Friday eve

This friday evening made it upto my blog...havent had so much fun in a past few weeks. I had a gift coupon for Buffalo Wild wings, courtesy Scion car test ride which gave me a free T-shirt too. Now, the question was how to use the coupon effectively and before expiry?..Lab mates at VBI - Dipti, Sanket and Farid were interested in eating out..and so the plan was made. We ate some nice appetizers followed by wings. Our waitress Michelle, oh what shud i say abt her..she deserved a life better than that!
During the dinner, the plan was made for a movie at NRV Mall. We drove around 8pm, but unfortunately tickets were sold out for Departed. Then we decided to roam around and shop for my Pune trip..and suddenly everyone wanted something from the mall. We spent an hour at JC Penney. Then again, we thought maybe we could watch the next show for Departed and immediately went ahead and booked the tickets. Now the question was to spend the rest of our time. An idea although not very suitable for that occasion popped up - grocery shopping at Walmart!..ok it started off wtih buying a few essentials but ended up in a cart full of items. Then we drove back to the theatre, enjoyed the movie...i was surprised that it was full show and lots of popcorn here and there..

Came back home at 1am..long evening indeed!

Lets get Nerdy

If you want to attract nerds, you need more than a town with personality. You need a town with the right personality. Nerds are a distinct subset of the creative class, with different tastes from the rest. You can see this most clearly in New York, which attracts a lot of creative people, but few nerds. [5]

What nerds like is the kind of town where people walk around smiling. This excludes LA, where no one walks at all, and also New York, where people walk, but not smiling. When I was in grad school in Boston, a friend came to visit from New York. On the subway back from the airport she asked "Why is everyone smiling?" I looked and they weren't smiling. They just looked like they were compared to the facial expressions she was used to.

If you've lived in New York, you know where these facial expressions come from. It's the kind of place where your mind may be excited, but your body knows it's having a bad time. People don't so much enjoy living there as endure it for the sake of the excitement. And if you like certain kinds of excitement, New York is incomparable. It's a hub of glamour, a magnet for all the shorter half-life isotopes of style and fame.

Nerds don't care about glamour, so to them the appeal of New York is a mystery. People who like New York will pay a fortune for a small, dark, noisy apartment in order to live in a town where the cool people are really cool. A nerd looks at that deal and sees only: pay a fortune for a small, dark, noisy apartment.

Nerds will pay a premium to live in a town where the smart people are really smart, but you don't have to pay as much for that. It's supply and demand: glamour is popular, so you have to pay a lot for it.

Most nerds like quieter pleasures. They like cafes instead of clubs; used bookshops instead of fashionable clothing shops; hiking instead of dancing; sunlight instead of tall buildings. A nerd's idea of paradise is Berkeley or Boulder.

(extracted from my previous post..this deserved special mention)

Wanna create Silicon valley?

Could you reproduce Silicon Valley elsewhere, or is there something unique about it?

It wouldn't be surprising if it were hard to reproduce in other countries, because you couldn't reproduce it in most of the US either. What does it take to make a silicon valley even here?

What it takes is the right people. If you could get the right ten thousand people to move from Silicon Valley to Buffalo, Buffalo would become Silicon Valley. [1]

That's a striking departure from the past. Up till a couple decades ago, geography was destiny for cities. All great cities were located on waterways, because cities made money by trade, and water was the only economical way to ship.

Now you could make a great city anywhere, if you could get the right people to move there. So the question of how to make a silicon valley becomes: who are the right people, and how do you get them to move?

Two Types

I think you only need two kinds of people to create a technology hub: rich people and nerds. They're the limiting reagents in the reaction that produces startups, because they're the only ones present when startups get started. Everyone else will move.

Observation bears this out: within the US, towns have become startup hubs if and only if they have both rich people and nerds. Few startups happen in Miami, for example, because although it's full of rich people, it has few nerds. It's not the kind of place nerds like.

Whereas Pittsburgh has the opposite problem: plenty of nerds, but no rich people. The top US Computer Science departments are said to be MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, and Carnegie-Mellon. MIT yielded Route 128. Stanford and Berkeley yielded Silicon Valley. But Carnegie-Mellon? The record skips at that point. Lower down the list, the University of Washington yielded a high-tech community in Seattle, and the University of Texas at Austin yielded one in Austin. But what happened in Pittsburgh? And in Ithaca, home of Cornell, which is also high on the list?

I grew up in Pittsburgh and went to college at Cornell, so I can answer for both. The weather is terrible, particularly in winter, and there's no interesting old city to make up for it, as there is in Boston. Rich people don't want to live in Pittsburgh or Ithaca. So while there are plenty of hackers who could start startups, there's no one to invest in them.

Not Bureaucrats

Do you really need the rich people? Wouldn't it work to have the government invest in the nerds? No, it would not. Startup investors are a distinct type of rich people. They tend to have a lot of experience themselves in the technology business. This (a) helps them pick the right startups, and (b) means they can supply advice and connections as well as money. And the fact that they have a personal stake in the outcome makes them really pay attention.

Bureaucrats by their nature are the exact opposite sort of people from startup investors. The idea of them making startup investments is comic. It would be like mathematicians running Vogue-- or perhaps more accurately, Vogue editors running a math journal. [2]

Though indeed, most things bureaucrats do, they do badly. We just don't notice usually, because they only have to compete against other bureaucrats. But as startup investors they'd have to compete against pros with a great deal more experience and motivation.

Even corporations that have in-house VC groups generally forbid them to make their own investment decisions. Most are only allowed to invest in deals where some reputable private VC firm is willing to act as lead investor.

Not Buildings

If you go to see Silicon Valley, what you'll see are buildings. But it's the people that make it Silicon Valley, not the buildings. I read occasionally about attempts to set up "technology parks" in other places, as if the active ingredient of Silicon Valley were the office space. An article about Sophia Antipolis bragged that companies there included Cisco, Compaq, IBM, NCR, and Nortel. Don't the French realize these aren't startups?

Building office buildings for technology companies won't get you a silicon valley, because the key stage in the life of a startup happens before they want that kind of space. The key stage is when they're three guys operating out of an apartment. Wherever the startup is when it gets funded, it will stay. The defining quality of Silicon Valley is not that Intel or Apple or Google have offices there, but that they were started there.

So if you want to reproduce Silicon Valley, what you need to reproduce is those two or three founders sitting around a kitchen table deciding to start a company. And to reproduce that you need those people.

Universities

The exciting thing is, all you need are the people. If you could attract a critical mass of nerds and investors to live somewhere, you could reproduce Silicon Valley. And both groups are highly mobile. They'll go where life is good. So what makes a place good to them?

What nerds like is other nerds. Smart people will go wherever other smart people are. And in particular, to great universities. In theory there could be other ways to attract them, but so far universities seem to be indispensable. Within the US, there are no technology hubs without first-rate universities-- or at least, first-rate computer science departments.

So if you want to make a silicon valley, you not only need a university, but one of the top handful in the world. It has to be good enough to act as a magnet, drawing the best people from thousands of miles away. And that means it has to stand up to existing magnets like MIT and Stanford.

This sounds hard. Actually it might be easy. My professor friends, when they're deciding where they'd like to work, consider one thing above all: the quality of the other faculty. What attracts professors is good colleagues. So if you managed to recruit, en masse, a significant number of the best young researchers, you could create a first-rate university from nothing overnight. And you could do that for surprisingly little. If you paid 200 people hiring bonuses of $3 million apiece, you could put together a faculty that would bear comparison with any in the world. And from that point the chain reaction would be self-sustaining. So whatever it costs to establish a mediocre university, for an additional half billion or so you could have a great one. [3]

Personality

However, merely creating a new university would not be enough to start a silicon valley. The university is just the seed. It has to be planted in the right soil, or it won't germinate. Plant it in the wrong place, and you just create Carnegie-Mellon.

To spawn startups, your university has to be in a town that has attractions other than the university. It has to be a place where investors want to live, and students want to stay after they graduate.

The two like much the same things, because most startup investors are nerds themselves. So what do nerds look for in a town? Their tastes aren't completely different from other people's, because a lot of the towns they like most in the US are also big tourist destinations: San Francisco, Boston, Seattle. But their tastes can't be quite mainstream either, because they dislike other big tourist destinations, like New York, Los Angeles, and Las Vegas.

There has been a lot written lately about the "creative class." The thesis seems to be that as wealth derives increasingly from ideas, cities will prosper only if they attract those who have them. That is certainly true; in fact it was the basis of Amsterdam's prosperity 400 years ago.

A lot of nerd tastes they share with the creative class in general. For example, they like well-preserved old neighborhoods instead of cookie-cutter suburbs, and locally-owned shops and restaurants instead of national chains. Like the rest of the creative class, they want to live somewhere with personality.

What exactly is personality? I think it's the feeling that each building is the work of a distinct group of people. A town with personality is one that doesn't feel mass-produced. So if you want to make a startup hub-- or any town to attract the "creative class"-- you probably have to ban large development projects. When a large tract has been developed by a single organization, you can always tell. [4]

Most towns with personality are old, but they don't have to be. Old towns have two advantages: they're denser, because they were laid out before cars, and they're more varied, because they were built one building at a time. You could have both now. Just have building codes that ensure density, and ban large scale developments.

A corollary is that you have to keep out the biggest developer of all: the government. A government that asks "How can we build a silicon valley?" has probably ensured failure by the way they framed the question. You don't build a silicon valley; you let one grow.

Nerds

If you want to attract nerds, you need more than a town with personality. You need a town with the right personality. Nerds are a distinct subset of the creative class, with different tastes from the rest. You can see this most clearly in New York, which attracts a lot of creative people, but few nerds. [5]

What nerds like is the kind of town where people walk around smiling. This excludes LA, where no one walks at all, and also New York, where people walk, but not smiling. When I was in grad school in Boston, a friend came to visit from New York. On the subway back from the airport she asked "Why is everyone smiling?" I looked and they weren't smiling. They just looked like they were compared to the facial expressions she was used to.

If you've lived in New York, you know where these facial expressions come from. It's the kind of place where your mind may be excited, but your body knows it's having a bad time. People don't so much enjoy living there as endure it for the sake of the excitement. And if you like certain kinds of excitement, New York is incomparable. It's a hub of glamour, a magnet for all the shorter half-life isotopes of style and fame.

Nerds don't care about glamour, so to them the appeal of New York is a mystery. People who like New York will pay a fortune for a small, dark, noisy apartment in order to live in a town where the cool people are really cool. A nerd looks at that deal and sees only: pay a fortune for a small, dark, noisy apartment.

Nerds will pay a premium to live in a town where the smart people are really smart, but you don't have to pay as much for that. It's supply and demand: glamour is popular, so you have to pay a lot for it.

Most nerds like quieter pleasures. They like cafes instead of clubs; used bookshops instead of fashionable clothing shops; hiking instead of dancing; sunlight instead of tall buildings. A nerd's idea of paradise is Berkeley or Boulder.

Youth

It's the young nerds who start startups, so it's those specifically the city has to appeal to. The startup hubs in the US are all young-feeling towns. This doesn't mean they have to be new. Cambridge has the oldest town plan in America, but it feels young because it's full of students.

What you can't have, if you want to create a silicon valley, is a large, existing population of stodgy people. It would be a waste of time to try to reverse the fortunes of a declining industrial town like Detroit or Philadelphia by trying to encourage startups. Those places have too much momentum in the wrong direction. You're better off starting with a blank slate in the form of a small town. Or better still, if there's a town young people already flock to, that one.

The Bay Area was a magnet for the young and optimistic for decades before it was associated with technology. It was a place people went in search of something new. And so it became synonymous with California nuttiness. There's still a lot of that there. If you wanted to start a new fad-- a new way to focus one's "energy," for example, or a new category of things not to eat-- the Bay Area would be the place to do it. But a place that tolerates oddness in the search for the new is exactly what you want in a startup hub, because economically that's what startups are. Most good startup ideas seem a little crazy; if they were obviously good ideas, someone would have done them already.

(How many people are going to want computers in their houses? What, another search engine?)

That's the connection between technology and liberalism. Without exception the high-tech cities in the US are also the most liberal. But it's not because liberals are smarter that this is so. It's because liberal cities tolerate odd ideas, and smart people by definition have odd ideas.

Conversely, a town that gets praised for being "solid" or representing "traditional values" may be a fine place to live, but it's never going to succeed as a startup hub. The 2004 presidential election, though a disaster in other respects, conveniently supplied us with a county-by-county map of such places. [6]

To attract the young, a town must have an intact center. In most American cities the center has been abandoned, and the growth, if any, is in the suburbs. Most American cities have been turned inside out. But none of the startup hubs has: not San Francisco, or Boston, or Seattle. They all have intact centers. [7] My guess is that no city with a dead center could be turned into a startup hub. Young people don't want to live in the suburbs.

Within the US, the two cities I think could most easily be turned into new silicon valleys are Boulder and Portland. Both have the kind of effervescent feel that attracts the young. They're each only a great university short of becoming a silicon valley, if they wanted to.

Time

A great university near an attractive town. Is that all it takes? That was all it took to make the original Silicon Valley. Silicon Valley traces its origins to William Shockley, one of the inventors of the transistor. He did the research that won him the Nobel Prize at Bell Labs, but when he started his own company in 1956 he moved to Palo Alto to do it. At the time that was an odd thing to do. Why did he? Because he had grown up there and remembered how nice it was. Now Palo Alto is suburbia, but then it was a charming college town-- a charming college town with perfect weather and San Francisco only an hour away.

The companies that rule Silicon Valley now are all descended in various ways from Shockley Semiconductor. Shockley was a difficult man, and in 1957 his top people-- "the traitorous eight"-- left to start a new company, Fairchild Semiconductor. Among them were Gordon Moore and Robert Noyce, who went on to found Intel, and Eugene Kleiner, who founded the VC firm Kleiner Perkins. Forty-two years later, Kleiner Perkins funded Google, and the partner responsible for the deal was John Doerr, who came to Silicon Valley in 1974 to work for Intel.

So although a lot of the newest companies in Silicon Valley don't make anything out of silicon, there always seem to be multiple links back to Shockley. There's a lesson here: startups beget startups. People who work for startups start their own. People who get rich from startups fund new ones. I suspect this kind of organic growth is the only way to produce a startup hub, because it's the only way to grow the expertise you need.

That has two important implications. The first is that you need time to grow a silicon valley. The university you could create in a couple years, but the startup community around it has to grow organically. The cycle time is limited by the time it takes a company to succeed, which probably averages about five years.

The other implication of the organic growth hypothesis is that you can't be somewhat of a startup hub. You either have a self-sustaining chain reaction, or not. Observation confirms this too: cities either have a startup scene, or they don't. There is no middle ground. Chicago has the third largest metropolitan area in America. As source of startups it's negligible compared to Seattle, number 15.

The good news is that the initial seed can be quite small. Shockley Semiconductor, though itself not very successful, was big enough. It brought a critical mass of experts in an important new technology together in a place they liked enough to stay.

Competing

Of course, a would-be silicon valley faces an obstacle the original one didn't: it has to compete with Silicon Valley. Can that be done? Probably.

One of Silicon Valley's biggest advantages is its venture capital firms. This was not a factor in Shockley's day, because VC funds didn't exist. In fact, Shockley Semiconductor and Fairchild Semiconductor were not startups at all in our sense. They were subsidiaries-- of Beckman Instruments and Fairchild Camera and Instrument respectively. Those companies were apparently willing to establish subsidiaries wherever the experts wanted to live.

Venture investors, however, prefer to fund startups within an hour's drive. For one, they're more likely to notice startups nearby. But when they do notice startups in other towns they prefer them to move. They don't want to have to travel to attend board meetings, and in any case the odds of succeeding are higher in a startup hub.

The centralizing effect of venture firms is a double one: they cause startups to form around them, and those draw in more startups through acquisitions. And although the first may be weakening because it's now so cheap to start some startups, the second seems as strong as ever. Three of the most admired "Web 2.0" companies were started outside the usual startup hubs, but two of them have already been reeled in through acquisitions.

Such centralizing forces make it harder for new silicon valleys to get started. But by no means impossible. Ultimately power rests with the founders. A startup with the best people will beat one with funding from famous VCs, and a startup that was sufficiently successful would never have to move. So a town that could exert enough pull over the right people could resist and perhaps even surpass Silicon Valley.

For all its power, Silicon Valley has a great weakness: the paradise Shockley found in 1956 is now one giant parking lot. San Francisco and Berkeley are great, but they're forty miles away. Silicon Valley proper is soul-crushing suburban sprawl. It has fabulous weather, which makes it significantly better than the soul-crushing sprawl of most other American cities. But a competitor that managed to avoid sprawl would have real leverage. All a city needs is to be the kind of place the next traitorous eight look at and say "I want to stay here," and that would be enough to get the chain reaction started.

(taken from http://www.paulgraham.com/siliconvalley.html)

Pleasure in Pain?

These days I have been caught in a weird emotional state. Whenever a thought about home passes in my mind, I feel like listening to songs in my native language Marathi. The more I hear them, the more I like them, but at the same time it gives me a feeling of pain. However, the urge to listen to them is so strong, that I still go ahead and try to overcome the pain. A similar feeling arises when I listen to Swades "ye jo des hai tera, swades hai tera, tuze hai pukaraaaa..and the pain goes "aaa", "mai vapas aungaaa again the "aaa" from Border". I think i am thinking too much..but cant help it..can I?

Anyways, trying some meditation to soothen my nerves and take control of emotions..its indeed a game of nerves!

Heart beats faster

hmm..long time since I actually sat down and wrote a blog on my own. This blog is different because I am writing it from my lab - why?..because I am stuck in a mess of C++ code which is hard to debug and I have no help in sight. Imagine having a unite testing frameowrk wrapped by another and now I am adding another layer to it..hundreds of files and tests to be integrated..and the bottomline..it should finally be automated with minimal changes to existing code.

That aside, its some 70 days for "homecoming" and i am all excited about it. These days i keep dreaming of what will happen when I visit home, how i will spend my "quality" time, etc. Shopping has already started with gifts coming from all over - online, Walmart, Google.com. My heart beats faster as each day passes.

College has started becoming monotonous - its the middle of the semester u see. Need to do something interesting to keep up, i wish i can enjoy a bit in the Fall break. To top it all, we dont have Algorithms class the entire next week, nor do i have thesis meeting..so i m gonna be free. God, take me to good sunny California once again..let me visit the beach, eat at the best hotels in So-Cal..

The Career Fair marked the beginning of the Fall interview season. Hope to make the most out of it this time..at least preparing better. Had a cool tailgate party with my host..ate lots of apple pie cake and fruit punch.
Loads of good food at my home sweet home, good ole Pune!

Why Indians are US's best immigrants

1. Education. The Census Bureau says that 63.9% of Indians over 25 hold at least a bachelor's degree, compared with the national average of 24.4%. Media reports routinely profile graduates from one Indian college -- the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT).

This is a great school, but most successful Indians I know aren't IIT graduates. Neither are the doctors, journalists, motel owners, or the majority of technology executives. Their education comes from a broad range of colleges in India and the U.S. They believe that education is the best way to rise above poverty and hardship.

2. Upbringing. For my generation, what was most socially acceptable was to become a doctor, engineer, or businessperson. Therefore, the emphasis was on either learning science or math or becoming an entrepreneur.

3. Hard work. With India's competitive and rote-based education system, children are forced to spend the majority of their time on their schooling. For better or for worse, it's work, work, and more work for anyone with access to education.

4. Determination to overcome obstacles. In a land of over a billion people with a corrupt government, weak infrastructure, and limited opportunities, it takes a lot to simply survive, let alone get ahead.

Indians learn to be resilient, battle endless obstacles, and make the most of what they have. In India, you're on your own and learn to work around the problems that the state and society create for you.

5. Entrepreneurial spirit. As corporate strategist C K Prahalad notes in his interview with BusinessWeek's Pete Engardio, amidst the poverty, hustle, and bustle of overcrowded India is a "beehive of entrepreneurialism and creativity." After observing street markets, Prahalad says that "every individual is engaged in a business of some kind -- whether it is selling single cloves of garlic, squeezing sugar cane juice for pennies a glass, or hauling TVs." This entrepreneurial sprit is something that most Indians grow up with.

6. Recognizing diversity. Indians hold many ethnic, racial, gender, and caste biases. But to succeed, they learn to overlook or adapt these biases when necessary. There are six major religions in India, and the Indian constitution recognizes 22 regional languages. Every region in the country has its own customs and character.

7. Humility. Talk to almost any immigrant, regardless of origin, and he will share stories about leaving social status behind in his home country and working his way up from the bottom of the ladder in his adopted land. It's a humbling process, but humility is an asset in entrepreneurship. You learn many valuable lessons when you start from scratch and work your way to success.

8. Family support/values. In the absence of a social safety net, the family takes on a very important role in Indian culture. Family members provide all kinds of support and guidance to those in need.

9. Financial management. Indians generally pride themselves on being fiscally conservative. Their businesses usually watch every penny and spend within their means.

10. Forming and leveraging networks. Indians immigrants found that one of the secrets to success was to learn from those who had paved the trails.

Some examples: Successful Indian technologists in Silicon Valley formed an organization called The Indus Entrepreneurs to mentor other entrepreneurs and provide a forum for networking. TiE is reputed to have helped launch hundreds of startups, some of which achieved billions in market capitalization. This was a group I turned to when I needed help.

Top Indian journalists and academics created the South Asian Journalists Association (SAJA) to provide networking and assistance to newcomers. SAJA runs journalism conferences and workshops, and provides scholarships to aspiring South-Asian student journalists.

In the entertainment industry, fledgling filmmakers formed the South Asian American Films and Arts Association (SAAFA). Their mission is the promotion of South Asian cinematic and artistic endeavors, and mentoring newcomers.

11. Giving back. The most successful entrepreneurs I know believe in giving back to the community and society that has given them so much opportunity. TiE founders invested great effort to ensure that their organization was open, inclusive, and integrated with mainstream American society. Their No. 1 rule was that their charter members would give without taking. SAJA officers work for top publications and universities, yet they volunteer their evenings and weekends to run an organization to assist newcomers.

12. Integration and acceptance. The Pew Global Attitudes Project, which conducts worldwide public opinion surveys, has shown that Indians predominantly hold favorable opinions of the U.S. When Indians immigrate to the U.S, they usually come to share the American dream and work hard to integrate.

Indians have achieved more overall business success in less time in the U.S. than any other recent immigrant group. They have shown what can be achieved by integrating themselves into U.S. society and taking advantage of all the opportunities the country offers.

Disclaimer: This article is taken from Rediff.com dated Sept 20, 2006.

Mixed bag

Last week passed by real quick. The courses have got the pace now, i am loaded with work. Our Software Engg project looks intersting..designing a plant sale software for our Horticulture club. It involved a lot of real-life expereinces like meeting the client to collect requirements, validating them. This looks even good when our clients are 2 blondes - u know what i mean!
Algorithms as usual seems scary..lot of maths and proofs which i dont seem to be in touch for a long time. Then I watched FlightPlan on Friday night and Lage raho Munnabhai today. Decent films both of them..Friends season 2 is about to finish (on my DVD)..with Feebies "smelly cat"...had a hearty laugh there!
Kary called up and informed me abt Reliance India call website being hacked..the phone has been ringing since then. Tomorrow will be spent working on assignments and some thesis stuff to do. 100 days to India trip!

The ball is rolling

Its the end of first week of classes at VT. Hmm..enough excitement has been built up and the initial inertia is gone. Party season is back in town; we had a CS department freshers party, this time its a huge Indian student population all worried abt survival without funding, but hopefuly situation will ease out in the coming months. Then we had the ISA Freshers party today; all rocking Indians dancing to the tunes of Himesh Reshmaiyya's muzic. Relished food at India Garden. Coinicidentally, today is the start of Ganesh festival here at VT. Similar to last year, we have a enthu public with ex-students driving from DC to be a part of pooja. The next ten days are gonna be enjoyable with aarti every evening and some "prasad"; wow i miss the modak; i wish i cud be home just for some time to eat modaks dipped in shuddh desi ghee; my mouth waters, cant describe it any more.
Days will soon start rolling as semester progresses and there is lots of work to be done..

What a day!

It was supposed to be the first day at Fall semester classes for 26000 VT students here in Blacksburg. But the day marked history. A suspect fled from police custody, was armed and dangerous. He was believed to be hiding near VT campus. It began with an email in the morning advising employees at CRC to stay away from work; the spot where he was spotted. Rumor then spread to campus and our student center was evacuated. Armed police officers were all around campus searching for him. It didnt look different than a war situation; with SWAT forces, sharp shooters on top of univ buildings. The entire university was evacuated and classes cancelled for the day due to the tense and potentially hostile nature. As the day progressed, i sat at home glued to latest television updates. Soon the news was on national media including CNN ; this was indeed big for a small and otherwise safe town. At around 4pm, the guy was arrested in the bushes near the Rugby stadium of VT. That eased out a lot of pressure and classes will begin from tomorrow.

Not a very good thing to happen at the start of the semester; except that we got an extra holiday; but who wants it anyways now after enjoying 3 months to the fullest!

The great divide

Its been almost a week after coming back to my old little town Blacksburg, located in the Appalachian mountain range in Virginia. And now after seeing a lot of places in US, I can better judge the regional divide here - how people in the East differ from those on the West coast. Life on the West seems like the fast and the furious - its a much more happening place, partially bcoz I stayed in the city as against the town here. People there are generally the working class - mid aged who spend weekends partying and slog during the weekdays. They also tend to take a lot of risks and seem to be engaged in outdoor activities. Converse to that, life on the East is slow-paced, everything takes its own sweet time. People generally stick in their homes especially due to the colder temperatures. Its a retirees paradise here with living costs much more affordable than on the West. Gas prices too differ by almost a dollar. But i must mention that such an atmosphere is good for academics and research - no doubt Virginia Tech has such great research work (pun intended - there's not much one can do here!) a breeding ground for PhD's.

Feels nice to get back to school next week, with 2 courses to go and the atmosphere all charged up - Go Hokies!!

Time to look back

First of all, let me congratulate myself on successfully completing a year in US and more importantly, away from homeland amchi Pune. Might seem a small leap in this world, but believe me, its not. Its different to stay in a different city in India, and coming here across the globe - u really feel the distance; especially when you call home and get a response after a time lag. Its a good time to look back at what I have achieved and what still needs to be done. I came here with some ambitions - to gain decent knowledge. On that front, truly worth it - hats off to Virginia Tech professors for giving me all that and yes, friends at the university who always helped, especially my seniors. Getting an assistantship (thru some exhaustive search...cud publish a book on this!) right from the 1st semester is a gr8 achievement i feel. I kept repeating each night that I deserved it, and yes, self affirmations helped..after all didnt have any shoulder to cry on!

The first semester mid-sem exam was a bummer - i was totally lost and didnt know what to do. I remember talking to Kary and Gud and they had similar experience. Then felt a little better and we decided to do well in the finals. Although, the damage cud not be completely undone, I got a decent grade to keep me in good standing. And how can i forget the wonderful new year vacation in Florida and then our unique get-together with Viv in Texas..ah these moments will be cherished for life.

Start of sem 2, now i am better prepared, and luckily have lesser courses. And this time, it went really smooth. My thesis is also taking shape slowly. Come february and i celebrated my 1st birthday away from home. friends made it special with a cake ceremony at 12 midnight. Then i start looking out for internships - with high hopes. Soon i find that all's not going well. i got a few emails exchanged but nothing fruitful. As time passes, i become desperate, sometimes missing sleep with nightmares of having to be in Blacksburg for the summer. But then God is merciful and I suddenly have 2 offers, which is even bad because now i have to "choose". Some advice from knowledgable ppl solves my dilemma.

Oh, how can i forget the day i got my US drivers licence - thanks to Seth. I can now rent a car and roam independently, it was one of my happiest moments in US. And here I am, right in the heart of southern California, working as a Linux kernel developer cum hacker for Broadcom...relaxing on the couch in Lake forest, writing this blog after exactly 1 year.

Definitely gained a lot of experience, knowledge. I have a broader perspective towards things, have become independent, can manage the house as well as finances. On the other side, miss family a lot, those Sunday eve outings, daily evening walks, the new house in Pune, friends, the "Splendorous Hoodibabaa" bike ride, mom's love, a hug with Dad, fun moments with dada.
Hope to meet all of them pretty soon...thanks all for supporting me and thank you Lord for keeping me fit, healthy and emotionally strong throughout.

Las Vegazzed

This Friday night will remain in my memory in years to come. I teamed up with friends Billya, Dhavlya and Baptya to go to the gambling capital of the world - yes indeed Las Vegas. All was well planned with finishing off work at office a day earlir so that we cud start early. We cruised (in PT Cruiser) at 95mph on the road to Vegas. As we entered Nevada, there lied stretches of land with no habitat, vegetation and to top it all - the desert heat. Clicked some beautiful snaps of the Zzyzx road exit and the cacti. As we approached Vegas, the excitement kept growing and voila - there we were on Las Vegas Blvd. The Fountain show at Belagio was awesome. We then walked on "the strip", visiting different casinos. We then realized that we needed to gamble here or else it wudn't be a gr8 trip. After observing the different bets, we decided to go for the Russian roulette. Initially, we lost some money, but soon recovered from the loss as we kept betting more and more. And then again started losing..thats the pt we had to stop to avoid bankruptcy. I liked the interiors at Paris Casino. We had a breath taking roller coaster ride at New York New York. The lion at MGM Grand was inviting us to play some more, but we managed to resist the temptation. Had a quick sub and clicked some good snaps. Billya drove us back thru the night with the loud muzic keeping him awake. We reached Los Angeles at 7am, dropped Baptya for his conference (which I assume he must have attended in deep sleep) and returned to Irvine for a hearty breakfast and coffee. There is one more thing that also happened ..but which is a suspense...after all What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas!!

Mumbai blasts: An NRI's view

Disclaimer:
This has been taken from rediff.com
http://ia.rediff.com/news/2006/jul/12nri.htm?q=tp&file=.htm
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If you live and work in the US, but were born and raised in Mumbai, you may understand my feelings.

Death is never pretty. But, when it comes in the form of seven bombs that rip through passenger trains at rush hour in your hometown, the word 'gory' takes on new meaning.

The blasts occurred between 6 and 6.30 pm in Mumbai. Latest estimates indicate 150 dead, with several hundred injured, most of whom are critical. Train services have shut down and local telephone lines are jammed. The day may have ended, but the trauma has just begun.

As a Non-Resident Indian, this is a strange feeling. You want to help, but the only thing you can do is make a few phone calls. You want to feel sad, but you are too far away to know what it's like for an official standing in the middle of mangled bodies at dinnertime. You want to curse the 'system', but it is no longer yours to curse. In essence, you feel helpless.

I know I do.

There is nothing I can do, and it hurts. Perhaps this could have been prevented, perhaps not.

Having said that, who am I to blame anybody, considering I no longer live in my own country? I have no authority anymore to criticize the way things work in Mumbai, because I now watch events on CNN and only check rediff.com once in a while. I admit -- I can't remember the last time I saw a Hindi movie or cooked a traditional Indian meal. I live like a foreigner and do not know what is going on in my city. The only time I sit up and take notice is on a day like today.

It is sad and, perhaps, shameful. It fosters a feeling of guilt. All these feelings exploded today and made me realize that you can take a man away from his city, but you cannot take the city out of the man. I speak for myself when I say that, as an NRI, Mumbai is an integral part of who I am, regardless of where I live.

Mahatma Gandhi once said "A man is the sum of his actions, of what he has done, of what he can do, nothing else".

If there is anything you or I can do to ease the pain for Mumbai, we should. If that means taking some time off from work to call or e-mail old friends and relatives today, so be it. If that means sitting still and praying for the dead and dying, so be it. If it means recognizing the simple things we take for granted every day, so be it.

And, if it means remembering you are an Indian, and should feel India's pain (just as you have enjoyed India's nurture and education before moving to another country), so be it.

Interactions

For the past few days, i have been interacting with a lot of techie colleagues at Broadcom, people with 10-15 years of experience in industry. We had discussions on various topics ranging from : how to start a "startup",IT, cultures, economy, war, Indo-US nuclear deal, spiritual, etc. It has definitely given me a new perspective to look at things. Here I have met people from all over the world, in fact true amru's are in a minority. It helped me to see how different people look at the world politics and state of affairs. One of my colleagues is deep into spirituality; he knows more than me regarding Hinduism, meditation, yoga and the vedas. I was amazed and a bit ashamed too! The talk on US economy, federal interest rates ,etc enlightened me. One of them is deeply interested in academic work and what we learn in our Masters program.

Looking at all this, i am getting some good inputs here, ..abhijit..welcome to the real-world!

Ghum jao

The past 2-3 weeks have been pretty good at work and at home too. I managed to learn some good concepts from my internship at Broadcom and I am slowly getting a feel of things. It was just 6-7 months back when I ventured into the kernel space, I thought this is the core work i wanna do...i possibly cant go deeper than the kernel...but here at Broadcom, i realized that the kernel came to life much later..there was a whole lot of hardware and board level bootloader which then transferred the control to the kernel...good to see how bare metal (silicon as they call it) comes to LIFE.. I saw the entire process from board bootup to an actual video being played on the HDTV using our board and it was amazing. Embedded definitely seems to be an intersting arena to venture in..

I also visited a few places around Irvine. The most striking among it being Beverly Hills, It was like heaven with all the goodies spread around...a must visit if u plan to goto LA. Every street has countless Merks, BMWs and all the exotic cars running around. The scenic beauty is enjoyable. Shopping here can drill a big hole in the pocket though!
The week before, I visited the Wild Animal Park @ San Diego. It was a perfect 1-day trip...drive for 80 miles on I-5 and enjoy the entire day at the park. We also did a Balloon safari, the balloon takes us 400ft above ground to get an aerial view of the park span. The train ride along the park was informative.
I also visited Laguna beach, Huntington beach over the weekend. Plan to learn surfing if time permits.

A lot of time was also spent in watching sports - we had a wonderful NBA season with Miami heats stealing it from the Mavericks. World Cup fever is heating up and my favorites are Argentina this time..they seem to be playing well so far. Ghana struck a surprise and secured place in the 2nd round...lets see what they have to offer..

Overall, fan(aa) in California

All set and rocking

The busy days are back with the first week of internship starting a new period in life.. my first corporate experience in america. Its been good and I am enjoying the work so far..ah..this kernel programming is sehr gut! The long weekend was spent by a short visit to Los Angeles and parts near Hollywood. I must mention that it was my first long drive of 100 miles, and I enjoyed the car drive thru the mountains. Had a good Maharashtrian lunch and went to Walmart for some shopping. The rest of the weekend, I just relaxed at home watching some good English movies like The Terminal and Minority Report. Bachelors party in Vegas has given the perfect setting to plan a visit to Las Vegas in the near future.

Orange, continued...

Just landed in my dream county, Orange which also is the 2nd most expensive county in United States. Things are settling down and I enjoyed the 4 hr Delta flight. Feels good to be on the West coast, close to San Diego, Las Vegas and Los Angeles and yes the Rocky Mountains. I had a glimpse during my flight and it was an awesome sight. Oh and I was all alone on the 3 seats, it was a sparsely populated crowd .. so enjoyed my space. Watched Hoodwinked on the flight and ate some excellent cookies. I recently rented a car here and my driving experience has been good so far. While searching for a parking spot, I landed on the San diego freeway and had no clue of what was going on. Suddenly, vehicles in full speed and I had to step on the pedal to maintain...then found an exit and came back to Tustin, only to land right in front of an Indian restaurant - Haveli.
Ate some delicious gulabjamuns, Paneer, Pakodas and delicious fruit salad. Then drove back to my home and finally found parking much closer to my house.

There ends my 1st day of enjoyment in Irvine..lots to do on weekend - a visit to the beach maybe.

Orange, CA

Ha ha.. a perfect plan to spend the summer at Orange county, California. A 10 mile drive and i step into office, work hard for 8 hrs and then spend the evening at Laguna beach..with the pacific ocean. Eat some sea food and drive back home..sounds too good..and after all its in line with my CA dream. There's Disney around to spend a weekend. Los Angeles and Hollywood are close too. As one of the movies says..nobody comes from LA, everybody goes to LA. I think the summer will be just gr8 and will pass out soon too, just as all good days fly and then I will be back to school, my own little Blacksburg (kalewadi, as we marathi crowd call it). Hope to spend some quality time and have fun...abhi...CA se bulawa aya hai!!

Corporate America

The last week has been pretty hectic for me trying to step in the world of corporate america. Some tough decisions have been made and i have tried to follow moral standards in making them. A lot of people including me were hurt in this issue of principles, but finally I think its the right decision. Its only a glimpse of what might happen before I graduate, and I already have some lessons learnt out of this experience. Jaan jaie, par vachan na jai!..ppl who track me closely will mostly understand what all this is about, others can keep wondering or drop me a email to find out !

People try to catch god! and god catch says catch me if u can!

Memorable evening

I am just coming back from a party arranged by my prof Dr.Madhav Marathe and his wife Achla. It was a really memorable evening. Originally planned a pizza party, but we students decided to add some spice to it and prepared the famous "Bombay Bhel", Chicken and Pudding to top it all. The Amrus and Germans just enjoyed this Indian stuff and believe me they hardly ate any pizza. In fact, we had to prepare another round of bhel due to excessive demand. We also got a few gifts for the kids and I was amazed to see the kids singing "Kal ho na ho" and playing it on the Piano as well....i always repent not learning to play any musical instrument in my life.. its just so simple to impress everyone in a party like that!

The house was decorated well and in a pretty serene locality..felt like we were in UK for a while with the mountains just behind us.. i felt i shud have a house like that.. and a laptop to work on my thesis in such awesome conditions.

The desserts like cake, pudding and ice-cream were different too and I had loads of it! Achla also prepared tradiitonal Indian chai, which i cudnt deny at all.. after all its my ekach pyala.. the 1 cup keeps me going day in and day out.

In the end, lot of pictures taken and lot of enjoyment. Hope to have some more parties like that next week after the semester ends!