Saturday, 27th of January, 2001
10:20: Everyone is talking about our prank this morning! And we only hit like 3 rooms. Some people think it's the conductor who's playing the trick! That's hilarious. If only we had the conductor's room number...
12:55: Wow, so it turns out, my stand partner's parents know my parents! They haven't seen each other in like 9 years, but they've known each other for a long time. That's quite a coincidence.
Well, I'm home now, oh gosh, All-State is sooo much fun. It's my last year :( And also the last of the January series of musical events :(
Friday, 26th of January, 2001
17:08: I saw Mrs. P at the convention room place, and asked her about the stroll. She said the client didn't even have us down as playing, cause Mrs. P had given her a green light, but said it was All-State weekend, and that she'd call if there were any problems. Well, apparantly, that wasn't what they interpreted it as, and they just didn't have us down at all. I think this kinda thing has happened once before... owell. Gosh, Berstain's tunes are so catchy, they've been in my head all day.
18:24: While getting dinner, I ran into Josh and Cindy again, on separate occasions, and we talked a bit.
23:03: I was just fooling around with my recording of West Side Story, and then our room came up with a great phone prank: call up rooms and just play the cool Mambo part and then hang up. It's like 3 measures before the "Mambo" shouting, and then the shouting. People thought it was hilarious too. They don't know that we are the culprits of it yet though.
Thursday, 25th of January, 2001
13:00: Well, we had our seating auditions this morning, and I'm 4th stand, outside! Tova is 1st stand 2nd violin, and Adam is principal bass. That is some niced representin' from Ladue. You know what's cool? When people talk about you behind your back, and you hear them, but it's something positive. I overheard a conversation, "Hey, my stand partner is Jey Ping, who's that?" "Oh, that's cool, he's really nice." It's a good reminder that it's rarely productive to say bad things about other people behind their back, but awesome when you positively encourage other people, even behind their back. Now I have a specific event to refer to with regardes to that.
16:10: Well, I skipped lunch today, on purpose, and now I'm only a little hungry. I wasn't very hungry at lunch time, and I since there are only 2 fast food places in the entire resort, I figured I don't want to just contribute to the eventual state of being sick of all the food that is offered here, so if it's really not necessary, I guess I won't eat.
18:42: We all went to the sit-down joint, and the restaurant had the most appalling service I have ever had. The server lost my food, and didn't give an apology, and then they suddenly switched servers. She was really really out of it anyways, it was ridiculous. The result of a monopoly in this place.
20:32: Well, West Side Story is shaping up, after starting out sounding kinda iffy this morning.
22:25 We had a late-night dressed-up photo session, and someone forgot his black dress shoes, so he's borrowing my solid-black tennis shoes. It works quite well, actually, you can hardly notice. It's still funny though.
Wednesday, 24th of January, 2001
I'm leaving for Tan-Tar-A today for the All-State Music Conference. Hopefully, I will keep my Handspring in one piece and keep a journal of what's going on, and then update you all. I'll be back Saturday.
19:00 - We can't officially check in since all the teachers from our school came on the bus with the 8th grade band which has yet to arrive. We all went to our rooms anyways, since our roomates have checked in and have a key. The room is nice, it's a 2-room suite in the front of the building, with it's own little stairs going up to it, private and all.
20:00 - The 8th grade band arrived, so we can finally sign in. I bumped into Cindy, Mike, Joshua, and the Allens, Joshua's parents! Wow, it's been forever since I've seen them, I went to elemenatry school with them in Poplar Bluff.
22:04: - We just finished our 1st rehearsal. Wow, West Side Story is hard to play ensemble-wise. The conductor British, with the accent and all the Britishisms. It's really quite cool. After the rehearsal, the head chaperon came up to the podium to give us the night's instructions, but he just kinda stood there, swaying back and forth. We all just kinda sat there for 5 minutes in silence, when someone finally realized that he was hyperglycemic (sp?) and he needed to eat some sugar, and he was having a blood-sugar imbalance.
Tuesday, 23rd of January, 2001
Put the car through the car wash for the first time in a few months, and now I realize that my car has a colour. And paint also reflects, would you imagine that. I can actually see own reflection in the car's paint now. Amazing. I think I need to get into the habit of washing the car.
Our school has recently switched to a new weighted GPA system. All As count for 4 points, but an 80-83% is a 3.0, 83-86 is a 3.3, and an 87-89 is a 3.7, or something like that if I rounded correctly. Well, it sounds pretty good to me, that way if I barely drop below the A, I only get .3 GPA points deducted, not 1 (which happens a lot). However, I've seen some interesting school-wide effects during the week of finals. I have never seen a school so entirely stressed out over finals. Wow. Cause, there are no longer "safe" grades, a difference between an 82% and an 87% is now .7 points, not 0. Hmmm.
Monday, 22nd of January, 2001
Yup, I placed 1st in the Sprint Round, and 2nd in the Target Round (tie-breaker), and our team totally tied for 1st place on the team test of Saturday's competition. Ashish, Yunxiang, and I got 2nd in the Relay.
Sunday, 21st of January, 2001
I figured out a great way to practice for these math contests... tutor someone in Advanced Algebra. There were like 3 questions yesterday on the determinent of a Matrix, and I just happened to relearn it Friday when tutoring Susan for her Advanced Algebra final.