Woke up late after hanging out with Brandon. Went over to M and had breakfast; had a chat with Trevor. Ran to the Ave to have lunch with Miranda, which I’d almost forgotten about. On the way, ran into Winnie very briefly; she was dressed in a striking blue blazer and matching outfit, apparently already dolled up for the Gala tonight!
I met up with Miranda at some random poke shop near Som Tam that had opened right after I left for Switzerland. The place was brand new and spanking neat. The food was quite delicious, and came with a bowl of miso soup. Miranda had just finished her 5th year master’s and was headed to San Fran to work for Cisco Meraki, after having a dinner with her prospective team members and really enjoying their company. She wanted to do automation work in the Infrastructure division. We also talked a lot about my traveling :D
Afterwards I headed to Physics to attend the seminar I’m auditing. But I realized they were discussing papers I hadn’t had the time to read. So I holed up in the IDL on the sixth floor and zeroed in on 331 HW 4 with the help of several cups of tea. (That place is great!). Back to Stevens, took a walk with Alex in the driving rain. I quickly showered and changed from my civilian clothes into wool pants, leather shoes, Trevor’s un-wrinkled dress shirt (he was very kind to let me borrow it), and a blue tie which complemented the shirt perfectly but was obstinately difficult to tie. By the time I’d tied it and chowed down some lasagna, I had barely any time to get to the pre-party. When I arrived, I realized I knew none of the new Laviners that were there, save Jacob and Michelle Ho. I had a couple of shots of Jager with Michelle and socialized with her and her buddies, fraternity boys & babes :P The Laviners of course wanted to book Ubers to the event, so out we went. It was raining pretty hard and the aforementioned babes had not dressed appropriately, so my $1 Goodwill umbrella came in very handy :P
We arrived at the venue and the front door was locked! So we went to a very picturesque brick back alley with fire escapes hanging off and the rain POURING down, and hung out there until we were able to get in. Once inside, I socialized with some more new Laviners. I decided to let my System 1 run my conversation in the confidence that it would do well, and it did! Not just facade-trained System 1, either, but from-the-heart, say-what-I-want-to-say System 1. I was shocked at how great it felt and how effectively I was able to converse and use the clever vocabulary I thought I might have lost. I really enjoyed myself, #JohanStyle.
Got a call from Winnie and came to greet her at the door. We strolled around the room, and met some interesting people–independently at first, then our conversations coalesced into a group. I still didn’t see many people I knew–no Jamie, no Johan–but it didn’t matter. We kept up this strolling and chatting and chipping and salsaing for a while, then it somehow entered our heads to hit the dance floor. There was nobody out there, but Winnie argued we’d set the trend. Leeeeroy… we jumped out and I started refreshing Winnie on the swing basics. It took her a little while to get the timing of the triple step out of the rockstep, but we hit our stride and started doing spins, and reached that great inflection point where I could start introducing variations without teaching them explicitly. Soon we were joined by more yokels on the floor. Everyone was jamming, so we switched from swing to goofing off. What a time! Somewhere in there we got in a pizza break, and bounced in time doing the old homeschool-style shoulder-bedoinking while we ate our pizza. Then a limbo contest was arranged. Winnie and I did pretty well but both fell backwards from overambition :D The crowd was all hyped up, just in time for the introduction of a live band, an awesome jazz quintet run by a Laviner. They played a few songs–super cool style, crazy wild drummer, emotional singer, sax blowing his head off–and then we started a game of Musical Chairs. Winnie and I started with 25 or so other contestants. I was goofing off, enjoying the music, and quickly got eliminated. Winnie scrambled to stay in a couple of times. Suddenly she found her strategy, her distance to the chair, her rhythm modulated by the chair spacing–and the game became a rout. Not once did she falter as she dropped uncontested onto a chair time and time again. Once, she claimed 3/4 of a seat, a guy got a quarter.. and promptly fell off the seat! I was going wild. The final round–Winnie vs. a girl with magnificent cornrows, one chair–came down to when the music ended, but Winnie didn’t take any chances when the music stopped on her side; low like a hoopster sliding into the post, she rocketed into the chair, which slid a few inches after she hit it. Domination! She took the opportunity to network with her vanquished foes, and got some hilarious staged pics, including some of her nearly pushing me off a chair :D
Winnie and me said hi to my bud Temo and his +1 Summer, then sat down in the chairs as the evening was winding down. During the entire event, we could hardly hear each other–my hearing is not robust to ambient noise, and Winnie doesn’t project super forcefully–so we kept having to lean in. We ended up having an entire conversation (about classical music) sitting past each other on chairs so that we were each talking into the other’s ear. That was pretty hilarious.
The crowd was dispersing and Ubers to the after-party were being formed. Winnie had to get back to the lab and work, so she couldn’t attend the after-party, so we elected to take a bus back to West Campus. We executed some flawless bus logistics, Winnie double-timing in heels as the wind assaulted us. On the bus, Winnie pulled up some bizarre Kant quote, (she’s taking a Kant class) and we argued about its meaning; soon I had to pull up some Nietzche quote. We walked to the physics building–I swooped up her arm on the way. Got to the physics building and got a surprise tour of Winnie’s (Junhao’s) lab. We walked up to the SPS to get her stuff, ran into Devin :P Hugged goodbye, then I ran back to Stevens to get my bourbon and Kahlua, which I trekked to the Lavin after-party. By the time I got there, it was winding down, but no mind–I made myself some White Russians and chatted. Got into a goofy political conversation with a guy from the house. Then I went back to the physics building and played blitz chess while I waited for Trevor et al. to get back from the GuggenRager. Brandon got back from his party and I decided to go over to D. Ran into Jacob Watkins and 3 of his friends chatting calmly on the “D Mattress”, which Alex got on craigslist for the house just a bit ago and now is just sitting in the D living room. Jacob introduced me to his math friend, Frances; after some epic banana dueling with Jacob, they did some salsa dancing, then switched to Swing. I got a dance in with Frances which was pretty great. Finally I retired to M for some well-deserved rest.