The Shock of Lighting

by Oasis from Dig Out Your Soul

Hello yet again. Just blogging during one of the few remaining days of summer. I am again blogging from Books, Inc here in downtown Mountain View using the Google WiFi, listening to music on my iPhone, and drinking a lemonade. A very yuppish situation indeed. So what has been going on? First off, I did a Splash and Dash in Livermore last week. It was supposedly a 1500 meter swim in a lake (CWP$ and I suspect it was shorter) and a 5K trail run. I don't like to brag but I was the #1 finisher...from Mountain View....as in I was the only person from Mountain View in the race. But it turned out better than I expected. In the previous triathlon, I totally freaked out during the swim and did crappy. This time I was much more relaxed (even though we arrived literally 5 minutes before the race began) and paced myself in the water. It also helped the water was much warmer and much less choppy than it was during the previous triathlon. The run was alright despite so really bad uphills at the end. The event wasn't the best organized but it served as a good warm-up for the Pacific Grove where I am doing the swim part (this time in the ocean).

Also of note is that I went to Seattle this past week for vacation. I have to say that sometimes you have to spoil yourself on vacation and that's what I did. I flew out last Sunday and had dinner with Maurice and Caroline, from back in my SI days. They live in this ultra cool condo a little outside of downtown Seattle. We would have been joined by a certain someone else who will be unnamed, but she didn't want to drive in the rain. Because you know, driving in the rain is tough especially given how infrequently it rains in Seattle. The next day, I did the Seattle touristy thing. As some people may know, I lived in Spokane Washington for 2 years when I was a kid. Although I have been to Seattle since then, I hadn't done the touristy thing since I was 6. I first went to the Seattle Aquarium, which I have to say was a bit disappointing. Well any aquarium compared to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, which is super cool, wouldn't stack up well. The biggest criticism I had was that it was 100% geared towards kids. Now everyone knows I don't like kids, but this aquarium pandered so much to really young kids, almost to the point that anyone over 12 would have felt it was a drag. For example, there was this display about a fish that apparently glows i the dark so they had a caption that read something like, "The blah-blah fish prefers to sleep during the day and then eat during the night, which makes him a nite owl...or nite fish!" Cheese me to death please. Now probably in their defense parents +kids are their prime audience so they need to pander to appeal to them. But yeah, not so great in my opinion.

I then went to Olympic Sculpture Park, which was pretty damn cool. Of course, I made it out to the Space Needle, which was alright. It was kinda of a rip-off (similar to how I felt when I went up the Empire State Building). The by far coolest place I went to was the Experience Music Project. Now that is a place geared towards adults who actually want to appreciate and enjoy rather than be dragged along by their kids. I like how the EMP was geared towards adults especially those with an actual interest in music. Another plus was that the "kids section", basically a bunch of sound booths were kids could strum away on guitars and other instruments, was segregated upstairs. Therefore there were no exhibits like "This is a guitar, can you say guitar?" I especially liked their exhibits on Jimmy Hendrix, the Pacific Northwest Music Scene (which had a great display on the grunge movement), and their oral histories section. The one I enjoyed the most was Harry Gregson Williams, a film composer who describes how he tries to show directors and producers how a score might sound before he actually has an orchestra play it. He described how Hans Zimmer, a famous film composer, recorded every instrument in the London orchestra playing every conceivable music note in almost every conceivable way. All the sounds are stored in a series of servers and he can literally compose a rough score using this digital orchestra. This gives the director and producers a good idea of what the actual score will sound like. He also talks about how music is often treated as an afterthought by directors and producers. But he makes a good point how if the music really good or really bad, audiences will care. I sorta feel the same way in my line of work in user experience. Often UI is treated as an afterthought by engineers and product managers and only gets attention when it really kicks ass or when it completely flops. I also dropped by the Science Fiction Museum. Paul Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft, must be a huge sci-fi fan because literally almost everything in the museum is donated by him.

The day after that, I went to Discovery Park to do some hiking. I decided to live by the seat of my pants for this trip so I didn't do much activity planning. Like I didn't plan on going to Discovery Park until Caroline recommended it the day beforehand. I thought I would just find a trail and then hike around for a few hours. So I had no trail map. So I started walking down what I thought was trail but then turned into more and more wilderness to the point that I don't there was trail anymore. Anyway, I thought I manage my way out but I nearly become very lost. Luckily I backtracked and found this cool loop trail that took me to the beach, near a lighthouse and back to my car. That night, I went to the Oasis concert at the Wamu theater, which was the real reason I went to Seattle. The concert kicked complete ass. It was better than when I saw Oasis three years ago. First off, they played more songs this time (including some I didn't get to hear last time like Slide Away and Supersonic). Liam's voice was noticeably better, given that this was their 1st show to kick-off their world tour. It was well worth the trip to see them. Ryan Adams opened for them, who was pretty good. I thought Oasis would sing Wonderwall in the Ryan Adams style since he was there but nope, they played it the same way they always do. There are only three things I would change. 1. The obese Indian dude in the row in front of me who kept yelling "I want to have sex with you Noel!" 2. Oasis didn't sing Live Forever, which would have been cool but at least I got to hear some other songs live instead and 3. It fucking poured on me after the concert completed. I checked weather.com earlier that day and they were predicting clear skies for the evening. Yeah, don't trust weatherman nor weather websites. I got totally drenched.

I remember that Seattle was named the most literate city in the US (although I have now learned Minneapolis now is - given that Vishnu is there I seriously doubt their calculations) partly based on the number of bookstores it has. I have to admit, they have a fucking huge number of bookstores. I went to the Elliot Bay Book Company, and I have to say it is a really great bookstore. But I must have walked past at least a dozen different bookstores in the small 3-4 square mile area around my hotel.

Anyway, that is all for now. For the next two weeks, I will be focusing on training for my mile ocean swim in Pacific Grove. Until next time, peace.