphia. Leaving the airport to where I was staying for the night, I was amazed by just how flat the great American plains were. With the rockies in the background, the sun setting across Denver provided a picturesque moment that I unfortunately didn’t photograph, due to a fascination with the glorious crepuscular rays shining from on high. It didn’t take me long to fall asleep, but twenty-four hours after leaving I was still in transit.
Sunday/Monday – Day 258/259 – #TheNextBigThing
April 21, 2013
A week behind again! Somehow this keeps on happening. I’ll have to do my best to reconstruct it!
Sunday was Fling recovery and I was up early to ensure all my work was completed. I had a stack of things to get through. Had to prepare for recitation the next day, a submission for my security class, final project for networking, physics and no end of stuff for my students! The only break in the day came in the form of my study with Shlomo Klapper, but even he was exhausted.
Monday – I was up early in the morning, around six am to try get ahead of some physics work for my recitation at nine.Things didn’t go too badly but I found the material a bit beyond me. Seems to be a theme in this course.
However, this morning was also an exciting event for me. Samsung was launching an advertising campaign on campus and as part of it they were giving away ten Galaxy Cameras to students on campus with high ‘Klout’ scores and I was privileged enough to be one of the recipients. Thus at nine, I rocked up to their booth in Houston Hall with my photo idea and was handed a brand new camera, replete with 3G functionality and a full Android (Jelly-Bean) operating system. Not a camera-phone but a phone-camera.
The image quality on the beast wasn’t particularly good but it was sooo much fun taking it round and making skype calls from my camera. I received plenty of weird looks but there isn’t much I enjoy more than being the galactic source of some oddity.
Next up was Networking and then Security. The security topic this time was social engineering. I in fact had made plans for a class wide demonstration of this, but that has to be kept under wraps until tomorrows post. Needless to say it was decently clever but slightly mean. I spent the hour after preparing for my recitation which today was to be located at a slightly different place from normal, Kiwi Frozen Yoghurt! I had decided to take out my entire class given that it was the last chance I had with them outside of the following week’s exam revision session. Semester was fast drawing to a close.
PGC rehearsal and choral society were after, with choral society running really late given that this was our final regular rehearsal before the big concert on Saturday night. An early night after I finished my physics was well in order, my voice still wasn’t up to scratch.