Facebook – Week 8
April 23, 2014
This week was to be very important as I would soon be receiving feedback on my impact as an intern, and needed to make a real push for results. To some extent I cut out distractions and hunkered down. As I was learning however, performance improvements normally come incrementally and though I was improving I hadn’t yet found a shortcut to success.
After rehearsal on Monday I was pretty productive and ended up having a brief chat with Zejia, one of my teammates and started developing an extension to my project that would have wider impact that what I had completed thus far. I had to start carefully planning my time left to achieve everything left on my list.
Tuesday was much the same with one enjoyable difference. After work Gus from the Vocal Network, drove me down to San Jose for a ‘Voices in Harmony’ rehearsal. Voices in Harmony were a traditional men’s barbershop chorus and though the crowd was a good bit older than I, it still seemed a decent fit. Many of the men there had been singing barbershop for decades and despite some experience I was definitely on the low end of ability
We sung two Beatles pieces, one of which had an incredibly challenging arrangement to sight read and definitely put me through my paces. However it was good to be singing challenging material again.
Another huge positive was the fact that in attendance was ‘JHo’ (Jonathan Ho) my former mentor in the Penn Glee Club. After rehearsal two others and we headed off to a bar in Cupertino for ‘Afterglow’, to sing tags. Unfortunately I couldn’t stay too late and at about midnight caught an ‘Uber’ back to my place in Mountain View.
Wednesday and Thursday went pretty smoothly. I definitely was getting into rhythm now and didn’t need as much support from my teammates in order to get done what I needed to. I tried to clean up as much of my original project as possible in order to really get cracking on a little more flexible solution to the problem that I was initially trying to solve. Thursday night I caught the shuttle from work to the Caltrain station and caught it to Millbrae, just outside of SFC. From there it was the BART train to the airport for another trip to Penn!
As I had acquired silver status on the ‘star alliance’ frequent flier system, I was able to skip the long lines for check-in and security and within about five minutes of arriving at the airport was through to the gate. As per usual my United Airlines flight was delayed, so I paused to sit and eat some food I had brought with me. Eventually we boarded and, at about ten past midnight we departed.
The weather was fair and we had a strong tailwind, so we arrived in Philly just past seven. I slept decently on the flight but four and a half hours was not enough for me to be well rested for the weekend! The next day was to pose a challenge to me in staying awake.
Thursday/Friday – Day 262/263
April 25, 2013
The next two days were pretty pleasant overall, despite high levels of stress. Thursday was another physics lecture on radiation, not easy but not overly difficult. Then was a group demo for networking. This unfortunately was a complete failure. Our code didn’t compile and even when we submitted a compiling version, it failed all the tests. We received a zero on our project and were sent depressed back to the drawing board, told to redo our project in hopes of at least some partial credit.
Coming away from that a little depressed, it was to Susan Greenberg, a good, Jewish, CIS friend to cheer me up. She did a superb job and I felt I finally got to know her well enough. Despite not spending inordinate amounts of time together, I was glad to have a certain closeness to her, and felt a little disappointed to know I’d be leaving her behind soon. My salad too was almost as enjoyable as the conversation.
I was still in recovery, so I napped a little in the afternoon before a major stuff up: I had accidentally mischeduled a Time to Shine rehearsal clashing with the Brahms Requiem dress rehearsal. I emailed the professor to tell him I’d have to miss it and he let me know that if I did so my grade would be less than acceptable. Thus I was forced to miss a vital part of the Time to Shine rehearsal in which we were filmed for the world tour of the video production.
The Brahms rehearsal was actually quite enjoyable as by now I knew the music well and could both sing and enjoy it at the same time.
Friday was intense. Today was our ‘Time to Shine’ and it began with an early run at 10AM with the full set before our run of it for the largest donors at eleven. The University President Amy Gutmann announced us before we burst onto the stage in our red and blue outfits, singing for Penn. The song itself, Time To Shine, was an upbeat pop number composed by the eminent Sean Altman, of Rockapella fame. I had also previously enjoyed his work on the jewish musical comedy scene and so it was quite an honor to work with him. Additionally, he shared a love of barbershop and so in the backstage rooms he and the members of Glee ran a few numbers together with decent success. The audience greeted us with thunderous applause and through our performance, the stage of the Zellerbach theatre twisted and turned with lights, sounds and graphics projected onto giant screens, glorifying the University.
Getting changed into regular clothes and heading outside, the heat hit fairly hard, so I headed to Hillel for lunch, before a short nap and then off to Penn Park for an on-stage rehearsal for the evenings performance before seventeen-thousand people. It was at this time that dear Sarah Silverberg decided to make an appearance on Penn’s campus, to stay with Julia Poslun’s, another friend of hers, and spend time with the both of us over the weekend.
Following that, back to my room briefly for a change into Khaki Blaze for the PGC performance and then to Penn Park again for the Glee Club Set. Unfortunately I don’t have my own photos of the whole day as I was too busy being part of it by I’ve included some shots taken by Penn photographers.
Following that Train and John Legend performed, and then the Time to Shine chorus that I was a part of. Unfortunately we weren’t exactly well received given the two opening acts and so despite the awesome feeling of being in front of so many people, it could’ve gone a little better. I’ve included below a Penn Communications snapshot of some of the crowd later in the night!
Penn had really pulled out all the stops for this party. Some of my friends in Wharton, the business school at Penn put together an estimate for spendings of around five million dollars on the event. Free food, alcohol, and entertainment for that many people doesn’t come cheap.
From there it was back to Hillel for Shabbat and dinner. Spent some good time chatting to Sarah and Julia, despite being soaking wet from an umbrellaless walk back from Time To Shine in my Shabbat clothes!
I was glad that evening to finally get back to bed and curl up in the warmth.
Shabbat – Day 250
April 12, 2013
The next day I arose bright and early to the warm sounds of Pink Floyd’s stunning album, “The Dark Side of the Moon” as Dan had seen fit to wake us up with is beautiful valve amplified stereo system. I was a little jealous. From there, the rest of the day was divided between singing and walking for me. First up was a full club rehearsal at some studio in midtown.
Rehearsal was a subset of club, joined by a subset of the alums, one of whom was from the Penn Class of ’70! The alums were split 50:50 between those who had continued singing after graduation and those for whom it had ceased to become a meaningful part of their lives. Regardless, all still retained their fine voices and musicality and I am proud to say that our sound was truly excellent.
Following a few hours of rehearsal, I, the older gentleman and Shohom Basuthakur (the vice-president of PGC) walked down to our performance venue. The club had arranged for us to sing inside the grand echoing chambers of the German Evangelical Church on 28th street, only an hours walk away!
The concert was surprising full, and a certain clubber even convinced a guy he message over ‘grindr’ to come see us. One highlights of the show in my opinion were Franz Biebl’s Ave Maria, in which a smaller counter choir sang down from the pews located upstairs, while I and the larger choir sang below. The resonance of the final chord was truly majestic and I only wish I had a recording of it! The other highlight for me was “The Brotherhood of Man” complete with choreography in the church.
Following our performance, Shabbat was out, so the two Dans, Kirk, and I all headed back to his apartment. Him for another exciting evening with friends and us for a night at Reuven’s (also known as ‘Jewbacca’ or ‘Taco’), an orthodox Jewish PGC alum who traditionally hosted fantastic after parties replete with top class mashke (alcohol). I had a very interesting chat with him about how he managed to be ‘frum’ (religious) at the same time as travelling with the club and partaking in all the activities. One thing he mentioned that was of interest to me, was how back in his day, the religious community at Penn was very much insular and un-accepting of diversity. I proudly told him how things had changed and it somewhat seemed to set his mind at ease.
I left the party with one very drunk Clubber in tow, shipping him back to the apartment before flouncing down on the couch for another night at the Pincus Emporium.
