South Lab Printer: Make copies at your own risk.

The problem is clear. If our wonderful Information Technology Services (ITS) frowns so strongly against unnecessary printing, why doesn’t CMC have its own copy machine available to students? I asked Cynthia Humes, the Chief Technology Officer this question, and she explained that the issue has come up before. As she puts it, a few years ago, ITS offered to set up a copy machine in the Hub store, but ASCMC indicated that “since there was free printing in all the labs it wasn’t a major issue.”

Investing in a copying machine will provide numerous benefits for the school. First, having a copying machine close at hand will help to give students an alternative to printing numerous copies, especially if ASCMC were willing to provide its services for free. This helps to free up printers, which seem to be acting particularly temperamental right now and have certainly caused more than one panic attack in the last two weeks.

Additionally, it will save the school money in the long run, even if copies are offered for free. Photocopying is significantly cheaper than printing, and if students can be encouraged to make copies rather than multiple prints, the school will be able to save money on printer ink.

A decent photocopier, such as the Canon ImageClass M7470, will cost between $2000 and $3000, but will be a sound investment for the school. Although it may take a long time for the copier to pay for itself, especially if it is provided free of charge, the machine will provide students with a valuable service and make it that much easier to follow ITS rules.

Ever since the days of Thomas the Tank Engine, I’ve been a train fanatic, and I get a huge rush from hanging out the car door, watching rural India fly by.

I have a bone to pick with Wes Anderson’s The Darjeeling Limited. Most passenger trains run overnight, not during the daytime, because they have limited AC, and long distances between stations. Most of the shots in that movie are of trains chugging along in the heat of the day. Also, the film was shot in Rajasthan province, but Darjeeling is on the other side of the country.

After a fitful night’s sleep, I’m again hanging out the door in the dim morning light, watching Delhi come to life. The neighboring tracks, are a popular toilet for local residents, maybe because of their relative isolation. The squatters are utterly unconcerned about being naked in front of the 20-car-long train passing by ten feet from them.

I take a taxi across Delhi with two friends, who are leaving Seva Mandir for foreign shores. At least once a day, the price of something takes me by surprise. My 12-hour train ride cost $6, and the taxi across Delhi costs nearly as much.

One time I tried to take public transit from Claremont to UCLA. Door-to-door, the trip took 3 hours and 20 minutes. I’ve now ridden a private car, train, taxi, subway, and bus, and everything went smoothly. I get on the bus to Haldwani, a town at the foot of the mountains in Uttarakhand province, only 80km from my destination. It’s amusing that planning and taking a journey of similar length in my native country (and native language) would be a Kafkaesque struggle. The USA just doesn’t have the infrastructure, density, or quantity of poor people, for feasible public transit.

Bus travel is not romantic; there’s no AC, no legroom and people try to sell you things through the window when you slow down. Four hours in we stop at an out-of-the-way restaurant, in an arrangement that surely generates kickbacks for the driver and ticket-taker. Out of principle I refuse to buy anything. The highlight of the trip comes when a man carrying a goat sits down in the seat across from me. I’d love to ask him questions, like what he does for a living, where he is going, whether he had to pay a separate ticket for the goat, and most importantly why he has a goat with him, but the language barrier’s too large, so instead I just take a photo.

I debate quitting my seat and climbing onto the roof of the bus, where I can stretch my legs and enjoy a great view. Ultimately I decide that I am drawing enough stares as the only foreigner on a bus for locals; I don’t need to draw more by climbing up to the roof. After nine hours I get off the bus and stay overnight in Kathgodam, near Haldwani.

Early in the morning the proprietor wakes me up at 6:30 and hustles me into the back of a Jeep, where I’m squished in the back, as the twelfth passenger. I’m not sure why I have to get up this early; there’s only 70 kilometers to go, until we get two kilometers outside of town and I realize it’s going to be 70 kilometers up a narrow, winding mountain road. The road to Mukteshwar is sort of like the road up to Mt. Baldy, only more windy, twice as narrow, and with the occasional landslide blocking one lane. Sleeping or reading for the next three hours will be impossible. I used to pride myself on being able to sleep anywhere until I notice that the woman next to me is fast asleep.

It would be pretty absurd to think that you could get an idea of the “United States” in a short trip in one city. I am realizing that you could easily take six or seven two-week trips to India, and for all intensive purposes, be transported to a different country each time. Rajasthan, where I’ve been staying, is a dry desert; Uttarakhand is mountainous and relatively thinly populated. Two hours into the Jeep ride I catch a glimpse of the Himalayas; they are imposing, snow white and beautiful. If I weren’t so queasy I would snap a picture.

Finally, I arrive in Mukteshwar. At the end of a mountain road, and 7500 feet in the air, Mukteshwar is a place that you’d go to when you would like to get away from it all. It’s the high-altitude home of the Indian Veterinary Research Institute, which according to its website, “conducts diploma courses in veterinary preventive medicine, animal husbandry, veterinary biological products, animal reproduction, poultry husbandry, medicine and surgery, zoo and wild animal health care and management, meat and meat products technology.” Some of the buildings here are holdovers from the time of British colonization. The landscape is out of a storybook. The hills are terraced and steep, and small homes dot the hillside. Everything smells like pine trees.

Whether to show off to their friends back home, to feel more exotic, or to try and show their tourist friends that they’re fitting in, Western tourists around the world love ‘integrating with the local culture.’ This is unfortunate, and to anyone who’s been around for a few months (or a local), it looks silly; it usually involves mastering the words “Hello” and “Thank You” in the local language, eating non-spicy, overpriced versions of the local food, and doing the same things as the locals do, like ride elephants, gain an intimate understanding of the Kama Sutra (again, ride elephants), or embark on all-inclusive overnight camel safaris. I wanted to fit in at the wedding, so before I left I went to a tailor and bought a knee-length, embroidered kurta and white trousers.

This backfires slightly when I look around and notice everyone at the wedding is wearing Western clothes: collared shirts, sweaters, and jeans or khakis. Out-localing the locals is a ridiculous idea and I leave the kurta in the bag, unmentioned. I’ll wear it next time I’m hanging out with other tourists, or back home.

This isn’t my first Muslim wedding; my cousin got married at our house a few years ago. As Rashmi introduces her family, extended family, neighbors and friends, I say “As salaam aleikum!” to everyone, and score points. The Khans are the nicest people on the planet; they’re trying extremely hard to make me feel comfortable, to the point that it starts to get uncomfortable.

Today, the first goal of the Khans is to successfully marry their eldest daughter. Their second goal is to feed me as much food as possible. In mid-afternoon we sit down to eat, and every two minutes or so someone drops more food on my plate, or refills my cup, despite my attempts to get them to stop. I resort to the little Hindi I know, or have heard, and plead, “Bas, bas. Nehi!” The server drops more lamb kebab on my plate anyway, but he stops coming after that.

Over the course of the afternoon I am introduced to Rashmi’s husband’s sisters. I can’t speak Hindi, and they can’t really speak English, so there’s an awkward pause. Each time, after about a minute, I’m asked by one of Rashmi’s brothers, “So what do you think?” “Of what?” I say. “My sister-in-law.” I’m not sure whether they’re serious about attempting a marriage to someone I met one minute ago, or just testing the waters, but in any event, I demur politely.

As a traditional Indian wedding, the women are in the Khan home preparing Rashmi’s dress and clothes and the men are outside talking to each other. I’m supposed to spend time with the men; I put aside my inner Andrew Bluebond, and decide to fight gender stereotypes another day.

Spending a long time talking to any group of people fills me with a sort of low-grade anxiety; usually I mitigate this by checking my phone, drinking heavily, and/or talking about basketball. As we’re in the middle of nowhere, it’s a Muslim wedding, and no one cares about hoops here, I’m in trouble. Only some of the guests speak good English, so I content myself by watching a mountain eagle and an osprey float lazily on a nearby thermal.

(By the way, if someone asks you who your favorite cricketer is, it’s a loaded question. There’s only one correct answer: Sachin Tendulkar, the 5’6 legend who’s been thwacking sixes for more than two decades, who prompts fawning ESPN India commercials, and Hindustan Times op-eds wondering whether he should be knighted. If someone asks you who your favorite actor is, you have a little more latitude: you can answer Salman Khan or Shahrukh Khan. Maybe I’m biased, because I’ve stuck to small cities and only been here two months, but it seems like pop culture is much more homogeneous here; everyone listens to the same hit songs, the same two movies play in the theaters at a time, and the same actors and cricket players are popular amongst everyone. I have a theory that India, at least the parts that I stay in, is like the 1930′s US, with better technology. Salman Khan reminds me of Cary Grant.)

Finally, we get to the ceremony, which is short. Rashmi wears jeans around our dorm, and was wearing them when I talked to her that morning, so I’m stunned by her outfit; she emerges in an extremely fine dress, jewelry actually straining her neck forward, her face obscured by a beaded veil. Her soft-spoken husband, Asim, is waiting outside, wearing a traditional outfit, turban, and necklace of rupees, which brings good fortune. Traditionally, the bride goes to the groom’s house for two days and then returns home. Because Asim lives in Moradabad, over 250km away, this part of the ceremony is simulated; the couple walk slowly to the home next door, followed by a crowd, spend ten minutes there and then return.

Back in the home, the couple are now married, and everyone gathers around to give the couple their blessing. I’m outside talking when I see Rashmi’s brother walking quickly away from the house, with Rashmi over his shoulder. Did she get cold feet? but it turns out he’s only carrying her to the “Just married” vehicle. It turns out that once married, the bride’s feet cannot touch the earth until they reach their new home. That’s reassuring, because I was worried I would have had an awkward afternoon.

I spend the afternoon with local boys, walking around Mukteshwar, and going to the nearby cliffs as the sun sets. We discuss the usual subjects: the Backstreet Boys, whether Hollywood or Bollywood actresses are prettier, and the WWE. Twice Asim starts singing “Tearing Up My Heart.”

After the sun sets, it gets really cold; we spend most of the night back at the Khan home, warming our hands around a small fire. I explain that I’m going to travel for a few days after the wedding. They are concerned that I will get lost, or taken advantage of, and worry that I don’t have enough money. I tell them that I’m an experienced traveler, and then I try to explain real wages, and how prices and wages are higher in the US, and that you can earn $16,000 a year (about 800,000 rupees), and be poor in the US but have relatively lots of money here. I’m not sure that my point’s hitting home.

There are more stars in the sky than I have ever seen in my life. Sameer, Rashmi’s brother, asks if I want to go on a walk. He starts walking into the darkness with no flashlight; I simultaneously realize that, evolutionarily, it makes more sense that people can see in the dark, and there’s a reason why every phone in India has a built in LED flashlight. Sameer tells me he’s seen four tigers in Mukteshwar, one about thirty yards from his house. The tiger snatched a dog in its jaws and bounded off. We look out across the valley, which is dark but for a hundred flickering lights. Sameer says that three years ago, there were maybe one or two lights in the whole valley, and now everyone has one.

There isn’t a good reason to stay up late, so we hit the sack by 10pm, and get up early the next morning. Within ten minutes of waking up someone’s turned the TV on. Maybe our cultures are similar, after all.

By 9am I’ve had four cups of chai, but they don’t do much against the cold. I think of Rashmi, happy, in Moradabad with her new husband, and feel warm inside. I’m ready to head out to my next destination, a lake village called Nainital. The Khans have been the nicest people on the planet and I thank them profusely for their hospitality, the graciousness they’ve shown by welcoming me into their home, and letting me be a part of an important family ceremony. Halfway around the world, in a culture wildly different from the one I grew up in, we’re celebrating the same thing: a man and woman in love, determined to spend the rest of their lives together.

Ryal Poppa ’57 (last name pronounced “Poppy”), has offered to pay for the new lab. According to a CMC Alumni Association Newsletter, “Ryal Poppa ’57 surprised fellow alumni, faculty, and staff during reunion weekend when he announced his pledge of $250,000 to help create a new computer lab.”

“He was at alumni weekend chatting with some students who mentioned that there wasn’t enough lab space. He wanted to do something about that, so he decided to give funding for a lab,” says Dr. Cynthia Humes, Chief Technology Officer.

Dr. Humes estimates the new lab to cost roughly $200,000 ($70k construction, $50k wiring and electric, $60k for networking, workstations and equipment, and $20k furniture).

The lab’s layout and design was organized by Micheal Malsed, Assistant Director for Student Technology Services, Candace Adelberg ’10, Nico Ratazzi ’09, and a group of ASCMC Senators. No outside firm was retained in the design or construction of the lab—everything is in-house.

The main purpose of the lab is to reduce overcrowding of the other labs and to provide a convenient place for students to do work. According to Mr. Malsed, the design of the lab is also intended to provide lots of individual space. “Let’s also make it a place where you can get a lot of people around a computer to do group work,” said Malsed.

CMC’s Central Facilities Department will begin demolition of the apartment on the north side of Phillips when students move out this May. The apartment, which currently houses students, was approved for demolition by the Dean of Students’ office and Committee on Academic Computing in anticipation of the new dorm’s opening this fall. Fid Castro, Assistant Dean of Students, worked with students and the Committee to find a space for the lab. Other options for the lab’s location included the new dorm and Bauer South, but Phillips was chosen for its location and availability of space.

The lab will measure 53′ by 16′ on the inside, with extra patio space outside the lab for wireless access. The lab, which is not yet named, is expected to be completed this fall.

According to the design, the lab will be accessible through the outside only, so Phillips residents will have to go around the building to get in. This is because Phillips, unlike Stark Hall, is not substance-free, and because it would be cost-prohibitive to tear down a bearing wall to build a door. The layout of the lab also makes room for a special room for RTAs to work on hardware and software issues, in addition to the possibility of other uses.

In addition to the new lab in Phillips, the Kravis Center (the West Campus Project where Pitzer Hall and the Admission Office now stand), will include a larger computer lab when it is built. That lab, which is not expected to be completed until at least 2009, will include laptop-friendly couches and floor-to-ceiling glass windows.

Every year since 2005, a group of about a dozen Claremont McKenna students spend a week in San Jose where they have the opportunity to visit and network with various Silicon Valley executives at leading companies in the area. This year, students brushed shoulders with CEOs, partners, and other top management at nine companies in the Silicon Valley area. The trip, which costs ITAB over $1,800 per student, is provided free to participants.

ITAB, the Information Technology Advisory Board, is an organization of CMC-affiliated executives in the technology industry working to advance the role of technology at CMC. Since 2005, the organization has sponsored a week-long trip to Silicon Valley. The trip was started in 2005 by ITAB Chair Bart Evans ‘70.

Mr. Evans started the ITAB trip to help establish Silicon Valley as one of CMC’s “centers of gravity.” “The current centers of gravity for CMC alumni are LA, New York, DC, San Francisco,” Mr. Evans explained to the group of 15 students who attended this year’s trip. That is, CMC alumni are concentrated in a few industries and geographic areas. “The world is getting smaller—much of our country’s business is being exported, but Silicon Valley is one of the few places [in the US] where people are still creating and innovating.” Mr. Evans wants to add the technology industry, specifically Silicon Valley, to CMC’s radar.

During the trip, ITAB pays for all student expenses—a week-long stay at the Fairmont Hotel San Jose, transportation, food, and miscellaneous costs. ITAB also provides each student with calling cards (business cards), a leather-bound portfolio, and tote bags to carry the “shwag” we pick up throughout the week—an “I’m Feeling Lucky” t-shirt from Google, a chunk of Silicon rock from Applied Materials, a bottle-opener that plays the “Yahoo!” jingle, etc.

Throughout the week, students are shuttled to various companies in Silicon Valley from Apple Headquarters in Cupertino to Google Headquarters in Mountain View (plug for Google: free Naked Juices and food everywhere!). CMC Chief Technology Officer, Professor Cynthia Humes accompanies the students on the trip, as her office is responsible for planning the trip.

“It’s a lot of work to plan the trip, but we get better at it each year the program is in operation,” said Dr. Humes. “For example, we hope to visit a gaming company like Electronic Arts next year in addition to this year’s lineup of companies.”

ITAB is also actively recruiting new members to help defray the costs of the trip. “The current cost is about $1,800-$2,000 per student, with students paying for their own transportation to San Jose. We want to expand our resources to be able to pay for each student’s transportation as well,” said Humes.

The ITAB trip (and the similar Financial Economics Institute-sponsored Networking Trip) is an underutilized gem at CMC. Within days after the trip was over, students had landed interviews and even jobs at the companies visited. What one learns in an economics or computer science class makes for useful technical skills, but only opportunities like these prepare students for the real world.

My highlights from the 2008 ITAB trip:

-Presentation by Scott Mauvais ’90 at Microsoft. Mr. Mauvais gave us the down low on why Microsoft isn’t threatened by Apple and a few other “do not repeat this outside of this room” remarks. I will not repeat them. We also got to raid the company store.

-Julie Cox ’07 gave an informative presentation about what consultants, especially IT consultants, do on a day to day basis.

-Listening to John Volk ’70, Partner in the Venture Capital Group at PricewaterhouseCoopers recount his decision to go to law school (“This was nearly 40 years ago… we didn’t know what was what… Duke was the best [law school] I got into, so I jumped in a car and drove across the country.”)

-Ashwin Navin ’99, President and Co-Founder of BitTorrent delivering the keynote address at the Alumni Association-hosted ITAB Reception at the Fairmont Hotel in San Jose. In a chat with students after his speech, Ashwin recalled how cool he felt living in Auen Hall when it was the only dorm with high speed internet hookups in every room.

-Weston Presidio, a venture capital firm located on a pier in San Francisco. Jim McElwee ’74, a partner at Weston Presidio, talked about the hardships and benefits of venture capital firms.

-Todd Teresi ’94, Senior VP at Yahoo!, brought in legal and marketing experts from the company to talk to us about censorship in China, redefining Yahoo!’s brand, and other topics. I was pretty unconvinced that Yahoo! would grow or survive much longer after our visit until recently.

-Discussion with Bill MacGowan ’79, Executive Vice President, and Jonathan Schwartz, CEO of Sun Microsystem. Mr. Schwartz is a legend in Silicon Valley and his blog is one of the most widely read in the industry.

-Apple presentation by Scott Gilfoil, head of campus recruiting. Mr. Gilfoil gave us an entertaining pitch to work for Apple (and buy Apple products).

-Joe Pon ’89 and George Davis ’80 at Applied Materials. Joe Pon gave us a tour of Applied’s labs, including chip manufacturing and research clean rooms where we had to take off our shoes and wear booties. Mr. Pon also discussed our country’s energy crisis and gave me a clearer view of solar panel technology and alternative energy sources.

-A visit to Infosys in Fremont, CA convinced me to apply for an internship in Bangalore, India this summer. I guess I’ll see how that one turns out…

-Jonathan Rosenberg ’83, Senior Vice President at Google, first fanned out 15 business cards, smiled, and said “E-mail me. I WILL help you.” Mr. Rosenberg also recounted some of his favorite CMC stories and advice for success in business.