In Which My Blog Misses Choir
October 2, 2014
This week was much shorter than usual due to the presence of Rosh Hashana. This meant that the start of my week was fairly hectic work wise. In addition, my blog went down while I was on retreat and I was struggling to bring it back up. To combination of exhaustion and technical frustrating led me to miss Choral Society on Monday night and spend a few hours on server administration instead, finally bringing my blog back up and starting to get back to my writing routine.
Homework seemed to be going a little better, although there was still constant deadline pressure and not nearly enough time to get everything done.
At this point, I started to get sick. The next day I woke up and something definitely wasn’t quite right. My body was drained, my eyes blurry and my nose and throat a mess. I struggled through the day, regretting the time spent practicing piano and not sleeping. Finally, when it came time for Glee Club rehearsal I just couldn’t do it anymore. After an hour I let Tony the section leader know that I wasn’t up to the rest and went to my room to pack my bags for my flight early the next day to Chicago. Given the state I was in, I did really pay much attention to the packing and would pay for it later, but gladly, at 9.30PM I was fast asleep.
In Which I Retreat
October 1, 2014
The weekend was marked most significantly by the Glee Club Retreat. It was the best chance to get to know the new members, and also served as a bit of a break from the hectic lifestyle I’d had up until that point. Leaving early Friday afternoon, we arrived at Camp Onas by sundown, with me lugging along a whole lot of fruit, granola and a few other assorted food supplies, for what I knew might be a difficult weekend for meals. Friday night was filled with singing, introductions, games and laughter and the lights were shut out in my room well after 2AM.
There wasn’t much of a sleep in to bed had, breakfast (two bananas and a nectarine) was to be had, and team building exercises outside in the sun. For the sake of future clubbers, I won’t go into the details (as previously) but I came out of the two/three hours of games much closer to a few people. One particularly nice guy was Bhavish Malkani, a sophomore newman who came with a whole lot of talents (more on that later).
Lunch was sandwiches which fortunately I could partake in. Also it was the first time I’d had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in a great many years. Following lunch we had the presentation of ‘the newman talent show’ in which all the newmen had to present a non-singing talent. Pearl, a really friendly girl on the tech team, started it off with a sorrowful reading of a poem about bullying. Phillipe led with shakespear in many accents. More poetry from David, some oddball comedy from Mack and a few others. The highlight for most people however was Bhavish’s magic show, which comprised mostly of sleight of hand tricks. There were so well done however, that even though I had some idea of how they worked, I was still thrilled along with the rest of the audience.
Another highlight of retreat was getting to know Sam Soik and Pearl Lo a bit better. They were both very warm personalities and I spent plenty of time talking to both of them over the weekend.
Finally, late Saturday night it was time for the camp fire. This was the best part of retreat because it involved us singing our favorite songs from our repertoire, albeit without a conductor and at times a little off. However it was an amazing feeling to be surrounded by my brothers in song and spending some time reflecting on our years ahead.
After the campfire it was straight to bed for me. I woke up barely a few hours later for the drive back, and when we arrived home I spent most of the morning in bed. I had a good few hours to work and then it was back to rehearsal, this time dancing with Penn Dance again. After that, I was thoroughly drained and promptly put an end to my weekend.
In Which I Surprise A CEO
September 30, 2014
I woke up at 9AM for the judging and to put the final touches on my app ‘Plagiarite’, designed to both circumvent censorship and also to provide a proof of concept as to the issues in automated plagiarism detection tools. While I didn’t win, my app entertained a good number of people who came by and was enjoyed by nearly everyone who visited.
There was a Hillel graduate student BBQ after the judging so I raced off to that but realized I was far too asleep to really stay and so went back to my room for a nap. After some sleep and some work I attended dance rehearsal with PD, and then retired after a super busy weekend.
The next week started off in high stress mode with many assignments due and me in a state of panic due to the amount of time I had spent on PennApps that weekend, getting very little done. I only barely scraped through in submitting my homework on time. In the middle of the week, a very exhausted me had lunch with Melody Cooke, a friend who I had yet to catch up with since returning to the USA. We had a lovely time catching up but it seemed she had changed far more than I in the interregnum, and in a way that made her happy too. I had also changed and had more adventures and so it was quite a refreshing break from the never ending stream of work.
Thursday nearly killed me. I was up at 6.45AM in order to arrive at a gig for an international funeral home convention. My voice was hoarse, my eyes bloodshot, but I still managed to sing the heck out of “The Star Spangled Banner” and “O Canada” before racing back to bed. I skipped my physics lecture, as I would’ve fallen asleep in it regardless, and returned later to the PhD “dungeon” (the basement lab) to finish off a group project in machine learning that I had been struggling with.
In the early evening after successfully finishing the homework, a somewhat refreshed me raced off for yet another Glee Club gig. This one was for the World Presidents’ Organization, a high profile performance for Philadelphia local CEOs. We arrived at the venue and relaxed in the green room for a little before bursting through the doors and surprising all the executives with a flash-mob performance of ‘Footloose’. The event itself was Philadelphia themed and as a result all the CEOs were dressed down in tshirts with Philly themes. After the performance we were requested to get on the dance floor and encourage the audience to join us which, after a little prompting they did. The rest of the evening was spent chatting to high profile figures and for some, munching on Philly themed food. I met a number of interesting and friendly people, among them an Aussie CEO who told me to keep in touch.
After our best gig for the year so far, I got home and went to sleep, free of the burden of looming deadlines and ready for an easier Friday.