10/4/16: Open House!! And Furmata Audition

1. 10/4/16
1. Today is a crazy day! First up E&M, which is tedious. I open up a big Wikipedia chain on math and zone out.
2. Walk to the Bean and Bagel with Eric, Spencer, Brianna, get myself a cheap bagel, very good.
3. Quantum is exciting. Prof. Cobden gives us a list of postulates which deal directly with wavefunctions, different formulation than Feynman. Cool links to math I’ve seen before, plus some of the stuff I was reading about in E&M.
4. Head to SPS lounge, hang out for a bit, walk up the Ave to get Open House groceries with Frank. On way run into Jasper from 33x, he tries to get me to take 390p, which he’s TAing.
5. Once back, realize Kyle failed to get enough balloons for our balloon stomp game. Think for a minute, where to get balloons; stroke of genius--or so I think--says call the RSO (student club) resources office. They do have balloons; I run over there, turns out I can only get 16 balloons a day :( WTF?! But I get to learn about their awesome poster-printing printer and other resources. the friendly girl recommends the dollar store for balloons, I smack my head and take off running.
6. Get 75 balloons for $3, back to lounge, start frantically writing up name tags with famous physicist names and sci-fi-characters, and blowing up balloons. Go ham delegating both tasks, as the time grows nigh the whole lounge comes together in common purpose.
7. We start the Open House in one of the big auditoriums, I direct people over from the SPS lounge.
8. We must have had 50 people, 10+ freshmen. All 12 of our pizzas are consumed. I get to mingle and introduce people. Brianna and Spencer and Xin show up. Announcements with the officers go really well, for the most part; I’m getting really comfortable onstage. Frank forgets to introduce Hira, our treasurer, though; which really bothers me because she’s the only girl on our officer team.
9. Balloon stomp game is a big hit, people really get into it. Kyle’s demos also draw a crowd.
10. Meanwhile, outside, celebration is occurring for the Nobel Prize awarded to a retired UW prof. I have no time to stick around and help clean, I run to Creating a Company. Catch the tail end of a talk, hang around and have tea with Prof. Leong and some students, then I have to run to Glee.
11. I get to Glee and Xin isn’t there, which bugs me, enough that I call him and tell him to get his sorry rear in the rehearsal room. The first two times I call him he just messes with me, pretends the connection’s bad and he can’t hear me, though I can hear his skeptical “Hello?!” with perfect clarity.
12. But he eventually does show up and seems to have fun :) Gets introduced to Paul J, they chat about China, (Paul is a big traveler).
13. Return from Glee, take a hot shower. Xin helps me pick out clothes for Furmata audition. Walk down to Smith Hall, the weather is beautiful. Forget which of the buildings in the quad is Smith, have to ask someone, turns out they’re also going to the audition.
14. Show up and within 3 minutes, before my official time, get called in. But it’s a lot of fun. Well-prepared, my heat-shield of confidence flakes and shudders, but holds firm. And the auditioneers are extremely friendly. I play my A, take a drink of water, and begin. And other than the high notes, which have been somewhat shaky all day, I sing like a boss! No big mistakes, great tone. Get to chat with auditioneers, end up singing excerpts from three other songs.
15. Return to 2104. On the way back, who should I encounter but Caleb Huffman and a buddy of his (Bradley) leaving orchestra practice. Get into a good discussion about IQ and criminal law; Huffman makes the good point that since white-collar crime is more thought-out and less impulsive than violent crime, it should be punished with at least equal severity for deterrence purposes.
16. Go to dinner with Xin at Som Tam Thai. Xin exhorts me to get some bubble tea from the new bubble tea place next to Som Tam; I oblige. Using the Mandarin for “thank you” while ordering my taro shake with pudding earns me a nod from the franchisee-entrepreneur, a friendly lady with a Chinese master’s in business management. We talk about her motivation for entering the business, why she opened when she did, and so forth. The shake is amazing, hands down the best “bubble tea” I’ve ever had.
17. Have to take the dinner home and enjoy it with Xin, a math article, a cold glass of milk, and the rest of the taro shake.
18. Back at 2104, I go ham on StatMech hw, which is extremely tedious and annoying. Back to intro chemistry and intro mechanics. Fortunately it doesn’t take that long. I go downstairs and watch two episodes of Your Lie in April.