Saket Vora

Ok so I don’t think I’ll be finishing the road trip blog. I’ll try to post up a summary of it later. Summer continues and I’m really enjoying it. I’m working at RTI International, a research institute up in RTP in their department of commercialization. My bosses, Abhi Gupta and Brent Ward, are terrific and the other interns working in the office are great. We have students from the MBA and Engineering Management program from Duke and a rising senior in Economics from Carolina. And of course, my close friend Greg Mulholland, who continues to lighten people’s spirits and makes me laugh like no one else can.

It’s nice to see people. On Friday I visited NC State and had lunch with Tara, who took us to the State Club. I got to see my friend Win Bassett, Greg, Kelly, and our Silicon Valley trip accomplice Jessie Jeppsson again. This week Donny Katz has been in town from New Jersey attending a CAD 3D class. Greg and I had dinner with him at the Village Drafthouse and we later caught up for bowling on Friday. We discussed his trip to Bangladesh as a Fulbright Scholar. He has some vacation time next September, so I’m strongly considering flying out to India before my semester at Stanford starts up and check out Kolkata (Calcutta) with him. When we departed at the bowling lane, it was tough.
Dad is off to Beijing again for another business trip. Last trip he got me an Omega watch. Don’t worry, at $20 it’s not a real one. :) Sapana is enjoying her break, and Sachi is feverishly planning her pending trip to India. Mom likes having all of us home.

I’m heading to Alaska in a week for the Polar Aeronomy and Radio Science summer school. Last week was hectic trying to do research and write my experiment proposal. Nader assures me that I’m more prepared than I think I am. So far this summer Nader, myself, and Sapana have had a lot of fun playing Rise of Nations together. It’s a good stress reliever. Next week I hope to go to Jordan’s movie night and catch up with him, and have lunch with my buddy Jordan Price sometime in the Park. He’s working at Sony Ericsson. Hey, Jared is working there too so I need to shoot him an email as well. I’m having lunch with Mike tomorrow — I want to see how his game development studio is coming along.

There is still a sense of normalcy this summer, but the undeniable winds of change are stirring….