I flew to San Jose on May 25th from NYC. This was my first trip to West Coast, discounting the one day trip for an interview at Broadcom. The difference from NYC is immediately obvious: Great weather, great roads, thus great dependence on cars and not so good public transport; intimidatingly polite people, and so on.
My internship at Broadcom started on Jun 1st and I came to Irvine on May 31st. I am staying in UCI housing with a group of Indian grad students. The house is conveniently situated, within walking distances from Super Markets, Post Office, Cinemas, etc. Broadcom is 1.7 miles away from the house and I use a bike for commuting to office.
I work in the Tuner group at Broadcom which designs chips for set-top-box applications. To be specific, I am designing a Power Amplifier which would go into the transmitter module; the one that transmits signals into the cable. The experience of working here is good so far. The engineers are very smart and work efficiently to make the job look very simple. Particularly, I am in awe with my office-mate called Marcel who is a rock star. The guy has all sorts of devices on his desktop: fancy lighting, water heater, coffee-maker, mini-refrigerator storing Vodka, Rum, Wine, Whipped Cream,... Upon noticing the surprise on my face, he was quick to say, "Well, I need to take care of myself". To add to this, he is very popular among the engineers at Broadcom for his technical prowess. I need to learn some tricks from this fellow.
Irvine is a fine place. Though not as happening as New York, Orange County has enough weekend-to-dos. While I spent my first weekend biking around Irvine and learning the neighborhood, Vedam (telugu movie) followed by dinner of Pesarattu-Upma at Bhimas was my today's achievement. I plan to go to Newport beach tomorrow. My initial plan of mountain biking with my manager got postponed due to his personal commitments.
In the coming weekends I hope to visit San Diego, Las Vegas and Austin. Whenever I am staying back at Irvine, a movie at the Cinemas, a long jog, and an interesting cooking experiment will be my recipe for a relaxed weekend. Now if only there was a girl to add spice ;).
About Me
- TJ
- New York, NY, United States
- I am Karthik, known to many as TJ, a student of Electrical Engineering at Columbia University in the great city of New York. I am doing PhD in Integrated Circuit (IC) Design. Engineering is my primary interest and it is my dream to become an engineer like Tony Stark (Iron man). Photography, running, cooking and aimless traveling are some of my other interests. Steve Jobs and Kamal Hassan (an Indian actor) are my biggest inspirations. I use this blog to share my travel experiences, interesting recipes and any other story that I feel compelled to share.
0 comments:
Post a Comment