Cooking at Stanford

The day after I moved into Stanford I realized that I will have to go hungry if I didn't start cooking. But I waited until my roommate arrived. So that day we decided to cook  in large quantities and keep it for 2-3 days. It took about 1 1/2 hours for me to cook. He helped me in cutting and I did all the cooking. I never know I could cook this good.. I made the Tamil Nadu Special Vathakuzambu, Potato Kuruma and Cauliflower fry. All came out to be excellent. So I thought it would be great to capture those moments.. Thanks to Mom's Recipe book... 

17 Mile Drive...

You know I love to travel a lot..The same spirit continued after I moved to Stanford too.. And it always helps when your close friend owns a car! So there we were three guys set out on a weekend trip to the 17 Mile Drive at Monterey California.. It's a long drive along the beach with a numerous scenic spots abutting the Pacific Ocean. It took about an hour and a half for us to get there. The drive on Hwy 17 was spectacular. It's full of twists and turns but with hills on both sides.. You could not enjoy such a scenic beauty if you were to take the US 101 although it might be a bit faster.  The 17 Mile drive is a part of the Pebble Beach Resorts and a privately owned estate and hence you will have to pay a toll of 10$ to take a drive although its free for bicycles. You will also get a map to locate the important places around. The last entry time is 7pm and there is no restriction on the exit time. There were lot of scenic locations on the way, beaches, rocks, beautiful trees etc.. Most of the land is used for Golf and infact many of the top Golfers in the world are members of the Pebble Beach Golf Association. The US Open 2010 Golf is scheduled to happen here. After enjoying a few spots we headed on to a Cafeteria.. We in fact made a mistake by not packing our lunches as the food there was both tasteless and expensive.  We then walked on to a Golf Club which was written as Open to Public. but then the person there told that we should not get in to the grasses as there is a game going on.. Infact most of the places there are written as  "Private Property and No Trespassing". Then we moved on to the mist hyped attraction of the beach, the Lone Cypress. It's a Monterey Cypress tree which has stood the hard climate of the Pacific for the past 250 years. The symbol of the Lone Cypress has been copyrighted by the Pebble Beach Club and cannot be used for commercial purposes.  By 4pm were done with most of the places. We then headed on to the Monarch Grove Sanctuary. It's a place about 6 miles from the 17 Mile Drive where huge butterflies called Monarchs migrate from different parts of America to that place in Winter to get shelter from the freezing cold of the North. They hang around the tall trees in clusters and would be a wonderful sight to watch. Unfortunately it will be an other couple of months before they come here and we returned disappointed.  It was time by then and we started our way back to Santa Clara via Santa Cruz. We just stopped for about 10 minutes in Santa Cruz to have a look at the beach. Santa Cruz by itself could be a single day activity..My friend was very kind enough to give me a ride back to my apartment. It was a wonderful trip. but what I felt about 17 Mile Drive is that it's a very calm, serene and a romantic place. So spending time with your girl friend would be the ideal thing to do.. If not one could go with his family and enjoy in the beach.. But for boys some kind of adventure lacks in the 17 mile drive....:-)

Having a wonderful time..

I'm having a wonderful time here at Stanford. Although it's been just over a week since I moved in.. I'm feeling a lot more comfortable. Especially because of the fellowship I have with the Intervarsity Christian Graduate Fellowship. Their meetings have give me real confidence to lead  my future life. Every one of them have a wonderful helping heart.. I thank God for these wonderful friends. Infact I just wrote a mail to the group asking for a bicycle. Within a day I'm here in an apartment with a bicycle..that too for free! There were like ten people who were ready to help me in that.. Also it just happened that I met an Indian in the WalMart showroom. He happened to be an employee of Apple for the past eight years. I was on a good mood that day and some how he was impressed in the way I was talking. So he took my contact numbers and left.  After he left I thought that I could have talked to him regarding Interning @ Apple the next summer. But today, surprisingly he gave me a call asking if I would be interested in attending a seminar in Sunnyvale where a great entrepreneur of the bay will be talking to people. He said it would be a good opportunity for me..I felt really good... I thank God for all that he has given me till today...

Locked Out of my Room

The door bell rang and I went to check at my apartment door. It was service person who had come to repair the cable TV connection. The request had come from apartment 517 which is mine. But i never did it. While I was having this conversation, I just realized that I was outside my door and the door was about to close.. Before I could realize what is happening, the door latched and there I am standing on my bare foot.. with no neighbors around and just a stranger who serves the apartments. He was very kind enough to take me in his car to the Housing office and dropped me back in my room. Thanks Mr... I was juz wondering what would have been my plight if I were to be in my underwear standing outside that door....

Sambar at Stanford..

Having starved on day one at Stanford, I bought all the utensils and groceries required for cooking from Walmart and India Cash and Carry. Thanks to Sasi for having helped me in transporting the stuff to my apartment. It was a bright morning and the beginning of the week. After energizing myself with some cornflakes and egg..I started to prepare my lunch. I made a delicious (truly ! you should have tasted it..) sambar and carrot fry. The only issue was I cooked lots of it that I need not cook for the next two days... After a heavy meal I slept like Kumbakarna..and woke up only to see the Sunrise, the next morning......

My New Cutie

The next day after I landed in US.. I realized that the life is harder without a laptop. Because to look for shops, bus routes, contact nos I had to have internet. Thats when I headed straight to an Apple store to fulfill my long awaited dream of joining the elite group of people who own a MacBook. I never expected the dream to come true so quickly as I got my MacBook delivered right into my hand in less than 20 minutes. And it was certainly a jackpot as I got a rebate on Apple iTouch and a printer as a student. I walked proudly out of the shop and reached the hostel carrying the laptop and the printer all the way without realizing that I had been carrying a load of more than 10 Kilos for about 2 miles. And getting the internet to work on my laptop was like a piece of cake. Once I started Safari I was taken to the Stanford site to register my laptop and boom..I got the internet up in five minutes. The time was about 3pm and I hadn't taken neither break fast nor lunch. The truth being the campus had no good restaurants around. So I started off immediately to my friends house in Santa Clara to spend the week end.....

Moved into the Promised Land

It's been a long time I wrote something on this blog. I hope to keep it updated in the days to come. Today I would like to start with a good news that I finally moved in to Stanford to start my Graduate Studies at the Electrical Engineering Department. After a month's stay at home, with the usual entertainments of eating, sleeping and cinemas the d'day came on 24th August 2008 when I took a flight to Singapore from the Chennai Meenambakkam airport. I took a break journey for three days in Singapore to meet my best pal Maggi. It was a memorable trip there although he tortured me with his typical Rajini dialogs. I took off from Singapore on 28th August and reached San Francisco on 28th, after changing flights in Hong Kong. It wasn't a new experience for me as I had been to US a couple of months ago. The Super Shuttle, a shared van drive arrived on time and took me to Stanford for just $30. Things are very perfect in US, as my apartment keys were ready when I arrived. It had been a very long journey and slept peacefully on my bed..not knowing that I had to starve the next day....