Saket Vora

I’ve been spending the last couple days with two of my favorite people on the planet.

We’ve a had nice string of warm weather out here at Stanford and folks back home in NC are just starting their summer vacation. So in light of this, what is a song you like that can be described as purely fun, bright, or even effervescent? Thinking back to my music collection, I actually don’t have too many of these. 

I’ll venture two: one that I mentioned earlier when I bought the new album.

Sigur Rós - Inní mér syngur vitleysingur (translation: within me a lunatic sings)

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And here is one I discovered a few days ago that somehow caught my ear, particularly the near-childish sounding ending. 

Loney Dear - I am John

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Thanks for the feedback everyone.

I’m pleased to finally post our class video project for Beginning Hindi, Winter Quarter. The centerpiece of the project is a re-enactment of selected parts from the Ramayan. Our whole class got involved in this video, with two members contributing original songs they composed and sung (check out the ~18:00 marker for a great song about Hanuman).

click here to watch the video in HD at Vimeo

A skeleton script was finalized the night before and shooting commenced the next day with minimal memorization. The locations were scouted out during the shoot, and the Ramayan segment principle photography with two HD cameras went on for 8 hours, ending at sundown. Ljubi, a film studies major, Amit, and I tackled the editing process — but this film was completed only through the Herculean effort by Ljubi who spent 22 hours straight at the editing desk so the movie could be completed in time for the Hindi final exam period. One of the more complex scenes to edit was the fight scene at the end — it was not choreographed so we pieced together a sequence in the editing room. It was a delight to shoot simultaneously with two HD cameras and gave us tremendous opportunities in the editing room. Our biggest challenge, as you can tell from the video, is sound quality. Wind and background noise were very difficult to mitigate. 

All in all, it was a great experience and I’m glad our whole class came together to make it happen.

I might have mentioned the Yang and Yamazaki Environment and Energy (Y2E2) building before. It is the home for the civil and environmental engineering department, the Woods Institute for the Environment, the Precourt Center for Energy Efficiency…you get the idea. So it was a must that their building be a campus leader in efficient and sustainable construction and design.

For my advanced topics in energy efficiency in buildings class, we had guest speaker from the architecture firm boora and a building design engineer from Arup who worked on the building. They spoke of the design motivation of the Y2E2 building and Stanford’s historical architectural designs and plans, the importance of the building’s programming and how it affected design, and then into the very features of the building itself. It was neat to hear from the folks who designed it why they did the things they did. A few notes:

Transition Zones

Transition zones help ease the visitor into and out of the building environment. There is the courtyard formed the the L-shape of the building, then the visitor walks into arcades similar to those found in the Main Squad. Lobbies with 4 story atria greet the visitor, who then moves further into the building into more enclosed offices. Not only does this strategy influence lighting, it also helps with expectations.

Attention to detail with daylighting

This is looking downward in one of the atria. Directly in front you can see conference spaces — glass walled rooms located at the intersection of wings to encourage shared spaces, collaboration with different areas, etc. Note the stepped back design? The rooms are not directly on top of each other — the bottom room juts out farther. Take a look farther down:

The bottom area with the couches is the basement level. These atria penetrate through all 4 floors and the stepped back design was to ensure that despite angle of the sun in the winter, sunlight could reach all the way down to the basement and warm up the thermal mass that helps regulate temperatures. All the floors are made of concrete, making the building thermally massive.

Solar Gain Mitigation Strategies

Directly in front is the north facing side of teh building and on the right is the east facing side. Note the difference in window design. The north windows are not recessed heavily and have minimal framing. The east facing windows, which see the morning sun, are deeply recessed with vertical fins to further prevent sunlight from entering. This reduces the cooling load of the building while still aiding in daylighting. On the south side, overhangs are present to shade the windows during the summer months but admit light in the winter months.

These are but three elements to a very complex integrated design. The Y2E2 building is the first in the new Science and Engineering Quad (SEQ 2) which is currently under construction behind the Packard electrical engineering building.

This is a view of the construction from a terrace on the Y2E2 building. Click for a larger panorama. SEQ 2 will also house the new Engineering Center (the octagonal building in the center of the above photo), the School of Engineering HQ, a Nanocenter, and a Chemical Engineering building. It is also represents a recommittment to original architect Frederick Olmsted’s vision of a quadrangle focused campus. Olmsted was one of the most landscape architects of the time — he did Central Park in NYC.

Above is the original plan for Stanford, which is an aerial view with Palm Drive pointing south. A view of the proposed SEQ 2 quad:

And the image below shows how the SEQ 2 will occupy Quad #2 space on Olmsted’s original plan. These photos are from an article in Portland Spaces.

As the architect from boora said — it really comes down to “a sense of place.”

My friend Jordan recommended the Boxer album by The National and it’s indeed quite good, particular the first song, Fake Empires. What I love about this song is how the horn section surfaces towards the end — though it’s at first unexpected, it fits perfectly and really elevates the song.

The National - Fake Empires

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Another song that comes to my mind with this characteristic, although decidedly less optimistic sounding as Fake Empires, is Rob Dougan’s pensive Drinking Song.

Rob Dougan - Drinking Song

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The waltz melody that emerges at the end is not quite expected….but somehow works.

So my question of the week: what song(s) do you know of that have this trait?

Yesterday was great! A special friend visited Stanford: Edouard du Breuil (Eddy), who lived in the same hallway as me when I was studying in Lund, Sweden back in 2005.

We had a great time (our whole hallway meshed really well) and when my sisters and I visited Paris around Christmas time during our whirlwind tour of Europe, Eddy met up with us. He took us to the best bakery in Paris — somewhere that we would have never found without him.

After Lund, Eddy finished his degree in business & finance and started working at Lazard in their M&A group. Eddy would like to attend business school in the US at some point, and took some vacation to visit his brother in NYC (Columbia and NYU) and then come out to San Francisco to visit Berkeley and Stanford. It was so great to meet him after nearly 4 years! It felt like old times. He has some interesting plans coming up, and even has an interest in clean technology as well! We had lunch and walked around campus for a few hours before headed back to the City for a goodbye party. Eddy has some photos on his camera — I’ll put them up when I get them.

Later that evening, after running some errands, I got a call from Brian - a Cal Poly student I met at the ThinkGreen conference — saying that he and a friend was going to be heading through Palo Alto en route back to San Luis Obispo. Amit and I met them at the Old Pro and we had a great chat. His friend Chris headed up the Cal Poly business plan competition and both of them have such inspiring entrepreneurial stories. Definitely need to connect them and Cal Poly to BASES. A lot of what Brian described about regarding Cal Poly and the awakening of entrepreneurship there reminded me of what’s happening at NC State. Good times.

Jess, now Simon’s fiancé, was in town and so a Rains 205 apartment reunion was in order. Luke and his fiancé, Dora, offered to drive us up and so I caught up with them after the Social E-Challenge event. We chatted for a while then drove up to the City. Our destination: Radio Africa Kitchen. Simon and Jess found this place, which describes itself as a ‘nomadic’ restaurant. The chef, Ethiopian native Chef Eskender Aseged comes to what normally is a daytime coffee house and turns it into a restaurant for just two nights a week. The menu changes each time, depending on what Chef Aseged found at the local farmers’ markets that morning. The cuisine has inspirations from all over, and the quality of the food very high.

It was nice to get the old apartment back together. We talked about the Red Sox, Jess’s on-going fight to convince the US pharmacy board to allow her to take the competency exam (they are refusing to let her practice pharmacy here despite having more years of overall science schooling AND years of actual practice in Australia all because her college transcript says 3 years, not 4), what’s going on at YouTube, photography, and food. Ah yes, food. 

For some reason, my end of the table with Dora and Simon turned to the topic of heirloom tomatoes. These tomatoes were extraordinarily popular last summer, and were the best tomatoes I’ve ever had. The kind even Greg would like - raw. Dora recounted the time that she and Luke went to go pick vegetables with their community garden group, and they got 30 lbs of these tomatoes. Simon told us why he loved them: his grandfather (back in Ukraine, I believe) had a farm where he grew all kinds of vegetables, but his pride and joy were these tomatoes called ‘bull’s heart’. They were pink, with one half larger than the other to resemble a heart, and were more fleshy than juicy. Simon loved those tomatoes, and biting into a heirloom tomato reminds him of his grandfather’s prized tomatoes. 

It may sound silly to wax eloquent about tomatoes, but isn’t that the level that fine food strives to attain? That’s why Simon is such a strong force in the kitchen.

You must listen to Obama’s remarks at the National Academy of Sciences. Seriously, listen to the whole thing. I could start writing about it, but then i’ll be pages long and no one would read it.

Wow…just wow. I’m on cloud nine.

Last Friday the Social E-Challenge held its 2nd Round event. 17 teams spanning the whole spectrum of social enterprise gave their pitches to judging panels chaired by prominent Bay Area thought leaders in the social entrepreneurship and investing space. And wow what a day it was!

Despite the events feel-good vibe, karma was not on our side. It was Admit Weekend at Stanford, so the campus was jam-packed with prospective freshmen (ProFros) and their parents. As a result, our parking plans took a severe hit. We also dropped the ball frankly on effectively handling how to direct judges to the event location after they had parked. Michael discovered his car dead in the parking lot as he left to get lunch for the judges. Being the resourceful logistics go-to-guy that he is, he commandeered a roommate’s car and sped off to Whole Foods. Later he started shuttling judges from their parking spots to the venue. Salina’s reliable printing location failed (I love how Stanford locks the paper trays for its printers…thus if it runs out of paper you can’t do anything but wait for someone else to refill it) and she ended up hitting the labs in 6 different dorms to get her stuff printed. We had split the teams into 4 rooms, each with a judging panel. With 30 minutes until showtime, we found that one our rooms was double-booked — and the prof refused to make room. Our VP’s seized an empty room on the same floor and quickly got it prepared.

Despite the hiccups, our team responded strongly and things got underway without too much delay. I was present in one of the rooms and got to see five presentations. It was very interesting to see the teams and listen to the sheer variety of their pitches, even though I had to play the timekeeper. I saw good chemistry with the judges, and I was so impressed with the amount of preparation they came with — unlike a lot of the VCs on Sand Hill Road, they all had read each teams’ 20 page business summary!

By 4:45pm, we all were waiting anxiously as the last judges deliberated their decision. I munched on some leftover cookies to make up for skipping lunch all together. We moved downstairs and hosted all the teams for a mixer. The Social E-Challenge team each got to chat with the contestants, but it was really nice to see the various teams talk to each other and exchange ideas and connections.

Unfortunately, I had to bounce early — apartment reunion at Radio Africa City up in the City!

Well, this certainly failed to become a regular feature. So I’ll try again, and we’ll stay on the topic of music for now.

Q: What song can get your foot tapping everytime you listen to it?

One of them for me is Bloc Party’s Banquet.

Last Thursday evening, I joined a group from Rains to the Nightlife event at the California Academy of Sciences. It had been a good day — lunch with a friend and an afternoon strategy session with the WaterPLUS team. Nightlife is where the Academy opens its doors, brings in a DJ, and scatters tables serving drinks and cocktails throughout the museum. To our surprise, there was quite a long line outside waiting to get in! The crowd skewed young - the 21 to 34 group - which made for a great atmosphere. 

Eco-Dome at Nightlife, by Eric Lew, 2009.

It was my first time at the newly renovated Academy of Sciences. A new landmark in the City, it is a LEED Platinum building with an enormous living green roof. It has a rainforest eco-dome, a planetarium, and a large aquarium. There was some people who bailed at Rains, so I grabbed tickets for my friend Simon and a friend of his, Jozefina. It was nice to meet Jozefina, who works at the World Bank offices in the City looking at woman and gender issues. She graduated from Stanford in 2002 and went to the Kennedy School for graduate studies. We wandered throughout the museum, enjoying the exhibits. Didn’t get to go inside the Eco-Dome. That’ll be something for a next trip.

It started about two months ago. Despite having this song for some time now, I’ve found myself playing it more and more recently. And more. And more.  And more.

Given the content, the urgent and repetitive rhythm, the anxious calling out at the end, I can think of a lot of reasons why this is. But could it be more than that?

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Chetan: The GRE sucked.
Prasanna: Yeah, the vocab….what crazy words. you know what pugilism is?
Chetan: Tell me.
Prasanna:  Boxing
Me: C’mon, you’re kidding. Pugilism?
Prasanna: No really.

Random guy walking out the door with us does a half turn.

Prasanna: Hey, do you know what pugilism is?
Random guy:  Yeah, boxing.
Me: Jeez, seriously?
Random guy: Yeah, the word pugilist is more commonly used. For a boxer.
Me: Wow, I fail at life.