Art and Earth Science by Grass
Grass Padrique | The Fabulous Scientist I work with data. I work with machine learning. I play around with AI and large language models. I spend a good portion of my working life staring at databases, spreadsheets, digital maps, subsurface data, and whatever other collection of zeros and ones has decided to make my day… Continue reading Why Fountain Pens Matter in a Digital World
Grass Padrique | The Fabulous Scientist For the past three years, I've had the privilege of helping fresh geology graduates prepare for their licensure examinations. It's an invitation I never take lightly. It's an honor, yes—but it's also one born from a bittersweet reason. Four years ago, I lost my very first mentor in mineralogy,… Continue reading Passing the Microscope Forward
A few months ago, I reached out to one of our company's Community Relations officer with a simple idea: would it be possible to donate oil and rock samples to my former institute at the University of the Philippines Diliman? The National Institute of Geological Sciences houses a humble but fascinating geology museum filled with… Continue reading Energy Museum at the Department of Energy – Something to Look Forward to in BGC, Philippines
Pip: The Fabulous Scientist is where geology and fountain pens share a field notebook, and somehow that makes complete sense.Mara: Today we're covering a piece from fabulousgrass that sits right at the intersection of scientific practice and craft — how geologists have always written, sketched, and mapped by hand, and why that tradition still matters.Pip:… Continue reading Podcast Episode: Writing Like a Geologist: Field Notes, Maps, and the Fountain Pen Tradition
I've wanted Jacques Herbin's Emerald of Chivor ever since I fell down the fountain pen rabbit hole. You know how it goes. One minute you're buying a perfectly sensible fountain pen for note-taking. The next minute you're staring at ink swatches online at 2:00 in the morning, convincing yourself that your life would be significantly… Continue reading Jacques Herbin Emerald of Chivor: The Ink That Got Away (Until It Didn’t)
Grass Padrique | The Fabulous Scientist In the lab, we obsess over our equipment. We calibrate our equipments, we make sure the connection between computer and equipment is uninterrupted, and we panic if one part acts up. Yet, when it comes to the tool we use to actually process the information inside our heads, most… Continue reading Why I Stopped Typing My Notes
Grass Padrique | The Fabulous Scientist As 2025 comes to a close, I find myself looking back not only at the big milestones, but at the small, intentional choices that quietly shaped the year. In many ways, this was a transformational season for me—the year I earned my Master’s degree, stepped into a new job… Continue reading 2025: The Year of Beginnings, Professional Growth, and Financial and Physical Wellness
Grass Padrique | The Fabulous Scientist Before GPS and tablets, every strike and dip was inked by hand by geologists. It is a ritual of observation and artistry. There is a certain romance in geology that isn’t always captured by equations, satellite images, or the neat layers of a GIS map. Long before digital mapping… Continue reading Writing Like a Geologist: Field Notes, Maps, and the Fountain Pen Tradition
Earlier this week, I found myself walking alone among the sunflowers lining University Avenue in UP Diliman—my alma mater, my academic home. On an ordinary summer day, the late afternoon sun might have cast a golden light over everything. But it’s already the rainy season, and the skies that day were anything but clear. The… Continue reading Walking Among the Sunflowers and A Quiet and Victorious End to My Graduate Study (for now)
I'm currently taking Stanford Education's Code in Place (CIP) online course, which I applied for while I was unemployed. This might surprise some people since I've used Python a lot in my Master's research in Geology. So, why am I taking a basic coding course? But here’s the thing: I’m really glad I did. CIP… Continue reading Why You Don’t Need to Understand Everything Under the Hood to Be a Good Python Coder
The Fabulous Scientist 