Saket Vora

Over this past month, I resumed the hunt for a place to live in San Francisco with vigor. Our lease is technically over at the end of March, and between a weekend in Tahoe and this recent China trip, I’d have two free weekends to look for a place. What was different this time is that both Troy and Michael also wanted to move up to the City.

We did the usual Craigslist browsing and headed on a Saturday morning with a slew of places to check out. Wendy came and joined us — she was moving to a place at 24th & Castro but was nice to keep us company as we started our search. Karla also came along, as did my buddy Mike who was in town for the Game Developers Conference that upcoming week. He was a great sport to come along looking at houses with us. My search box was largely confined to a neighborhood called Noe Valley, located south of Market St. near the middle of the peninsula. It’s demographic ages older (its nickname is often ‘Stroller Valley’), but it has an easy-going feel to it; has a lot of great restaurants and cafes; I have friends nearby; and (this is important): there is an Apple shuttle stop about 5 min away. I wouldn’t consider moving to the City if I was faced with doing the 60 minute commute every day.

We saw several apartments, but on opposite sides of the spectrums. Some places were super nice, but expensive (exceeding $1700/person/mo), and others were on the lower end (less than $1300/person/mo) but weren’t at the quality level we were looking for. It did give us an idea of what was available.

We meandered over to 24th St at lunchtime or savory crepes at Savor. It was a stunningly beautiful day, though likely brought more into relief after the spate of clouds and rain we’d been seeing recently.

After finishing our list of houses, Karla and Michael split off to meet up with some people, while Wendy, Troy, Mike and I headed up to Nob Hill to meet up with Wendy’s roommate for drinks. We went to this tapas/wine bar on Polk St. Later that evening, my friend Simon (Stanford roommate and hacker extraordinaire) and his fiance Jess met up with us. I hadn’t seem Simon and Jess in ages, and it was wonderful to catch up with them. We headed over to a Thai restaurant for a late dinner, and was amused by the masses of people in snuggies doing a bar crawl. You’re guaranteed to see something weird everytime you visit San Francisco.

The next weekend, we lined up some more places to see. Mike and I were accompanied again by Wendy, but this time Dan came along too. This time we looked at places more in the middle of our range. For lunch we walked to the Castro and met up with Chrissy for sandwiches at Ike’s Place, one of the coolest places I’ve been to in San Francisco. It has an awesome menu, great sense of humor and identity, and the food was delicious. Again, the day was simply gorgeous, and I just felt like sitting there in the sun. Later we went over to Wendy’s apartment to hang out for a bit, and took a lazy afternoon stroll through Golden Gate Park before heading back home.

Update: Oh yeah! I forgot that en route to Wendy’s house, we swung by the Sutro and took in the amazing views of the whole City from there.

I might have said this before, but as far as music discovery goes, Last.fm works way better for me than it’s more recognized competitor, Pandora. I came across a band called Freelance Whales a couple weeks ago via the site, and sought them out. True, it has a decidedly indie name, but the music reminds me of Death Cab / Postal Service, but with more varied instrumentation ala notes of Sufjan. Two of their songs, named Generator ^ First Floor and Generator ^ Second Floor are scarily effective earworms for me. I can’t stop listening to the first one, even though it feels almost like a song fragment than a fully fleshed out idea. It’s just so evocative for me.

Freelance Whales – Generator ^ First Floor

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We get up early just to start cranking the generator
Our limbs have been asleep we need to get the blood back in them
We’re finding every day several ways that we could be friends

We keep on churning and the lights inside the house turn on
And in our native language we are chanting ancient songs
And when we quiet down the house chants on without us

“Hannah” is bubbling with energy, and “Starring”, and “Location” are also nice.

I came across the xx a few months back while perusing some of the music recap articles of 2009. It’s mood music for the nighttime. For an essentially new band, the finished result is remarkably well constructed, and it’s interesting to see the ‘less is more’ approach still alive in a time when anything seems to go.

The xx – Intro

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Another tracks to check out are Islands, Crystalised, and Heart Skipped a Beat.

Bonus track for Greg – gotta give credit to Troy for finding this. here’s a sweet remix of DMX and the XX. I never thought I’d read those two artists in the same sentence! Caution: NSFW.

Headed overseas on another business trip — sorry for the infrequent posts. Last couple of weeks have been great. I’ll get everyone caught up soon. Shoot me an email if you want to say hi.

Last weekend I headed up to Tahoe for the second ski trip of the season. One of Dan’s friends from undergrad was organizing and had an extra slot, so I went along knowing it would likely be the last chance this season. Stephanie also came along, and we’re thankful she did — Dan and I rode in her Subaru STi that she outfitted with snow tires Friday morning. Wendy was already going to be up in Squaw Valley on a Google ski trip and would meet us there. We were aiming to leave work last Friday at 4:30pm, but it wasn’t until 7:00pm that the three of us were on the road. Smooth sailing out of the Bay, but we knew there were storms up north. We saw that I-80 (the main highway up to North Lake Tahoe) was closed, so we tried diverting to Highway 50 to South Lake Tahoe. Thirty minutes into the detour, we find out that the road from South Lake Tahoe to north Lake Tahoe was closed. BUT, 80 was open now! We pulled off the main road into a parking lot to figure out what to do next. Then two cop cars surrounded us and told us we were on “federally restricted property”. Whoa, ok, ok, we’ll be on our way. Just trying to get to Tahoe!

We later hit the first chain control and the highway parking lot around it. When there is snow on the ground, the California transportation department requires that you put chains on your car for better traction. They inspect cars through a waystation, and you have to pull over to the side of the road to install your chains. But if you’ve got a car like Stephanie’s, you breeze right through it. The maddeningly part was that we ended up stuck for over an hour (maybe moving 1/4 mile) and there was no snow on the ground. It was just wet. Only at the second chain control did we actually hit any snow.

The result of all this was that despite leaving at 7pm from Cupertino, we finally pulled into the cabin at 4am. No joke. The three of us took a shot of whiskey in triumph of having made it finally (nightcap also), then went to get a few hours of sleep before heading to the mountain.

The street outside our cabin, a common view in Tahoe

The group (numbering nine people) didn’t end up at the Northstar ski resort until almost 11:30pm, so we were just going to do a halfday. Dan, Mike, Stephanie and the others were going snowboarding and had their gear, so Wendy and I went and rented skis. By noon thirty, we had taken the gondola up to base camp and were finally on the mountain. I did a green run two times to get my ‘snow legs’ back, and then met up with the group at the lodge for lunch. Anthony, a friend and colleague of ours from Apple in Product Design, came up from Heavenly with a few friends to snowboard with us.

Anthony, Jason, and Stephanie

I was the beginner in the group so spent most of the day by myself, improving my skiing. After lunch, I did only blue (intermediate) runs. I was digging Northstar — the jump between easy and medium wasn’t as severe as I felt it was at Squaw Valley. I was feeling really great on the last few runs, even though at the top of the mountain the fog was starting to set in. I finished with a 20-30 minute run from the top of the mountain to the lodge at the base. We were all feeling pretty good about the day.

End of a good day at Northstar

We hit up a Safeway en route to our cabin back home, where the outdoor hot tub was fired up and a batch of “summer beer” was prepared by Stephanie, Mike was busy making dinner with homemade pasta sauce, but the rest of us enjoyed the hot tub for a while.  The summer beer was a hit (despite drinking it with snow all around us) and it was easy to see why: three cans really cheap (too cheap?) beer, 12 oz frozen limeade concentrate, then 12 oz of vodka. You really end up tasting the sweet limeade.

Sam, another friend and colleague from work, has a cabin nearby and joined us for dinner. He has a season pass to Alpine, another ski resort in North Lake Tahoe. He had a good day on the slopes too, and he told us about the ‘full contact skiing’ mode he and his longtime ski buddy goes into when they deem a run is too easy for them. One time Sam almost derailed him into a tree!

The cabin’s main room

The next day we returned Anthony’s good deed and headed down to Heavenly to ski a half day there. I woke up at 7am, and laid in bed for a while until I had no more interesting things to read on my NYTimes iPhone app. I got down to the kitchen at 8am and started some coffee. Mike and his girlfriend Carrie later came down and started cooking up a storm — French toast, bacon, sausage, eggs, you name it. We ended up eating a big breakfast so we wouldn’t have to interrupt our time skiing.

Acorn, a friend of Mike’s who also came up this weekend, joined me, Dan, Wendy, and Stephanie to Heavenly. His van came in so handy in the trip, and it was apparently only one of eleven stick shift Toyota vans to make it to the US that mid-90s model year. Stephanie had a season pass here (came up like ten times last season) and had us avoid the crowds on the California side by going to the Stagecoach lodge on the Nevada side (the Heavenly ski resort straddles the CA/NV border). Wendy and I rented skis again and joined the rest of the group up the ski lift. We had to take two separate ones to make it ‘base camp’, where we met up with Anthony.

Wendy and Dan on the ski lift at Heavenly

He, Steph, and Acorn pointed their snowboards in the direction of Mott Canyon — a double black diamond section of the mountain while I eagerly tackled the wide selection of blue runs throughout the mountain. It was a good progression for me — the runs at Heavenly we not as well groomed as they were at Northstar, so frequently I’d run into moguls which were a bit difficult to get through. But there are just so many blue runs and I felt myself improve learning to go down them. A month ago, I’d look down a really steep hill and mentally lock up — now I just take a breath and head down it. I ran into Dan and Wendy but then lost them unexpectedly a few runs later.

On the lift at Heavenly

Heavenly is known for it’s views. On the Nevada side, you see the stark contrast between the white slopes beneath your feet and the desert of the valley below. On the California side (saving that for another trip), you see an gorgeous view of Lake Tahoe. I took the shot below on my last run of the day, from near the top of the mountain.

It was another great day on the slopes. Despite being sunny, the snow didn’t get slushy at all. By 5pm we were all off the mountain, and headed over to Anthony’s hotel room in South Lake Tahoe to shower and freshen up for the ride back. The last Olympic event was on — the 50km cross country race — so we watched that. For the drive home, I hopped in Anthony and his friend’s Jason’s truck while Stephanie took Dan and Wendy. Jammed to an eclectic mix of late 90s pop and mid-decade hip-hop. Our caravan stopped for dinner at a sweet burrito place near UC-Davis (outside Sacromento), not far where Anthony and Jason lived while at UC-Davis for grad school. From there, it was another straight shot to the Mariani parking lot, then finally home.

Would love to go back to Tahoe, but it might have to wait till next season….

On last Monday night I headed up with a bunch of friends to see Fanfarlo in concert at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco. I wrote about this wonderful band earlier, and if you haven’t checked them out yet I encourage you to do so — got all my roommates and more friends listening to them out here. It was a bit chaotic because people were all coming up from different directions and times, but six of us made it there early enough to get some Korean food (Michael was dying for some bibimbap). We got to the venue in time for the last few songs from the opener. We also met up with Joey, his girlfriend, and more folks from Apple, and I went and got Wendy from the 2nd floor balcony.

photo by John Shen

It was great to see Fanfarlo live — especially to see how much (or how little) of the instrumentation you hear on the tracks translate to the live performance. The songs have a lot of great rhythm to them. The band played briskly through their set, pulling in a few songs from older EPs. They came back for a quick encore, which ended in a rousing edition of Fire Escape. We milled around after the show, taking in the music hall. It’s neat with these small bands — the bandmembers just came out after the show into the audience area and mingled with people.

The journey home took a few turns. I accidentally ended up on the Bay Bridge after dropping John’s friend off, and ended up doubling back via Treasure Island. We actually stopped and took in a great nighttime view of the San Francisco skyline, glowing in the darkness.

This was the first concert I had been to in a long time, and hopefully just the beginning of a good year of events.