Saket Vora

Yesterday wasn’t your typical sunshine and clear skies day in the Bay. It was raining hard and visibility poor, and on my way southbound on I-280 to work all of us were going 5 to 10 mph below the speed limit. About a mile from my exit, while in the 2nd-from-the-left lane, I see this Mercedes in front of me swerve left. All of a sudden, I see a black SUV perpendicular to me in my lane. Directly in front, moving to the right.

I slammed on the brakes and swerved to the left, trying to avoid the SUV. Next thing I know, I find myself stopped next to the concrete barrier dividing north and southbound traffic.

The airbag had deployed, I reached down and picked up my glasses. I grabbed my laptop bag and darted outside into the rain. Behind me I saw the SUV stopped. The man in the Mercedes had stopped and came up to me, asking if I was ok. I was. No sharp pains, no cuts. He said “the SUV came out of nowhere!” I thought the SUV probably spun out in front of us. The car looked pretty bad.

The wheel had completely separated from the axle. 911 was on its way, and soon the cops came and got my info. A tow truck arrived later and I waited inside of it. The couple in the SUV were walking around and didn’t appear hurt, but they were on the opposite side of the highway. I wanted to talk to them, but didn’t seem like a good time. The cops came up to me later with the more bizarre part of this all:

The SUV hadn’t spun out in front of us. It was going northbound on I-280, then apparently lost control, went up the embankment, hurdled the central concrete barrier, and into the southbound traffic. No wonder the Mercedes guy said the SUV came out of nowhere. Jeez.

Joseph came to pick me up at the tow truck’s place and took me to an urgent care center near work. I had been feeling some shakes, but Sachi said that was probably the adrenaline wearing off. Still, I didn’t have a scratch. The urgent care center wouldn’t see us because it was a vehicle collision, and my health insurance company’s offices were closed for MLK holiday. Go figure. In the parking lot back at work I ran into my colleagues and went straight to lunch with them, showing them pictures of my car. Even though I’m on a diet, I had a chocolate chip cookie. It was good.

I got a ride back home from a colleague at work who lives near me in Menlo Park. I made phone calls to my sisters and later in the evening told my parents, who are in India. My mind started to drift back to the accident. I started to feel pretty lucky, all things considering. I even had my rear brakes replaced last week, but now the car was likely totaled. But maybe those new brakes helped me walk away from this one. A few meters here or there, and it could have been a lot worse. I ran though some what-ifs….what if I had just left home a few minutes earlier, or if I hadn’t pushed to make a traffic light. But I quelled those pretty quick — we all make hundreds of decisions each day like those, and it’s just not worth the energy to ponder all the problematic outcomes that could arise from them. I guess I’ll be thinking about this when I start driving again too. We just need to control what we can control. The other thought that crossed my mind before going to bed? I’d like to find a girlfriend.

Last weekend, I went with a group of friends up to Tahoe for skiing at Squaw Valley, the site of the 1960 Winter Olympic Games. It was my first time skiing in over five years, but still I had a great time. Our group consisted mostly of Apple colleagues, and Chrissy did an awesome job of finding a great lodging in nearby Truckee. We drove up after work on Friday (Nader drove me, Dan, and Wendy in his new Rav4) and got in after 11pm that night.

We killed some time that night exploring the cabin. It was huge, with a sauna and hot tub. It had a big kitchen (with a pasta faucet over the six burner stove) and just about every kitchen gadget you could want. Nader got the fireplace going and jammed out on the guitar a bit. John brought his Nikon D200 with a 35mm f/1.8 lens and I had a blast using it (the photos are from it)

John and Rong are regaled by Nader.

Dan shows Brook and Georgina his snowboard

The next day we drove ~30 minutes to Squaw Valley. What a different setup than the Wintergreen ski resort I’ve been to in West Virginia! A group of us went to rent our skis then took the funiculare up to a point 2/3rds up the mountain. Several lifts were available from here, including a handful of green circles. I stayed on those for the morning, getting my ’snow legs’ back. Turning gracefully while keeping my skis parallel is still pretty hard, but I didn’t fall on the slopes or coming off the lift.

It’s so beautiful to just be up on the mountain in Tahoe. The lake was shrouded in a blanket of fog, while all the peaks of the surrounding mountains was covered in snow. It wasn’t that cold, and the sun shone through a thin layer of clouds. Feeling adventurous, Rong and I took a lift up to the top ridge to try a blue square. The lack of snowfall during the past week hurt this one, because the very beginning offered just a narrow path of good snow, with the edges being rocks and dirt. Not too good for a newbie like me! But we made it down, eventually. The group had split up to check out different runs, but we all met up around 1pm for lunch. We packed bagel sandwiches, and I kept a few Clif bars in my ski pants.

After lunch the newbies (John and I) went on another blue square, with Chrissy and J.Lo being great sports in staying with us. There’s a mental block for us — I’ll be feeling fine on blues but then comes this one hill which scares the heck out of me. I just have to man up and barrel down it. Falling a few times was good for me, cause it’s not that bad. Getting back up is harder than actually skiing.

We ended the day by taking a mile long “mountain run” to the very bottom of the mountain. This was the highlight of the day, because it was right at my skill level, long, and our group of five serendipitously started running into all the other members of our group on the way down. About 2/3rds of the way down, it started to rain a bit, and I could feel the snow start to get a little slushy. It wasn’t too much longer though until I was finally down.

We returned our gear and headed back to the cabin. We made some pizzas, broke out the drinks, and chilled for the rest of the evening. We also played ‘the Game’, a cross between Pictionary and Telephone. Everyone has a sheet of people, and you write a sentence or phrase at the top. Pass the paper to the right. That person has to draw something that represents that phrase. They then fold the first sentence over and pass it along, such that the next person just sees the drawing. That person has to write a sentence of what they think the drawing means. You keep going round with people translating between drawings and sentences, and in the end nearly always hilarity ensues as someone’s original intent gets completely transformed into something entirely different.

We all cleared out of the cabin by 11am and Nader’s car stopped in Berkeley for lunch. We went to an authentic ‘Berkeley experience’ organic co-op cafe on Telegraph Avenue. No Hare Krishnas today. Nader saw some hippies with signs saying “No to Dedicated Bus Lanes”, which made Nader say “A hippie who is against dedicated bus lanes? Just whose side are you on?!” Hah.

All in all, it was a great tip and I’m already looking forward to another trip sometime in mid to late February.

Posts have been light lately, but I’ll catch up after the weekend — heading up to Tahoe for some skiing. It’s my first winter visit to Tahoe and my first time skiing in maybe 5 years. Hopefully I won’t break any limbs :)

As we were getting ready to graduate from NC State, a classmate and close friend of mine (from out of state) pronounced “I will never come back to Raleigh.” Flash forward nearly three years later, and now it’s “I love Raleigh.”

A remarkable difference, to be sure. Raleigh — the “City of Oaks” — and the Research Triangle area in general seems to have begun a noticeable revival in the recent years. The change is most recognizable in downtown Raleigh, where there seems to be new bars, restaurants, and cafes popping up every few weeks.  I’ve heard my friends in Raleigh talk about new places they are finding, and I initially thought it was a function of transitioning to off-campus life, but it’s much more than that. The changes are even surprising to those who have grown up in Raleigh. Over winter break, I was downtown bar crawling for the birthday, then again to see Avatar in IMAX 3D, and again to a cafe one afternoon with friends.

This is really exciting to me. It seems that many of the re-development efforts undertaken by the local governments in the past 5 to 10 years are finally bearing fruit. Even though the recent recession has hit some of the stalwart Research Triangle Park companies (i.e., Nortel and SonyEricsson), new entrants like Fidelity and Credit Suisse are coming in. And as a whole, the Triangle area wasn’t hit as badly as other parts of the country. Consistently Raleigh and the Triangle are ranked top in the best places to live, best places to start a business, best places to start a family.

If this keeps up, I see no reason why Raleigh and the Triangle can’t be elevated further into the national discussion as great/unique metropolitan areas. One example I give is Portland, Oregon — a city smaller than the other landmark cities of New York, LA, Chicago, Austin, etc — yet has a well known character of being very progressive, green and yuppie friendly, and with its own unique music scene.

Keep it up Raleigh, keep it up.

Two years ago, I wrote a month-by-month recap of 2007, but so much happened that year it felt appropriate. While 2009 witnessed an important milestone for me, I’ll take a more casual approach.

Upon returning from winter break, the realization that my time at Stanford was just six months away truly hit. At this point, I was completely immersed in energy and greentech courses and market trends. Apart from fleshing out new venture ideas of my own, organizing the Social Entrepreneurship Business Plan competition was also kicking into high gear. I was also working part-time back at Apple, helping to get the new interns up to speed. In February — in the depths of the stumbling economy — I decided to turn down a job offer from Cypress Semiconductor, boldly stating “I didn’t come to Silicon Valley to take the safe way out,” (only to join Apple 7 months later…). That was a hard decision, but one that I’m glad I made. February also marked the end of my father’s 40 year working career; he visited India for the next couple of months. School was becoming a blur — all my energy related classes were projects based, I pushed and helped execute a really ambitious film project for Hindi class, I was attending more events off-campus like the ThinkGreen forum trying to figure out what to do after graduation, the Social E-Challenge eating up more time as we got closer to the competition date.

Visits by my friends helped kept me sane and recharged — in those last two quarters at Stanford, I saw Mike, Donny, Mark and Jennie, Greg and Kelly, my corridor-mate Eddy from Sweden, Jordan, and Laura! (Bonus points to Greg and Kelly for making a trip just to see me! hehe) I also got to see Melih, Brent, and Tim more often. On campus, I enjoyed getting to know a whole new group of people who were interested in energy issues that were in all my civil and environmental engineering courses.I also grew closer to the people I already knew on campus. The tick-tock-tick feeling that looms over an impending graduation can be dreadful.

Graduation came, with a piece of paper stating I (miraculously) had a diploma from the Leland Stanford Junior University, and my family came to the Farm. A little bittersweet though, for a last minute scare back in India saw my dad depart for India before the graduation ceremony. The four of us also went to Tahoe for some hiking — so pretty.

So what to do now? Brent and Abhi back at RTI were kind and let me do some part-time working on a project, so I worked on that while continuing the job search. For the past few months I (and tens of thousands of other soon-to-be-graduates) had been looking for job opportunities; startups, companies, or even new ventures. I eagerly sought out greentech companies, but the recurring line I got was “we think you’d be a good fit, but we want to wait 6/8/12 months before hiring because we’re not sure how our project load is going to be with the current recession.” Not very encouraging. The world was gray…I was between worlds. Still living in my on-campus apartment through the summer, but no longer a student. Not sure what or where I’d be in the next few months. In my heart I wanted to stay out in the Bay Area, but what if this application for a position at the renown National Renewable Energy Laboratory in the Boulder region of Colorado goes through?

Then, Joseph called me up and wanted to meet for dinner. Well, this was interesting. Over the next few weeks, I sought advice and perspective from everyone I spoke to. The advice that resonated with me the most: don’t undervalue the fact that you love working with the people there. That is actually a rare thing and appreciate it when you can.

A room for rent opened up in a Stanford friend’s house in Menlo Park, so I transitioned there for the fall while starting at Apple. I got consumed by work, and loved living with Troy, Michael, and (effectively) Karla. Troy was busy working on his iPhone app and writing his book, Mike converted to full-time as Box’s lead mobile developer, and our evenings routinely featured new recipes on the stove and hours of ping-pong. Talked hours of college football with Troy, Melih, and Matt. I got to see some of golf’s great players at the President’s Cup tournament with Melih and Matt too. My grandmother visited America and I visited home for Diwali. I decided that I would move up to the City, and started spending more weekends in the City. I was delighted by a day spent up in San Francisco with Peyton. In mid December, Dad got the call from India and was on a plane the next day for his hometown of Akola. A few days later, my grandmother passed away.

Finally, spent winter break back at home. Went out on the town with friends and had a terrific time for the 25th birthday, and got to see them more before the eventual return to California. It’s hard for me to describe the feeling of seeing and being with my friends back here; it’s like slipping on a favorite pair of well worn shoes after a long absence. They’ve been with you for countless miles, places, and situations, and will never let you down. It makes me feel like the luckiest person in the world.

So what’s next for 2010? I now feel good and confident about a few aspects of my life — I graduated from college (for real) and have a great job that I love. Now, while I love living with Mike and Troy, I’d like to find a place to live that I can feel more settled in. And finally, at the top of my goals for 2010, I want to finally start paying attention to my personal life. Although I’ve just hit the quarter-century milestone,  I know there is so much more I have yet to experience in life.

Now, let’s get to it.

Happy New Year and best wishes to everyone! Thanks for reading.

Avatar is making it’s way through the country, and a number of you have already seen experienced it. As a film enthusiastic who is fascinated with the creation process, I thought I’d add a few of my thoughts to a much-hyped film that has already seen many yards of newsprint. (For those who haven’t seen it, I won’t spoil plot details.)

I admit, I’ve got a soft spot for epics. The grandeur, the archetypal narratives, and the scale of emotion. And with a film, the vision and sheer force of will needed to convey an epic story through the screen is deeply intriguing to me. Avatar was not a film whose production I actively followed; I only learned what James Cameron was cooking up when I saw the first teaser trailer. My expectation were low. The consensus of most people I’ve talked about Avatar with is that a) the story is cliched to just ‘alright’ and b) the visual experience is stunning. On part b, I wholly agree but I’ll play defense to part a. I’ll argue that the underlying narrative of Avatar is a recurring, archetypal one that we have seen played out many times before, both in cinematic and literary history. I can look back at many films and stories and find elements that match particular beats and sequences in Avatar. The spectre of Joseph Campbell’s famous hero’s journey is present here, I think. Each viewer will likely think back to different sources when comparing Avatar; Fern Gully for it’s environmental theme, Dances with Wolves or The Last Samurai for the “gone-native” theme, and (for me) Dune for the growth and maturation of Jake Sully’s avatar character within the Na’vi society. For these reasons, I don’t go as far as to dock points from Avatar due to its story.

The visual experience is truly stunning. I saw the film twice in IMAX 3D, and I give major credit to Cameron’s immersive use of the 3D effect, rather than just ‘gotcha’ moments. This isn’t a 3D film as much as the visuals hover in front of your face, but that there is greater depth and substance to the visuals on the screen. Beyond the technical effect, there is Cameron’s world of Pandora. Lush, grand, detailed, with sweeping vistas and wonders. And of course, the Na’vi — the ten foot tall, blue-skinned, at-peace-with-nature inhabitants of Pandora. Cameron developed critical advances in motion-capture technology, both in the capture process and rendering process such that Avatar presents to me the first time an alien ecosystem is fully realized. Peter Jackson’s Gollum was the first, followed by the tentacle-faced pirate captain Davy Jones in the Pirates of the Caribbean. But Avatar showcases a whole array of immediately believable creatures. The picture of Neytiri at the top of this post shows a moment that I insisted was either a prothestic-wearing actor or a sophisticated animatronic. It simply looked too good in the film to be entirely computer generated. But no…none of the actors ever put on blue makeup and all the Na’vi are entirely CG.

One of the things I marveled at while sitting through the credits was the sheer force of will it took to make this picture. I’m the kind of film geek who has watched all the dozens hours of behind-the-scenes material of The Lord of the Rings…twice. The credits for Avatar read likes a who’s who: Joe Letteri and Weta Digital, John Knoll and Industrial Light & Magic, Richard Taylor and Weta Workshop, Stan Winston Studios, Skywalker Sound, plus a half dozen other smaller visual f/x houses (though no DigitalDomain? hmm). I joked to Dan that it was as if Cameron had opened his rolodex and just started asking who had free computer clusters to render some scenes for him. Regardless, the outcome is simply staggering. The 3D effect aside, there so much visually going on in just the background of some scenes, let alone the technical mastery of creatures, vehicles, and the main characters. I am eagerly looking forward to the behind-the-scenes story of how Cameron and his team accomplished this extraordinary feat.

The one real criticism I have of Avatar is that its musical score does not rise to the occasion. I think back to some classic ‘big’ films — Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Jurassic Park, Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings, The Lion King, Jaws — and they all share incredibly memorable scores and musical motifs. Play five seconds of the main melody from any of these films and recognition is instant. For a cinematic feat such as Avatar, this absence is a bit disappointing. Was I too focused on the visual spectacle? My friend Dale observed that the fairly rudimentary score was perhaps a reflection of the Na’vi culture and place within nature. This could be plausible; Howard Shore’s monumental score to The Lord of the Rings builds its motifs around races and cultures that have developed for thousands of years. We just don’t know enough of the Na’vi’s background and context in the Pandoran world. I’d love to see this explored in future films.

I enjoyed Avatar and I’m excited to see the effect it’s had on cinema. I think it breaks new ground on what filmmakers can satisfyingly convey to an audience, and just wait until these techniques are employed in telling more original, daring, and challenging stories.

Eat, drink, and be merry!

Just had an amazing night in downtown Raleigh with some of my closest friends to celebrate the birthday. I feel like i’m the luckiest guy in the world to call these people my friends. I love them all. To all those I didn’t see tonight, you know who you are and we need to catch up soon.

thank you all for everything

While skimming through some “top N” lists of favorite music of 2009, I saw a band called Fanfarlo pop up a few times and the description of their music was enough to warrant a listen. I used Lala and its 25 free credits for new users to check out their album Reservoir. And ended up buying it soon after.

At times it feels like a less extravagant Arcade Fire (but not in a bad way), but also notes of Eisley or The National (ok, maybe a stretch there). Lyrically the songs have a lot of depth as well.

Fanfarlo – The Walls Are Coming Down

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The Walls Are Coming Down

They swallowed it whole, they went for the gold for the gold
We fall for the same lies, we all have the same shoes to fit
The preachers and books of your empire will fight here alone
Some day they will be forgotten and die one by one

The walls the walls are coming down, the here and now is coming round
It will some day let you down
The ships the ships are coming in, the great ideas are wearing thin
There is nothing left to do

For atoms have gone as far as atoms will go
Your books write themselves, they line up in row after row

The walls the walls are coming down, the here and now is coming round
It will some day let you down
The ships the ships are coming in, the great ideas are wearing thin
There is nothing left to do

Recently, my colleagues Dan and Dave went on a weekend snowboarding trip to the Kirkwood mountain resort in Lake Tahoe. They brought along some of the new iPod nanos, and used the video cameras in them to record some of their runs down the slopes. The nanos are small enough to make this rather easy and the video quality is actually quite decent, in that good-enough-for-Youtube way. Dan sent over the footage and I broke out the video editing tool to put together a montage. Check it out:

After a final dash at work to winter break, I was on my way home to North Carolina for the holidays. Figuring I didn’t have to be home for Christmas morning, I decided to fly out the 25th morning. Started the day at 4:30am because I had to take a Super Shuttle to SFO airport, but the morning was made bright when I ran into my friend Evan at the airport. He was headed home to Wisconsin, and we killed over an hour talking and catching up. He’s one of my favorite people to talk tech with — smart, perceptive, and both thinks and speaks quickly.

Despite arriving to Dulles on time, we spent 45 minutes on the tarmac waiting for a gate to open up. This was a bit problematic, because some of us had connections with under 20 minutes to make them. The good news for me was that there was 25 of us on-board intending to continue on to Raleigh, so they called ahead and held the plane. On that flight, I ended up sitting next to a Brit who was  a screenwriter. We ended talking about scripts and film for the entire flight, even all the way to the baggage claim. It was great.

Enjoying the time back so far, especially seeing Mom and the sisters. Did some light shopping yesterday (got some new kicks) and watched Pitt beat UNC in football (haha). Looking forward to catching up on things (like movies), seeing my friends, and eating more of Mom’s delicious delicious food.

Back on Thanksgiving day, I found an article exploring NPR listener’s best music picks of 2009 at the year’s halfway point. I recognized several names on the list and laughed a little, remarking to Michael, Karla, and Troy how we sorta fit right into the NPR demographic. They saw the list, and agreed. We made our way through the list while cooking that evening’s dishes, but later two songs remained lodged in my head: No Intention by the Dirty Projectors and Blood Bank by Bon Iver. I’ve found myself playing these two a lot these past few days as we’ve entered the last stretch towards winter closure. They certainly elicit different moods, but there is something to Dave Longstreth’s wandering voice and lyrics in No Intention and Justin Vernon’s striving vocals and vivid narrative in Blood Bank that I can’t get enough of.

Dirty Projectors – No Intention

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Bon Iver – Blood Bank

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Now, I can just see Jordan’s eyes roll at my very mention of Dirty Projectors — a band he’s been namedropping for months now — but I listened to the rest of Bitte Orca and didn’t find the others as memorable. Bon Iver is a band that I’ve been wanting to explore, and this seems like a good entry point.

No Intention

The renegade feeling satisfied
You blinked and closed your eyes
You like the feeling of Saturday
You love the danger in the night
The restless corpse is collapsed wind
The breath is daffodil
What not become what is lapsing
Into the universal fill
Or maybe just

No intention
Or maybe just
No intention

When I am full with endeavor
Nothing can stop gestalt
The freshness of my reality
Makes me feel tingly and hot
When you wake up shouting “Idea!”
Is that a punishment?
You represent saying, “I’m real,”
But is that what you meant
Maybe you meant

No intention
Maybe you meant
No intention

Blood Bank

Well I met you at the blood bank
We were looking at the bags
Wondering if any of the colors
Matched any of the names we knew on the tags
You said “see look, that’s yours!
Stacked on top with your brother’s
See how the resemble one another
Even in their plastic little covers”

And I said I know it well

That secret that you know
But don’t know how to tell
It f$@!s with your honor
And it teases your head
But you know that it’s good girl
’cause it’s running you with red

Then the snow started falling
We were stuck out in your car
You were rubbing both of my hands
Chewing on a candy bar

You said “ain’t this just like the present
To be showing up like this”
As the moon waned to crescent
We started to kiss

And I said I know it well

That secret that we know
That we don’t know how to tell
I’m in love with your honor
I’m in love with your cheeks
What’s that noise up the stairs, babe?
Is that Christmas morning creaks?

And I said I know it well
I know it well …

In a marked departure from the past many weeks, not a sound of ping pong was heard at our yellow house in the Alameda. Yeah, it’s been that kind of week. Troy is working his poor fingers raw pounding out chapters to his book (deadline: Sunday night), and Michael has been grinding it out at Box while all the Stanford folks hunkered down for finals week. Rishabh was taking some much deserved time off to India, but Joseph was back in the office this week so that helped a lot. On Wednesday we had our going away lunch for Dustin and Sara, our group’s interns for the past six months. We’ll have a new batch of interns (two from NC State!) in January.

On Wednesday I caught up with Brent over drinks at the Wine Bar in downtown Palo Alto, and Amit joined us later after attending  a conference in Mountain View earlier that evening. On Thursday, Lux sent out a note saying that to celebrate his last final of the quarter he was headed to the Nuthouse. I ended up getting there at 11:30pm (looong day at the office, yeah) and had a good time with him and some classmates, plus Saumya from Econetix with whom Lux is working on some cool stuff. On Friday, Dan invited me to his “Hanukkah” party, which I put in air quotes because in addition to latkes and dreidals there was also plenty of bacon, pork ribs, and shrimp to go around. Dan was wearing this giant dreidal on a chain, a watermelon yarmulka, and a bathrobe with a menora stitched on the back. Hehe.

So I was getting home after 1am the last three nights, which is a little late (even for us) for ping pong. Taking it easy today, then will go up for brunch and maybe apartment hunting up in the City tomorrow. It finally started raining over here, so we’ll see how long I end up staying up. Heisman Trophy ceremony tonight, hoping for a Toby Gerhart win but will be fine if Ingram gets it (he’s in the championship game after all) and it’d be a just world if Suh gets it instead.