photo culled from Google

The other day, I went for another free day, this time to the Exploratorium, which is an interactive science museum at the Palace of the Fine Arts. Standing in line, I wasn't very sure that it would be the right kind of museum for me since every adult in line had at least a few kids in tow. The museum seems to be aiming for a younger age group audience.(although they do have adult nights where drinks are served to the visitors as well)

It's a little different from the average science museum, because they don't just have exhibits by themselves, most of the displays are more like simple experiments or games that you can try yourself. Probably more fun to go with friends though(or as the website recommends, go with a date), because some exhibits require more than 1 person to make it work, and also if you read the description and don't really understand how it works, it's more fun to figure it out as a group than just by yourself, when there's probably a few people watching you to see how it works, and you look a little stupid when you don't succeed.

The museum's layout is like a warehouse with sections divided into your senses; sight, hearing, etc, so you have a lot of curiosities to play with, like trying to make different coloured light, making things show up in thermal cameras, and playing with substances of strange consistencies, or steam, or water. There are also some demos, like dissections of flowers or cow eyes (probably a little slow for adults since they are explaining to kids, but still interesting)

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lousy handphone quality picture taken before the performance

Besides that, I went to Stern Grove's concert again, this time it was the SF ballet performing. Since it was an outdoor performance, there was no elaborate stage backdrop. Half the show was more of a modern version of ballet, which suited the venue better, I think. My favourite piece was one with quite a minimalist costume (just leotards) with modern instrumental music and more unconventional choreography. I found it better than the 2nd half of the show done with seasoned professionals to classical music and white tutus (the first half was performed by apprentices). Perfect day for a picnic, except that I had no company, so the sad part was watching people around me, whole families with kids, groups of friends or couples having fun and sharing food, with me as the odd one out. I did get to do a lot of sketches of people posing candidly though, which is better than models since they are naturally relaxed, but then again they keep moving every 5 seconds, so ended up with lots of extremely rough lines, sometimes overlaping a few poses when someone I was watching moved about.

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Photos taken by me will be on hold for awhile, my camera gave up on me. It's from that time I went to the beach and sand got in. Apparently that broke a few gears in the focussing mechanism (what? and the beach sand in SF is so fine!)so I have to get that fixed for some disproportionately high price. So be warned. Cameras + sand =not good. I totally forgot about that the last time, I've never had this problem before.