Saket Vora

11:00am

The three of us leave San Jose for Stanford. We take El Camino Real and pass the Stanford Terrace Inn, where I stayed with my Engineering Entrepreneur Program friends on our Silicon Valley trip. We eventually make our way to the Visitor Center at Memorial Auditorium, next next to the Hoover Tower. I call Nader and he hops on his bike to come join us. This is the third time I’ve been walking around the campus, but I still don’t have an intuitive feel of directions. Nader recommends Bytes Café in Packard (the electrical engineering building) as a good place for lunch. Tables are full, so we get our food and go upstairs to a lounge for the VLF (very low frequency) research group, the one Nader is in. We learn more about what the group does, I ask Nader about the PARS summer program, and we chat with some of Nader’s colleagues who stop by. Afterward, Nader went off to finish some homeworks (his term is ending this week) and I continue leading Sachi and Sapana on what tour I could give of the campus. We go see the Lego enclosure that Brin and Page (founders of Google) built to house their first server. Ironically, its in the William Gates building. I meander through the Paul Allen building to find out where the integrated circuits group is located, and I smile when I see the RFIC group with their wooden saloon door entrance to the cubicle farm.

3:30pm

We got a call from Naman; he was heading over here from Mountain View. After a brief stop in the Stanford bookstore we went to meet him, then walked over to the Packard Building again. It heat outside in the sun surprised us all. Nader finished with his meetings and joined us in the lobby, and we walked together back to his studio apartment on campus. On the way back, we saw a shocking sight for us North Carolinians. There is a Stanford tradition of cavorting in the fountains scattered across campus. A bunch of undergraduates seemed to be doing this in the large fountain in front of Memorial Auditorium – celebrating the end of the term no doubt. Only in this instance, there were half a dozen open cases of beer scattered around, with
We watched the “Smug Alert” episode of South Park, it being a good preparation for tomorrow’s trip to the ‘The City’. Afterward Naman headed off to pick up Deepak Uncle, but the three of us stayed around. We learned about the Rise of Nations game, had some coffee and crackers.

7:30pm

Finally, it came time to meet Mary and Matt Elting for dinner. I had been trying to visit them since arriving in the Bay Area, but our unusual schedule and our stay at Deepak Uncle’s house complicated things. Mary’s parents – absolutely wonderful generous people – even offered their home for us to stay in while we were visiting. I regret not being able to. We met at a great Mexican restaurant on California Avenue – just the type of place that Sapana had been looking for since starting our road trip. Nader joined us, and we had a nice time at dinner. Afterward we spotted a used book store and despite Matt’s warning, went in anyway. I found an interesting edition of Dune Messiah and some other Herbert books. Sapana picked up a few books too while Nader found some rather esoteric ones. The place was pretty neat – it was a maze in there. It was soon getting late – we still had a 45 minute drive back to San Jose. I presented Mary with the two cases of Cheerwine and they graciously took a box of textbooks I brought along. We bid farewell, but I was happy that I’d get to see them in short time.