2025.7.17. Sea You At the Waterfront

7/17, Thursday. Seattle Aquarium hosts a booth at Pier 62 for Sea You At The Waterfront, quite a few days this summer. I stopped by this Thursday to check out what is it about. 2-3 (very) young employees, showing anyone who's interested to pop in. 2 bottles with different mesh in the water to fetch sample. Squeeze a few drop of that water on a plate to view plankton at a nice compact microscope. Saw many chains of diatons. One jelly fish like little bubble, who moves around. All displayed on the flat screen monitor, which is nice and easy to see, but too dim to show up on my photo. One unexpected obstacle is wind, which blows the water away from the focus area.

This same evening, Glazier's had an open house for the Analog Week. This lady proudly showed up her collection of miniature cameras. One (top left) can take 4 sequential shots. I was surprised to see a large turn out: so many people are still taking film photos.

2025.7.15. "Mandela in Seattle" exhibit at MOHAI

7/15 Thursday, 6-9pm, in conjunction with the new Mandela exhibition, This event not only allows attendees to view the exhibition for free, but more notably are the 2 speakers of tonight. This one was instrumental in bringing Mandela to Seattle. He had some anecdotes of how they raised $15M each from McCall and Gates.

The exhibition has quite many artifacts of Mandela and footages and newspapers of the time. I also briefly walked by some other exhibits on the 2nd floor, and found this photo amusing.

2025.7.10. The Bight - adventure story series at Feathered Friends

7/10, 6-7:30pm. The Bight adventure story series #2: Backpacking.

• how to pack ice cream for a day:
  1. high fat content ice cream;
  2. pack full in thermos wrapped in down sleeping bag.
• backpacking in San Juan islands via ferry:
  1. better with ebike!
  2. hiker/biker camps are always available;
  3. racoons will rip your gear in order to reach your food;
  4. ferry for foot passenger is mostly free, can wait out bad weather inside
• don't be afraid of bear: the chances of being killed by one is rare. Only statistics, no useful tips
• PCT southbound (July-Nov):
  1. buggy in WA in July; far from town for resupply in WA;
  2. Frogg Toggs ultralite2 waterproof rain suit set (I immediately bought one);
  3. lasting friendship;
  4. lots of cheetos and junk food

I did go to May 1st's Bight's first story night on spring skiing. It was excellent too. Looking forward to the next.

2025.7.9. Seattle Chamber Music Festival

Summer Festival of Seattle Chamber Music Society. Lecture by Lydia Goehr, titled “Listening Out of the Box; Chamber Music and Furniture Art”. Good speaker. However, the 2 examples of "thinking out of the box" were badly presented. She mentioned of a lecture yesterday, not sure what it was. Overall, a very good lecture, made me think of chamber music is a product in conjunction of a chamber. Acoustics of material and space was not discussed. I'm looking forward to the next lecture.

2025.7.8. Amazon stairs have new designs + new flower

Two new paintings on Amazon's stairs, signed by the same artist.

Heard this rare bloom on Seattle Now, I walked around the Sphere 2 weeks ago in search of this Rhodoleia parvipetala, a brush native to Vietnamese mountains. It looks a bit like camelia. In the vicinity, I also found pineapple guava, Chinese fairy bell, Japanese Mahonia, and Chilian Pichi.