Saket Vora

Met up with my friend Jimmy for a long lunch, with Nader. We took EE 214 together. Jimmy has taken almost every EE course (Stanford undergrad too, now a coterm) and does well in all of them. He spent the last two summers working at Intel doing hardcore design work in their processor division. Really sharp guy. Swung by the Stanford Activities Fair where all the student orgs were out representing their groups. I signed up with Ultimate frisbee, the archery group (there was a girl holding a sweet looking compound bow), Stanford VC Club, the Scandinavian Culture club (they were amused to hear Nader and I mangle some Swedish, but surprised that I knew about their crayfish festival), the ACLU chapter, and a group dedicated to projects for the developing world (they had Water Conference t-shirts on).

We also spotted a Star Wars Jabba the Hut-style sand skiff, so naturally we gave chase:

Met up with my friend Lei, and we got dinner at the CoHo before dropping by a nearby apartment in Rains to watch the debate (100 inch HD projector…sweet). Obama did well, we had a good time watching it. Best line:Obama: I worked to make a ‘Google for government’
Guy in the apartment: McCain doesn’t even know what that means!

After the debate there was one huge party that ultimately formed. I hung out at Michael’s place (fellow iPod SW intern who lives across from me) and met his friends and helped cook some dinner, then went back to my apartment where Charles and Gene were throwing a party with their respective departments invited (international policy studies and literature, respectively). As you can imagine, the makeup of this party differed from the usual Stanford get together (for the better of course). Simon also had made it down too! I had a great time meeting all these new faces and amazed at how there were close to 30 people in our apartment (more people than ever). Upon hearing the good fortunes of our apartment and the appearance of a keg outdoors, pretty soon all four parties going on in our quad joined as one. I snapped a photo, but it doesn’t do it justice.

The next morning I got up early and met up the Nicks…actually, now they are going by Nick major and Nick minor. They were organizing a 10 mile day hike at the nearby El Corte de Madera Creek open space preserve, located in the foothills behind Stanford. We had some neuro people, two chemists, and one chemical engineer and his girlfriend who is working with the fundraising and foundation group at Stanford.

An interesting sandstone formation called Tifoni:

A mid-hike lunch:

Vista point:

The entourage shot:

After dinner, I went with a Rains group to see Bottle Shock, a film ‘about’ the famous 1976 Judgement of Paris in which in a blind taste test, French wine critics voted Californian wines over French wines. I thought it might be neat, but it turned out to be a terribly made film. Cliched, bad screenplay that doesn’t setup anything up and cuts from story arch to arch, and incredibly for a film all about how California wines beat French wines — a disappointing lack of expository or time spent on actually describing the wineyard, viticulture, the wine industry, tasting, etc.

Anyway — after the Farmer’s Market tomorrow morning I’ll be hitting the books (finally).