Saket Vora

After the Roundtable, we had lunch then went to the Stanford v Arizona football game. Turnout (as you can see in the pictures above) was pretty embarrassing for our homecoming game, but hey, it’s Stanford. The game was great — Stanford drove down the field and scored the go-ahead TD with 25 seconds left and hung on to win. I went with Joey, Charles, and Nader and ended up spotting a bunch of other friends at the game too.

Compared to an NC State game experience, Stanford’s student section is uh…different. First, many fans (and even the cheerleaders, at times) don’t understand you aren’t supposed to be loudly cheering while your team is on offense about to snap the ball. Near the end, some idiot with a microphone kept trying to start cheers as our team was breaking from their huddle. At one point, enough students shouted back to quiet down at the cheerleaders/idiot guy that they stayed quiet. On the flip side, during defense with Arizona in front of the student section, the megaphone cheerleader guy actually yelled “Come on Stanford this is a football game! Not a midterm! Make some noise!” Another thing - you know how we used to jingle our keys to mock the ‘fans’ who leave the game before its over? Well over here, you jingle your keys when Stanford is about to placekick. I was talking to a guy from UTexas @ Austin and he was equally bewildered. The drum major for the marching band was going with a Dr. Octopus theme, and the halftime show consisted of them making fun of Arizona and John McCain — petrified wood, the grand canyon = “meh”, and the MLK Jr. holiday.

Now I’m off to spend the rest of the weekend doing work.

This was homecoming weekend at Stanford. I woke up early this morning for the annual Stanford Roundtable, a special event where a distinguished panel meets to discuss topics revolving around a theme. I went last year, and got to see Justice Stephen Breyer, General Abizaid, and Tom Friedman.

This year the panel was moderated by Tom Brokaw, with guests including Justice Anthony Kennedy, CEO of the Gates Foundation Jeff Raikes, former CEO of HP Carly Fiorina, distinguished professor of American history David M. Kennedy, Congressman Xavier Becerra, Stanford’s President John Hennessy, and CEO of the Global Fund for Women Kavita Ramdas. This year’s theme was Courage, Compassion and Character Leadership for the 21st Century, and much of the discussion was about leaders — what kind of leaders do we need, how we create or find good leaders, how do we treat leaders.

Ms. Ramdas quickly emerged as a crowd favorite — her opening statement earned the first crowd applause and throughout the discussion the crowd applauded her insights and observations. She commented that the culture of this country often equates the organization with a single leader (Steve Jobs for Apple, Bill Gates for Microsoft, etc) that it forgets that it is more meaningful to have communities of leaders, because leadership isn’t just about an individual. Another notable moment was when she reminded Tom Brokaw that the phrase ‘the personal is political’ originated with the feminist movement and that it had real literal meaning — as in when woman’s choice about her own body is made political. Ms. Ramdas helped drive the discussion to acknowledged the truly global aspect of today’s world — and I was in particular intrigued that Justice Anthony Kennedy so purposefully highlighted the fact that over a billion people lack clean drinking water, and how woman and children in sub-Saharan Africa have to spend hours and hours each day simply finding water. He echoed Martin Luther King Jr.’s words about the fierce urgency of now.

Raikes, longtime Microsoft executive and current CEO of the Gates Foundation, was asked about how a new kind of leader — the “brainiacs” — are now looking to solve the problems of the world. All the teachers in the room (Hennessy, both Kennedys) remarked that even compared to the ’60s, the students they see today are more tolerant, have traveled more, are more worldy in their knowledge, and aren’t afraid to tackling hard global challenges. They know they have the tools to do such things. The discussion also shifted to the media, with references to Fiorina’s experience in the McCain campaign and of Mr. Brokaw himself. They acknowledged that due to the influences of an advertising model, the news has gotten shallower. Kennedy remarked that the press does a great job at telling the public what the Court decided, but not so much at why the Court decided. Brokaw had observed that people today have more new sources at their fingertips than ever before, and that they should not expect to be force fed things — that people need to work at being informed.

The video for the Roundtable will be on iTunes U and YouTube in a few days, so I’ll be sure to revisit this.

Due to popular demand (ok, just 1 hehe), here’s the recipe for curry cubes:

• 4 cans of tomatoes (diced will work best if you don’t have a blender or food processor. If you can find “no salt” tomatoes that would be better)
• 2 medium onions
• 8-10 cloves of peeled garlic
• 1 1/2″ fresh ginger ( peeled)
• 2-3 green chillies chopped finely
• salt, turmeric, garam masala, oil and black mustard seeds

Drain tomatoes (saving some liquid). Chop onions as fine as you can, same with garlic and ginger. Drain out juice out of onions by squeezing by taking handfuls.

Take a big pot with heavy bottom. Pour about 5-6 tbsp. of oil and heat on low heat. Put @ 1 tbsp. of mustard seeds. When they start popping, you know the heat is right and put in onions and saute. Add @ 1tsp. of salt. After @ 2 minutes, add ginger, chillies and tomatoes. Increase heat to med high and stir often. If you are using no salt tomatoes then add 1tsp. of salt again. Cook until onions and tomatoes are mushy and excess water has evaporated. This will take about 20 to 25 min.

At last add garlic, 1/2 tsp. turmeric, 2-3 tsp. garam masala and cook for 2 more minutes.  Taste and adjust accordingly. If it becomes too dry, add couple of tbsp. of saved tomatoes juice. Turn off heat and remove pot to cool area and cool the mixture.

When completely cooled, put it in ice cube tray and freeze. Then next day, take them out and put them in freezer zip lock bags.

Good luck making,
love mom

I tried using them for chana masala last night and it worked as advertised, though I had to use 4 cubes and a bit extra seasoning. Maybe I’m overdoing it, or my little cubes were too small. IKEA doesn’t have ice cube trays, go figure. I’ve got garam masala in case anyone needs extra. :)

Enjoy and happy cooking.

On Sunday a group of friends and I went back up to the City for the 2008 Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival. There were two acts in particular that the group was excited to see: Iron & Wine and Gogol Bordello. Iron & Wine is an artist that I just recently started listening to — his latest album, The Shepherd’s Dog, is so very good. Gogol Bordello is not an artist I listen to but I know of them because of their notoriety - they are a NYC-based immigrant heavy gypsy punk bank on steroids. Not literal steroids, but if you witnessed the crazy amount of energy and excitement of their live show and the unbridled nature of their songs, you’d have to wonder. It was another gorgeous day and the company was great, as usual.

 After coming back to Palo Alto, I finally got around to making curry cubes. My mom started making these for me last year as a quick way to make some Indian food. The most time consuming part is the curry base — the blend of onions, garlic, ginger, tomatoes, and spices that serve as the common starting point for a lot of dishes.

Thanks for the recipe, Mom!

I think ImprovEverywhere is great. For those that don’t know, it is a NYC-based group started by people who wanted to do some improv humor well…everywhere. I believe that the group’s intent is to inject some wonder and curiosity into the world to counter people’s day-to-day routine life. They group puts on ‘missions’ and documents them. For instance, they had 200+ people simply freeze in place for 5 minutes in the middle of Grand Central Station. They had 50 people dressed in khakis and blue polo shirts walk into a Best Buy. They enacted a spontaneous musical in a mall’s food court. They gave some little league baseball kids the best game of their lives. They placed a Starbucks store into a time loop for an hour.

It’s the sort of thing where a person who experiences it would go back to their home and tell their family, “You wouldn’t believe what happened to me today!” And I think this world needs more of that.

One of their missions is something called the MP3 Experiment. They record a 45 minute mp3 and post it to the website. People download it to their mp3 player, but don’t listen it. They are told to go somewhere (usually a park) and at a precise time, press play and do whatever the voice tells them to do.

photo: IanMain

On Saturday my friends and I took part of the San Francisco MP3 Experiment held at Mission Dolores Park.  We were told to wear either a blue, green, yellow, or red shirt and to bring an umbrella. The weather could not have been better. We could spot people we thought was there for the mission, but the park was bustling with other activity. At 2pm, we pushed play and it began. The big reveal I think for most people was when we all opened our umbrellas up and started spinning them while holding them high and moved across the park to congregate in the middle of the main field. I could hear a little girl looking around and saying “Daddy, why do all those people have umbrellas?”

The experiment was fun and it ended with an epic showdown between the green/blue shirts vs the red/yellow shirts. A sizable number of people was looking on at that point and a helicopter was flying above (though I think it was part of the ImprovEverywhere team). I could imagine how weird it would be to see over a 100 people act out motions in unison without hearing any loudspeakers or the participants speaking anything.

I spotted Charlie Todd, the creator and leader of ImprovEverywhere, and went over to shake his hand and wish him and his group well. Some of my readers will be pleased to know that Charlie is an alum of UNC-Chapel Hill. :)

Full coverage will be up in a few weeks, I’ll post an update then.

Last Friday, I went up to Berkeley with my friend Nick and a new friend Joey for the Sigur Rós show at the Greek Theatre. Readers will already know that I enjoy this band quite a bit. For those that don’t know, they are an Icelandic band with a sound that is hard to describe easily. Nonetheless, it has resonated and I was greatly looking forward to this concert, as it was the first time seeing them live.

We drove up and met up some of Nick’s high school friends who are at Berkeley now for dinner, then walked up into campus. Berkeley is lucky — the Greek Theatre is a popular Bay Area venue for fairly big bands (Radiohead and Death Cab plays here), and it’s literally in the middle of campus. Like, across the street from undergraduate dorms. The university holds functions here. It’s an open-air Greek amphitheatre (see what they did there? — Greg) with high stadium seating around a pit area.

The opening act was another Icelandic band named Parachutes with a similar style to Sigur Rós. The show finally started at around 9pm, and the band played a great selection of songs from all four of their albums, including some of my favorites like Ný batterí, Hoppípolla + Með Blóðnasir, Sæglópur, Glósóli, Inní mér syngur vitleysingur, Gobbledigook, and Popplagið (also called Untitled 8). I did wish that their friends Amiina and a brass band could have joined them — it makes some of their songs truly shine.

photo credit: CommandZed

photo credit: JessBees

But the best moment came at the end - it was threatening to rain the entire evening but hadn’t. The band came out for their encore and started Popplagið. This is a song that builds and builds intensity until finally going berserk at the end. Halfway through it, it starts to drizzle, and the rain kept building too. By the time the band went insane with  Jónsi’s e-bow going nuts, it was pouring and everyone was going crazy. Though I think the rain kept the band from playing (the stage was getting wet), it was an awesome way to end the show. Someone fortunately captured this on film (thanks mytigerluck):

After the show, I went up to Oakland with Nick to meet up with the other Nick at his girlfriend’s house. She was having people over and generously let us crash at their place. Next up: the MP3 experiment!

Heading out the door now…have a pretty packed weekend of all sorts of fun. Will post when I can.

Until then, cheers!

I’m happy to add another friend to the blogroll, this time Joel Thomas. Readers might remember that Joel is the director of Nourish International and a fellow colleague on our WaterPLUS venture that I wrote about this past year. I actually met Joel during summer Ultimate Frisbee games during undergraduate times and since then I’ve been really pleased to be his friend. He has a passion for social entrepeneurship and he not only talks about it  — he actually does it.  I’ve really admired his work in growing Nourish and use it as a prime example when describing student-led social change to others.

He’s off to a great start, so I encourage you checking out his blog at www.joelwesleythomas.com.