Tag: motherland

In Korea, it’s called “every day”

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Those who follow competitive gaming might not be shocked to find out that, more often than not, the highest level of competitors tends to come out of the east…ern hemisphere.  Asia.  Specifically, depending on the game, between Korea, China or Japan.  This isn’t to say there aren’t talented gamers in Europe, other parts of Asia, South America or North America, but it is safe to say that the upper echelon of gaming typically exists in southeast Asia, and this is punctuated by just how often times gamers or teams of gamers from this region win global tournaments and international competitions.

Although I’ll ultimately get back to primarily talking about League, this doesn’t apply to just League.  Overwatch, Counterstrike, Street Fighter; anything that is played competitively, for legitimate prize money, notoriety and business advancement, usually the best players of these properties are coming out of Asian countries.  Sure, there will occasionally be upstarts from different regions from time to time, but on the wider scale of the small competitive gaming history, it’s typically been some Asian guys hoisting trophies the vast majority of competitions.

One cliché that’s come into very popular fashion in the competitive gaming scene these days are the wide number of professional gamers from North America and/or Europe that flock to South Korea for weeks at a time to play the same game they play at home, but on the Korean servers, against Korean competition.  The logic behind this stems from the notion that you’ll only be as good as the strength of your competition, and if Korea is where the strongest competition exists, then Korea is the place pro gamers need to go play.

The best part about it is that all these non-Asian professionals call these Korean excursions “bootcamping.”

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Oh how different my life could have been

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

It begins in Asia: Video games will soon be a medal sport in the 2022 Asian Games

To all you non-Asians, the Asian Games are kind of like a mini-Olympics, but exclusive to, you guessed it, Asia.  There are all sorts of athletic competitions performed at the Asian Games, from baseball, judo, wrestling, weightlifting to gymnastics and ping pong, much like the Olympics.  It’s a very big deal, because it’s not as exclusive as the Olympics can be, so it really gives smaller, lesser-heralded Asian countries opportunities to represent themselves, and it’s where some of the larger countries like Korea and Japan can flex their advancement without competition from the Western world.

But anyway, news comes from the East that by the 2022 Asian Games, eSports might be a category in which countries can participate in.  As in video games; teenagers playing video games featuring characters that are usually athletic to compete against other teenagers playing as athletic characters.  But video games, for actual medals and actual national honors and prestige nonetheless.

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The obligatory 2016 year in review post

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Frankly, I don’t much feel like writing lately.  I’ve been leaning on the crutch of trying to find an intriguing story to me with hopes of sparking some motivation to write, and opting to not force the issue and not writing anything if nothing emerges.  Otherwise, I haven’t felt particularly driven to write, and it’s safe to assume that when I’m not busy, have plans or something to do, I’ve kind of been in this depressed state of being, where my life simply kind of feels like it’s on hold and I’m not particularly happy with my life.

But as far as I can observe, that seems to be a general sentiment felt by many, as 2016 comes to a merciful close – not particularly happy.  Make no mistake, whether you believe a narrative can be conveniently encapsulated within a calendar year, or if it’s coincidental to be insulated within twelve particular months, 2016 was a pretty rough year.  Maybe it was because of the litany of celebrity deaths, from Prince, David Bowie to the seemingly endless coverage of Carrie Fisher.  Maybe it’s because of the election of a president that is a known bigot, sexist and racist and the dread of knowing that he will be in charge of the country for at least the next four years.  Maybe it’s the ever-growing dredge and pessimism and ‘if it bleeds it leads’ mentality of the media and the social shitstorm it brews over social media, leading to this endless cycle of negatively connoted news we’re incessantly exposed to.  Maybe it’s because in our own personal lives, we’ve dealt with loss, bad news, or diminished feelings of hope for the future at the home front.

Or maybe it’s a little bit of all of the above, or any combination of such.  Who really knows, but it goes without saying that for most of the people in my own little world, the negative outweighed the good by a tremendous margin, and that notion in itself is why I’m one of the many that is looking forward to 2016 ending, and hoping that 2017 might just be a little bit better.

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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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Photos: Korea Trip 2016, batch 4

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[2020 note] These are unposted photos from 2016, the fourth of four galleries of my first-ever trip to the Motherland, that I took with my mother.

The tour group concluded with a trip to Seoraksan (Mount Seorak) before it was back to Seoul, where my mom and I settled into another AirBnB for the last few days of our trip.

Admittedly, as much as I loved my time in Seoul, I really was feeling like I had begun to see a lot of the city and having done countless hours wandering and seeing shopping center after shopping center, I was ready to go home.

Hilariously, my mom reached out to some other old friends in the area, and extended her own stay for another two weeks, but I was most definitely ready to head back to the states.  It was an unforgettable first-time in Korea, and I have nothing but great memories and appreciation for seeing my culture in its native land.

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Photos: Korea Trip 2016, batch 3

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

[2020 note] These are unposted photos from 2016, the third of four galleries of my first-ever trip to the Motherland, that I took with my mother.

After a few more days on Jeju Island, the tour brought us back to the mainland where I thought we would just go back to Seoul, but instead we landed in Busan, where we would begin a road trip up the Korean peninsula visiting various towns and cities on the way.

After capitalizing in Busan, finding the League of Legends pop-up store, I caught up with the rest of the tour group and from there it was Geongju, Pohang and Pyeongchang, seeing all sorts of sights from seas of country, to even a brief stop inside a cavern.

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Korea Stories: League of Legends

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

If you haven’t noticed, I’m kind of in to League of Legends.

And as much as I’m typically opposed to doing stuff like playing the same game I could play back at home, there was a part of me that was really curious to find out what League would be like in Korea, the region of the world in which the talent is undisputedly the greatest and where the competitive scene is respected and regarded as a legitimate, money-making spectator sport.

I wanted to try playing League of Legends on the Korean server and see what the differences were.  And surely, in the part of the world where League is so highly regarded, I should be able to find some cool League merch, or some professional League gaming team swag, right?

It started out pretty amusingly, when I got to Korea.  Through international roaming, my phone piggybacked onto whatever provider would allow it, and in the case of being in Korea, my phone immediately latched onto an SK Telecom signal.  Now this might seem like no big deal to the vast majority of people, since SK is one of South Korea’s corporate giants that have their fingers in just about every possible business venture from petroleum to telecommunications, but to a League fan, SK is primarily known as the company that owns SKT T1, basically the Chicago Bulls or New York Yankees of the League competitive scene.  SKT has won two of the five world championships (and Korea didn’t play at all in year 1) and are in position to compete for a third, but they are undoubtedly the most prominent team in the entire world, when it comes to League.

Yeah, just connecting to SK Telecom cellular service elicits that much of a response.

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