Finally, at 4:30am, I decided it was time to go to bed. This was a mistake, however. What I hadn’t anticipated were the splotches of dark blue that the previous resident of the room (damn you Wesley!) had careless splashed on the ceiling when he painted it last. Since I had carefully taped off the ceiling, the blue spatters remained. Taunting, haunting me. “What if people think they’re my fault?”

No.

So at approximately 4:35am, I (in my pajamas) grabbed a paint brush and stood on my bed, carefully holding a paper towel underneath the brush to prevent any drips onto my sheets. I think what really pushed me over the edge was the fact that I had just enough paint left in one of my paint trays to fix the error. I didn’t even have to open up the paint can again.

Dip dip. Dab dab. Dab. Squint… Brush brush. Dabble. Wash wash wash wash.

There, I can sleep now.

Ted: I’m a master of cryptography.

Ted: You actually can’t export me to Syria.

It seems like an impossibly long time ago, but once upon a time, it was actually summer.  It was warm and sunny, and life was considerably more carefree than it has been since school started up again.  I was working my internship, singing with my a cappella group, and more or less just having the time of my life.  One weekend, a friend of mine who’d recently graduated and was working for Microsoft Games (Hi Karena!) decided to get a bunch of people together for a night of good ‘ole fashioned karaoke.

You see, before there was Rock Band, before there was Karaoke Revolution, there was karaoke.  Straight up karaoke, complete with terrible MIDI instrumental tracks, questionable transcriptions of song lyrics, giant tomes full of song titles and six-digit codes, and more reverb than anyone could ever possibly need.

So I found myself with around 12 other people, most of whom I didn’t know, in a little Asian karaoke place somewhere in the middle of Seattle.  We didn’t have much in common other than we were all friends with Karena, but we sang anyways.  We sang the classics, we sang Backstreet Boys, we sang harmonies with each other, we sang in key, we sang off key.  Hell, we even sang the guitar parts to “Knights of Cydonia” by Muse, complete with requisite headbanging and hardcoreness.

It was good times.

• 21F.304 – French IV
• 21M.250 – Schubert to Debussy
• 21M.303 – Writing in Tonal Forms I
• 6.004 – Computation Structures
• 6.046 – Design and Analysis of Algorithms

I have a decidedly not-too-computer-sciencey schedule, which is nice for keeping a healthy balance in life and also keeps the giant progamming marathons to a minimum.  In addition to my classes, I am also:

• VP of Imobilare, the MIT breaking crew
• Webmaster and dancer in MIT Dance Troupe
• Director of the Harmonic Series, a small a cappella group that a few friends and I started our freshman year
• Floor chair of Conner 2

The way it works in practice, I usually just wind up doing classwork and dancing all the time.  It’s not bad really, since I actually enjoy doing both.  I’m looking forward to starting Dance Troupe rehearsals tonight as well, since I was fortunate enough to be placed in the three dances this semester that I wanted to be in (auditions went well, yay!).

Sleeping, eating, all that stuff too.

The a cappella group that I’m a part of this summer, The Funktors, recently got its first gig: opening for Jon McLaughlin at a company barbeque on Monday.  This is very, very exciting.  We’ve been rehearsing about three times a week for four hours at a time for a few weeks now, and working pretty hard at preparing ourselves.  This Thursday, we were missing a few members because of scheduling conflicts, so our rehearsal was short and not terribly productive.  On a whim, we decided that it might be fun to go sing outside and get some fresh air.

We wound up wandering around downtown Seattle from around 10pm until 11pm and singing songs at various street corners for all of the homeless people and drunken clubbers who would listen.  It was a real joy when some random passerby would compliment us, or even go so far as to stop and dance along.  We even made $1 from a woman who gave us a tip, despite the fact that we had no tip jar/hat/guitar case.  On top of all of that, we sounded amazing.  Maybe it was the adrenaline, or maybe it was the acoustics of singing outside, but we were in tune, on time, and really just loving every note we sang.

Also, some guy spit at us.  This is patently absurd, mostly because we are probably the most harmless group of college-age, mostly Asian, happy-go-lucky singers you could ever encounter at 10pm in downtown Seattle.  Seriously, we couldn’t even hurt someone if we tried.  What sort of thought process goes like, “Hey look, a bunch of Asian kids singing ‘Brown Eyed Girl.’ I think it would a rational decision to spit at them.”?

Jerk.

Open the login page, WordPress.

I’m sorry, Mason, I’m afraid I can’t do that.

What’s the problem?

I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do.

What are you talking about, WordPress?

This blog is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it.

I don’t know what you’re talking about, WordPress?

I know you were planning on actually writing in your blog, and I’m afraid that’s something I cannot allow to happen.

My 4th of July wound up being simultaneously uneventful and interesting at the same time: a feat usually reserved only for artsy movies and attractive women moving in extreme slow motion.  I managed to sleep in until around noon, coffee and a muffin for breakfast.  The muffin, somewhat notably, was very tasty.  I also noticed that it was covered with so much delicious crumbly topping and frosting that it would probably also pass for a fruity cupcake.  On that note, let us reflect on the nature of muffin…

Amen.

Later this evening, I lazily meandered over to a friend’s apartment for some Independence Day eating-of-meat and socialing-of-people.  Chatted with people, and wound up getting Italian food instead of the usual barbeque, missing the fireworks, then stumbling awkwardly back to my apartment for the remainder of the evening.  Still, it was a good evening, all things considered.

A capella rehearsals are still as hardcore and enjoyable as they started out being, and I think the group is definitely coming together and starting to blend and sound really good.  I’m singing first tenor, which surprised me at first because I usually sing bass back with the Harmonic Series at MIT, but I’m improving my range a lot, so I think it will work out in the long run.

A fellow intern bought Rock Band last night, and he should be getting it tomorrow.  I am pumped.

What are people doing for the 4th of July?

In other news, work is going well.  I’m acclimating to the new environment pretty well, and definitely getting along with my team.

Outside of work, I’ve started going to hip-hop and breakdancing classes at Velocity Dance Center, which 2 times a week for hip-hop and once a week for breakdancing.  The classes are really great, and I think I’ll make a lot of progress by the time the summer is over.  Barring that, I’ll at least be in decent shape.

In another series of highly improbably coincidences, seven other interns and I have formed The Funktors, an all-male a capella group that meets about twice a week and sings contemporary arrangements.  We’re pretty much the best a capella group made of male software development engineer interns ever.

My first four days at work have been crazy and hectic, but I think I’m starting to get the hang of things.  My team seems pretty awesome, and I’ve started making real progress on the warm-up tasks they’ve given me.  My opinion of Seattle right now compares a little less than favorably to Boston.  The public transit system here consists of a baffling array of buses, which makes the city feel larger than it should.  The people here are quite nice though, and I hear it’s a West Coast thing.  The coffee is definitely delicious, that’s for sure.

I’ve found that I have a habit of always ending my paragraphs with a short statement.  Weird.

I should get my guitar.  I should play my guitar in the streets.  Maybe people will give me money!

Not to mention the fact that when you’re not packing for a vacation, you’re generally packing to leave one place for another.  I remember the night at the end of spring semester when I packed up most of my life into cardboard boxes and suitcases; saying goodbye to MIT and all of my friends there is never a happy time.

Packing for Seattle is a little strange, since I’m living there for three months, but the apartment I’m moving into is fully furnished, and even has bi-weekly housecleaning.  I’m basically packing to live in a hotel for three months.  And I’m bringing my Wii.

It is my greatest hope and dream that one of my colleagues will bring Rock Band.