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.
Monday – Day 87
October 24, 2012
Today’s link is slightly scatalogical but is well worth reading for those who have ever wondered what happens when you flush a toilet from an airplane.
Monday wasn’t the most exciting of days, woke up really late and felt well rested for the first time in a while. My coughing has almost stopped and this has brightened my overall mood.
I’ve also been taking the free time as a chance to catch up on a good amount of work, particularly in the Ruby class and so much of my time today was spent on that and the Physics. After a few hours of work and a lunch and interview with Zack Costa.
I made it to Professor Mele’s office before the day was through and spent a while going through the problems with which I had been having trouble, that helped me out a lot.
The evening I played SupCom 2 for a while (giving myself a little break) and some piano before heading out with JHo and Paul (also from PGC) to go see Looper, staring Joseph Gordon-Levitt. My overall impression of the movie was that it was fun with fantastic concepts and design, however there were a number of glaring plot holes and at time it felt like it was overdoing the artsy thing in order to prop up its ‘real movie’ credentials. 7.5/10.
The rest of the evening was spent again with PGC members, watching the presidential debate in which Vanessa (our Canadian stage manager) and I complained about the focus on American exceptionalism in discussions of foreign policy. After a hug goodnight and a few more chips, it was off to sleep again for another day.
Wednesday/Thursday – Day 82/83
October 21, 2012
Today was yet more stress! I had a large programming assignment due for algorithms that I hadn’t yet started! As a result today was a flurry of activity for me. The lecture in the morning was nothing special but until my Ruby on Rails class I worked hard on the project, barely even stopping for lunch at Hillel.
My Ruby class has also improved significantly, largely due to the fact that I have recently put in a good few hours in to learning the first few weeks worth of material that I had only skimmed over previously and now understood it much better.
Evening was a rehearsal again, PGC as per usual, with dancing and the band. Fun as per always,
Following rehearsal I grabbed my laptop and walked over to the engineering quad, where a number of the TAs (teaching assistants) and students were busy on the assignment. To give a brief overview, the task was to write our own implementation of a stack in Java using two queues and then write an Infix to Postfix converter and Postfix calculator using the stack class we had made. At the end were a few analysis questions that also needed to be completed just to ensure we actually understood the task we were completing.
At about 9:23 I received a message from Charlie McClelland, one of my favorite oldmen from PGC whom I was meant to be interviewing this evening. We ended up rushing over to an Indian restaurant, Sitar, to catch a meal before it closed at 10PM. Our meal was delicious and the conversation excellent, though he had the sportsmanship I lacked ( being a past member of the Penn track team). However Sitar was soon to close and our meal was forced to end. Thankfully we didn’t end there, running by the Harnwell Starbucks to find a place to sit. It was all taken up by students busily finishing off the remainders of their work before fall break so we retired to my suite where we shared a little wine and chatted, discussing Australia amongst other things for a few hours. So far this was my favorite interview experience.
Thursday was my day to do errands, the shopping, various forms, the bank and a few other miscellaneous items. Physics was hard as per usual, though I followed along relatively well today. Operating systems was nothing special, as per usual I slept a little, keeping awake just enough to follow along. However, today I received excellent results from several assignments and so was in a dapper state all afternoon.
After a few hours of working in the evening, I received a message from Molly Hutt, a PGC alumna, inviting me out to check out a few bars in center city. So overjoyed to have received an invitation to go out and one that coincided with a downturn in my workload, I immediately replied in the affirmative, dressed myself and, set out to meet her and Patrick, another newman, to adventure in the city.
At the first bar we visited, the atmosphere was not so exciting, the crowd was too dressy and unfriendly and the only redeeming feature was the five dollar champagne. After a creepy guy invaded Molly’s space, we finished our drinks quickly and headed out to explore further.
The next place we found was a bar called Barbuzzo, which was a bit of a dark venue had an inviting feel to it, lively, with a great looking bar and well set tables. The bartender was excellent and the specials menu was terrific too. Patrick went for a pilsner, Molly a wine and I the sangria, all of which were fantastic. A pizza that was shared received top marks as well and the service was great. Highly recommended and we all said we would go back there.
Our final stop for the evening was the dog bar with pictures of puppies on the walls. The place was filled with an older crowd this time and we sat in our own booth discussing life while Patrick sipped yet another beer, Molly a wine, and I some Jacob’s Creek. Good to drink the taste of home.
Thoroughly tired from our night out we all walked back to Penn together before heading to our respective rooms and dropping to the floor.