Stanford Stories VIII - Baseball

After having seen games of American Football and Ice Hockey, this Friday we decided with a couple of friends to see a Baseball game of the San Francisco Giants. In contrast to American Football and Ice Hockey, Baseball to my mind is extremely boring. There is not much going on and most of the players are standing or sitting for 99% of the up to 4h game time. But as anyone will tell you, you don’t go to a Baseball game because of the sport. Instead, you go there to enjoy time with your friends and tons of junk food such as garlic fries or a Nacho head. On top of that, the Baseball stadium in San Francisco is located Downtown next to the bay which first offers a wonderful view and second allows for so-called “splash balls” home runs where the ball flies over the outfield wall into the San Francisco Bay which happened 97 times since the year 2000 when the stadium was opened. Interestingly, there were around 20 people waiting in Kayaks on the Bay outside the stadium this evening. Unfortunately, their waiting time was not rewarded this evening.

On Saturday, our unofficial Stanford hiking (WhatsApp) group did a half day hike in the Sierra Azul open space preserve to Bald Mountain. At the top, we had a brilliant view on the south end of the Silicon Valley, San Jose and Mount Hamilton. Again, I met tons of very nice people doing tons of interesting research and, moreover, I could take a few photos capturing the contrast between the golden autumn grasses and the perfect blue skies.

Last but not least, on Tuesday there was a Santa Clara County Board meeting where on point was to discuss the housing problems for PhD students and PostDocs at Stanford. After a presentation of the Stanford future housing plan, Dr. Jeffrey V. Smith (County Executive Officer) openly said that the “salary of PostDocs … is inadequate given the region” and we should think about “… compelling a more reasonable salary …” (link to his exact statement). It is great to hear that people at the County Board are becoming aware of the problem. Let’s see if something will change for future PostDocs.