Yesterday was MIT’s senior ball at the Sheraton Hotel, next to the Prudential Center. The only other time I had ever been inside was a secret infiltration to use the restrooms while shopping (there is a distinct lack of restrooms in the greater Prudential Center shopping area, which includes the first floors of several skyscrapers, connected by enclosed bridges and long corridors). My girlfriend and I arrived there pretty early, avoiding some bizarre shuffling for called taxis and such by simply walking “upstream” to the source of taxis and flagging one down. What’s the point of calling a taxi ahead of time, when there’s almost no way to tell which one is yours (people were just climbing in randomly, it seemed)?
In any case, being there an hour before the main banquet hall opened meant that we got to circulate around, looking at some of the opera poster replicas haphazardly affixed to the reception room walls. The posters reminded me Yukino of Kare Kano – the same sort of “reputation-building” due to the display of high culture without actually knowing or caring about it (how many elite hotel-goers actually watch opera ..?).
As the first gig of the night, a small string gypsy-jazz-style ensemble performed live (2 violins, acoustic guitar, and string bass). The first violinist had a curiously green-blue violin with serious amplification going on. They played romantically and clearly enjoyed what they were doing. Certainly no Stephane Grappelli, but decently mood-setting. I think overall, they had a good feel for the music, but part of the beauty of well-played jazz string music is taking advantage of the versatility of the instrument in terms of tempi and volume. And for me, there is no way that hearing any guitar-violin group would not bring up my aural memories of Django and Stephane.
The food for the evening was alright – it was curious that they decided to put everything (vegetables, salmon, chicken) into a pastry form (dubbed the “hot pocket” by the couple next to us). The seasoning was beyond bland, but I suppose that when catering for 700 people, you have to leave things that way to minimize allergies or distaste. The thing that did bother me was that the bread was rather cold and hard by the time they served it.
In any case, it was kind of hard to hear people speaking, so we got up and found a nice place just outside the room. It ended up being “photo op central” for many groups, and we participated in a neverending fiasco of posing for digital cameras.
My girlfriend folded the two food slips indicating our order into little origami jumping frogs. The food slips themselves were almost useless, anyway – the waitresses couldn’t read English and turned the slip upside-down in an attempt to figure out whether it was “fish” or “vegetable” before we just told them directly. The small jumping frogs can hop dozens of times their body lengths. In fact, I think that there is a direct parallel to the size of bugs and jumping power as well. The same springing action applies. The tension of the spring, for the frogs, is essentially confined to a region where the fold goes across multiple layers of paper, and this effective energy goes with the length of the frog (because it extends length-wise and then proportionally to the thickness of the paper, which is always the same). The volume, however, goes with the cube of the length. Thus, there is naturally weaker and weaker jumping force per unit weight unless you increase the thickness of the paper for larger frogs.
We ended the evening with a tour of the hotel – the first, second, and third floors that were accessible. Just before we left around 11, Anne somehow managed to round up all the old exec of ATS for a group photo, which turned out surprisingly well.
That is all.
