Tag: travel

I don’t know how people do it

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Lately, I’ve been feeling kind of depressed and stressed about how I haven’t really traveled or seen some particular friends or family in quite some time.  Sure, I had a trip to Disney back in April, but almost at no point of that trip was I really able to sit back, relax, and kind of do nothing.  I’m not saying nothing is all I want to do, but there are times that I feel that I’m pining for occasions where there is nothing really on the agenda but loose ideas, and little or no stress if any of these ideas are acted upon.  But really, I’m finding myself missing people I used to see on a pretty regular basis, and the number of days, weeks and months since I’d seen them grows, leading to this perpetual cycle of feeling detached.

What isn’t helping the entire conundrum is the fact that I no longer have the ability to up and hop on any flight as I used to, and which is serving as impetus for writing this in the first place.  I’d like to travel and visit some friends or family pretty soon, but simply put, I just can’t afford it, or find myself being able to stomach the cost of flying, without privileges.

Frankly, I don’t know how people do this, planning so far ahead in advance to get reasonable rates, and looking at $600+ round trips if one actually wanted to make a last-minute flight somewhere.  I don’t know how people do this.

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QQing over wrestling

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I’m sad because I’m missing Wrestlemania this year.

I’m not sad because I’m missing Wrestlemania this year, because the card looks putrid, NXT Takeover will inevitably be the better show, but Wrestlemania’s card looks putrid this year.  Nobody wants to see Roman Reigns win the world title, nobody wants to see Kevin Owens be in a match that includes the Miz and Zack Ryder, and the best match of the night very well is going to be the Divas title match between Charlotte, Becky Lynch and Sasha Banks.  No disrespect to the hardest working women in ages, but the rest of the card is definitely not worth sinking five hours of time into.

I am sad because I’m missing Wrestlemania this year, because it’s pretty much the first time in over a decade in which I’m not going to be watching it with some of my closest and longest tenured friends, whom we’ve had something of a tradition of doing for the better part of almost the last two decades.  Prior to this year, the only two blips in the radar have been the times in which I actually attended Wrestlemania, which were cool in their own right, but paled in comparison to evenings of catching up, shooting the shit, stuffing our faces silly, and commentating on all the bad matches of the night.

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Photos: A tiny Vegas trip

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Literally, two weeks ago, a close friend of mine messaged me out of the blue to tell me that she was getting married in Vegas.  Initially, she assumed I was already going to be in Vegas because of Otakon Ve(r)gas, but pffh I don’t don’t really go to conventions anymore, much less the ones run by friends.  I had no intention of going out to Vegas for OV, but to be there for a good friend’s wedding?

Not to mention an Elvis wedding?  Totally worth it.

Thankfully, I was able to find some reasonable travel and lodging accommodations, and was able to make it out to Vegas this past weekend, in spite of the last-minute nature.  The wedding itself was everything I thought it would be; short, succinct and to no real surprise, the Elvis impersonator himself was really mediocre.  He didn’t do the voice, barely any mannerisms, and nary was there more than like two lip curls.

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Photos: Europe Trip – Berlin, Germany WORLDS

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

For quite a long time, whenever anyone would inquire about where in the world I would like to go, if I could go anywhere at the drop of a hat, I always responded that Germany was where I would want to go. I didn’t really have much basis behind it, other than the fact that I suppose I wasn’t aching to go visit the Motherland or be all weeabooey and say I wanted to go to Japan; ultimately, I think I always wanted to go somewhere where I could look and feel like a complete foreign tourist, and in my mind, Germany seemed to fit that bill.

Well, thanks to WORLDS, I had my excuse to visit Deutschland, and fulfill that line of thinking. Ultimately, I think I was certainly right, because I was very much the foreign tourist in Berlin, not speaking a lick of German, and aside from the litany of fellow Korean tourists also visiting for WORLDS, being very much in the minority of mostly white people faces.

But the thing is, now in hindsight, I don’t necessarily think that it was everything I had thought it would be.

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Photos: Europe Trip – Paris, France

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

After Brussels, we took a train down to Paris, France, where the mythical girlfriend and I would spend a few days doing a boatload of touristy things, eating all of the food and drinking all of the wine.

Not that it was necessarily a bad thing, but if there was one city that genuinely felt, not really that European, I would have to say that would be Paris. Perhaps it’s on account of just how tourist-heavy Paris is in general, but at least where we were staying, right in the heart of the city, it felt almost like New York City. Lots of cars, honking horns, road ragers, large-scale branded department stores and popular international brand stores adorned Rue de Rivoli, which we were right off of, and a Metro stop was almost always within eyesight, to duck into, and take whatever train to whatever destination at the drop of a hat.

Sure, the vast majority of overheard conversations and speech are in French, but just about everyone in Paris speaks English, extremely well, and I can’t recall a single time in which I felt incapable of being able to communicate with someone if necessary. International immersion is something that I kind felt like I was seeking out, and I don’t necessarily think I found it in Paris; but considering the polar opposite of what I experienced in Berlin, I’m wondering if it really is a bad thing.

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Photos: Europe Trip – Brussels, Belgium WORLDS

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

The first leg of the Europe trip was Brussels, Belgium, where the semifinals of WORLDS was going to take place. It was pretty much a hit the ground running kind of trip, since as soon as we settled into our hotel in Brussels, we power napped for a while due to the jet lag I’d never experienced in my life before; by the time we woke up, it was pretty much time to go to the venue.

There’s nothing I haven’t already said about the WORLDS experience that wasn’t in my prior post about the event as a whole, but at least now I’m putting up some of the pictures from the event, which include my hot mythical girlfriend, as well as some shots from within the arena itself, attempting to show some of the atmosphere, the championship Summoner’s Cup, as well as some post-victory pictures from SK Telecom’s victory over Origen.

The rest of the pictures are more or less a litany of mushy couple selfies, as well as some of the places we hit up in our free time in actual Brussels, and not the shitty area surrounding the Brussels Expo area.

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Musing about WORLDS

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I’m never going to deny the fact that ultimately, the impetus for going out to Europe in the first place came about on account of video games, namely the one that I talk about just about every single day, League of Legends. Given the fact that Riot Games made it clear that the annual World Championships would take place in different countries each year, it was a pretty safe bet back in like March that 2015’s WORLDS was very likely going to take place in Europe, considering the previous two WORLDS were in two of the other primary LoL markets of the United States and South Korea. And when it was confirmed that WORLDS would be scattered throughout Europe, it was full speed ahead on making plans not just for attending WORLDS events, but also providing the opportunity to do some European travels.

But yes, for lack of a better term, it all started with WORLDS, and frankly it ended with WORLDS too, since the entire trip was bookended by the WORLDS semifinals in Brussels, with the finals in Berlin.

Everything in between was the sweet gravy of personal travel and new experiences, with the mythical girlfriend.

Anyway, in an attempt to compartmentalize and try to organize my thoughts into neatly organized brog posts, I’m taking an approach of writing about one thing at a time, if I can manage to stick with it; seeing as how WORLDS was what led us to Europe in the first place, I figure there would be no better place to start talking about my Europe trip than talking about WORLDS.

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