Wasted Days ...

The best part of keeping a blog (especially one that no one reads), is that I still feel bad when I think I want to write something down, but don't think I have enough to say at that point to make it worthwhile. It's bizarre, really, but apparently I feel like I'm letting myself down. Oh well ...

Anyways, today was what I'd classify as a productive, wasted day by all accounts. Eating the leftover salmon tortellini stuffing spread on toast 2 nights ago for a late dinner came back to bite me starting yesterday evening and I still went to Whiskey 101 at Stellas (a Whiskey tasting "course" every Tuesday night at my favorite local haunt on College Ave). I then followed that up by eating a big dinner with a slice of deep dish pizza with artichoke hearts, feta cheese and spinach and a less delicious 4th topping of broccoli (it just didn't mesh with the textures and flavors of the rest) with about 1/3rd of a pitcher of Cascazilla beer.

Probably not the best decisions, but it was all in support of local business for what it was worth. The Whiskey 101 tasting this week was hosted by Brian McKenzie of the Finger Lakes Distilling Company, an up-and-coming local distillery about 30 minutes from Ithaca on the east-end of Seneca Lake. He brought an unfinished 1-year-old whiskey which had potential, followed by an off-the-market wheat whiskey, a rye and a bourbon. The McKenzie Rye was by far my favorite, but that's not surprising. The sweet spicy mixture of a good rye, I often liken to a good curry or a sweet chili sauce, depending on the rye. The experience was pretty positive on the whole and my friend Ryan and I make a soft resolution to visit and taste at the distillery at some point. The bar manager Greg, who I've become friends with through these tastings, was also quite pleased. As a grad student in the Plant Sciences department, he seems to have a good rapport with the lab-types who often frequent the bar.

Regardless, it left me exhausted and still suffering from what was probably mild food poisoning when I woke up this morning. Instead of forcing myself to work, since my car was up on the Hill, I stayed in bed since it was a balmy -5 when I woke up at 6:45am. The result was that I tried to force myself back to to sleep until I woke up at 10:00am and saw my research professor's email about a 10:00am meeting to discuss the usage of our fresh off the sequencers genomic data for some D. melanogaster lines that I have been managing. Since I was still feeling ill, I didn't bother even trying to shower and race to campus (showing up late to the meeting might have just been awkward) so I just gave up and made it up in time to meet with my sister for lunch at 12pm where we discussed her interview for her two interviews this week - at Goldman Sachs and CitiGroup. After that I met with my housemate April to go over her speech for VP of the Cornell Chorus, which just inspired me to get back into Glee Club work.

First I started by remembering my desire to commission a "Chariot" song for the Glee Club. A Chariot song is a song sung at Glee Club "Chariot Nights" on Wednesday nights after 7:30-9:30pm rehearsals. The name Chariot is a reference to a bar called the Chariot that used to allow the Glee Club to occupy the space every Wednesday, located at the T-intersection of Eddy Street and Dryden Road. The events are a quintessential part of the Glee Club experience, in my opinion, and different iterations of the weekly tradition have gone back decades in CUGC history. At the event, we usually sing classic Glee Club songs, traditional Cornell songs, but also 3 "Chariot Songs" which are affectionately called "Itsy Bitsy Spider," "The Freshmen Up at Yale" and "Fireman." The former two make fun of the other Ivies, while the latter is a drawn out innuendo to make fun of a Glee Clubber who has a sister. For a few years that has been me (on and off) since my sister has been at Cornell for the past 2.5 years including a semester in the Chorus. While these songs usually cross a line in vulgarity, the spirit of them is a raucous college spirit that I'd love to capture in a new song. My thought is that it is definitely time for such an event, so I contacted the current Assistant Director of the Glee Club, Jesse Jones - a graduate student in music composition at Cornell University to see if he'd be interested. I'm waiting to hear on that ...

But that was just the beginning. I then drew out a long e-mail with my plans for the use of the photos and musical recordings of the Glee Club to put on the website and make available to our alumni. I've started getting some positive responses from the several alumni I emailed about the topic, so hopefully that will get going. For now I've got to make a proper photo album for the tour.

I then took care of some Hangovers tour things - I've still got to send out an $11,000 check to American Airlines for our flights and then pay for a few things in the UK, but things are shaping up well.

I contacted my old HS, New Trier to ask about a concert there for the Glee Club next January and also discovered something cool - my old newspaper sponsor, Tim Dohrer, had become Principal, which I suppose could help our cause for bringing the CUGC to New Trier - one of my many unrealized goals for the CUGC so far.

I also sent a long e-mail about Glee Club tour to John Nicolls, a particularly stern power-alumnus who I've had an up-and-down relationship with, depending on the context (Glee Club vs. Hangovers). I expressed a pretty strong interest in helping with the Midwestern Tour next year and cited my outreach to New Trier, as well as my outreach to the CSO (Chicago Symphony Orchestra) with the hopes of getting a rental rate. The rate itself was too high and the 2000+ seats too large, but the idea of going for a high-profile venue was made clear and I also apologized again on behalf for the Hangovers - something I had little to do with, but was being roped into by affiliation. Despite the significant improvement, the negative sides of being the Hangovers have been made clear to me again (then again I've enjoyed many of the benefits, so I can't complain too much).

After that, I finally was contacted by the *new* Outreach Coordinator for the IHA who contacted me back about organizing fundraising for their organization, after the old outreach coordinator Betsye had been somewhat difficult to meet with. And we may have now just set a meeting time.

All in all, a productive day out of a wasted one, but I should be careful with old fish, even old fish I've made ... even if it was part of a delicious Salmon Tortellini with a Wild Mushroom Sauce, served with mixed, spiced vegetables. I'll put up a recipe for that at some point ...

[And look at that, not such a short post after all]

Milk Chocolate Ice Cream from Go Fish in Napa Valley

When I organized the Cornell University Glee Club's Wine Tour in Napa Valley, we ate at a restaurant called Go Fish. Great food, but more importantly, the Milk Chocolate Ice Cream was divine. Honestly, this is some of the best ice cream I've ever had. I e-mailed the owner who I had been in touch with and she convinced the chef to give me the recipe. I highly recommend it as well as the restaurant Go Fish if you are ever in Napa Valley, CA. I saw it rated as the top fish restaurant in the area.

Without further ado:

Milk Chocolate Ice Cream- 1qt

230g Milk Chocolate

1.5C Heavy Cream

1.5C Whole Milk

150g Sugar

Pinch of Salt

4 Egg yolks

2t Brandy

Combine milk chocolate and cream in bowl set over simmering water. Stir until melted, then pour into container and set a strainer over top.

Warm milk, sugar, and salt in a saucepan.

In a separate bowl, whisk yolks until combined. Temper with warm milk, then pour back into saucepan.

Stir constantly over medium heat until nappe (170 degrees).

Pour through strainer into chocolate. Add brandy. Stir to combine then chill.

Momentary synaesthesia

I often wonder what it means to mean when they say that they "see God" and me being the heathen child that I am wonder what I'm missing. It's not so much that I strive to see God - my sense of "rationality" tells me that if I can't physically sense it, it's just at most a perception created by necessity for understanding what we know and desire to explain it.

Even so, I've wondered why I don't perceive these things. As I understand it, everyone should perceive certain events and it's just the interpretation of those perceptions (based on our nature and nurture) that separates us. So for some time, I've been looked for those moments when I'm supposed to see the writing on the wall. Naturally when your looking for something so actively, it can be staring right at you and you will completely miss it, but I've also been sifting through significant memories and once again I'm brought back to musical moments in my life, synaesthetic moments, which seem to stand out.

Now I suppose that these moments will differ from person to person - the whole idea behind personal connections to God (which in some way seems odd to me, because while I fully support individualism and am vehemently opposed to groupthink moments, particularly in religion), seems like it inherently pulls people further away from the people around them, making God seem almost like a divisive force. It's 3am, so clearly I'm not thinking clearly, but either my logic is fuzzy, I'm a pessimist, or God as a divisive force exists and I'm going to be smitten for considering the thought.

I shall have to ponder this further and get back to this thought later on ... especially the dual-spellings of the word Synaesthesia/Synesthesia ...

China nostalgia ...

Naturally I procrastinate writing by writing ...

I'm working on my tour article for the Glee Club newsletter and I was listening to some old Cornell Glee Club and Chorus music and O Magnum Mysterium (the Morten Lauridsen version) came on and it's giving me some serious de ja vu from China. It's not surprising, but I figured I'd try to narrate the connection in my mind, especially after hearing Professor Emeritus James McConkey speak so eloquently about life-writing in his lecture at President Skorton's house today.

The tour to China was something particularly unreal in my mind, both because of my mental and emotional state at the time and because of the amazing experiences we had while we were there. There is really nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing, quite like the performance we gave at the Shanghai Arts Center. It was by far the most acoustically beautiful place I've ever sung (and that includes Carnegie Hall) and that night was the night we made music.

It was the most beautiful music I can remember in my life - including the best of our 4 full-performances of Brahm's Requiem (my favorite major work, it was my favorite before that night too), a magical performance of O Magnum Mysterium and a couple other pieces. We also, had two impromptu performances of note at the end of warmups, which reinforce why I love music (and the Glee Club) and the ability it has to connect people.

The O Magnum performance was as I said "magical" because it came from nowhere - we learned it for Sage Chapel Vespers in December, performing it after practicing it just twice before (not very extensively either). We didn't rehearse it again until either the week before tour, or on tour and then Professor Tucker told us we would perform it in our highest-profile concert in China. I don't really know how it came together so well, but it was one of those years for music - perhaps the best year for music in my life. The year included the ACDA Eastern Division performance in Connecticut, an excellent performance of the Brahms Reqiuem in Bailey, China Tour and then the best Homecoming in my 4 years at Cornell in Fall 2008. But despite ACDA 2008 being one of my strongest and happiest memories at Cornell, the rare musical moments in Shanghai capture my imagination in the same way that the ACDA performance captured my heart.

The experience in Shanghai was further strengthened by our warmups - at the end, a couple of us requested that we sing the Biebl Ave Maria in the concert because we thought it would be incredible in that hall. Professor Tucker refused, explaining that it would be unfair to the Chorus, who don't have a comparable piece to pair with our Ave Maria (it has a long history, dating back to the Glee Club bringing Biebl's Ave Maria to America from Germany in the 1960s and popularizing the piece). As a result, he agreed to let us sing the piece in the hall after warmups and what followed was an ethereal moment. The chorus had left the stage and were watching intently (along with the rare few men who chose to rest their voices). What followed nearly put me in tears (which has happened only once in the past 15 years) - a heart-felt performance to our close friends in a hall that had no equal. In retrospect, it was not as technically excellent as our heart-wrenching performance of it just weeks before at the ACDA convention, but this was just as emotional. Perhaps it was fair warning for what was to come (in my mind), but what followed set the tone for the rest of the night - tragic, loving, beautiful, dramatic and epic. As we started to drag ourselves offstage after the Ave Maria, Steve "Willy" Welker, a senior at the time, looked to a couple others, and started singing Danny Boy - another piece we loved, but had barely practiced (learning it after Homecoming and performing it just once, at Elmira, prior to tour). What was particularly special was that this was no ordinary Danny Boy. It was arranged by Patrick Quigley, Assistant Director of the Notre Dame Glee Club, a very similar organization to our own. It was unpublished (and still is to this date, more than two years since it was arranged) and to my knowledge the only other group to perform it has been the ND Glee Club for whom it was arranged.

When Willy started singing, people stopped moving wherever they were and one by one the Glee Clubbers around the stage and eventually around the whole theatre joined in to the point where everyone was singing when we sang "and kneel and say an ave there for me" leading into the final verse. That piece has been my second favorite Irish ballad (second to the Minstrel Boy) and is one of the prettiest and saddest melodies. It has grown to mean so much more as the years go on and the words really begin to mean something tangible to me. That moment, after we finished singing - that silence (no clapping and sighing like after the Ave Maria) was even more significant. It was the calm before the storm, the moment of readiness. For the rest of the night, I was (and I'm sure others were too) in a trance, not unlike how we felt weeks before prior to ACDA when Willy warmed up the group before Professor Tucker and John even got to our hotel to see if we were awake. We were emotionally and mentally ready and it's those performances that I look back on - when every one of us knew that something significant happened. With ACDA, our performance was a barn-burner - everyone was crying and on their feet. Many of the conductors commented and sent letters and saying that it was the best choral performance they'd ever witnessed. With Shanghai, we had our relatively small audience wrapped around our fingers, but they were not the type of audience to just out of their seats with emotions - but I'd like to think that they were aware that they were being invited into an intimate, personal performance, like our warmups. The concert meant more to us because we sang it for ourselves and needed no voice of approval to tell us otherwise. It was for us and anyone else was along for the ride, a participant in our musical catharsis, because to us, it felt like no one else but our groups were there.

When the voices cascaded, building off each other's vocal and emotion support, the hall rang. And then that last "hallelujah" came, warmer than any before it, continuing until we faded to nothing.

More on why we write ...

In my first post, I think the message was somewhat muddled by the feverish delirium, but one of the really important things to note is that virtually every major historical figure wrote or spoke (in some way or another) to a larger audience, through articles, stories, scientific papers, books, music, etc. If you want to reach that level, you'll have to start writing eventually ...

Jingoism vs. the intellectual elite ...

The title of this post was born from some left-over thoughts on my last post, most importantly that anyone I've met who seems to be living the jaded, apathetic lifestyle and perspective that I was describing before also seem to lack any strong feelings towards the country as it is now.

It's a criticism often used by the far Right, which I find hard to combat. I love the idea of America and any bleeding-heart liberals and conservatives will, on some level, agree with that statement. However, the Generation Apathy that I described before lack the sense of wonderment that I think is essential for our humanity, but that generation also seems to lack the rabid, almost blind-faith of our country. I'm definitely someone who errs on the side of being very critical of how our country is run and while I love and appreciate what we stand for, I feel like that meaning is lost more often than anyone would like. The fine line between being critical to help improve our country and anti-American sentiments seems to be blurred because we're too young to really appreciate everything we get with America (the good and the bad) and even the strongest historians can't totally appreciate where we came from to get to this point.

[More to come ...]

Up and out ...

I always find myself distracted and at a loss of wonder, despite the natural beauty that still remains around us and I find myself disappointed. The have been moments in life that I've seen the world through rose-colored glasses, but in times like these where activity and focus take over, I find that the part of me that can't help but appreciate how amazing it is that we are alive is lost.

I long for the desire to gaze longingly at the skies. I'm utterly jaded at the thought of actual space travel, or a night-time adventure that once excited me. It's not exactly like I've experienced live so much that it bores me, but that I'm so afraid of not having something to do in my free time that I overload myself with plans and activities. At my first thought, I felt like technology and the availability of so much information was the cause, but I could be wrong. Once upon a time, people wrote letters no one was supposed to read, dreamed dreams that would never be achieved and did things because they were excited by them, not because it gave them a slight edge in life. Instead, we're left with Generation Apathy. It's not like we're not aware of our sloth-like state either. I'm sure many like myself wonder how our sense of wonder comes and goes so quickly and as a result, leaves us in mental states at the extremes of rationality and consciousness.

Some would call me a glorifier of the past and rightfully so - I'm a lover of history and someone who is fascinated by the value-added to an object just by time. Despite the fact that we've learned from history to get where we are, I somehow believe that we have lost our way. We've gained so much, so fast, that the humanity and love and wonder of the world seems to be missing. It's not blatant materialism, although that does play a role - it's our increasingly self-centered society. It's the blogging (not unlike this blog I'm writing), obsession with self-improvement (of which I'm a huge offender), the high speed of connection to people we know and don't know and the lack of effort to do all of this. We don't appreciate how much effort, patience and care it took to send love letters even 50 or 60 years ago and it's not like that's going to change.

A couple years ago, I wrote an article encouraging people to go night wandering around Cornell and appreciate the natural beauty and that sentiment should definitely be realized by as many people as possible. Here at Cornell, we are driven, obsessive people and our desires to succeed and win (because if we are "successful" we win at life, which is what every good Cornellian should want) are relentless. It is for that reason that we must try to slow down every once in a while and look at the world with a little bit of wonder. We're not going to re-create the values I romanticize from past generations, but a genuine appreciation and sense of wonder is healthy even for the most science-minded of us here. There is no formula for doing so - just practice and an appreciation for our curious position in the universe.

As someone who's both a heathen, god-less child and a scientist, I understand the awkward sentiment associated with looking at the world as a giant mudball hurtling through the universe, but even that sounds rather intriguing. The truth is that you have to not overthink the world. That's not to say that you let loose your unintelligent demons, but rather that you don't overthink the process of appreciating something. Appreciate the universe, the way the clouds part to let a couple rays of light peek through, whatever ... appreciate the seemingly simple or the devilish details behind the apparent simplicity - such as a pretty color on a bug, or the evolution of the genes coding for the pigments in the bug's exoskeleton. Both in their own rights are amazing.

Maybe I'm losing my mind and only I'm losing touch with these essential, dream-like characteristics of reality, but I can't help but feel like our generation and really everyone absorbed by our technology-crazed world is hurrying, both in our day-to-day lives and our minute-by-minute perceptions, and as a result is missing out.

I started this post because I was upset that the thought of a manned mission into space again didn't really excite me and that my kid-self would loathe me now. It's still true, but I feel reinvigorated to try and look at the world the way I did a couple years ago ... It might be an attitude-changing move that will trigger a part of yourself that you've been missing.

[Edits to be made ...]