roaring camp railroad

one last opportunity to do something fun before we all head home.  so ps thought of the sonora roaring camp railroad that has a steam train you can ride on.  it's in felton and we set off early enough but it was a bit tricky to locate and we thought we had made it just in time to catch the train but alas, tickets were sold out.  and so we decided to take a walk in the nearby forest and it was beautiful.

ps deciding to live dangerously.  kids, don't try this at home!  well actually, you can't unless you have a train running through your house or backyard:)  actually the train isn't moving...in case you wanted to know how this stunning piece of trick photography or stunt action was done.

play ball!

as you can probably guess, this entry is about baseball, america's favourite summer pastime.  it is the game where people memorize statistics about players and teams, where sons learn to play with their fathers, and where the athletes are among the highest paid sportsmen in the world.  and of course, the world series, a competition in which only american teams play, and yet the winner is crowned world champions!  and so on this beautiful summer's day (though it would get quite cold once the sun went down), the stanford school of business decided that they would organize a trip to the home of the current world champions, the san francisco giants.

the stadium is called the AT&T park and it is located next to the bay.  so our bus pulled into the carpark where the port is.

i would come this way again a week or so later as i ran the san francisco marathon.  this would be around the 24th mile mark.

as we went in to watch the warmup (the giants were playing the milwaukee brewers) we saw the spectators in the front rows at the back of the field pleading with the players to throw balls to them for them to keep as souvenirs.  some took matters into their own hands and came with their own devices to snare the balls themselves.  this chap here had a line attached to a net which he expertly threw to pick the balls up!  as you can tell, he was pretty good at it.

here i am with one of the malaysians( cs yap) on the program.  he didn't enjoy the game that much and left midway through!

another panaromic view of the stadium but this time under the floodlights!  the lights make it look nice and cosy but it was freezing!  that's why i bought the cap...even though i am sort of a yankees fan.  and i went to get a hot chocolate as well.  no beer for me...

one of my favourite moments at the game was the kiss-cam (see the video above) where the camera pans round the stadium (or ball park rather) and you can see what it is focussing on up on the giant screen.  the camera seeks out couples and will stop and the couple onscreen is then supposed (or encouraged or more like egged on by the crowd) to kiss.  well sometimes the cameraman gets it wrong like in the video where the "couple" are actually not a couple with each other but with the other person on their other side...

the giants lost the game - they weren't having a particularly good season but it was still a great experience  i nearly caught some fly balls during the warm up when we were allowed to stand right next to the field.

and i finally heard that song "take me out to the ballgame" that is such an institution in baseball.

best of week 5

here's a selection of stuff we did in week 5.  first up was a dinner at fogarty vineyard.  it's set on top of a hill and has marvelous views of the surrounding countryside.

the best thing about week 5 was this.  it was an optional visit to the d. school (design? school) at stanford.  the school runs programs that students from various disciplines sign up for and work together in cross-functional teams.  it is strictly voluntary and students work on the programs on their own time.  for instance, in the picture below, we were briefed by prof patell on the "entrepreneurial design for extreme affordability" program.  basically, the program identifies problems in developing countries and get the student volunteers to come up with affordable (as in, really cheap) solutions to those problems.

first we watched a video about one of the programs they had done in myanmar where a woman found it hard to keep her farm going after her husband had abandoned the family.  she desperately wanted to keep the farm in order to support her daughter who loved school and was doing well.  but she found it hard work to keep it going on her own - there were problems with water supply.  in the end, she saved the farm because the program developed a cheap plastic water pump that you work with your feet (something like the stairmaster in the gym) that cost almost nothing and allowed her to have a constant supply of water which she needed to irrigate her crops.  and she also rigged the pump with a stand that allowed her daughter to work the pump while reading her textbooks at the same time!  it was a truly inspiring story.

design thinking is a new way of problem solving that places emphasis on producing mockups or prototypes in order to quickly test concepts.  the mantra of design thinking is "fail early, fail fast".  not that the point of it all is to fail but rather, it helps to produce better solutions because of the idea that when you test a prototype, you do it as close as possible to the real environment where the product or solution has to work.  that way, you find out problems early and can then quickly go back to improve it. 

this recognises a very important aspect of human behavior in such work.  the more work that has gone into a product or solution, the more entrenched would be the beliefs of the person who came up with it and he is likely to resist suggestions for change because it would be costly (he may have to do radical re-design, or undo a lot of work that has gone into it).

some of the spaces in the school which are created to help the students have a better environment in which to come up with their ideas.  below are some of the more interesting products that the school has developed.

this is a solar flashlight that is made in singapore!  

these two girls are holding a prototype of what they hope would be a cheap respirator for babies.  the respirator at this point in time consisted mainly of an aquarium pump, and a plastic bucket that was cut in half and then put back together!

a paper "spacer" used for inhalers - these are used by kids with asthma.  the advantage of this paper spacer is that it is easily transported flat, and then folded into this shape when needed and because it is made of paper, very cheap.

this is professor jim patell and the green tubes in the packaging is the pump mentioned earlier.  the blue thing next to it is a baby incubator.  the incubator has some pieces of wax-like substance that slip into pockets in the back (it is made of plastic and looks like a life jacket) - the idea is that you dump the packets of the wax-like substance into hot water) and then once it is heated up, slip the packets into the incubator and it keeps the baby warm for a few hours.

this was easily one of the highlights of my time in stanford and it wasn't even a compulsory part of the program!  in some ways, it made me wonder how i would have spent my time differently in school with the hindsight that i could have done and achieved more, not just for myself, but for those less fortunate.  the short time that i spent here was truly inspirational, and not just because of the achievements of the program, as seen in the amazing stuff that they produced, but more from the fact that these students volunteered their own time to work on these projects (and they won't earn any credit for it towards their undergraduate or post-graduate programs) and simply want to make a difference.