Shabbat/Sunday – Day 85/86
October 23, 2012
Today a good friend Vanessa came over and we talked for hours and hours. After Shabbat came out, played some piano, messed about on the computer a little and just generally took it easy.
The trees on Locust Walk have now changed their colours and it’s somewhat beautiful. I’m really enjoying walking down with so few other people round, and just enjoying the peace and fresh air.
Sunday I worked a little, got my Ruby and Physics work mostly out of the way, and saved the evening for social events. At around two-thirty, I left my room and went to the bookstore to browse their physics collection where about a half hour later I met Melody for coffee, a chat and a walk.
Following that it was to my room for a short break before catching an interview with my Glee Club Mentor, Jonathan Ho (also known as JHo) at Sitar, the delicious Indian buffet.
Getting back a few hours later, my last social event of the evening was to spend sometime at the Rodin front desk chatting to Caitlyn Garcia, a UPenn cheerleader, who was interested in coming to study abroad in Australia. We spent her entire shift discussing the differences and culture of Australia and what the different cities and options were. Unfortunately for her, the girl who was meant to take the shift after her never appeared so she had to spend a good forty minutes trying to figure out what she was meant to do!
After waiting around till it was all sorted, I walked her up to her room and then headed myself into deep slumber.
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.
Sunday – Day 79
October 17, 2012
Until such time as I am in better health, I am going to be spending a little less time writing the blog and a little more time sleeping.
Sunday was another mad day of working and rehearsing, the main issue being the physics problem set due on Tuesday. Along side that, I had prep for an interview on Tuesday night and an Operating Systems midterm that I felt I had little to no time to study for.
On top of all this, today’s rehearsal for Legally Blonde was scheduled from 1:30 to 6:00 with a PGC and Penn Dance collaborative rehearsal set from 6:00 to 9:00. As you can imagine, by the end of this I was quite drained and didn’t quite have the energy to keep going.
I was so stressed out that I even let myself slip a little and played forty-five minutes of a game called ‘Supreme Commander’ that I used to play in Australia with my friends. Immediately after that I switched off the lights, set my alarm, and fell fast asleep.