Saket Vora

1 down, 9 more to go until the end of the quarter. First week went well. I’m taking a good mix of classes – a circuits class, a statistical signal processing class, a medical electronics (i.e. biology) class, and a seminar on international technology management. The first two classes have weekly homework, but the medical class is just reading.

One problem for circuits took about 3 or 4 hours…one of those maddening problems where intuitively the result makes sense but the mathematics to demonstrate it are confounding. I met up with a classmate, Mike, who did his undergraduate at Iowa State before doing two years at IBM working on the Cell processor. Fun guy with real practical experience. He wants to focus on circuits and device physics.

On Thursday I joined Amit and Lei to a McKinsey info session for graduate students. McKinsey is the #1 management consulting firm in the world. They had free food (+ open bar, this being Stanford…) and I got to know a bit more about the company. Honestly, doesn’t seem like a bad thing to do for an internship or even a two year stint. The skills seem applicable to any field and you get to meet some cool people.

I’m going to carry my camera around with me the next couple days to take some photos of my apartment, the Rains neighborhood, where my classes are and the campus in general.

No, the two don’t have anything to do with each other. Went to EE 214 (analog circuits) again this morning, met with my advisor Dr. Wooley to go over some classes, then went to my first EE 202 class, which is Medical Electronics. Dr. Thompson came to Stanford in 1960…he retired 14 years ago but teaches this class every autumn. He has a lot of stories to tell and isn’t afraid to talk about politics. The course is primarily a biology course, and while interesting…I wonder if there is a better use of my time. I’m looking around for a different class just in case I decide to drop it.

I sat in on a Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders seminar intro session today. Every week they bring in a speaker to give a talk. Speakers come from start-ups, corporate successes, VCs, journalists, authors, professors, etc. They will also offer 10 students to have dinner with a speaker. Though the MS&E 472 students have preference in the selection, I would love to go to dinner with someone like Michael Arrington.

Did a two hour hw session with Nader and Doug at Meyer Library, then came home around 8pm. Made chana masala and Luke joined in too. I mention the lemon trees because I realized I needed some lemon juice but haven’t bought it yet. Then I remembered the fruit trees that grow around the Rains buildings. We have lemon trees, limes, oranges, even some nuts I think. Luke went walking around and sure enough came across one of them. A few jumps and grabs we had a few. The fruit of our labor (see what I did there?): perfect scent of lemon. It worked great.

Anyway, there is a lecture at the Graduate School of Business (GSB) I want to attend sneak into tomorrow, and its starts at 8am.

I took it easy in the morning yesterday, taking care of some errands in the morning. There was a small tailgate at Rains that I went to and had some snacks, then I met up with Nader and we walked over to the Stanford Stadium for the football game. Last season, Stanford went 1-11 and spirits were very low. But this year, we have a new coach who is breathing life into the program. We shined in the 2nd quarter, scoring 28 something points and leading #13 Oregon 31-21 at the half. But Oregon woke up and ended up winning by 20+ points. It was still fun though. the atmosphere wasn’t like Carter-Finley back home, but it’s alright.

This morning Nader, Luke, and I headed down to California Avenue for the open air market. I bought vegetables and fruits, shared samosas with Nader and had a cappuchino.  Afterward I met up with Amit and some other Rains resident and we hit the Stanford driving range. I was pretty awful…need a lot of practice. Watched a few episodes of the Office at Amit’s apartment and talked with his roommate Ronny (cool guy!). The community associates (CAs) at Rains threw this impressive ‘dessert’ party where they had so much food, followed by an amusing skit involving two new grad students (Leland and Junior) that go around to all the various residences and find out that Rains is the coolest one to be at. It was fun. I hung out there for a bit, met a bunch of Indians in CS (computer science), and even an East Asia studies guy. We tend to meet a lot of engineers…. After a while Amit and I headed over to Mary and Matt’s house in Menlo Park for dinner and some cards. Mary and Matt have been so amazing to us and I’m really fortunate to have them here welcoming us here.

First class is tomorrow at 10am. Honeymoon’s over…let’s get started.

Yesterday the EE department had their incoming grad student orientation. They had breakfast for us after check-in, and sat with two guys named Doug and Lei, from Florida State and Ohio State, respectively. Great guys, and we ended up spending the rest of the orientation together and had a great conversation over lunch. All 210 of us incoming EE grad students sat in a large auditorium and various people came and presented to us. The chair of the department, the student coordinators, the vice-chair, followed by professors from the five different labs the EE department is comprised of.

A few points were especially emphasized:

• The five labs were constructed for administrative purposes only — not to put up boundaries for research. The EE department is the largest entity on campus. The only school larger is the medical school.
• The most important thing you will take away from your time here is not the research, not the grades, not the quals, not the classes, but instead the friends you make.
• The chair and vice-chair were lighthearted, and tried their best to lower the anxiety about the notorious Stanford EE Quals. They say that the format of the quals (ten 10 minute oral exams, each with different professor) is designed to measure ’something’ that is both useful in determining whether you are a good candidate and that is orthogonal to what they can glean from GPA scores, test scores, etc. They said that when you consider both attempts + the appeals process, 88% of the people pass.
• The single most important thing for an aspiring Ph.D. candidate is not to worry about the Quals, not to worry about getting straight A+ in classes — you must find a research advisor and do good work for them. If you have a research advisor that likes you and wants you in their group, then you have nothing to worry about the Quals.
• They emphasized that the “Master’s Degree Program Guidelines” were just that — guidelines, not law. It was encouraged to find a path through the program that fits us, not the rules they necessarily think students should follow. All you have to do is convince your advisor.

My academic advisor is Dr. Bruce Wooley, chair of the department and professor in the Integrated Circuits Lab. I’m happy with the choice.

After the orientation (which got out a little too late for me to make it to President Hennessy’s reception on-time) I spent several hours looking at the Stanford Bulletin and charting the next six quarters of classes. I’ve got all my required credits mapped out, and will have something serious to show Dr. Wooley when I meet with him next week.

Today I’m going to check out the bookstore for my class books and run some errands. Might try going down to the driving range later tonight too.

I went out to the EE buildings this morning and attempted to meet some professors. I was able to introduce myself to Dr. Teresa Meng, a professor at the Integrated Circuits Laboratory. I wanted to meet Dr. Meng because she does research in analog circuits but she was also a co-founder of Atheros Communications, so she ‘gets’ technology entrepreneurship. I headed back to the apartment to grab a quick lunch then went off to get a bike.

A bike is a necessity on the Stanford campus. To get to the EE/CSC buildings (Packard, Hewlett, Paul Allen, and Gates), it is a solid 25-30 minute brisk walk from where I live in the Rains neighborhood (~1.2 miles). After lunch, I promptly went out and bought a bike. I paid a bit more than what I would have liked, but after seeing the hundreds of newly arriving undergraduates on my morning walk, I felt a sense of urgency. This bike is a commuter style bike that I think will work well around campus.

Back home, Dad has been pursuing a really good deal on a laptop so I’ll be getting a new one in maybe a month or so. It’s a Thinkpad T61. More on that when I get it.

I also got a chance to poke my head into Dr. Umran Inan’s office and say hello. He was on conference calls for much of the day. Dr. Inan is Nader’s research advisor and head of the famous VLF Group at Stanford.

I tagged along with Nader to a barbeque get-together at Studio 1 and got a chance to meet more new grad students. Met some people from IIT in India, Korea, Boston area, etc. One incoming EE grad student was very much along the same lines as me at how he was approaching the EE program and what he wanted to get out of Stanford.

Line was too long at the barbeque so ultimately Luke, Nader, and I went to a good mexican place on California for a late dinner.

My departmental orientation is on Thursday, from 7:45am to 5pm. Still need to get my classes finalized too.

No, classes haven’t started (that’s next Monday). I met up with Amit and we spent most of the day together actually. We got his ID card made, then meandered through campus. We checked out the business school (GSB – Graduate School of Business) and as we were about to leave, we saw many students line up to enter a classroom. I caught the title on the powerpoint inside — Global Perspectives on a New Curricula. Amit wondered aloud whether we should walk in, and in a few moments we were trailing the last students into the room and found seats in the back row. This intro seminary was simply communicating new curricula changes for this class of GSB students. What’s interesting (and prompted MANY questions afterward) is that all students are required to have an experience abroad that is at least 2 to 4 weeks abroad, and it must be in a country that you have not spent more than 90 days in. The latter 2/3rds got into the nitty gritty procedural details, but we found out a famous global business development professor is giving four lectures in the coming weeks, so we gotta find out more on when those are.

This impromptu sit-in made us miss lunch with Mary, so we headed over to the Bookstore area and the Tresidder Union (subway). This part of campus definitely has a more undergraduate feel to it. Over the course of the morning, I learned with much delight that Amit is also interested in entrepreneurship topics — he was involved in some fantastic groups at Cambridge in technology entrepreneurship.

We headed back to the apartment and met up with Luke. The three of us hit IKEA and then the grocery store. We made it back in time to catch a Rains house welcome barbeque. Over 80 people showed up and I got to meet some people. By around 8 it was getting dark and it was hard to make out people’s faces. Luke and I were setting up some IKEA lamps (Wei joined us too) and Nader came over too and we chatted for a while. Later Luke and I headed out to walk around campus, going through the main Quad and the engineering quad before swinging by the 750 pub in the graduate community center (GCC). It’s a pretty decent place, especially for something that’s just a minute walk from the apartment.

I’m planning on going by the EE department tomorrow and try to meet some professors. I also need to buy my bike…before Thursday.

Ok so I cheated. We actually got in yesterday night. I went by campus and got my parking permit and student ID card made. We had dinner at this Gujurati restaurant called Chaat Paradise and it was delicious. The food out here is so amazing. Finally an Indian restaurant where I can get an authentic meal like the kind I grew up eating at home. We ate way too much.

Today Mom and I arrived on campus and met up with Luke Butler, one of the roommates I had been emailing before and coordinating our move. Luke flew in last night from Boston and drove in from nearby Menlo Park. We’ve got two other people already in our 4 bedroom apartment. One of them, Wei, moved in about two weeks ago and is starting a program in Management Science & Engineering (great! this program has a lot of courses i want to take). He did his undergrad at Univ of Virginia (go ACC!). Luke did his undergrad at Harvard in psychology, and worked at a educational development company before going back to grad school. He’ll be doing developmental psychology here. I haven’t met our fourth roommate yet — he’s in Denver at a wedding — but I think his name is Gene, and is starting his 2nd year at Stanford doing German literature. I’ll find out more later.

After some jamba juice we hit up the IKEA (only 4 miles away) and i got some lamps and stuff for the room. I’m planning on going back with my roommates on Monday to stock up the kitchen. Mom and I had lunch at Taco del Mar (a funky kind of Chipotle, only less corporate), and went back to the apartment to take care of some more things.

One of my mom’s friends from college back in India has been living out here in Fremont for the last 20 years. Her husband is in orthopedics. We drove over to their beautiful home to meet them, and went to dinner.

The weather is great. Mom is flying back to Raleigh tomorrow evening. I’ll spend the day with her, seeing as how she’ll be in India over winter break and I’ll be staying out here in the summer. Amit Desai, a fellow NC State alumnus, is arriving in town tonight as well. I hope to meet up with him soon. Oh! and my friend Nate Derbinsky called today. It was great to hear from him and it sounds like he’s having fun up at Michigan.

More tomorrow….

A note for anyone wanting to drive from Raleigh to Palo Alto — you can do it very comfortably in four days, three nights. You will spend nights in Little Rock, AR; Amarillo, TX; Kingman, AZ, drive no more than 10-12 hours a day. Since we allocated five days, we have decided to make a detour to the Pacific Coast Highway — Route 1 — see drive along a road far more scenic than I-5.

Unlike the rest of the states we have driven through, California is persistent in showing its penchant for contrast in its land. Bare mountains are clumped about the horizon but occasionally come near the road. The grassy plains are a bleached tan color, and the numerous short trees that dot the landsacpe make this choice of ground cover even more odd, especially for one coming from the East coast, where the ground is painted from a palette of greens and browns.

Multiple runs of ugly, crude transmission line towers stand tall amidst the haze that smudges the view of the coastal mountain range on our left. From the road, squares of green farms or fruit trees come into sight, sometimes replaced by enormous dredging machinery or mining facilities. At one point we take CA-46 and head west again towards the coast. Vineyards start to appear. In one especially bizarre stretch, we had an almond tree grove to our right for 2 minutes, then the neatly ordered rows of a vineyard to our left for 3 minutes, chaparral scrub on both sides for 1 minute, immediately followed by nearly a hundred bobbing oil pumps scattered around both sides of the road for 3 minutes. Very strange indeed.

King City is a fairly small town, but we found a nice pizza place for dinner and a hotel run by an Indian — who we converse with in Gujurati now.  

Tomorrow we will drive along the coast, to Big Sur, then Carmel Highlands, Monterey Bay, until finally pushing to Palo Alto.

We got in touch with my nephew Saumil (who is actually 2 years older than me) and will meet him on Sunday. He recently graduated from Stanford too. I’m looking forward to that.

Edit: I just realized something. When I look at a map, there are 6 or 7 major lateral routes across America – the interstate highways 10, 20, 40, 70, 80, 90, and partially 94. (I-90 goes down across South Dakota while I-94 goes up across North Dakota and Minnesota, and I-20 meets up with 10 near El Paso, so that’s a half-route too).

I’ve driven cross country on 2/3 of them — the 10, 40, 70, and 90. Pretty well spaced ‘cross sections’ of America.

Driving through New Mexico and Arizona is much better than Texas or Oklahoma. In fact, it’s the nicest drive of the trip out West so far. Starting in Amarillo, we were truly in ‘big sky country’ — perfect 180 degrees of sky. As we entered New Mexico, the monotonous plains and grasses of Texas gave way to mesas, rocky outcroppings, and colors ranging from reds to whites, tans to greens. The desert also features interesting skyscapes. The light of the plains is harsh and bright. The desert is more varied — the ceiling of clouds shine like highlights while the floors appear brooding in grays. Off in the distance a streak of clouds look lazily smudged, while a single cirrus puff stands out starkly high above the road. We drive in and out of shadows, and these shadows mottle the land around. It’s pleasing.

We made two stops today. The first was in downtown Albuquerque, which has a distinct southwest vibe. We grabbed lunch on its Main Street, while convention goers (Association of National Postmasters…go figure) scurried around the various stores and pubs.

The second was Meteor Crater, a national landmark near Flagstaff, AZ where a large meteor created a 4,000 foot wide, 550 foot deep crater in the middle of the Arizona desert 50,000 years ago. The aerial pictures make it seem very, very large, but when you are standing at the rim it doesn’t look very big. I got my first real taste of a problem the astronauts had on the moon — a severe lack of depth perception. With no recognizable objects for comparison, it’s very difficult to accurately estimate distance.

We can make it to Palo Alto tomorrow if we push, but we’ll see. Might take a detour and see something.

Nothing too exciting today. Oklahoma is very boring to drive through. Not very good roads and frequent construction zones slow things down. No rain either — on the contrary the weather was very nice.

We pulled in early to Amarillo because we’d have to go another 2 or 3 hours before hitting the next real town. We’re going to make it to Flagstaff tonight, with stops in Albuquerque, NM and Meteor Crater, AZ.

Today went fine. We hit the road around 7am and checked into a hotel just outside Little Rock, AK at 9:45pm. Tennessee took forever to get through, staying on I-40W the whole way. We ended up driving through several intermittent bands of extremely heavy rain. I could see the haze down the road, and it would go from dry roads to torrential downpour in the span of ~15 seconds. Visibility would cut down to a single vague outline of a car in front of you, and the whole scene would dissolve into an angry sheet of plaster gray.

It was the kind of sudden change that can cause a truck to hydroplane directly in front of you, do two 360 degree spins over all 3 lanes of the highway before swinging wide into the shoulder ditch and facing the wrong way.

Just like the truck in front of us. Yeah.

Here’s an idea: when such bad weather descends upon you, you probably shouldn’t go the posted speed limit of 70mph when you’re in an old creaky truck with balding tires. Good thing I had cut my speed down to 45 mph and was keeping a safe distance away.

Anyway, we’re doing well. We are going to push to Amarillo, TX for tomorrow. 600 miles.

Ok, I admit it. The publishing on this blog has been very, very slow.

A lot has been happening, and you will certainly hear about it.

I finished my internship at RTI today, and in two days I’m setting off with my mom to drive cross-country to Stanford. I’ll be blogging a lot as I start at Stanford to let everyone know what’s going on.

Move in: September 15th

Orientation: September 20th

First Day of Classes: September 24th

Let’s roll.