Inspite of all my efforts directed at the contrary, I completed my Masters’ in Computer Science with an individually designed specialization.

It was commencement day at Stanford, but I figured out it was a better idea to go on a trek instead (a Dipsea trail roundtrip, more details/snaps later). For those who attended and received their degrees, heartiest congratulations ! As long as you do not clog the network while uploading snaps, we’re cool.

The commencement speaker this time was U.S. Supreme Court judge Mr. Anthony Kennedy, and the speech wasn’t too great, I hear. I haven’t seen it yet. I’ll probably catch it sometime later and feel inspired. But I am sure it was better than Oprah Winfrey’s speech last year, who probably thought she was bringing her show to Stanford for a special edition.

Here’s the thing. Why make everyone go through the task of having to come up with an inspiring speech, when most cannot ? I personally vote for arranging giant screens and playing Steve Jobs’ 2005 Stanford commencement speech …. everytime.

The best part of the commencement, with most parents flying in, was put hilariously by K. As he was walking down the main quad on commencement eve, he spotted tons of TamBram families admiring the beauty of the Memorial Church, which by the way is supposed to be funny. Each had an inbuilt antenna to pick up any Tamil signals in the vicinity, and on positive identification, a small comglomeration would be setup, exchanging contact information. I don’t know if this is a TamBram thing or generic, but each TamBram family assumes they are the only ones in the U.S., so there is an inexplicable joy (no jealousy whatsoever, mind it) on spotting another one of the kind. It understandably wears out considerably after a couple of days, especially in the Bay Area, where you no longer feel like an endangered species. Instead you start worrying about controlling the numbers.

Anyhow, with the completion of my masters’, about 25 years of a planning and execution without a glitch comes to an end. Now time for some randomness.