Getting Bored

Originally posted: May 29, 2011

Now this must be a first. I have told you how angry I was at knowing that Abhishek Gupta had peeped into my drafts. This is revenge time, people. I peeped into his drafts this time and stole his title. This title belongs to a post Abhishek plans to post. I wished to call this post “Solitary Confinement”. I stole his title purely for revenge and my post will not be related to this.

This has been a lonely week. Stanford has its final exams for the quarter coming up. I sit almost alone in my room throughout the day either coding stuff or looking for new gmails and fb notifications. However, both seemed to have dried down (or perhaps, I had failed to notice that I never had these). Evenings are quite good for I talk to a few people and thank skype for enabling me to do a video chat back home. Also, the apartment gives me a feeling of home. I realise I will have to get to facts if I need to keep you interested anymore. I have been quite vague of late.

Now, let me introduce you to people in the story of Stanford, people who will often be mentioned in this series. I will have to be good to them in all my posts, for they are tech savvy people and may sometime stumble upon one of my posts. So, infer their character from what I tell you in the series, just have a formal introduction for now.

Leading the pack is Shikhar Aggarwal, a third year IITD CS guy interning at VMWare. I had never met him before though. He is a nice helpful guy who helped me find the apartment (or I should say found the apartment for me) and we live together for now.

Next on list is Mahesh Gupta, the person who has rented us the apartment. Again a helpful, friendly guy trying hard to get me accustomed to places and people around. He is employed with Dell and is a delhite. You see why I get to feel like home, when I am at the apartment.

Enough of home, let us get to work. Professor Balaji Prabhakar. He is a great guy, fun to be around, very motivating and highly intellectual. He insists on me not calling him Sir and I haven’t changed yet, but yes I have a lot to learn from him. Hopefull, I do that during my stay.

Then comes Naini. Naini Gomes. She is a PhD student in Prof. Balaji’s group. The very fact that she is one of the two PhD students to have found mention in a separate section in this post should tell you how helpful she is. She is the one whose constant friendly talks have made me feel comfortable at Stanford.

Juanying, I don’t know if I got his name correct. Even if I didn’t, he won’t perhaps mind it. He is a good happy guy. I like talking to him. He will perhaps be a friend I take back from here. He is also a PhD student in my group.

Other PhD students in my group whom I admire include Deepak Merugu, Martin Hunt: the coding stud, Alizade: the data center guru, Berk, Abdul, Tom…..

So, here comes to an end the formal introductiion. It should have been quite boring. But things can get quite boring sometimes, especially when you have three days off and Shikhar goes to LA with fellow interns and even Mahesh goes out everyday with his wife to tour nearby places who has come from India for a trip. I spent an entire day alone in company of my laptop and I felt like writing a post title Solitary Confinement. There are two more days to go. Perhaps the post should wait till the end…

P.S: if you haven’t read my intro to Stanford intern, find it here.