First, a little background. Last week (OK, by the time I’m posting this, last month), I had the great pleasure of traveling to Princeton on USAID business. Hilda (“Bambi”) Arellano, special counselor to the USAID administrator (i.e., highest ranking member of the USAID foreign service), was giving a public speech at Princeton and then delivering the keynote address for the annual recognition dinner for the Scholars in the Nation’s Service Initiative (i.e., that fellowship program that pays my salary and ensures that I go back to Princeton next fall). I had the honor of serving as Bambi’s control officer (read: kind of like a babysitter), as well as meeting with her and USAID’s human resources team privately. So, USAID/Peru sent me up for the occasion, which also meant that I had the further pleasure of seeing that member of our Sisterhood who is distinctly unsisterly (Garland) and his delightful chum (I know you’re going to hate me for calling you that) Zach-Todd-Ryan-What’s his face. In keeping with recent history, Garland is having a rather odd October. He also was continues to wear another shirt near and dear to our hearts (Communism—it’s a party!), and (happily) his hair remains fabulous. His brother is pretty cool too.

Anyway, the cheapest way to fly to Princeton routed me through Houston, Texas, allowing me to undertake Special Operation “Chan Lee” and recover The Shirt from Bianca. For the record, Bianca’s breech of Rule 8 arises not from malice nor disrespect toward the Sisterhood nor The Shirt, but rather negligence and her sedulous dedication to other tasks (i.e., moving out of the apartment she and Umar shared with a crazy woman, moving back to Texas, starting a new job, planning a wedding, etc.), which she will chronicle in her own blog post. Right, Bianca?

Special Operation “Chan Lee” began on 22 October 2010 at 23:00 hours. Upon arriving in the foreign territory (Texas; specifically, the Love residence—in keeping with our dirty minds, I tried to make that sound dirty, but it doesn’t really sound that way), I located and captured the shirt, which required the harrowing tasks of opening the hall closet and verifying that the shirt was there. It was, and remains in good condition. Mission: Accomplished. Next Mission: bedtime.

No longer a recovery mission, Special Operation “Chan Lee” continued on 23 October 2010, which was much more “Sex and the City,” but without sex and a city. (Bianca lives outside the city on a beautiful property that has dogs, cats, chickens, ducks, and—one of my favorites, though Bianca detests them—little tiny green frogs.) Anyway, the Sex and the City adventure involved Bianca and me doing a lot of shopping because it is much better to buy clothes, shoes, certain toiletries, etc., in the U.S. than in Peru. But when I came downstairs, I ran into my first challenge of the day: Mrs. Love looked at me in The Shirt and said, “You’re not actually wearing THAT, are you?” Wearing the shirt meant channeling Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen in their “I’m wearing clothes that don’t fit me so that I look like a hobo” stage instead of Carrie, Charlotte, Samantha, and Miranda. (Hence the semi-breakage of rule 6.) Although I didn’t succeed in channeling Charlotte for practical reasons (we foresaw lots of walking and I wear heels at least six days a week as it is), I did opt to not wear the shirt in deference to Mrs. Love’s objection and the reality that exposing myself (and my bra) in a shopping mall filled with brown people is probably not a good idea. (We headed to the upscale Galleria shopping mall, which attracts lots of brown people, most of whom have money—which means they are probably not the types that ask me to marry them upon first meeting.)

With BIANCA at Chipotle! The Sisterhood lives on.

Our shopping expedition involved ten solid hours of shopping (12:00 through 22:00—yeah, and you thought stores weren’t open that late), at least 22 stores (three of which were Banana Republics), and two meals. I won’t bore you with the details, but highlights included a mini-Bianca (age 6 and so cute—her mom even said, “She looks like she could belong to you!”), a deeply discounted three-piece suit, a trail ride (a distinctly Texan tradition of riding on horseback, in Conestoga wagon, or in Chevrolet Suburban along the side of the highway), some 40 Corvettes racing along said highway, and a chicken fajita burrito from none other than CHIPOTLE! We had the best intentions of taking a picture of me wearing the shirt while eating my burrito, but by 16:00, we were so famished that we gobbled down our Chipotle and only remembered The Shirt upon our return to the car.

As for the shopping acquisitions, they were far more mundane than those of the Sex and the City variety, though they did involve three pairs of shoes—all flat, two of which were running shoes, and one pair isn’t even for me. (I tried to find some cute—and comfy—new heels, but alas, my mission failed.) Yet all of these acquisitions pale in comparison with the real treasure of the trip (and ultimately the moral—I assume, having never actually watched an episode—of Sex and the City). No, I’m not talking about shoes. FRIENDSHIP! It was really fun to catch up with Bianca, reminisce about old times at Princeton, and talk about Topic Numbers One, Two (which we can rename School/Work), Four, Five, and a new Topic Number Six (weddings). We didn’t really talk about Topic Number Three—anyone know how she’s doing?

Throughout the day, The Shirt was there, witness to our mighty undertakings. (Shopping in Texas is kind of a big deal and requires extreme patience with people like the woman who lifted up her boyfriend’s t-shirt to audibly scratch his back with nails that could use a good trimming—and in the process of this scratching exposed his insert word that rhymes with back and is frequently used in the context of plumbers. Traffic can be pretty bad too, but was distinctly less distasteful.)

Bianca put me to work driving the tractor

With the famous Chanley

Special Operation “Chan Lee” concluded on Sunday, and merits an explanation of why the Operation was christened “Chan Lee.” Sunday was my day to return to Lima, and we still need a picture with the shirt! After packing my bags and before dashing out to the car with my suitcases, we had to take the picture with The Shirt. Some of you may remember Bianca’s affable tabby Chanley, whose name is of mysterious origins, not unlike the mysterious origins of The Shirt. As we ventured out to the barn to take a picture of me driving the tractor, we brought Chanley with us. And that, dear readers, is the origin of the name Special Operation “Chan Lee.”

To finish things up, now that I’ve overused the thesaurus and belabored this rather unexciting tale (the exciting part being a visit with BIANCA!), we finished a fabulous visit with a visit to Chipotle. To make the occasion even more momentous, we invited along Bianca’s not-so-little brother Rob, a sophomore at the University of Houston. Rob had never eaten Chipotle before, and I think I would be correct in saying that it was love at first bite.

Love at first bite—with Rob at Chipotle

With Special Operation “Chan Lee” now concluded, The Shirt will be washed and on its way to Julia, its first round of the Sisterhood complete. Let’s hope that its next stop doesn’t require a Special Operation recovery mission (though I’d love to visit each of you in turn, just like The Shirt).

Ridiculously nice house

My fun excursion with the shirt, growing hazy in my memory since it happened all the way back in December, was a ski trip with five of my friends from high school. My friend Ryan’s grandparents have, as Kaitlin would say, a ridiculously nice house a little outside of Reno, Nevada.

It is basically two stories of pure awesomeness. They have the biggest TV I think I’ve ever seen in a home, a huge high-tech kitchen, a mini movie theater, and their own old-fashioned popcorn popper stand thing. Naturally we stayed for the weekend to take advantage of all this cool stuff. His grandparents are really nice. He is about 6’ 5” and has a good sense of humor (we got along well) and she is a typical nice old lady who was always encouraging us to eat more (leftover Christmas goodies = good times).

The night before I wore the shirt I had the weirdest dream about our adventurous garment. It was even weirder since I almost never remember my dreams, a clear indication of its deep and meaningful impact on my life. During the dream the six of us were loading up the car to go skiing and I accidentally left the shirt on the roof of the car when we took off. After a little while I realized what had happened and demanded we turn around and search for it, launching into an impassioned plea and detailed explanation of the shirt’s importance and origins. I also had to argue with this other random guy who was in the car for some reason and insisted we just continue to the ski resort. After winning the argument and searching the whole night—not sure why it was nighttime, but hey, it was weird dream—we found the shirt and I woke up.

Pulling it off

That morning I slipped on the shirt making sure to abide by rule #3 and taking care of #5 beforehand. I walked in to eat breakfast looking fabulous and totally pulling it off. After a very long and giggle-inducing explanation, not to mention some VERY odd looks from Ryan’s grandparents, we ate breakfast and headed off to Diamond peak. As you can see from the picture, the shirt was a perfect

addition to my stylish ski attire and in no way makes me look ridiculous.

Wish this wasn't so blurry

Lunchtime at the ski resort was also a bit interesting since I took off the jacket to eat. People kept stealing glances at me every so often, presumably to marvel at how manly I look in teal.

After a solid day of snowboarding and skiing, we packed up and went back to the ridiculously nice house.

After showering, and yes rule #4 was abided by but no pictures since we were in a hurry, and putting the shirt back on, we went out to eat. Due to the cold weather and personal modesty, I kept my jacket on for most of dinner. However, as we were leaving, I decided the world just had to see my shirt so I walked out in dramatic fashion as my friend snapped a few photos of my stylish exit.

Back at the house I decided it was time to properly remove the shirt. With the help of four lovely assistants, my shirt was almost torn from my body as Ryan awkwardly took some unfortunately blurry pictures. Naturally they had to have a little fun at my expense as you can see in the picture on the left, but it all worked out and rule #4 was followed to the letter. The next morning we packed up and said our goodbyes and thank you’s to our generous hosts. After assuring them one last time that I was not interested in their grandson THAT way, we were off and returned safe and sound back to Modesto.

Somehow I know I will regret posting this

Pulling it off

The Shirt’s Adventure in San Francisco

My adventure with the shirt begins the day before Thanksgiving.  I left my office a bit early that day to do some breaking-and-entering and bring the shirt back to its kleptomaniac routes.  I snuck into Tom’s office and picked up the shirt, pilfering some peanut M&M’s from his desk for the long journey ahead on the way out [mreh... I guess it's not really kleptomania if I stole the M&M's for a reason... but whatever, close enough].  I went downstairs, hopped in Akshay’s car and began our 16 1/2 hour drive to San Francisco.

Along the way, the shirt stayed in my bag in the trunk, so I guess this is not a real shirt adventure.  But Jen has set a precedent that I am going to follow of telling you about stuff that happened when the shirt was traveling, though not necessarily on my body.  The drive started off fairly uneventfully aside from hitting a bunch of traffic leaving Seattle and listening to athe boys say “veggies” … “potatoes” … “sauce” in a strange voice repeatedly [Jen insists she will create an audio clip].  For the first 8 hours or so, Akshay drove and Jen slept in the back seat.

The trip remained uneventful until around 11 PM, when we needed to get gas.  Figuring that we could get gas by getting off of basically any exit on I-5, we took the first exit we came across.  This place seriously looked like it was straight out of a horror movie.  It was pitch black, with sketchy abandoned-looking houses every few hundred yards.  Plus, the road we were driving on had ditches on both sides, so we couldn’t turn around and get back to civilization.  Of course, I pointed all of this out to the two ‘manly’ men I was traveling with, and they [mainly Abhishek] basically screamed like girls the entire time we were there.  We saw a sketchy looking pickup parked in an empty field, and when I made a teensy comment about how the owner would probably be back once he finished burying the body, we finally turned around.

Back safely on the highway, we found a gas station and switched off drivers.  We woke Jen up from her nap so she could be navigator [where navigator = person in the passenger seat assigned to make sure I don't fall asleep] while I drove.  I drove for the next four hours on the same road the entire time.  It was pretty unexciting, except when we were going down several-mile-long strips of downhill, where I would look at the speedometer and suddenly realize I was going 95 mph [whoops!].  Jen sat in the passenger seat and played KOL on her iPhone.  As you can tell, my drive was super exciting.  One comment I must make about the trip down: Akshay is a champ.  After driving from 2 PM until nearly midnight, he drove from 4 until we got to San Fran… he’s awesome.

Any way, we finally arrived at Steph’s place in San Francisco at 6:15 AM.  After greeting Steph and seeing her place (which is really nice, btw!), we crashed [or at least, I crashed.  I think Jen continued to play KOL since she slept almost the whole ride down].

The next day [or the same day since it was well after midnight when we arrived] was our first Thanksgiving as “adults”.  We woke up around 11, and headed out to get breakfast.  The Seattleites were mildly ridiculous when we first walked outside.  After spending a few months the cloudy, rainy Pacific Northwest, walking out and seeing sunlight was amazing.  Of course, we thought that the weather was like this every day, but it rained the next day, so I guess it is a bit more like Seattle than we thought :/.  Any way, after getting over the ridiculously blinding sunlight and eating breakfast, we went grocery shopping to get ingredients to cook dinner.  Since none of us are big fans of turkey, we had a Thanksgiving chicken.  If I do say so myself, I think we did a decent job considering none of us have ever cooked a chicken before.

We had a pretty chill night and stayed in and played charades.  Akshay’s entries into the game were pretty ridiculous.  Seriously, how do you act out crispy caramel cream crunch? [Note: Actually just binged that... apparently Krispy Kreme makes something called caramel kreme crunch.  So maybe Akshay isn't that weird, just confused.]

The next day, we actually wanted to explore San Francisco.  And since I was actually going to see San Fran, this is the day I actually wore the shirt.  After eating brunch, the 6 of us [me, Jen, Steph, Abhishek, Tom Lieber, and Akshay] piled into Akshay’s car, ready to start another adventure.  Now, Akshay’s car is not intended to seat 6 people.  Especially not 6 fully grown adults.  Steph did some crazy bending stuff to fit into the back seat with us, mostly sitting on Abhishek’s lap.  It was mildly ridiculous and pretty uncomfortable, but we managed to survive the drive to the Golden Gate bridge, even though it involved us driving in the wrong direction for about 15 minutes before we realized that there was in fact not a huge red bridge in sight.

I must admit, the Golden Gate bridge was somewhat underwhelming for me.  However, on the way from the parking lot to the bridge, we saw PUPPIES!  Huge, huge PUPPIES!  I took a picture with one of them.  They kind of made me miss my puppy, even though they were like 80 times bigger than she is.

We also had a lot of fun doing jump shots in front of the bridge. It took several attempts to get the shot right, where all of us were in the air and not doing something ridiculous. This was also hard to do without violating rule #3 [you must never tuck the shirt into your pants]. But alas, we finally succeeded and got a pretty good shot

That night, we went to the pier and had yummy ice cream from the Godiva shop.  Then we walked around and saw sea lions sitting on a wooden platform.  There was one sea lion that kept trying to get up onto the platform with the other sea lions.  [S]he was really cute, so I decided to name her Sally Sea Lion.  I felt bad for Sally Sea Lion because [s]he couldn’t get up with her sea lion friends, but eventually she made it.  We left after that, because really, what else is there to see once you watch a sea lion’s dreams come true?

After that, Abhishek called up his friend Mason from Princeton, who also happened to be in San Francisco that weekend.  When he came to meet us at the pier, he brought a couple of friends with him… one of whom is someone you all know [or at least, everyone who lived in Dodge-Osbourne freshman year...].  That’s right, it was your former roomie Swati!  This makes me 2/2 with running into unexpected Princetonians while wearing the shirt [remember Blair in D.C.?].  I think the shirt and I are a magical combination!

We had dinner at the Hard Rock Café, then headed back to Steph’s place.  That night, we played a game where one person asks a question, and everyone answers on a piece of paper.  Then, you put all of the answers in a hat and try to guess who had which answer.  It was kind of fun for a while, though it was often easy to pick out Jen’s answers, particularly about questions involving the future, since all of her answers involved her being dead or otherwise not having a future.  [Eg. “Where do you see yourself getting married?”  Jen: “.” ; "What are you going to name your first child?" Jen: "." … though maybe this is more about marriage and children than a future in general…]  After that, we played some more charades.

The next day, we met up with Michael Ye, another fellow Princetonian who is working in Mountain View.  We went to Golden Gate Park, where the Seattleites were again awed by sunlight.  Jen and I ended up doing cartwheels and jump shots, and otherwise acting like 2 crazy people who haven’t been outside in months.  We spent a good deal of time just walking around and exploring the park, basking in the sunlight while we still had the chance.

The highlight of the day, and perhaps even of the entire trip, came when we decided to rent a couple of surreys at the park.  Jen, Akshay, Tom, Mike, and I were in one 5 person surrey, while Steph and Ab took a 2 person surrey.  The person renting the surreys cautioned us to only go up, back in the direction we came from.  Obviously, as we’d already spent a few hours exploring that side of the park, we ignored his advice and headed down toward the beach.  On the ride down in the opposite direction,

Akshay manned the wheel in the 5-person surrey.  We drove along the side of a road with a fair number of cars.  I’m not sure how Candians learn to drive, but Akshay apparently thinks that good driving entails turning the wheel wildly back and forth. It reminded me of the way a 5-year-old would turn an imaginary steering wheel while pretend-driving.  Doing this on a real vehicle, of course, lead to the surrey swinging left and right, into and out of traffic.  There were quite a few times where we almost ran into a car in the surrey, and one time where we genuinely ran into Steph and Ab on their surrey.  Still, the ride down to the beach was fairly pleasant, especially since we managed to survive Akshay’s attempts to kill us. We spent some time enjoying the view, taking pictures, and goofing around before turning around to head back and return the surreys.

Now, the trip back was much less pleasant than the trip there.  Turns out, the surrey-renter told us to only go up for a reason.  You see, the entire ride to the beach was downhill.  This makes for a fairly nice, easy ride.  However, returning is not so easy.  Even when we had 4 people pedaling their hardest, the surrey barely moved.  At one point, we were pedaling our hearts out, watching a woman leisurely walking her dog pass us on the right.  Obviously, at this rate, it would take us hours to get back to the surrey place, and it was starting to get dark.  On to Plan B.  Since we had 5 surrey riders, and only 4 sets of pedals, someone was obviously taking up space without contributing.  So we started a ridiculous rotation where 4 people would be pedaling while the 5th person ran around to the back of the surrey and just ran along and PUSHED.  This was really tiring [I mean, you try pushing a surrey up hill!], so we switched off every few minutes.  Of course, we didn’t want to stop the surrey to switch riders since we didn’t want to lose our momentum, so we would be running around the surrey and hopping into and out of seats.  This was particularly amusing when the driver changed since this involved steering while jumping off the surrey and running.  We needed to be sure to switch off quickly to avoid swerving the whole surrey into an oncoming car.

This was pretty exhausting, but we finally made it back to the surrey rental place in one piece.  We definitely felt a sense of accomplishment that we were able to get back — between Akshay’s driving on the way down and the ridiculous uphill journey back, we were lucky to make it alive.

That night, we kicked back and enjoyed our last night in San Fran.  And I mean, what else would we do on our last night in SF?  We played charades yet again.  I think by the end of that weekend, all of us were significantly better at acting out random things.  Steph did an awesome job acting out “corporate discrepancy”, which I don’t even think is a normal phrase [again, Akshay is ridiculous].  Her acting involved miming an apple core, pointing to her face [“pore”], eating [“ate”], and somehow getting Abhishek to figure out that she was talking about a discrepancy by acting out reading 2 documents and shaking her head.  I think Steph definitely takes the prize for best acting out of clues.

Sadly, like all good adventures, our trip to San Francisco had to end. After all, we had to work on Monday.  We woke up pretty early on Sunday to get on the road, back to rainy, gloomy Seattle.  We said our [not so] tearful goodbyes to Steph and got on the road.  Akshay again took the wheel as we left San Francisco, thankfully much better at driving an actual car than a surrey.  On the drive back, Akshay again took on the bulk of the driving [that man is a machine!].  Jen, the shirt, and I walked tiredly back into our apartment at around 9 PM, completing an awesome shirt adventure.

Later that week, I washed the shirt and shipped it off to Taotao for its next great adventure.

[An exercise for the reader: Count the number of times I say ‘ridiculous’ in this post.  It is ridiculous.]

[End Note: Does anyone know the current whereabouts of the shirt?]

“I am making the executive decision that you do NOT have to play for the piano faculty this semester. You’re all busy enough and, um… have shown that you can PLAY THE PIANO. No juries. I would, however, propose that we all go to Greenwich Village to eat Australian meat pies and perhaps see a film on Sunday Dec. 20. Game? Available?”

[Translation for those who have not gone to music school: “Juries” are practical exams at music schools at the end of each semester, in which students get up and give a brief performance for the entire faculty of the department. Accompanists already have to play for multiple juries with our singers, so it’s kind of annoying when we also have to play for the piano faculty.]

So I thought the suggestion about Australian meat pies was strange enough, but believable coming from our teacher. Then, Andrea, one of the other accompanists answers with the following e-mail:

“Yesssssss on all accounts!! I was actually just about to ask about our meat pie excursion… I however cannot do the 20th because I’m off to the great white north on the 19th… The 18th isn’t a go either for me. Other ideas?”

[Clarification: Yes, she’s also from Canada. Don’t know how it happened that both of us are, but such are the facts.]

Which led to an in-depth discussion of dates and times that somehow resulted in us all being available today (scheduling around four accompanists is no small feat, by the way). It also further piqued my curiosity on this event, suggesting, for one thing, that it had been talked about before, and was possibly an annual tradition? It was not an annual tradition, as clarified by the following e-mail from our teacher, in response to my further questioning:

“Hey hey – So, just so Taotao doesn’t think us to have yearly rituals such as “Accompanist Meat Pie Day” (maybe not a bad thing…), I should say that I discovered a place in Greenwich Village famous for meat pies which I’d like Graeme to basically give a thumbs up or thumbs down to. So, round two of dates – how is Thursday night the 17th? Do you have readings and carols on Sunday the 13th?”

[More Clarification: Graeme is Australian. ‘Nuff said.]

Much further discussion of dates led us to agree on Wednesday the 16th, which made little sense, as it didn’t even come up in the first two rounds of dates. So here we are.

We were leaving at 5pm (apparently our teacher was driving – I’ve never taken a car to New York before, actually). But first, I had to get through the day. It was a pretty uninteresting day as far as days at school go. No ridiculous choir rehearsal with our energetic choral conductors, no being yelled at by voice teachers with highly interesting personalities, even the jury that I was supposed to play for was cancelled because my singer was sick. I had sort of seen this coming, since he had been struggling to be well enough to sing for several days, and it didn’t help that he had stayed up all night writing a musicology paper (which I maybe should have done too, except that I wasn’t interested in doing much more than passing the class…why should grades matter in grad school?) It was still mildly annoying to show up at Bristol Chapel (which is the closest thing this school has to a concert hall) and find my singer not there. Apparently he had texted me earlier, but I didn’t realize until later that my pay-as-you-go cell phone was out of minutes. Ah well…the jury would be made up in February (after our amazing five-week winter break!)

I did successfully have one coaching that day (with a singer who only normally shows up about 60% of the time, actually! It’s kind of fun playing the guessing game of when singers will show up.) We worked on repertoire for his junior recital in March. Nothing really out of the ordinary happened in the coaching, although perhaps I should mention that it isn’t a very ordinary coaching to begin with. Firstly, this singer (a tenor), is a recently converted Christian, and has always been pretty outspoken. This results in a mildly comical combination of out-of-place remarks on life and punctuating every other sentence with, “Oh, Father!” Furthermore, he claims that his past voice teachers (he’s hopped around a few of the voice studios) used to let him get away with murder. Murder, in this case, takes the form of breathing whenever he wanted to (as often as that’s forgiven in pop music, classical singers have to be able to sing long phrases), not fixing any diction problems (and there were innumerably many, especially in French – French singing is actually atrocious across the board in this country), and generally poor practice habits. Well, his new teacher, with her MET career and diva-tinged toughness, certainly wouldn’t stand for those things, and of course, neither will I. So we’ve spent the semester building up this young tenor almost from scratch, and it’s been frustrating at times, but actually been quite rewarding in the end, because he does have a fantastic instrument (translation: that’s lingo for “he has a good voice”).

Anyways, after some practicing and errand-running, it was finally 5pm. (NB: The account of this is going to be censored. While I think you’d probably enjoy reading the uncensored version more, I don’t actually want someone finding this and getting me into trouble, so I’m not putting anything here that I think is going to offend anyone. Hopefully my instincts for my censoring decisions are correct, though I’m starting to learn that, in this profession, someone is always going to be offended anyways.) We met at the front of the school, and our teacher drove his car up to meet us. It was a fairly non-descript car (dark blue or dark gray, I can’t remember), and on the trip back, once we had exhausted all of our gossip on singers and voice teachers, there would be a discussion on what kind of car our teacher should actually drive. I wouldn’t know enough to contribute to that discussion, but I think Andrea’s opinion (don’t remember on what grounds, and not that I’d understand anyways) was that he should drive a Saab.

I wasn’t sure what to expect when we got into the car. Undoubtedly, we’d have enough conversation topics because accompanists are interesting people, and if all else failed, we could probably just rant. Still, I’d only had one semester of lessons with this teacher, and I hadn’t yet fully realized the level of informality on which he can work, so I was kind of apprehensive to just hang out with him and the other accompanying majors. The thing was, I still kind of treated him like, “O reverent teacher of infinite wisdom and experience, I hope I have worked hard enough to please you.” Not that I treat every teacher like that, because there are many teachers that I have absolutely no respect for, but I’m ridiculous enough to adopt that attitude sometimes. Which is beyond unnecessary for this teacher. As was mentioned later that evening, apparently one of the voice teachers had said something to him like, “It’s so great to have you, so that the students get to see a twenty-first century personality.” I think he was mildly offended by that statement.

The conversation (“By the way, Taotao, this is full disclosure,” our teacher said to me early on in the car ride; apparently the others, who were both second-year grad students, had had dinner together before, so they already knew this) started, predictably, with voice teachers and singers in music-related discussion. That was ridiculous enough already, what with how weird the jury results sometimes ended up being, the strange pedagogical methods of some of the teachers, and just how weird all of our professional lives are. Music school is an endlessly rich source of odd personalities, usually ones that take up too much space. The voice teachers, being older, have had many more years to develop that than the singers, though often you also get young singers who are very precocious in this area.

At one point, I mentioned something about the Princeton music department, and we all marveled at how weird that institution was for a while. Things are done so differently there that whenever I talk about it to people at my new school, I feel like I’m telling tales of a trip to a desert island or something. The reactions are also sometimes like reactions to an exotic story.

We then moved to personal-life gossip about singers. Andrea had, by far, the most to contribute to that, as Graeme lives further away and is a little older and married, and I usually try not to hang out with my singers (I see enough of them during the day). Surprisingly for me, it was our teacher who brought this topic up and kept it going for as long as he could. He was pretty intent on fishing as much information out of Andrea as possible. This conversation topic led us all the way to our destination. We found a place to park, and then set off on foot down a small street. “Tuck Shop,” it said on the outside of the building. Apparently, our teacher had discovered the place while walking in the city, and I guess he made a mental note to bring his students there.

We walked in. It was pretty devoid of décor, though the walls were lined with boxes of Australian snacks with funny names. (“You have to try Tim Tams,” Graeme insisted, and bought a few boxes before leaving.) Somehow, the guy at the counter and Graeme immediately recognized each other as fellow Aussies. It was a sort of “Hey!” “Hey!” kind of moment, as they both had Australian accents, and immediately began to talk about Australian things. Our teacher, Andrea, and I found this very funny. We ordered our meat pies, which was a typical lunch-on-the-go in Australia, Graeme explained. That was kind of funny for this being our accompanists’ night out. I also realized, unexpectedly (though Andrea and Graeme look unsurprised, because I guess this had happened last time too), that our teacher would be paying for our entire evening. It was a good meal, though it’s not like I get meat pie cravings after the fact.

Afterwards, we took a cab to an Italian dessert place, apparently reminiscent of the cooking of our teacher’s Italian grandmother. This looked significantly classier. I don’t think I’ve ever gone to anything other than an ice cream shop or a bubble tea place specifically for dessert before, but maybe I’ll start doing it more often. I ordered profiteroles, which I had never had before. I can’t describe them in words, but they were delicious. Andrea took the initiative to change the conversation topic here. She demanded our teacher’s life story. I, for one, was not disappointed by his account. He was quite a good story teller, and he started a few generations up in his family, so that it sounded like a conglomeration of several disparate movie genres into one. Everything from bar fights, to intimidating fatherly pep talks, to dream quality Italian food, to someone’s leading a double life on another continent, to being an unfocused undergrad, to studying with the intimidating Martin Katz, to working with Kathleen Battle, to adventures with a four-year-old nephew.

I could have listened to that story for several more days (and, no doubt, our teacher would have somehow found that much material; when you talk at people for a living, you end up being able to fill any period of time with interesting material), but we had to leave the Italian desserts place to walk to the movie. “A Single Man,” with Colin Firth and Julianne Moore. Our teacher is apparently really into film, among other things, so he suggested all these indie films for us to see. The movie was OK. I’m not a huge Colin Firth fan (I just don’t think he’s that cute). I do like Julianne Moore and she was good in this role, but the role itself was pretty unflattering. The shooting of the film was a little too artsy for my taste, though I respected that it only used film techniques that were available ten or fifteen years ago (maybe a budget thing?) I guess people who like indie films appreciate them really as works of art, whereas I use movies as quick third-person glimpses into fictional lives that will help me better understand real life. Seriously. I mean, I can get the same thing from any sort of fiction, but movies and TV shows do it the most quickly.

For some reason, it took unreasonably long to get a cab back to where we parked. I guess it was pretty late, but seriously, it’s New York. AND it was really cold (yes, even the Canadians felt cold), so I was not happy about the long wait at the street corner for an available cab. But one did come eventually. “And there’s my car,” said our teacher as we walked into the parking garage, as if he hadn’t been expecting that we and the vehicle would be reunited, all unharmed.

The ride back was a little quieter because we were more tired, though we were still in no danger of running out of conversation topics. Graeme broke out the Tim Tams, which were good, kind of like Kit Kat. (In fact, I wonder if one was inspired by the other, or if the same person thought them both up, judging by the similarities in the names.) I wondered why no one else objected to us coming back so late. I was the only one who didn’t still have more juries to play. It was past 1am when we got into Princeton. I had my bike at school, though the others were incredulous that I would ride back so late. “I do it all the time,” I said, perhaps giving more information than I intended. After all, I wasn’t an undergrad anymore, and thus now surrounded by people who live on “real people time.” But seriously, it’s Princeton, and I only live a five-minute bike-ride from school.

Among the holiday wishes, there was talk of doing something together again in the spring (maybe MoMA, someone said), but I really doubt that’s going to happen, since musicians are (for some reason) three times as busy in the spring, and accompanists often get the worst of it. That’s kind of shame, because I’ll probably be quoting from this night for the rest of my life. While most of my life is pretty crazy and quotable too, there really is nothing like a bunch of accompanists getting together. It was certainly an excellent start to my winter break. While I was glad to be getting away from the craziness for awhile, I really did love my new life, and I knew I would really miss being around singers and accompanists, and of course lessons with my brilliant teacher, over the course of the next five weeks.

Who has the shirt now anyway?? And how many fail posts am I gonna have to make?

In the meantime, Kaitlin you can post.

[update] Actually, by now the shirt may actually be out of Bettina’s hands and headed towards Kaitlin. Sorry for taking so long guys… but apparently there’s a lot to do in Seattle, especially if it includes dragging your life over here. And making a proactive effort to be social.[/update]

The Night That I Didn’t Actually Wear The Shirt

Apologies in advance if this violates some shirt rule. I was originally planning to wear the shirt this night after having carried it along for 6 days, but using my better judgment (yes, there exists such a thing) decided not to. It was summit night. After going to bed at 7pm, we were woken at 10:45. PM. What a great night’s sleep. We were getting ready to start the long hike. After hearing about the frequency of vomiting during this stretch (remember: there are such things as type II fun), especially combined with my experience on day 3 where I witnessed a little bird pecking at my expelled afternoon snack (for which I am more than willing to equally blame an unwelcome monthly visitor in addition to the altitude).

shirt on day 2 of hike

I decided to leave the physical shirt at camp and to only take its spirit with me. Besides, it was cold and I looked like a puffy marshmallow rolled several times in pink and black sugar… aka, a Peep… so you’d never be able to tell anyway.

At 11:30PM on August 10th we set out from Barafu camp for the oh-so-fat peak of Kilimanjaro. It was obviously dark, so we switched on our headlamps in ritualistic fashion. This turned out to be a superfluous act. Though the moon was a few slivers past full, it and the stars were enough to light the way. It’s refreshing to know that we could see because the celestial bodies were actually that bright, and not because of light pollution. Take that, you purple Princeton sky.

Camp was at 4500m and our goal was around 5800m. As you can imagine, this means a long, continuous, upwards climb. My head throbbing continued, with some nausea slowly setting in. This is normal at altitude, so my guide tells me. 4700, 4800, 4900 meters. By 5000 meters, I was going very pole pole. With each step, the throbbing intensified. With each step up a big rock, I feared for my brain cells. Instead of giving into my masochistic side, I literally stopped every 30 seconds to catch my breath; the air was just too thin for my pathetic little lungs.

It’s probably a good thing that it was so dark. If I were able to make out the entire path in front of me, I probably would’ve given up long before I reached even 5000m. People talk about how difficult the altitude is to deal with, but forget to mention the brutality of the long hike after days of sleep deprivation. It was a seemingly endless 8 hours before I reached the top.

The last couple hundred meters to Stella Point were the worst. The air doesn’t have enough oxygen, the slope is steep, and the destination taunting in clear view. Worse yet, with each step forward, you slide a half step back. The ground is loose, composed of sand-like soil and small rocks. Coming down, folks are practically skiing, gracefully sliding down on the sandy surface and carefully avoiding the large chunks of rocks in the middle. The view from Stella Point was pretty damn good (absolutely spectacular by any sort of east coast standards) but I’m not sure it was worth the “suffering” to the peak. The two aren’t exactly comparable, but I thought the Andes were absolutely breathtaking by any standards.

Check out the pinkness!

My slow and nauseated body ran out of time to get all the way to Uhuru Peak. Oh well. I never did throw up again, but a certain lack of food/appetite made me hit the wall somewhere on the way up, making the way down almost equally painful. My “skiing” came to a halt about every 10 meters or so, still to catch my breath and to ease the headache, which somehow becomes even more unpleasant in the daylight. I think our assistant guide became fed up with my slowness. When we were nearly (a mile or so?) back at camp and some porters had come out to meet us, the guide suggested that they carry me back despite my protest. After insisting that I was too heavy and making myself difficult to carry (thank you Zach for the practice), they let me walk. The assistant guide then asked me if I weighed 100 kilos. I’m still uncertain if that was a serious question or just in jest. After lunch, a now repetitive course of soup (sometimes cucumber, sometimes carrot, but it all tasted the same) followed by vegetable sauce (which had beef in it…) and rice, then fruit, we set out for Mweka Camp. Now that my tummy was in good spirits and the path was not completely rocky, we raced down the trail and passed many a hiker along the way. We took an hour long break at High Camp where they sold beer, then continued onto Mweka camp. Mweka camp is very crowded and looks like a camping ground you’d find at a state/national park. We bought each of our porters and our cook and our guide and assistant guide a beer. This of course made them very happy, but afterwards I debated the merit of giving them beer before dinner. Fortunately(?) the food seemed the same as usual, so no worries. Kilimanjaro brand beer is actually a pretty decent beer. I went to bed early (like 8 or 9PM — fairly typical for this trek) and had the first restful sleep in a week. Unfortunately for you and for the party animal in me, sleeping before 10PM is pretty much the story of my summer life.

The Day That I Did Actually Wear The Shirt

At this point, Kili was a thing of the past. Just another tick off the checklist… We woke before day break. 5:30am, so that we could leave camp by 6. Watching the sunrise was pretty cool, but honestly, I couldn’t see a thing before the sun lifted into the sky and I would’ve preferred the extra half hour of sleep. That being said, we had a pretty exciting morning so I didn’t really mind the early start.

For those unfamiliar with the concept, a game drive consists of sitting on your ass (or standing if you so desire) all day and being driven around in a big national park or preserve while looking for animals. When something cool is spotted, the car stops and the mzungus stick their heads out through the windows and displaced roof, equipped with camera or binoculars in hand. Most of the time, this is rather boring unless you take great interest in watching gazelle turn their heads 180° to face you, stare at you ’til they freak, then skitter off a few extra meters away to “safety”, somehow crossing the “road” in front of the car to do so. I put “road” in parentheses because although there is a clearly marked path, it is little more than the dusty dirt that somehow supports the flora around it. The gazelle then resume grazing, but only after staring at you for a few more seconds.

Here’s one thing about the safari that ensures excitement. The Serengeti has about 25 radio channels. When a group spots something cool, they’ll often radio it in. So if your guide knows which radio stations are best to listen to (and ours did) then you’re bound to see something worthwhile. Besides, the Serengeti has a large lion population so it would be pretty sad if you didn’t see any of those predators. Additionally, if another car stops, your car will stop too to check out the scene. There were lion sightings today, but save for a couple, they weren’t terribly exciting. We drove by a lion cub sitting right by the road, which was completely adorable when it turned to look at you.

There was a cheetah spotted from afar as well as a cheetah crossing the road in front of us. Crossing slowly. I really wanted to see it sprint, complete with thundering background music, but alas, I’m pretty sure I could’ve outpaced its light and short-lived jog. There was a leopardess sitting in a tree (you could tell it was female because it sat straddling the tree with its hind legs whereas males don’t… is this really only because of anatomical differences?) which was pretty cool (they’re “rare”) until we drove by again several hours later and it was still resting in the same position. Despite their clear cattish daytime lethargy, leopards are pretty cool. They’re one of the many creatures that put lions to shame. The previous day, we’d seen a carcass hanging 5m up in a tree. Can you imagine the jaws that it takes to do that? Else they’re very sneaky and good at convincing gazelle to expend the rest of their energy jumping into a tree, expiring upon landing.

But the highlight of the day no doubt goes to this family of 4 lions. They had taken down a young giraffe, reddened with fresh blood at the top of its neck. They were eviscerating the poor creature for at least a couple of hours. It was so cool watching them sink their teeth into and pull at the very raw meat. Mmm, tasty. The hyena lying nearby was probably getting hungry. I was too, just watching them. Or maybe that was because we skipped breakfast so we could leave before sunrise. *shrug*

Mmmm... tasty!

We went back to the campsite, had brunch, and drove to our campsite just outside the Ngorongoro Crater, the largest caldera in the world. I was just at Sierra Negra, the second largest (which was vastly different in terms of flora/fauna/existence of life) and this one was much much bigger. Plus it was filled with wildebeest, buffalo, and zebras among other animals.

Anyway, our campsite was luxurious. There was a nice view and my shower was the warmest I had in Tanzania. Upon arrival, we hopped out of the car to unload our stuff from the back. The dialogue went something like this:

- The door is missing.

- What? The door is right there.

- Not that door, the metal frame of the door attached to the spare tire.

this vehicle is supposed to be symmetrical...

All these Toyota Land Cruisers (why do they have such a monopoly?) have two spare tires on the back, each secured to a metal gate-like “door” that closes outside the real door. Apparently, the 3 welding joints had fully cracked and broken, and gracefully at that, for it went unnoticed by any of us in the car. A chunk of the car was lying somewhere in the 4 hours between the Serengeti and Ngorongoro Crater. We informed our guide. His response: “It happens.” I can’t say that I’m entirely surprised given that we once had to push the car to get it started and once had another car push it to get it started. This was despite our guide leaving every night to get the spark plug, battery, and alternator fixed. I’m half surprised our vehicle didn’t break down in the middle of one of our game drives.

shirt at super-awesome campsite with hot water

Nightfall came and it was freezing. Thankfully I had already showered, otherwise I think I might have frozen solid. Even with all my layers on — which wasn’t many — I was still cold. So of course we had the brilliant idea of building a fire! Though this should have been evident during the day, I learned that the lush woods of Appalachia surpass Tanzania in the “bonfire materials” category. Twigs were scarce. The ones that we could find were thin and scrawny. During our scramble for burnable branches, we encountered a couple zebras that had wandered into camp. Better yet, someone came back and beckoned us in a different direction.

- You guys have to see this.

- Is it a snake?, half jokingly

- It’s a bit bigger than that.

We follow and see an elephant drinking out of the nearby water reservoir for the showers. An elephant! In a flurry of excitement, we all begin encroaching on this elephant’s space, and it starts backing away with speed. We scared it off. I couldn’t keep up and lost it pretty quickly. This reservoir is about halfway between my tent and the toilet, which was not very far. It was pretty cool seeing a random elephant so close to camp. After a fine evening with French folk, non-French folk, and flame time, we settled in for the night.

Overall it was a pretty awesome time. The you-had-to-be-there kind, not the it-makes-for-good-stories-kind. Met some good people and made a few friends along the way. Speaking of which, you should totally check out EGG-energy if you get the chance. I want to see this start-up succeed. I also tried to super-cheat and wear the shirt a 3rd day into the Ngorongoro Crater, but there is still not much story-telling, so I’ll spare you and just include a picture:

the safari gang

The shirt on day 2 of hike!

Sucha: 110 (100 for posting + 10 for sending the shirt to Jen)

Julia: 110 (100 for posting + 10 for sending the shirt to Sucha)

Jen: -99999999999999999999999999999999990 ( -100000000000000000000000000000000000 for late posting + 10 for sending the shirt to Bettina)

Summary: Julia and Sucha are awesome.  Jen fails.

I think people should start texting Jen that she is a failure every day until she actually posts.

* Edit: Taotao pointed out that I fail at math.  But not nearly as much as Jen fails at life. *