The Globetrotting Geek

Sunday/Monday – Day 51/52

September 13, 2012

Sunday I intended to get down to a bit of work, however Penn had other plans. Sunday to Wednesday marked audition season for the various groups at UPenn. Things started out well, tutoring a few Jewish girls in my Ruby class, helping them to set up their computers for the class, however flipping through the F/Penn program I noticed that auditions for The Penn Singers, the Broadway and light opera company at Penn were at twelve. Plucking the day, I headed off to the Platt Student Performing Arts House, just off main campus, where auditions were being held. Along with me I brought the music to “Some Enchanted Evening”, my personal audition favorite, and was soon met there by a good number of friendly theater people. I was then presented with a monologue to learn in the few minutes before the audition, playing the part of Leo Bloom from the producers. The audition consisted of me singing my piece, which went well. Vocal exercises, which went decently, and the monologue, over which I stumbled a few times. Further than that they taught me a few bars of the cast song “Hail Poetry!” which I didn’t quite get but I felt decent about it. Following that I saw that the ‘Off The Beat’ acapella auditions were in the same corridor, feeling a bit plucky I decided to audition for them too. However after a twenty minute wait outside I was informed that they would not take an exchange student due to the lack of worth in investing in my training. Remembering that other auditions were on that day too, I wandered over to Irvine Auditorium where the ‘Penny Loafers’ acapella auditions were being held. For them I sung ‘Under the Bridge’ by the Red Hot Chilli Peppers and was made to do a good few minutes of exercises and vocal dictation.

I won’t tire you with the details of every single audition, however, The Glee Club auditions deserved a special mention. Testing both my rhythmic and melodic sight reading, along with my ability to box-step, I had a lovely time in the audition interacting with both the director and the other members of the club.

Monday was much the same, running back and forth between clubs and classes. In the evening I met with Google representatives and listened to them give a recruiting spiel. As if anyone needed to convince me that working there might be a good idea.  Following that I raced off to the University Choral Society, a half credit class I was taking. At the entrance to the rehearsal room stood a mostly older crowd of between forty to eighty, all waiting to rehearse. This was a slight shock for me given my expectations of a student choir. However, I soon settled in and had a lovely evening singing. Towards the end of the class my friend Thea ran out and came back a little sullen. A while later my phone buzzed too and I check the transcribed voice message to find indecipherable garbage. Listening to the original I found a message telling me I had been accepted into the cast of Penn Singers and their production of Legally Blonde this fall! I raced off to meet the cast at a meet and greet in Platt and following that headed back to my room to work a little before, finally, sleep.

Classes – Wednesday – Day 48

September 10, 2012

Class began today at 10AM and after grabbing today’s issue of the Daily Pennsylvanian (the student run newspaper) I ambled off to the engineering building.

My first class was CIS-121, basic algorithms and data structures using the Sedgewick textbook. Most of the hour was spent on administrative affairs with the lecturer going briefly into a history of algorithms for finding ‘highest common divisors’, from the simple and slow methods all the way to the recursive algorithm found by the Greek mathematician Euclid.

That finished all my officially enrolled classes for the day but, after checking out what was available, I found another two to keep me occupied in the afternoon. After a quick lunch at the Hillel (where I met plenty more people again), it was off to ‘Ruby on Rails’, a class worth half credit, covering the design and implementation of web applications. The class had a maximum allowed size of twenty people, however more than thirty packed into the room. The course got down to business straight away with a ‘Hello Lolcat’ exercise being posted for homework.

My final surprise class for the afternoon was Elementary Russian with a lovely old Russian lady by the name of Ludmilla. The class was incredibly unstructured and my classmates weren’t exactly thrilling however, I quite enjoyed it and got started learning the Russian alphabet and pronouncing all the new sounds.

That evening was our first TRAC (The Rodin Arts Collective) Music Floor Meeting. Anil and I met with all the residents from our floor and our RA (Residential Advisor) Will, to discuss the upcoming year in music and, to get to know each other a little. Following that it was up to the glorious Rodin rooftop lounge wherein an unmatched view of the Philly skyline could be seen (photos to come later). There we met the members of the other residential programs and socialized for a time. For those of you who may be a little confused, a residential program is a floor of the dormitory buildings dedicated to helping students engage with an area of interest and fostering community learning about a specific area through house funded events. In my case I’m on the musical engagement floor which features a resident musician, composer and music historian living on our floor, alongside visits to various musical events and institutions. The rooftop meeting was replete with delicious desserts sponsored by Rodin, provided by Penn Hillel and, was mainly an event to introduce us to each other and to the schedule for the next year.

Following the meeting it was back to the room with Anil to watch an episode of Breaking Bad and then to a short nights sleep.

Zurich – Day Two

July 20, 2012

Today began with a large breakfast with the Empting family with whom I’m staying. It consisted of many different cheeses, artisanal breads, berries, fruit and cereals. There was on particular cheese of interest that translated roughly to ‘Frenchman’s Head’ cheese that was scraped off with a circular blade to form a shape somewhat like that of farfalle pasta. After the adults retired, Eva and I happily polished off the leftover punnets of raspberries and blueberries.

From there I traveled by train to Tiefenbrunnen station, about 30min walk out of the CBD. There exists a charming walking path along the banks of Lake Zurich, and I thoroughly enjoyed my walk (see pictures below). Making it into the city center, I walked along the main shopping street, Bahnhofstrassen and tried to get a feel for the place. Most striking were the wide streets with generous foliage along the sides.
At 12:00 I was to meet Eva at another station by a fountain, which after a little searching and a detour into a music store I found. For lunch Eva took me out to a fantastic vegetarian buffet place, that charges by weight. Lunch as displayed below, was delicious and I left wholly satisfied. Mmmm… vegetarian bolognese.

Eva then returned to her university, ETH Zurich, with me in tow. On the way we found a letter written to a family here, on display in a window. Eva then informed me that Einstien had in fact studied at the same university as her when he was younger! As she discussed her courses I realized that though she is in first year, the standards here are high such that she is studying the equivalent material for our  second year. For those keeping track this means 2nd year level mechanics (Lagrangian Dynamics etc.), an analysis course (Real Analysis) and, other equivalent courses.

The afternoon I spent wandering around again, sampling a lovely piano in the aforementioned music store for a good twenty minutes and, visiting numerous chocolate shops. I treated myself to a Swiss Movenpick Icecream: strawberry, 4.50CHF. Of note is the dessert shop Sprungli, which is from the same family as Lindt & Sprungli, separated since a few hundred years ago.

I met Eva at the hauptbahnhof at 3:45 to catch a train to Baden, where I was to surprise my friend Carmen who, working in a hospital full time, had no time in which to see me. This was a troubling affair for me as she worked in a small hospital in a rural town! For 20CHF I purchased a return ticket and went to Baden. However, when I got there I had little idea how to catch a bus to the hospital. Luckily, I heard two women speaking Hebrew as I was exiting the train and asked them for advice. They took me under their wing, even going so far as to board the bus to the hospital with me, being happy to help a young, Israeli tourist.

Once in the hospital I was challenged to explain in swiss german, that I wanted to find Carmen Flury, an employee in some unknown part of the hospital. I was first directed to the 11th floor where they puzzled for a minute trying to figure out what I wanted. Eventually, an english speaking intern came in and redirected me to the palliative care unit a floor below. It was there I was presented with the opportunity to give Carmen a near heart attack, as she didn’t know I was coming! I spent as much time as possible with her before returning to Eva in Kusnacht at 6PM.

Once back in Kusnacht I knocked on Eva’s door to find it answered by her boyfriend Jonothan. A lovely guy who spoke good English. I, Eva, Jonothan and her family, then proceeded to dinner at a Kosher restaurant in the Jewish quarter, located inside the community center. The guard at the door was very suspicious at first and wouldn’t let us in until I spoke to him in Hebrew, reassuring him that we had good reason for seeking out a kosher restaurant, despite most of us not being Jewish, flustering the Empting family somewhat. For dinner I tried a Swiss dish, some kind of sausage, that was fine, if a bit heavy for my liking. Following dinner we returned to walk along Lake Zurich before going home.

My last few hours of consciousness were spent talking to a few people around the world, sorting out a mess or two, and reconnecting a bit with home.