In Which I Sing For My Cake
September 1, 2014
The jet lag was starting to wear off. Finally. However waking up early was useful as I had need to be at J. M. Huntsman Hall at 9AM. We were to be performing at a welcome gig for freshman students at the Wharton School. After a little rehearsal and some hanging around, the students filed in and we begun to sing. This was quite possibly the worst gig I have ever been a part of. The students were loud and raucous and paid us little to no attention. I don’t begrudge them in the least, but it wasn’t the best of choices to have us perform in that venue. I could hardly hear any of us singing, except a booming in my left ear from the bass, Matt Howard.
My uniform was a little outdated by this point and needed some revisions, thus my next stop was to Macy’s in ‘Center City’ (the central business district of Philadelphia). The actual shopping part took relatively little time, and I found suitable ‘chocolate brown’ shoes without too much fuss. However, when I attempted to pay for my items, the cashier was put through on the phone to card security and I had to go through a relatively arduous process to verify my identity. Despite my best efforts the payment didn’t go through in the end, so after fifteen-minutes of verifying, I ended up just putting the amount on a different card.
With a significant delay from Macy’s, I raced back to Penn for continued rehearsals. The afternoon was dance numbers with the band and I struggled through them, not having the experience of the other members.
That evening was one of our bigger regularly scheduled gigs: convocation, the formal opening of the academic year by the university dignitaries. After the opening of ceremonies we performed ‘Go The Distance’ as a musical interlude and then to close the ceremony was ‘The Red and the Blue’, the official school song. However the best element of singing for convocation was our early access to the dessert reception immediately following. After consuming a good deal of cake and cookies, Sam Soik (a fellow Baritone) and I sought after the mythical President Amy Guttman for a photo opportunity. After some searching we had our pictures taken and were then both satisfied enough to grab some final food before returning to our dorms for the night.
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.
PhD Adventures
August 26, 2014
For those of you who haven’t noticed, I’m gone again. For the long run this time.
I haven’t entirely decided on a new format for the blog, and I’m currently toying with a few design ideas. May ditch the custom themes for a bit.
This is all tied in with my latest new beginning, the third ‘era’ of my blog: my adventures as a PhD student. It will serve first as my diary, as a way for people I know to find out about my life and then, for other prospective PhD students to get a bit of an insight into what life is like. I plan to write at least weekly through the entire degree and chart the highs and lows of ‘grad school’ life.
For those who don’t know, I’ve just started my doctorate in Computer and Information Science at the University of Pennsylvania. It’s currently looking like I’ll be working on a project in computer security, but more on that later.
The flight over was unfortunately more eventful than I’d planned on. On leaving, I had already accrued enough points of Aegean Airways to merit Start Alliance Silver status, so it all started well. I paid the extra $100 for my second suitcase and departed for my first leg MEL-SYD. That flight was fairly empty with nothing special to report. The next leg however was packed full. SYD-LAX departed on time, with me seated next to two elderly folk from California who insisted that the only way to get through a flight was with the assistance of copious amounts of alcohol. Every time the drink cart came by, it was another two whiskeys for him and another few mini bottles of wine for her.
When I arrived at LAX, I made it through security pretty smoothly, however once on the other side, it was clear things weren’t quite right. A slew of flights were delayed and people were rushing about madly. Another normal day for United Airlines I guess. Both flights to Philadelphia for the day were delayed. The first waiting for another flight to arrive and the second as a result of mechanical failure. I put myself on standby and kept racing between the two gates in case one or the other boarded first. Finally my flight was scheduled for boarding, but it left only twenty minutes for my transfer to my final flight. LAX-DEN was not very successful from a logistical perspective. After a good forty minutes on the tarmac we finally lifted-off.
I was in a cheery mood despite being fairly sure I would now miss my connection, so I decided to be friendly and say hi to the flight attendants/stewardesses, no doubt they were having a rough day too with a plane full of now cranky passengers. They ended up being friendlier than expected, and soon enough I was up the back of the plane with Natalie, Kat and Amanda about life and travel. Natalie was even kind enough to offer me a place on her couch should my flight be delayed. One of the other passengers brought some Indian bread along and soon there was a small picnic in the galley, supplemented by some of the Cadbury’s chocolate I had on me.
When I landed I raced across the terminal, only to see that the gate for my flight had closed three minutes prior. Close but no cigar. It took me another hour and a half at the airport before I was all sorted with a flight the next morning to Philadelphia. Leaving the airport to where I was staying for the night, I was amazed by just how flat the great American plains were. With the rockies in the background, the sun setting across Denver provided a picturesque moment that I unfortunately didn’t photograph, due to a fascination with the glorious crepuscular rays shining from on high. It didn’t take me long to fall asleep, but twenty-four hours after leaving I was still in transit.