Tag: observations

Damn, this is a good season of television

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Usually, I’m often times behind the times when it comes to television.  I’ll let things hoard on my DVR, binge-watch and then have nobody to gush about, because everyone else watches things live or within a day or two of airing.  I’ll enjoy lots of shows much the same, but often times have to play the virtual tightrope game of avoiding spoilers on popular websites and social media.

This season however is a different kind of game; finding the time in order to keep up with the onslaught of excellent television shows, and trying to process the plots, mysteries and storylines of multiple.  Needless to say, there are more than one show that I’m currently engrossed in, and surprisingly none of them are on TLC since Dish Network kind of sucks and my hardware is on the fritz.

But right now, I am enjoying several shows, which is a little out of the ordinary because I don’t really watch that much television in the first place save for occasional sports, wrestling and shows I’ve remained loyal to, but there’s simply put a lot of good shit out there right now.

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Simply amazing

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

The Chicago Cubs are not my team, but they don’t need to be my team for me to understand and recognize the significance of them winning the World Series for the first time in 108 years.  Last night’s game was about as epic as a baseball game could possibly get, and make no mistake, it most certainly was a battle worthy of the two deserving best teams in Major League Baseball in 2016; seven games, rain delays, scoring on both teams’ supposed untouchable relievers, and extra innings to decide a winner, it was practically a microcosm of an entire season in a single game.

Last night’s game amazing to me in so many ways.  So rarely does an odds-on favorite prior to the start of a season actually end up going all the way, often times falling prey to the hype, injuries, the rise of an upstart, the hot September team, or the San Francisco Giants.  Not only were the Cubs the proverbial hype machine all the way back in February before Spring Training even began, they marched through the season with dominance, almost winning in defiance of the monumental hype outlets like ESPN heaped upon them on practically a daily basis, winning 100+ games and marching into the playoffs with little doubt that they belonged.

Where they ended the obnoxious curse of the San Francisco Giants and the even-numbered year, to which at this point I was just grateful for that, and rooted for the Cubs out of gratitude and the fact that I was meh on the idea of the Cleveland Indians or Toronto Blue Jays winning a World Series alternatively.

It’s like I know a little bit about baseball or something, when just about every single concern I previously expressed about Joe Maddon’s pitching management came to haunt the Cubs last night, and there’s little I like more than being right about things.  But in spite of Maddon’s over-managing and over-meddling with pitching changes that almost sunk the Cubs in tragic fashion, his players simply wanted it more, and in an amazing display of genuine curse-breaking, overcame an unexpected choke job when momentum was clearly on the side of the Indians.

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In Joe we trust, but I don’t like it

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Game 6 of the World Series couldn’t have been a more perfect scenario for the Chicago Cubs; the Cubs get a big lead, and the need for key relievers goes down.  Aroldis Chapman can get an extra day’s rest a day after throwing 2 1/3 innings and prepare for the winner-take-all Game 7 the following night.

Or at least that would have been the script of just about every baseball manager, regardless of if they’re old school or new school.  Simply, there’s no reason to tax key pitchers in scenarios where they really don’t need to be used.

Instead, despite the fact that the Cubs were up 7-2 in the 7th inning, we saw Aroldis Chapman warming up in the bullpen; at first, I figured it was just a routine bullpen session, just to keep loose.  But then two Indians hitters were on base, and Maddon was walking out to the mound, tapping his left arm, signaling for the unleashing of the All-Star closer.  Chapman only needed two pitches to get the third out of the inning, but not before he stepped awkwardly on first base and came off the field with a noticeable limp.

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Korea Stories: Random Observations

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

The following is more or less going to be a list of random observations I made while in Korea that didn’t really fit into the mold of any one chunk of posts.  That being said, it’s also indicative that I’m pretty much at the end of the rope when it comes to writing about my experiences in Korea.

Internet is as good as you’ve probably heard: When you use the internet in Korea, coming back to America and using my Comcast “high-speed” service that I pay a premium penny for on a monthly basis feels like going from a jet to a Ford Festiva.  Wi-fi, at a public hotel, with many users concurrently connected, was still pulling 60 down and 60 up, speeds that rival my own private connection, hard-wired.  And it was like that everywhere I went; I know, because out of curiosity, I was running the SpeedTest app just to see how good Korean internet speeds were.

Cabs are dirt cheap.  I was often doing math in my head while in Korea in regards to trying to find the USD equivalent of everything I was spending.  It’s easiest to round up or down, to where it’s a 1 to 1,000 when converting a dollar to Korean Won, so basically chopping off the last three digits was the easiest to rationalize the dollar amount of things.  I rode in a lot of cabs, because after the amount I was walking, sometimes I just didn’t want to hoof it for more miles to get to the nearest train station.  But whereas in the States, a cab ride for just a few blocks easily ticks its way to $10 and up, I was baffled to see how often times a cab ride for a considerable distance, often started at roughly $3, and only once did I spend more than $10 on a cab ride, and that was a good distance.

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Visiting the Motherland, with my Mother

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

If I didn’t mention it before, the trip to Korea was one that I took with my mother.  The idea was that way back when, my dad and sister went together, so it seemed like a suitable idea that this would be a mother and son trip.  My mom had recently retired, so she had nothing but time on her hands, and from my perspective, this was a trip that had to be done sooner rather than later, because I didn’t want to live my life with the regret of never going to Korea with my mom while she was still physically able to.  Not to mention, my mom had never been back since I’d been alive, so it was literally 38 years since she’d last been in Korea.

This is without question one of the best ideas I’d had in my life, and although I’m not going to sugar-coat and say it was a perfect trip, I don’t have any regrets about going to Korea with my mom one bit.  It was meaningful and memorable, and I’m glad to be able to say that my mom was there the first time I visited the Motherland.

I let my mom drive when it came to planning for the trip, since my initial idea of planning a trip to see the places of her childhood and upbringing seemed to fall on deaf ears, so it ended up with us having a few days in Seoul on our own, but then ultimately going on a multi-city tour group through the rest of Korea, back-ended with two more days in Seoul before coming home.  I’m not going to pretend like I was pleased with the idea of being on a guided tour, since typically I prefer to be in control of my own destiny, but it was what my mother had wanted, and she didn’t seem to understand that I was quite the competent planner on my own.

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Things that made me think Europe is overrated

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

One thing that lots of people do that I think is a little obnoxious, is thinking that the way things are done in America are all flawed, and that they are undoubtedly and unmistakably better in other parts of the world like Europe or Asia.  I’m not going to pretend that America does everything right, but spending lengthy times abroad is an easy way to make comparisons, and discover that America sure gets a lot of things pretty damn right, and often.

European airports.  I challenge any person who loves to bitch about how chaotic, hectic and for whatever reason that doesn’t imply veiled racism “difficult” Atlanta Hartsfield-Latoya Jackson Intergalactic Nail Emporium and Hot Wings Shack Airport, to spend a day waiting for a flight in a European airport. 

Including last year, my frame of reference includes airports in Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam, Berlin and Milan, and all of them suck, compared to Atlanta Airport.  And it might be home to me, but Atlanta Airport is far from the best airport in the United States.

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Social devaluation

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

After like two months, I decided to get off my high horse perched atop a pedestal that was boosted up on a soap box, and opened up Facebook.  I had a couple of new friend requests, some group conversations that were now a month past since the last message, and 99 new notifications that’s really more, but Facebook only registers up to 99, and apparently, only one month’s worth.  But all in all, I still don’t feel like I really missed anything.

Admittedly, I’d been peculiar about when I’d dive back in, because I didn’t really want to jump back in the midst of a tragedy, or too big of a political shit storm, and if it were up to me, I’d like to have something interesting to post about as well.  But then shit like all the killings of black people, the bombing of Istanbul airport, protests, politics and other things kept happening around the world, and if they were insufferably covered by the media, I could only imagine that the opinionating by people on social media would have been a hundred times worse.

The thing is, if I waited for the world to be peaceful for just a week, I’d probably be waiting until I was 90 years old.  So I realized that I needed to lower my expectations, and when the coast was clear for like five minutes, I dove back in.  Not to mention that I was still kind of on my high for being the first winner of the Willy’s Road Trip, and I figure it would be something somewhat interesting to post about.

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