Adventures of a Discoverer

Easter is coming and in the US that includes the tradition of eating Peeps. For those who don't know, Peeps are a candy made by a small company in the United States, which very simply consists of a piece of marshmallow shaped like a little chick with bright colors and two dots for "eyes". They are popular around Easter time and as the years passed, the company has tried variations of the candy. This year they are coming up with something brand new: chili-lime-mango flavored peeps. One of my friends saw that at the grocery store and her reaction was to write to me and dare me to try them. I obliged. I just had three of them, to be sure that I was having the full experience. However, the first one already left a very clear impression: it is a cacophony of flavors, many of which don't belong together, with only a barely noticeable hint of lime and I couldn't detect any mango flavor at all (and I had many mangoes in my life). I don't like spicy food in general, b...

This was a very fun new experience: for the first time in my life I tried roller skating! In this case, I'm talking about the old school roller skates: the ones that look like a skate board on your foot, as you may have seen in movies set during the 70's and 80's. In fact, my experience resembled a lot what I've seen in the movies, with the lights and everybody going around having a great time. I had always wanted to try roller skating, and fortunately for me I found a perfect place for that:  Southgate Roller Rink  (by the way, it seems that their website hasn't changed since the 90's...), an old school roller skating rink in South Seattle. Honestly, the place felt like it was stuck in time in the 80's, but it was in good shape. I went there this afternoon, and I paid just sixteen dollars to enter the rink and get a pair of skates. During the afternoon the place has lots and lots of kids, and in fact there was a birthday party going on there. It made for a ...

This is quite a new experience to talk about: from beginning to end it took four years. Let me explain. Most people have heard of Kickstarter , the crowdfunding site, but, for those who hasn't, it works like this: people that have an idea for some creative project (like a new electronic device, stage show, comic book, work of art, among many kinds of things) but don't have the money to actually implement said project can go to the website and register as a "creator". The creator, then, can start a "campaign": it tells all the people who go to the website that if he or she gets enough people to pledge to pay for the creation in advance, the project will get going and those who pledged in advance (which are the "backers") will get the creation first, plus possibly some additional goodies. For example: a comic book creator starts a campaign saying that he will create a brand new story if he gets enough backers to be able to print and publish the book ...

This Friday I went to a really cool new art space in Seattle: Cannonball Arts. One of the reasons why it's cool is because how a number of artistic entities in Seattle came together to make good use of a previously abandoned space. In the middle of downtown there used to be a large Bath, Bed and Beyond store which stayed abandoned after the chain went bankrupt. Then, Bumbershoot, the Muckleshoot Tribe, the Seattle Center and other artistic entities pooled together and acquired the building, which was fully remodeled and opened on August of 2025 as a brand new art space for the city. It is a really nice space because it is quite large, bigger than some of the more established art museums in town: it felt bigger than the Frye Art Museum and the Henry Art Gallery. Furthermore, it also has a space for live concerts, which I'm eager to check out. In fact, the team at the center had made an excellent use of the available space, making it feel very airy and roomy, which created a very...

For many years I always wanted to try paintball, but, for some reason or another, it hadn't happened yet. Last week I finally got my chance: a friend of mine was celebrating his kid's birthday at a paintball center,  Operation Paintball , in the woods south of Seattle, and he invited me. It was a lot of fun! The center provides a mask and the gun, and you pay for the boxes of paintballs (and, believe me, they go really fast). It is a great piece of advice to wear thick clothes: you immediately feel, and very clearly, when you're hit by a paintball. The center has three available fields: urban warfare, taking the hill, and the one for rookies with inflatables. We started by the rookie one, then progressed to taking the hill, in which you have to go up a slope to take over the top which is defended by some players entrenched there, and finally we went to the urban warfare field, in which various structures simulate houses and other urban structures that you have to fight for....