Saket Vora

The flight back to California this past Friday was uneventful, slept on all legs. Didn’t bargain on the Stanford shuttle bus system to be closed, except for a single route to the Medical Center which is on the opposite side of campus to my apartment. It was overcast and slightly drizzling, but I took the shuttle to the medical center near the EE buildings and walked the mile plus distance with my two bags. Yay, Stanford.

Gene had been holding down the fort over break, and he was really excited about how productive the break had been for him.

On Saturday, Gene and I hit up Trader Joes for a much needed food run. I spotted the Brachetto d’Acqui wine that Jordan brought over as a birthday present. On the 29th he dropped by with that bottle, two cartons of strawberries, and Ghiradelli chocolate chips. He said that the combination of chocolate-covered strawberries and the Brachetto d’Acqui is fantastic. We tried it on New Year’s Day and it didn’t disappoint!

I walked over to Amit’s place  to catch the 2nd half of the NC State vs Florida game. Disappointing loss…we are in bad need of a point guard! Afterward I headed over with some snacks to Studio 1 where Jonathan and Mozzi live to watch the Colts vs Chargers game. Mozzi had a high school friend over and we had a good time chatting during the game, talking about college football (the friend did undergrad at USC) and such. Mozzi spent most of the time cooking a rather spectacular meal of pasta, salad, and fish. His homemade red wine tomato sauce was exquisite – I got the recipe and will try it soon.

Jonathan’s new TV monitor is HD at 1080p that he has hooked into his media center PC for DVR capabilities and the like. He just installed a Blu-Ray DVD player in his computer, but had no Blu-Ray discs. We rectified this by hopping over to Blockbuster (and I was introduced to a nice pocket of restaurants behind campus while doing so) to pick up The Dark Knight. Mike had told me it was spectacular, but we were simply blown away by the sheer quality and clarity of the picture. It’s a revolutionary step. Just mindblowing.

I just spent today clearing all the junk out of the room and working on Social E-Challenge stuff. Class starts up Tuesday!

On the 29th, Mike came over to watch NC State take on Rutgers in the Papajohns.com Bowl Game. We were so excited about freshman Russell Wilson and his leadership of the team, until everything came crashing down when he got injured before the half. Everything unraveled and despite a flash of promise from 3rd-string QB Daniel Evans, we lost. That evening, I went into Chapel Hill to meet up with Naman and Joel to discuss WaterPLUS at the Carolina Brewery. It was a great night, and beyond WaterPLUS we had a long and meaningful conversation.

On the 30th, we had a plan to go paintballing. We had never been and was really excited about it. I had submitted an online reservation to Predator Paintball, about 1 hour away in Hillsborough, NC. But I never got a response to my email or calls. We assemble the troops early in the morning, and still no response. Finally I get a call telling me that reservations need to be made 1 week in advance. “Funny, I didn’t see that on the website,” I replied. “Yeah, you’re not the first to say that. Maybe we need to update it,” the lady said. Yes, indeed.

Instead, we directed everyone to Bond Park, a community park in the heart of west Cary to play some ultimate frisbee. I might have enjoyed this more. I have fond memories of this field – introduced to the game late in senior year of high school, our group of high school friends would meet there twice a week during the summer before college to play casual games. We’d return there the next summer, expanding our group with new friends from our respective schools. Sometimes 10 people would show, other times we’d have 25+, forcing us to split into two different games. All different skill levels were there. It was during frisbee where I first met and got to know people like Joel and Derek, whom I consider really good friends now. There were few more enjoyable moments those summers than when we’d all be sitting on the side of the hill overlooking the field, sipping iced water after two hours of hard playing, watching the sun go down and catching up.

New Year’s Eve was again spent with friends at mostly Naman’s. I really must give props to my parents for letting us do this, rather than just being with family. Naman’s mom was cranking out the homemade pizzas and brownies, and Dale from the Navy and Andy from high school was there too.

Megha goes om nom nom at the brownies

The Carolina gang hopped over back to my house to watch the UNC basketball game (lame) which was played in Reno. The University of Nevada-Reno’s mascot is the Wolf Pack, fittingly enough, so Pavak and I defended them.

The turn of the new year did not weigh on my mind much this year. I did not spend much time ruminating over the past year, or charting out new year resolutions. Perhaps it’s the knowledge that I’m finally leaving the university life in six months into an uneasy world and still need to realize what I’m to do with my life.

No, not with Jack Bauer. The birthday for my sisters and I! In grade school I’d often get asked if my family celebrated Christmas. With the whole society stacked in that direction, it’s hard to avoid the ‘holiday season’. We put lights up on the house, Sachi is obsessed with decorating Christmas trees and putting up stockings. But seeing as our birthday likes between Christmas and New Year’s, it’s an alltogether festive time of year and we get presents to swap stories about at school (like who got a better NERF gun or Lego set).

This year there’s been an overall disinterest in receiving gifts, particular with the cruise at all. This was refreshing, and people took the time instead to still go and get things. Oh yeah, our family also finally upgraded the TV (hadn’t got a new one for 9 years).

Fortunately, Greg and Kelly were back in the Triangle for the 28th, so we invited them over for dinner. I was really excited to hear about Greg’s quick promotion to Director of Engineering and to learn more about what Kyma is doing. We also talked about where Kelly might go for summer research, whether to a REU at Stanford or take up the standing invite back to Cambridge. She also said that there is a conference at Cal Poly this spring, but I think it’s a bit too far out of the way for me to come visit.

After dinner, more friends started to arrive. Like I’ve said before, what I value most now is time spent with friends, and this was a good opportunity for our different friend circles to mix. Naman, Pavak, and Mike (with distraction provided by Nader) made a cake.

Jordan came on by and got to meet my parents, sisters, and a lot of my other friends for the first time too. He did a review of our (admittedly meager) wine collection and gave some suggestions to my mom for sweet(er) red wines.

A wonderful birthday, couldn’t ask for anything more.

My favorite thing about coming back to North Carolina, aside from family and higher on the list than sweet tea, is getting to meet up with longtime friends. I’ve known Naman, Mike, and Nader since early in high school, and even though Naman did his undergrad at Chapel Hill, the three of us have stayed close. It helps, of course, than Naman and Nader live three houses apart in the same neighborhood as me.

This time around I didn’t enter the wake-up-at-12pm trap; mornings and the day would be spent with the family, doing errands around the house, shopping outside, enjoying Mom’s mouthwatering food, etc. One time we even made frozen margaritas, especially requested by Mom. Who would have seen this coming just a year ago. In the evenings though, after dinner, we’d get together with friends.

One person’s late night hunger led the four of us to the Waffle House near NC State (take that, In-N-Out burger). We’ve never been the clubbing or let’s-go-to-a-bar-and-get-hammered group. Instead, what we like is just talking about big ideas, silly things, and directing deprecating verbal jabs around the table. Yeah, that probably pegs us as nerds (the waitress said at one point that we sounded ‘smart’), but that’s how we roll.

Sometimes Sachi and Sapana would tag along, and Pavak (Naman’s brother) would be there too. The more the merrier!

This time around health policy, infectious diseases, and economic bailouts. Of course, funny cat videos on YouTube nearly always took precedence.Typically we’d go on for hours, the group groggily disbanding at three in the morning back to our respective homes.

Friday was another full day of sailing back to Ft. Lauderdale. Saw the Ice Dancing show again, this time with Sachi, Sapana, and Dad. There was another dodgeball tournament, basketball tournament, a live performance painting by Disney artist Trevor Carlton, plus a finale show right before dinner. The special guest was a juggler, and it was an awesome show.  A bit of comedy juggling and some real technical juggling. The guests who came up for some of the sets had a good sense of humor too.We woke up in Ft. Lauderdale and tried the ‘express checkout’ except it took nearly an hour and a half, but ultimately we left the port area around 10pm. Just under an hour later, we were at Sawgrass Recreation Park. It isn’t part of the official Everglades National Park, but is situated on an…everglade?

 We did a short airboat tour, and those airboats feel great to ride in, especially as it’s making turns. It’s like out of a video game. The pilot got us close to 4 different alligators, including one ‘aggressive male’ who started turning to the boat and heading towards Sachi. The pilot even said “looks like he’s hungry for the woman in the Carolina shirt.”

They also had this animal farm area which was a lot of fun to walk around. A local school group and community volunteers were bustling about building new shelters for the animals, and a variety of roosters were moving about underfoot, clucking and crowing. The was also a pig!

om nom nom

We then hopped back in the car and started the long drive through Georgia, stopping at night just outside Savannah. We’ve heard a lot about this famous city in the South, and figured we’d stop there to check it out since it was on our way. I was curious to find out that Savannah is the wilder and grungier one of the two twin cities (with Charleston, SC being its more refined, cultured sister). The next day was overcast, as despite a 2% chance of rain we were struck by a 15 minute rainstorm. The River St. area was alright…I think in better weather I’d come away with a better impression. A giant barge ship did pass us by though.

River St., Savannah, GA

 River St., Savannah, GA

Outside the tourist bureau, we ran into two teachers from Orlando, FL and we chatted a bit about teaching and math education. The three of us were in a collegiate mood, with us wearing our Stanford, University of Chicago, and Carolina hoodies. We then headed over to the City Market, which was a bit underwhelming save for a candy store with delicious pralines and toffee. Next: a sunday morning southern brunch for lunch.

Ooooh, shiny!

I spotted this on Google the night before, so there really wasn’t any question of where we’d be eating. It’s situated on this nice little square next to the church whose musician penned Jingle Bells. No joke. It was also crowded (another church got out just down the street) but the food was delicious.

We three kids booked a beginning diving scuba excursion for Belize, while Dad and Mom were going to go explore Belize City. The waters around Belize City are too shallow for big cruise boats, so they are parked about 20 minutes by boat off -shore. A special boat came for those of us on the scuba excursion, and we headed off to the Belize Dive Connection’s own island for a quick training session.

Sapana had taken a scuba course while in undergrad and had done some in-pool stuff, but never out in the open water. Sachi and I were total newbies. There were about 20 people all together, and the staff was easy-going, funny, and friendly. After watching a PADI training video, we hopped aboard a dive boat and headed up to an isolated sandbar where the water was only 4 or 5 feet deep (still in the open water, though).

This is actually the ‘pro divers’ boat.

There was another family on board with University of Washington shirts on, and the two kids looked college aged. The guy ended up joining us in the water for the training. We tried on our scuba gear and did our first under-water tests -> purging the regulator, clearing our masks underwater, etc. Overall the whole thing was easier than I thought. We struck up a conversation with the guy back on board, and turns out he’s a senior in EE at UW and applying to grad schools, including Stanford. Had a good chat with him.

After this training, we headed to a portion of the reef. Belize is apparently home to one of the largest reefs in the world, including the famous Great Blue Hole. We would be diving about 35ft to 40ft deep, in a group of four with a guide. Our group was one of the last in the water. I got my gear strapped on, waddled to the edge of the ship, and jumped in. That jump was one of the highlights of the trip — as you plunge underwater, you suddenly see the whole underwater world open up. The water is crystal clear for 100 feet, the reef is underneath, you can see the other groups on your periphery as they move around. Breathtaking…pity I’m nearly blind without my glasses. Once the four of us were in the water, we deflated our BCDs and started going down, and we swam around the reef for a good 30 minutes. I ran out of air early, and went back up to the surface. Other than Sachi being “attacked” by some fire coral, it was an awesome experience.

It was wet on the boat, so I don’t have very many pictures. :(

We got back to the boat around 3pm. That evening, back on the boat, there was another show  that we attended, and outside they had some special food buffet with elaborate egg and food carvings.

 Tomorrow is the last full day at sea.

We woke up early and had a quick breakfast to make it out to Cozumel, Mexico. Despite living in Austin for 10 years, it was our first real visit to Mexico. We didn’t schedule any cruise-sponsored excursions, so instead we went to look at some Mayan ruins then hit up the beach. It was up to me, I would have gone directly to the beach, but whatever.

The Mayan ruin complex was about 15 minutes away from the main city, and featured a scattered assortment of a small Mayan village. A lot of buildings seemed to be for ‘ceremonial purposes’. Two highlights: saw some giant lizards and we stopped by a guy skinning conocuts on the side of the road and had some fresh coconut water. Delicious.

After a slight trouble with paying the taxi cab driver (note: never, never, never, ever rely on traveler’s checks), we finally got on the beach and got some nachos, magaritas, and beer. Dad, Sachi, and I took a swim in the ocean — despite being a beautiful shade of blue, was still on the cold side. I guess the water in Sarasota, FL during Greg & Kelly’s wedding has set an impossibly high bar.

beach in Cozumel

Later that day, Sachi and I went ice skating. It was my first time and wasn’t as hard as I thought it was. I only fell once — seconds after I thought to myself “ok, Saket, one more lap around the rink and you’re finished.” Sachi is waaay better.

Later that evening, us kids went to go listen to some karaoke and was quite impressed with some of the performances. Late after dinner, we ended up in the card room and played a few hands of bridge. Dad and Sachi versus Sapana and I. Any game that involves Sapanabear and I on a team is always more interesting, because she is someone who likes to adhere to conventions and keeps up with tracking the cards and such. I usually rely on gut feel and don’t pay any attention to bridge ettiquete like not showing emotion when stating your bid. If I’m unsure about a Two Clubs bid, I’ll wince and draw it out, and motion in not-so-subtle ways that I’m not super happy with it. You’re supposed to just say Two Clubs monotonously like a robot. Anyway,we had some good games. One time Sapana overruled my bid and got broken badly, when if she had stuck with mine we could have gotten 5 or 6 clubs. But we finished the night with back-to-back Five No Trump hands (we bid 4 No Trump both times), so all was good. Afterward, two ladies at the table next to us remarked in the elevator “We’ve been playing bridge for 60 years and have never seen people having that much fun!’ Well, it’s easy if you don’t take things so seriously. :)

My family has never gone on a cruise before, and this winter break my parents decided it was time to see what the fuss was all about. They booked a five day cruise with Royal Caribbean, with stops in Cozumel, Mexico and Belize City, Belize. Royal Caribbean was recommended to us by Greg over other cruise lines, and so far we’ve enjoyed it.

We made the drive down to Ft. Lauderdale and went through the fairly painless boarding process. RCI issues these ‘SeaPass’ cards which serve as your entrance pass and credit card for the duration of the cruise. Good thing it was linked to Dad’s card, not mine. :) The ship itself, the Navigator of the Seas, was enormous boasted an almost excessive array of amenities: gobs of swimming pools, rock climbing wall, skating rink, basketball court, etc. Push off from the dock was supposed to be at 5pm, but delayed to 6pm, then 8pm, then finally at 11pm we finally started moving. Some mechanical problem with the roll stabilizer, everything else was still going well, except that the casino wasn’t open because we weren’t in international waters yet. We did some miniature golf and saw the welcome show.

Tuesday was the first full day at sea. These cruise ships keep a variety of activities to prevent their patrons from going to crazy. We played some basketball, saw a dodgeball tournament, attended a lecture about art (there was an art dealer on board who was conducting auctions the whole cruise), and I slipped out to just lie in the sun and read for leisure. When not in the hustle and bustle of school, it’s refreshing to get back into the mode of cranking through 450+ page fiction in a matter of days, in this case it was Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay.

Sachi hitting up the rock climbing wall

Sapana and Sachi

 
Sapana being a diva

Dad

Tuesday was also the night of the formal dinner, where everyone on board dresses up. I must admit, it did add a certain flair of elegance to the ship.

The three level dining room

 
Sapana looking creepy, as usual.

Earlier in the day, Mom and I saw an ice dancing show that was surprisingly good, considering the small size of the rink. That evening, there was a song and dance show that was also surprisingly good, and we couldn’t help but note that one of the singers looked like a double for Jenna Maloney from 30 Rock.

 We’re going to be hitting Cozumel and Belize the next two days.

Taking a vacation with the family for this week, likely to have limited e-mail/phone/interwebs access until Tuesday, 12/23.

I’ll see if I can get some photos uploaded to Flickr, but we’ll see.

Heading back to NC today, will be arriving late at night. I got less than 4 hours of sleep today because I stayed up reading (and finishing) Barack Obama’s first book, Dreams of My Father, which frankly made my head spin…I just couldn’t put it down. Still digesting it. Woke up before 8am and made it over to the Nanotechnology for Neuroscience, Neuroengineering, and Neural Prosthesis conference and spent the morning and afternoon with Mozzi (my MEMS project partner, EE coterm who is applying to MD/PhD programs) listening to some of new advances and techniques in this space. I got to finally hear from Karl Deisseroth, and a Dr. Wightman was here from UNC-Chapel Hill too.

I rallied with a 30 minute nap before Andrew came by to pick me up. We grabbed falafel wraps and headed down to the AMD campus in Sunnyvale for the NUSEA Rainmakers talk on Trends and Innovations in Energy Efficiency. Heard from two panels of speakers representing various sectors, but the two who were the most exciting was Dr. John Weyant from Stanford (part of the Precourt Institute for Energy Efficiency) and Kevin Surace, CEO of Serious Materials, one of the hottest green building materials companies around. Surace was a terrific speaker — engaging, passionate and knowledgeable about the space, the challenges, and what’s important. Nice sense of humor too. I thanked him for coming as he was leaving, and he’s very gracious too.

I really enjoyed the time I had to hang out with Andrew and stretch my mind a bit….thinking about big problems and big ideas.

Studying for my finance exam, T-4 hours. Met up for dinner with Simon and his (now) fiance Jessica up in the city for a Rains 209-205 reunion (with Gene and Luke). Jess stayed with us for nearly a month earlier this year and was visiting Simon from Australia. Great food, even better company.

Windows on my T61 is kaput (lasted 3 weeks…ouch) so my trusty Thinkpad T40p from 2003 is trucking along. I proudly show people the chipped corner of its case near the hard drive where it took a direct hit after being knocked off a table (thanks Greg, heh).

Tonight I’ll be joining a group for Sunish’s last week dinner (fellow iPod intern heading back to Northeastern University soon),  then tomorrow there is a neuroscience conference on campus in the morning/afternoon followed by an energy efficiency conference directly after over at AMD’s campus. Then Friday I head home!

Andrew McKee and I are working (slowly, for my part) on a cross-post about the good water talk we attended last week, hopefully we’ll get that up soon.

Donny recently made a nice comment about my Writings section, and is starting to build up his own as well. It will prove him well I think, for he has a lot more interesting things to come.

I took a moment to update my own Writings section. You can find my recent MEMS project paper & poster, an extensive lab report about the voltage controlled oscillator and phased-locked-loop lab from  EE 414 RF Lab (circuit board photos and neat o-scope shots included), an investment recommendation memo I wrote on a new venture proposal for my entrepreneurial finance course, and a project paper I completed for my neuroengineering class which looks at the impressive work in optogenetic neuromodulation by the Deisseroth Lab at Stanford.

Today I wrapped up the MEMS course for the quarter. For three hours we stood on the patio of Durand for a poster presentation as the teaching staff went around to listen to our explanations. They had food and beer (I gave one of the TAs a hard time as he took a swig from a Guinness: it’s 2:30 in the afternoon! I know it’s a Friday, but come on man!)  and overall it was good to see all the various projects, even though it got very cold by the end of it.

We had to go around and write comments on the other posters and give them a score, then suggest the top 2 posters. The teaching team did the same. I’m pleased and a bit taken aback to say that my group’s poster took home the Best Poster Prize. I think we could have done better and the other teams did some really nice work. I think ultimately it was my loquacious speaking style that convinced people….The prize was a silicon wafer with the words etched into it, pretty cool.

Amit swung by for the end of the MEMS thing and then convinced me to hit up the chemical engineering Christmas party. I immediately spotted fellow Wolfpack alum and Park Scholar (c/o 2007) Wes Overton, and I finally took a moment for some quality catch up time. Turns out my understanding of chemical engineering is woefully antiquated — Wes’s lab is working with studying gene expression cycles in cancer cells, and they are all chemical engineering people. It opened my eyes for sure. I also ran into Bill and Ajay too and chatted with them for a while.

Anyway — my final exam this quarter is for finance class and will take place Wednesday. This is going to be a very tough final, so I’m going to start early tomorrow.