Glee Club Never Stops
August 31, 2014
The next day was almost a sleep in, qualified by the fact that I was waking up at strange hours during the night. I was still in the fierce grasp of jet lag. I finally got up just before lunch and went to Hillel to shmooze with everyone. I wasn’t the only one who had woken up late as a good number of other people were still dragging themselves in. Lunch was fairly standard. I sat with some new freshman along with a few new people all of whom were friendly enough.
Sadly, I had to run off to rehearsal all too quickly. Rehearsal itself was fine but I struggled a little with the ‘production numbers’, dance numbers that the rest of the chorus had learnt over the past year and that I was scrambling to fit into. I tired myself out pretty quickly and it wasn’t long before I was ready to crawl into bed again.
The next day I was again up earlier than expected and used the time to talk to people at home and sort out my room. Once the sun came up, I got out of bed and went out to Hillel where they were setting up the activities fair to introduce freshmen to all the available opportunities. As I had nothing better to do early that day I helped set up and met a few new people in the process. I hung around for a few hours until yet again, it was time for rehearsal.
After a few more hours of singing, dancing and, singing again, I ditched the last few minutes of rehearsal to run off to a new graduate student event. A campus wide gnome-hunt. This was the highlight of my weekend. In a team of about fifteen new graduate students, we raced around campus following clues to pick up mini plastic gnomes scattered around the eastern side of campus. I became quite friendly with a number of my teammates and in the happy hour following the hunt met a few more. This included two other Australian/New Zealand nationals over which I was quite pleased. Afterwards, a few of the grad students and I headed over to “Tap House”, a local bar to continue hanging out for a while. After a few drinks and a pleasant breeze, the jet lag returned and so I headed back to my room and called it a night.
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.
Monday/Tuesday – Day 245/246
April 5, 2013
Unfortunately I wasn’t able to do a repeat of Monday/Tuesday last week. There was no way I could miss Physics this week, and I was already dangerously behind on my other lectures. I had missed a full week of Glee, and was one strike away from failing choral society (at which 100% attendance is required). Thus, while I dressed up nicely for the day and managed lunch at Hillel, my day was mostly sitting in the back in lectures, listening quietly.
In the evening, after classes and my recitation that I’d had to prepare for chag very carefully (it went really well), I had a large block of rehearsals. Unfortunately the breaks didn’t line up with Hillel properly and as a result I missed out on dinner. Which effectively meant missing out on food. Thus, I asked Michal to save me a take away box for later. Now, I’m not sure whether it was the thing of pickles I ate, or the semi cooked chicken, but something in my day didn’t agree with me and I was in distracting pain for the next twelve hours, gaining very little sleep and as a result, not doing particularly well on Tuesday.
Tuesday was another physics lecture and more rehearsals. Singing was great! Had a good time with my songs and as always, a little progress. Today was also our first rehearsal for Time To Shine (more details to follow in the next few weeks) and I’ve gotta say, we sounded pretty awesome, despite the baritones really stretching to sing consistent E#s. And then, finally, after that, CHAMETZ!!! So excited. Real food! Sushi was first order.
Full PGC rehearsal later that day was also there, but I was pretty distracted. Food was the only thing on my mind.