This was yet another year that brought many surprises. In January, I began working on MultiLearn as a capstone project in CSE 477. Thanks to very generous support from our advisors and sponsors, the project resulted in lots of travel. Combining those trips with a few others, I flew 79,661 miles this year, which falls well beyond my previous record from 2008.

Here are the cities I visited this year:

• Beaverton, OR*
• Seattle, WA*
• Eugene, OR*^
• Bangalore, India*
• Mysore, India^
• Ooty, India
• Coonoor, India^
• Mumbai, India
• Corvallis, OR^
• Doha, Qatar
• El Dorado Hills, CA
• Gurgaon, India*
• Udaipur, India
• Jaipur, India^
• Agra, India
• Berkeley, CA^
• Noida, India
• New Delhi, India

One or more nights spent in each place, with the exception of day trips marked with a ^. Those cities marked with an * were visited multiple times on non-consecutive days.

Previously: 2008, 2007

This year brought another study abroad trip and a road trip in Canada. With a total of 22,366 miles flown, a bit less than 2007, here are the cities where I spent my time this year.

• Beaverton, OR*
• Seattle, WA*
• Vancouver, Canada
• New Delhi, India
• Satoli, Uttarakhand, India*
• Corbett National Park, India
• Binsar, Uttarakhand, India
• Jageshwar, Uttarakhand, India
• Noida, India
• Agra, India
• Pickering, Canada*
• Montreal, Canada
• Quebec City, Canada

One or more nights spent in each place. Those cities marked with an * were visited multiple times on non-consecutive days.

Previously: My Year In Cities, 2007

Over the past year, I studied in Europe, visited 3 countries and 5 cities for the first time, went on my first business trip, traveling by land, air, and sea. I flew 29,066 miles — that’s all the way around the equator and a bit more! I couldn’t have predicted any of this in December 2006, so let’s just wait and see what 2008 brings.

Following Kottke’s lead, here’s my year in cities for 2007:

• New Delhi, India
• Beaverton, OR*
• Seattle, WA*
• New York, NY
• Santa Clara, CA
• Silver Falls State Park, OR
• Amsterdam, Netherlands*
• Brussels, Belgium
• Paris, France
• Chula Vista, CA*
• Cabo San Lucas, Mexico
• Ensenada, Mexico

One or more nights spent in each place. Those cities marked with an * were visited multiple times on non-consecutive days.

• I finished my freshman year of college.
• I interned with a pretty cool group at Intel and attended Research@Intel Day in Santa Clara.
• I got on a plane and flew to Amsterdam, where I’m posting from now.

When I was originally thinking about starting a “serious” blog, Rajat‘s first response was that I needed to define what I would write about. I think that part’s taken care of. There are plenty of interesting things to write on, like what I’m doing in Europe — I just need to sit down and get it all on (digital) paper. Hopefully I can cover all of the backlog with a barrage of posts in the next few days and start blogging regularly again.

How someone might see me:

Subject: Student
Sex: Male
Age: 18-20, partially based on the expected age of an undergraduate student.
Race: Indian
Religion: Not apparent, though a string around the right wrist might suggest something.

Clothes: Subject wore pants, shirt, and a jacket. The clothes fit fairly well. The pants were a pair of blue denim jeans, fairly standard for an American college student his age; they were not torn or distressed. The shirt was long-sleeve black t-shirt, with Google’s logo written across the chest in full color, covered in part by a somewhat worn Columbia Sportswear fleece jacket. The jacket was unzipped, indicating that the subject did not find it chilly, but not warm enough to go without the jacket – on the other hand, it could indicate a compromise for personal comfort in exchange for a public display of the bright logo.

Hair was cut short and combed forward, without any visible signs of styling gel or other artificial products. No hair accessories present.

The only bodily accessory visible was the previously mentioned string around the subject’s wrist. No jewelry or piercings visible. Shoes were laced and tied brown suede sneakers, with the Reebok logo visible.

Given the numerous visible logos and fairly stereotypical clothing for an American male college student, the subject was apparently participating in the current fashion standards for his gender and age.

The Backstory:

This outfit was not intricately planned, as I was in a hurry that morning, but what I wear is generally chosen by the events I expect to encounter on that day. This specific day was to be occupied with a few classes on campus, hence the casual clothing and comfortable shoes. It was cloudy when I looked outside in the morning, so I chose to wear a jacket and long-sleeve shirt. As one could expect, the combination of Pacific Northwest weather and school has resulted in a fairly consistent uniform of a t-shirt, fleece jacket, and jeans.

If I wanted to taken more seriously, say, for an interview, I might have worn a button-down shirt, khakis, and some nice shoes, but that’s not what I set out to do in the morning.

The shirt happened to be a freebie American Apparel t-shirt from Google’s on-campus tech talk during fall quarter, while the jeans were a pair I bought from Aeropostale last summer.