Adventures of a Discoverer

Yesterday I had the pleasure to watch a live concert of Painted Shield , a new rock band from Seattle with a really nice sound that not necessarily fits any particular genre. To make things even more interesting, it was my first time at this venue, the Clock-Out Lounge: it is a small bar and music venue in Beacon Hill (a neighborhood at the south of Seattle) that it is indeed small for a music concert but it does provide a nice intimate feeling to the performance. I should notice that it never felt overcrowded, in fact I've been to bigger venues that felt suffocating with so many people, but in this case the promoters were very wise and even though there was no doubt that it was a sold out concert, I never had the feeling of it being too crowded. The music was very good, with some slow songs and some more intense ones, and it made for a very fun night. In addition, this was the first concert I've even been that was simultaneously broadcast on Instagram: I could see that even so...

In the United States, Peeps are a typical candy associated with Easter: basically a colorful blob of marshmallow vaguely shaped like a bird. I consider them OK, nothing incredibly exciting (chocolate Easter eggs are much more my thing). But here comes the Pepsi Company this year with the following idea: "What if, and hear me out, we combine Pepsi and Peeps in a single sugary drink?" The result is Pepsi Peeps, which I just drank a small can of. I like Pepsi, and this is basically Pepsi, except for a vague hint of marshmallow, but you almost need to be a professional Pepsi taster to notice a difference. It works better as decoration for Easter.

Yesterday I had the pleasure of enjoying two first experiences at once! First, I went to the historical Moore Theater is downtown Seattle. The Moore is a small theater smack in the middle of the city that is more than one hundred years old. It is not big, but it is in perfect shape and looks quite beautiful. I had passed in front of it many times, but yesterday I finally got to enter it, and it didn't disappoint, as you can see in the pictures. In addition, I watched a performance of "Manual Cinema": the concept is to create a movie in real time, resulting in an artistic work that it is somewhere in between a movie and a live play. As you can see in the pictures of the stage, there are a number of musical instruments and various devices to produce the sound effects, some screens big and small that project background images in front of which the actors, the puppets or the shadow puppets play their roles in the story. Hanging over all that there is an actual movie screen, w...

Since I was a little kid in Brazil I liked hummus, and I always ate lots of it. I also like some of the most recent varieties, such as hummus with olive tapenade, hummus with nuts and etc. However, recently I saw a really new and intriguing variant of hummus: chocolate hummus. Basically, the Boar Head company, that already makes various different flavors of hummus, wondered what if we mixed chocolate and sugar to regular hummus? The result is what you see in the pictures. I tried it, and it is not bad: it is not super sweet, but it clearly has a chocolaty taste. However, it gives you the impression of being a weakened Nutella, so it's not fully satisfactory (in fact, after trying it I bought a jar of Nutella).

Yesterday I had the opportunity to go to my first book launch:  "The Township" . It was written by Bryson Hirai-Hadley, who is a good friend of mine and all around great guy. Previously he gave me the opportunity to read a pre-release version of his book, and I can only recommend it: it is a great story of Science Fiction and also a call to action regarding climate change. I liked it very much and I think it is an excellent suggestion for a new book to read (and, no, I don't make any money by saying this, I'm just saying this because I liked the book). Bryson was really kind and invited me to the book launch, which was the very first time that I've been to one in my life. On top of that, he did the event at the Deadline, a really nice bar in Pioneer Square in Seattle that I had never been before, so it was a double treat. The book launch was very nice, the bar looked really good, and the conversation was great: it was a perfect Friday night. Bryson read a snippet ...

Together with Jenn and the kids, I went to an incredibly beautiful place in the Olympic National Park: the Hoh rainforest. This rainforest is in one of the rainiest places on Earth, and the plants here evolved based on that: not only there are lots of huge trees, those trees are covered in green by the overgrown mosses. We were particularly lucky that we got a rare combination of sunshine and drizzle at the same time, and everything was glistening. Because of so much green, there is a kind of ambient green light, which is something I never saw anywhere else. In addition, we could see some streams with absolutely transparent water, it was hard to believe that we could see something like that in nature. We did a short hike through the Hall of Mosses, where you can see some of the most impressive examples of the green coverage of all surfaces in the rainforest. It is a short hike and very well kept. With not many people today (during Summer this part of the Park gets crowded) we could be ...

I never read any of the "Twilight" books (and I don't intend to) neither have I watched any of the movies (and I don't intend to). However, I have to admit that they were best-sellers, and there is a big following around them all over the world. I know enough about the books to know that they are set in the small town of Forks, on the northwest side of the Olympic Peninsula. Today, on the way to the Hoh rainforest (see the next post) we passed by there and I decided that I might as well stop by the famous high school where the main characters met. It was an uninviting morning, with a unique mix of rain, snow and wind all at the same time, so Jenn and the kids decided they would stay in the car and just look at the pictures later. The high school is like any other high school in Washington state, well built but with nothing particularly remarkable. Nevertheless, every year when the city hosts its  Twilight Festival , a whole bunch of loving teenagers comes here to feel...