USA98 - Report - November 9

November 9 <back to main page>

Portland

We honored The Breakfast Tradition at Gracie's. Everybody chatted, enjoyed the colorful couches and filled their stomach. I did some report-writing, and Ed brought some calculator paper to begin the Sito Unplugged Hygrid Collab After some failed attempts to turn Ed into the Burning Man, we headed for the city looking for zines and records. The backpack I found at the bins made great success (It's a cartoon character and I'm trying to trying to find his name. Some people already told me what it was but I forgot. If you recognize it, e-mail me!). After a horrible coffe at the book store, we dinet at a Greek Restaurant (only they call it "mediterranean"). Back at Underworld Industries, Ed, Martin, Chris and Mrranda went to a show, while me and Ivana chatted with Brady at Gracie's. We spent hours trying to download astrology software to make Brady's natal chart. Then we gave up and Ivana proceeded to Tarot readings. By that time, Ed has returned from the show and joined us in the our fate-quest journey. I don't remember what time we finally went to bed, but it was definetely late. I remember tough that the cards were very kind to us :)

The collab calculator paper continued to grow during the next day. After breakfast, we went to see the movie "Cube". The dialogues were arguably a bit poor sometimes, but the cube concept was great. I liked it very much anyways :) In our way back we took some nice kind of free train to get to our bridge. It was "Experimental Dinner Night" at Megan's house, so we bravely ventured ourselves there to see what surprises were waiting for us. The food was actually very good, there was pumpkin soup, weird "american" sushi (with salsa & beans and apple w/ peanut butter fillings), salmon, and the Caribbean Island jello. The "Sito" topic was mentioned during the night and Jon gave an informal lecture on the subject, followed by a demonstration of Hygrid, after everybody had twisted their brains trying to understand the hyperdimensionality of the thing. Ed arrived with Rachel some time after, both completely soaked from the rain outside. She followed us home when we chatted a lot - not as long as we wanted tough, because Rachel had to work early in the morning.

Next day we had breakfast at a nice place where the next Sito collab project was conceived. Apparently, the Cube movie had seeded Ed's brain with many new 3-dimensional ideas. After a joyfull debate at the Cafe's table, cryptic drawings on Ed's notebook marked the birth of "cubu" (this is the project's code name for now, who knows what will be the final name :) Happy with our new child, we went back to Jon's place to pack our last stuff and wait for Brady's Airoport shuttle. We said goodbye to our friends in Portland with a strong will to come back soon.

San Francisco

Our first day in San Francisco greeted us with a sunny face! We met Annette at Construct and had lunch again at the South Park. Last night, Ed lured Annette into IRC and she spent the whole morning talking to ebug. We saw again the Dating Game demonstrations, and Ed contacted his friends at Hotwired. We went there to visit them and know the Mecca of webdesign ;) At the evening we went to the Indie Film Festival, where we met Steev Hise and followed him to his insanely-connected house. There he prepared some great drink I can't remember the name and showed us photos of his last show. After that, we went dancing at the special 80's thursday at Cat's Alley. What a day!

Apple Computer

Next day was our long-awaited visit to Apple Computer. We rented a white Dodge Neon and followed Bill Coderre's nicely detailed instructions until we got to Infinite Loop, Cupertino. There we printed visitor badges and proceeded to the cafeteria, where we were told highly classified rumours we then wowed not to reveal :) Then we toured the big building. Most signs pictograms there are from Apple's font Cairo and are terribly cute. We made quick stops at InstallerLand and QuickTimeLand, and also visited the Apple Store where we bought our uniformized jackets. At the little museum we saw a wood prototype of Apple III, a Mac with serial number 00001, and an Apple I motherboard that is rumoured to have belonged to Woz. We couldn't resist printing some fake badges for our friends stating they were there visiting Steve Jobs. Apparently, everybody does the same :) We had dinner at a nearby restaurant, said goodbye to our hosts and rushed to the airport to deliver Martin in time. (sadly, we later learned that he missed his flight). Our next adventure would be "parking in San Francisco". We must had spent at least 50 minutes driving in circles until we could find a spot. Ed faced a near-death experience when the floor suddenly disappeared under our wheels at Jones Street. We liked the little rollercoast so much that we went thru it over and over again :)

Ed woke up early worried if our car had been towed away. Those parking instructions in SF are damn complicated! They're more like puzzles than rules. Our little withe car was still intact, so we went out for breakfast. At that time, I've had all the omelets and pancakes I could afford for a whole year, so I just had some soup and salad. After that we drove Ed to the airport (I'd better say that Ed drove us to the airport :), where we stayed for a lot of time because his flight was late (Murphy rules!). It was hard to say goodbye to such a great friend!

Next day we mostly stayed at home resting and enjoying the Sunday. It was our last day in San Francisco and Ivana was surprised by a flowers&ice cream delivery in the middle of the day. We took our shuttle to the airport and faced a big jet lag, arriving in NY the following morning without sleep. It was our last day in NY and our friend Rodrigo was there for the week, so we met him for brunch at Astor's place. By that time, I had decided to stay a little bit more in New York. Ivana couldn't stay because she was already missing classes and had to graduate next year. We managed to carry our huge luggage to the Newark Airport, and felt less guilty when we saw all the brazilians in the check-in line with even bigger bags :) You'll be amazed if I told you how much money we saved in hi-tech equipment bought in the US for less than half the price it have cost in Brazil. We have a stupid law to "protect the national computer industry" that actually gave us the worst computer per people ratio in South America. I waved "au revoir" to my dear sister and went back to Cibele's house in Harlem, just to arrive at the subway station and find my friend Rodrigo there by chance! We then went to a blues bar with some of his friends. It was a nice night :)

Now, if I'm not too lazy, I may write reports on my "bonus" time in the US. Stay tuned!

And have I said yet: I loved to meet all this great people! Sito people are the nicest in the world! Thanks soooo much for everything! Come to Brazil and visit me!

Pictures

Portland

Breakfast at Gracie's