The Globetrotting Geek

Tuesday/Wednesday – Day 260/261

April 23, 2013

I was still recovering at this point, and didn’t realize it yet but would be for a while. Today’s physics lecture was fascinating, explaining the mechanics of radiation and leading to discussions on the colour of the sky and water. I felt though it was difficult, I really understood it! I told the professor as such and he wasn’t particularly enthused but let me know that the next lecture was a continuation of the current.

Singing with Brian was better than last week, but my throat still wasn’t quite cutting it and things were more work than usual.

During office hours I had a nice chat with Shilpa Kannan about TAing and why computer science is awesome (definitely more ‘fun’ than finance). She wasn’t particularly enthused by all of my comments but I was glad to spend the time discussing things with her.

It was Yom Haatzmaut today and to celebrate Hillel was having a BBQ. Unfortunately for me I had missed the majority of it during my office hours, arriving just as things were finishing up.

PGC rehearsal finished early tonight and so I had a chance to get some more work done on the Networking project due Wednesday midnight.

Wednesday was mostly stressing out over the project. I skipped classes to try and pull it together but unfortunately I didn’t have much luck.  Our project was hopelessly underdone. I was partially to blame for it this time, I definitely could’ve put more time in. However, the workload again wasn’t divided up evenly or even close to. Very dissatisfied as of 2AM.

Shabbat/Sunday – Day 243/244

April 4, 2013

I am pleased to mention the inclusion of yet another wonderful person in my life. The delightful Tova Reiter of U Chicago fame. Chol Hamoed (intermediate festival days) brought her to Penn, to spend time with her close friend Ariella. Surprisingly enough, despite our numerate difference we hit it off almost straight away. My only regret is that I will unlikely be seeing a lot of her in the near future due to geographical concerns. My life in a nutshell.

Shabbat was Glee Elections, and boy did they take forever. Most of the day was spent cooped up in a little room discussing the various merits of all the candidates. And we didn’t even finish. That said, I did take significant breaks to try and hunt down food that was Kasher l’Pesach, and ended up eating bananas, macaroons and matza sandwiches. Not the best of lunches.

Sunday was dedicated to a lot of hard work, just getting coding done before chag came in again. There didn’t seem to be enough time though to really do anything between meals and Hillel and getting ready. Additionally, I had office hours in the evening so I had to prepare offline any cards and info etc I needed.

Another highlight of the weekend was the PGC trip to sing at the Philadelphia Philly’s Baseball Game! I saw a few real baseball players and was screened on the jumbotron! So exciting!

Finally, late Sunday night, after shule and dinner, I read my new Douglas Hofstader book while my students coded and occasionally asked me questions. Ended up staying till around 1AM as some people decided to hand in their work past the midnight deadline.

Friday – Day 242

March 31, 2013

Passover has made my posting a little sporadic in the past few days, but I’ll do my best to keep it up. Friday I got up late, worked in my room for a while and then headed to Hillel for a good few hours to eat as large a lunch as I could manage. It didn’t keep me very full, as I kept eyeing food all afternoon.

After that I went to my office, coded for a bit, sat thinking for a little. Research is difficult. At 3PM I headed to my TA meeting, where Val Tannen decided to announce my news to all the TAs, embarrassing me greatly, though I had to give him a little leeway given his status as my referee. TA training was mostly unexciting, however I did compose a neat little one liner (plus variable instantiation outside the function) for recursive calculation of fibbonacci numbers with memorization. Hooray for ternary statements!

Made it to shul on time tonight and had a pleasant dinner with the usual crew. After dinner the Shabbatones and the Penn Bloomers were performing. The Bloomers were surprisingly excellent, and their skits as an all female musical comedy troupe were actually funny enough to laugh out loud!

After the performances, I chilled with Ariella, Hannah Dardashti Madeline Brown and Alexis Block for a number of hours, telling stories from my travels! Made it to bed well past midnight.