Tag: coronavirus

New Father Brogging, #006

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

One of the most important things that I’ve learned as a first-time dad is that whenever you feel like you’re getting a grasp of raising a baby, behaviors will inevitably change and then you’re back into a position of knowing nothing all over again, and feeling helpless when your baby is reduced to crying and finding great difficulty at what may be causing your child distress.

When my baby is crying, it could be a variety of things that could be causing it; might be hunger, even if it might be improbably because she ate a full feed just 80 minutes ago, but a growth spurt could be in play, meaning she’ll want to eat pretty much every single hour.  Maybe it’s indigestion, to which there are only a few things that can actually bring her relief, like pressing her up against the warm body of a parent, or medicinally with gripe water or newborn anti-gas drops.  Maybe she needs to be burped more.  Maybe she’s cranky because she needs to take a nap.  Lately, she’s become cognizant to the discomfort of having a soiled diaper, something that hadn’t been the case in the first five weeks.  And sometimes, she just wants to be held by mom or dad.

The point is, there have been numerous times where I feel like I’ve identified a behavioral pattern, only to rely upon the knowledge of yesterday for today’s problems, and find out that everything has changed all over again, and then I’m left feeling dumbfounded and useless that I can’t figure out how to bring comfort to my own child.

I never once discounted the difficulty of parenting, for the first time much less, but as I expected it would be, parenting is not easy.  This does not deter me in the least bit, but I am just confirming that it’s about as difficult, and occasionally frustrating as I imagined it would be.  There’s nothing like changing a diaper, only for the kid to rip a wet fart and soil it seconds after being put on, only for an after shock to hit two minutes later, and make me throw my hands up at the frustrating of changing three diapers in the span of 120 seconds.

Ultimately I wouldn’t change a thing, and I’ll change a trillion diapers if I have to in order to raise my little girl right, but damn can I at least say there are times when I just have to say, what the fuck man?

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This is what is called “poor optics”

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Since really March, when coronavirus really began taking off and running wild across the globe, a lot of massive events have been cancelled, understandably.  The 2020 Olympics postponed until next year, the NBA and MLB have suspended their seasons indefinitely and it doesn’t look like either is going to resume at all this calendar year.  The city of Las Vegas pretty much shut down, as did both Disney World and Disneyland.

Basically, anything that encouraged any sort of mass gathering of human beings has been cancelled, with great justification.  Major events such as SXSW and recently San Diego Comic-Con have cancelled.  Hell, even non major events, but still capable of drawing people out of their homes have shuttered up, as they don’t want to have the blood of anyone dying from contracting coronavirus at their events from happening.  Momo-con in Atlanta, a massive Memorial Day convention has cancelled, among all sorts of fun runs, shows and concerts.

As disappointed as I’d be, the Peachtree Road Race is probably going to be cancelled at some point soon, because it’s the world’s largest 10K run, that draws 65,000 runners to Atlanta every July 4th.

One of the biggest questions among some people in my little world was “what about Dragon*Con?”  Seeing as how it falls on Labor Day every year, there stood to be some hope that it might still happen, since we were still several months away from it at that point.  But at the same time, America has literally been the worst country on the planet at handling coronavirus, with idiots who not only don’t adhere to social distancing and staying home, but proudly defy the one scientifically proven way to combat the pandemic, and go outside and amass in groups to protest, being suggested of what to do.

Even if we’re still several months away from Dragon*Con, the world as a whole is even further away from any sort of vaccine or drug that can help suppress the spread or effects of coronavirus.  I think it goes without saying that an event that draws nearly 75,000 people in the tightest possible quarters, should probably be cancelled.

Nope, as of right now, Dragon*Con is still a go.  Four months from now, still anticipating 75,000 attendees crammed like sardines within a three-block radius in Downtown Atlanta with no known vaccine or inoculation in sight.

So much for that whole flattening of the curve thing.  It only took the convention nearly a decade to successfully scrub a known pedophile off of their board, but somewhere within it is basically another Bubba Kemp who insists on keeping the convention on schedule despite the fact that nearly every known other major event and gathering of people have been cancelled or postponed.

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Welp, so much for flattening the curve

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I’ve long since stopped using the phrase “just when I thought people couldn’t possibly get any dumber,” because no matter what flabbergasting things in the world people do, they can always inexplicably find a way to do something dumber.  No. Matter. What.

In spite of the fact that Georgia, much less the rest of America is nowhere close to being on the path to being remotely similar to South Korea or Taiwan in terms of fighting coronavirus, our idiot governor Yosemite Sam, has decided that the stay-at-home ordinance is going to be lifted so that certain types of businesses can open reopen and get back to work; as in people go out of your homes into the world that has a potentially deadly airborne virus floating all over the place and get back to fucking work for the sake of the economy at the risk of your literal lives.

Before we even get to the list of approved businesses, let’s just opine about how recklessly horrible this decision is.

Despite the fact that Georgia ranks in the top-10 states in worst coronavirus numbers, they’re basically scrambling to get to the front of the line in regards to encouraging people to leave their homes, go out amongst other people and put themselves at increased risk; in order to get back to work.

Because the economy needs it. 

So go put yourselves in danger.  Because money

Anyway, let’s take a look at the businesses that will be opening within the next week:

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New Father Brogging, #005

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

We’re now well into the brave new world of pandemic ruining the planet, America “ascending” to #1, as in, being the country that’s most been most devastated by coronavirus and had the highest afflicted/death toll in the world, and pretty much everyone in the world has been advised to stay inside, avoid other people, and generally hunker down and hope for everything to eventually blow over.

Cabin fever, has perpetually been viewed as one of the biggest obstacles for Americans across the country, and it’s no more evident than whenever I do go out (pediatrician appointments, picking up takeout meals), that there are always people out and about, taking walks or jogging, more than ever.  Seriously, a running joke that myself and many people out there have, are that we’re all seeing people in our own neighborhoods that we’d never seen before, because people are mostly recluses to begin with, but forced into situations where they are discouraged from wasting time elsewhere, they feel the itch to waste time at home, even if it means being seen by their neighbors.

It kind of defeats the purpose of social distancing, but Americans have always been shit about following directions in the first place.  Although going on walks and jogging is a pathetic bending of a rule that isn’t going to help, things could be worse, so I guess it’s mostly a “fuck it, let them have that” kind of compromise, although I have heard of more draconian areas in the country that have police willing to write tickets for those not properly practicing social distancing.

Personally, cabin fever hasn’t really hit mythical wife and I, because the vast majority of our days have been overwhelmingly consumed by the whole, now we’re parents thing. I highly recommend popping out a newborn and raising it, if you’re feeling anxious about the way the world is now; I assure anyone that it most definitely is effective at taking their mind off of the inability to go out and do things, and that there’s absolutely no feeling of having too much time on your hands.

As it stands, since I’m working remotely, I actually feel like I work more now that I’m doing it from home, than I do when I’m at the office.  In fact, I feel like a lot of my reports and a lot of my peers in general are doing similarly, mostly on account of the fact that they all feel like they need to prove that they’re working, and subsequently actually become more productive than not.  I’m glued to my work machine for full work days, and by the time I log off, it’s the start of the evening, and we’re on a general cycle of feeding and changing the baby and then suddenly it’s 10 pm, and I need to start thinking about the next work day.

There are people out there who are complaining about how they’ve watched “everything” on Netflix already and are thinking of what streaming service to subscribe to next in order to find more fresh new content to watch; I’ve barely watched any television at all over the last few weeks.  The only things that I’ve really seen are when mythical wife is on pumping/feeding duty and I’m hanging out for support, and she’s been watching stuff like Great British Baking Show or Crash Landing On You.

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Well that was predictably not great

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Unsurprising to me, considering the fact that professional wresting kind of needs fans and atmosphere to really excel at being the spectator event it’s supposed to be, that a Wrestlemania with no fans and no real atmosphere, just was not that great.  It didn’t help that as a result of coronavirus running wild, there were some massive impacts to the card, like Roman Reigns pulling out because as a leukemia survivor, he’s already immunocompromised, and then the Miz pulling out because he had some ailment that scared the shit out of all other roster and personnel and probably gained him a ton of heat, things were becoming a steeper and steeper uphill battle, even before circumstances made the company turn the whole thing into a closed-door private affair.

In spite of their best efforts and making it a two-night event, very little could’ve really been done to have made the event remotely palatable to an old smark like myself.  The importance of crowds and the atmosphere they bring has been completely understated in the last few weeks of both WWE and AEW putting on empty venue shows.  But as much as I don’t like having to praise AEW, I have to give them credit for at least having the wherewithal to put their superstars in the audience so that there’s some sort of crowd noise or interaction to gain.

WWE on the other hand has literally nobody in the stands whatsoever, and it’s almost an eerie silence when matches go on.  I have to imagine as performers, it’s really jarring and awkward to them to have to perform for nobody but the camera, but act like that there’s a crowd at all, and go through with ring entrances and staring out into nothingness like there’s a sold out show.  I imagine those who are WWE grown struggled with it the most, whereas those who worked their ways through independents and alternative federations are probably no stranger to low-attendance or near-empty gates.

Regardless, the show as a whole was pretty weak, and it was entirely too difficult to get into many of the matches.  I fortunately watched each night of the show the day after, so I had the luxury of being able to fast forward and skip the rest holds and extended promos in order to chew up time.  As well as Rob Gronkowski segments, where the only thing I want to see out of him is to team up with Zack Ryder and Matt Riddle and make a douchey white guy bro stable, and have one program with The New Day since they’re a group of black nerds, and then get the fuck out of the WWE forever.

Undertaker vs. AJ Styles was about as bad as I imagined it would be, considering the fact that it was a gimmicky “Boneyard Match” that wasn’t so much of a match as much as it was an episode of WMAC Masters from back in the 90’s.  It hid every bit of the Undertaker’s lack of mobility and stamina, and AJ Styles had to work his ass off to make it look remotely passable.  It wasn’t really entertaining, but more cringeworthy that the WWE went off in this direction, but given the fact that the Undertaker is like 55 and can barely move, they didn’t really have that much of a choice.

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New Father Brogging, #004

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

The last time I wrote about my plight of being a new dad, mythical wife and I were staying overnight at the NICU as the last milestone necessary in order for our kid to come home.  That being said, baby is now home where she belongs, and thus begins (really) the rest of our lives, and the start of our lives as a family unit.

Honestly, it hasn’t been as tragically difficult as people love to expound that new parenthood really is.  Sure, we’re operating on the NICU’s general schedule of feeding every three hours, so that our premature child can gain weight as efficiently as possible, but I imagine this is something that my body will get used to as time progresses, not to mention the fact that as baby grows and develops, she won’t need to be on this kind of timeline forever either.

So mythical wife and I get up at 2:30 and 5:30 in the morning each night to feed our baby, and slog our way through the motions in the AM hours.  I get up at around 7:45 to make sure that I’m logged into work on time, but then I go ahead and take care of the feedings at 8:30 and 11:30, while I frantically do my best to do work-related things in between.  Yes, I am still working from home, and it is truly an unprecedented brave new world we’re all operating in these days, and I often have anxious thoughts about the future of my own career, as I wonder if the longer all of this goes on, the more expendable my team’s work will become perceived.

Work aside, being a dad is pretty great.  I don’t mind the dirty diapers and the demanding schedule, because I have a beautiful daughter that I enjoy just sitting and watching sometimes, wondering how her features are going to grow in, and despite the fact that she had more of my features at birth, I can see glimpses of lighter brown hair, and there’s no mistaking the large eyes she sprouts whenever they open up, that definitely come from mommy and not from me.

I love changing her outfits and seeing her in the large varieties of adorable baby clothing that we’ve purchased in advance as well as inherited from the generations of cousins ahead of me.  I’ve been peed on and I’ve witnessed various catastrophes of soiled diapers, but they’re no big deal at all.  I refuse to be a stereotypical dad that can’t handle changing diapers or think I’m too macho or manly to do things that people tend to associate as being “mom work.”

In fact, it kind of makes me a little sad whenever people have given me praise over my indifference and enthusiasm for doing things like changing diapers or bathing my kid.  It speaks volumes of the amount of men out there that don’t do the littlest things that instill love and affection for their children, and if there’s one thing that I want to accomplish as a dad, it’s that my kid grows up knowing that I love her more than anything, from the big things to the little ones.

Eventually, we’ll hopefully get to a comfortable rhythm as it comes to living with a child in tow now.  As much as I want to use this additional time at home to catch up on cleaning and making the house as great as possible for our kid, or I want to be a lazy slug and watch television and movies in between feedings, I just don’t feel like I ever have the time.  Three hours sounds like a lot of time, but given how much of it I spend cleaning bottles or pump parts or straightening things out for the next feeding/changing session, then I feel like I don’t have enough contiguous time to do anything productive or enjoyable, so I usually dick around on my phone or watch YouTube videos instead.

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2020 Olympics postponed: what about the age cheaters??

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Among the numerous unprecedented occurrences that have happened on account of the global pandemic of coronavirus, if ever there was one thing that could be listed among the biggest of them, I think the postponement of the entire 2020 Olympics could definitely be a contender.  Regardless of how little or how much people think coronavirus really is a thing or not, the fact that a global event like the Olympics being shut down should speak volumes to just how serious it actually is. 

It’s absolutely the right call, considering nobody has any earthly idea just how long this is going to last, and the last thing anyone needs is to get hundreds of athletes from all across the globe, along with the thousands of fans who come from all over to watch, gathered in one location in tight quarters, and then for everyone to go back to their respective corners of the world and possibly unknowingly spread more coronavirus to places that might not have even been exposed to it in the first place.

It’s just amazing to think that something has occurred that actually had the magnitude to impact something as major as the Olympics.  Sure, the indefinite postponements of all sport leagues in America are one thing but the entire Olympics is pretty massive.

Anyway, upon hearing that the Olympics were postponed, the very first thing that popped into my head was what was going to happen to countries that routinely lie about the ages of their athletes; specifically China, who has notoriously attempted to pass off 12-year olds as 16-18 year old athletes, despite the fact that even factoring the naivety of non-Asians when it comes to Asians all looking the same to them, even they can tell when someone looks 12 versus when someone looks like they’re 16.

Regardless, China, among other countries that like to try and cheat athlete ages, are probably all pissed about the postponement of the Olympics.  If the world does get its shit together and is able to have an Olympics in 2021, that’s still one whole year for the preteen athletes of the world who were ready to say that they were 16, to hit puberty and suddenly age out of their illegitimate primes.  And considering Olympic hopefuls have four years typically to train for it, imagine the scramble of cheating countries trying to scrap together some new 12-year olds to take their places?

Either way, let’s take a second to send our thoughts and prayers to these particular countries that won’t be able to cheat as effectively as they had originally hoped to do.  All those poor preteens hoping to masquerade as actual teens, for the sake of the potential glory of their countries.