Tag: old man

Take that, job hoppers

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Yahoo Finance: wage growth for job hoppers slowing down as labor markets cool

One of the many things that I’ve had to accept as a changing of the times kind of the thing is has been the growing acceptance of job hopping in the working world.  I was more or less raised on the mindset of getting myself into a company, staying for my entire career, earning pension, retirement and all the benefits that come with longevity, and then work my entire career for a single company.

Obviously the world does change, and I don’t disagree that there’s little point in staying somewhere if you become miserable or the game of finances doesn’t seem to be keeping competitive to the market, but mostly if you’re just not plain happy, or you get laid off of released for any litany of reasons.  It’s naïve to think that anyone is going to stay with a singular place of employment for 30+ years anymore.

But as the years have gone by, the working world has gotten to the point where employees spend less and less time at employers before deciding to bounce, and it no longer seems like it’s people having lower thresholds for bullshit as much as it is that people today are just bigger flakes and indecisive and easily swayed by the shiny thing on the other side of the fence instead of remotely trying to have a stable career somewhere.

I used to tell myself that no matter what, to give every place at least a year before exploring a change.  A year seemed like an adequate amount of time to really learn about the highs and lows of a company, learn about the commutes, the types of people you work with, how they operate holidays and busy seasons, etc.

My first job after I moved to Atlanta, I stuck it out a year.  At first, it was great, but then the commute became murderous and the superiors in my company weaned off the honeymoon period and became really toxic to everyone.  I was the third or fourth resignation in a rapid exodus, because I found a job that was way closer to home, and paid a little bit more money, but honestly I do chalk it up as a mistake because I realized that I hated the work and the line of business I was in.

I didn’t quite make it a year at this place, but that was because they laid off my entire team, but it turned out to be a blessing in disguise, because I got with a place where I stayed for nearly four years, before my entire team was laid off there as well, which put me into a tumultuous life of freelance for many years, before I got my foot in the door with the state.  I stayed there for three years before a lack of growth, wages and just general boredom led to a messy divorce, and then I made another career mistake by bouncing to a place that was again closer and paid better, but the nature of the work and the dynamics of the company were hell.

This was actually the first time in my career I bounced before a year, because I was miserable and wanted out.  It was a move I don’t regret, and where I really had to self-reflect a lot on my choice to deviate from my original mindset, but it was for the best, because I ended up somewhere where I spent the largest tenure in my career.

But when coronavirus and the age of COVID-19 came upon the world, it transformed the world to closer where we are now.  My shortest tenure at a place was six months, but I was now beginning to witness people barely staying at a company for six weeks before deciding to bounce.  I remember assessing and trying to sniff out flight risk when combing through resumes and interviews at my old job, because my company and department in particular had a tendency to attract a lot of people who were looking for means to get their foot in the door, and as soon as their probationary period ended, would capitalize on the favoritism of internal associates to swap to a different team.

However, it wasn’t just internal bouncing, people just weren’t sticking around the company, or any other company, anywhere.  People would come, and just when it seemed like things would settle down on the team or company, suddenly there’d be news of them having turned in their notice, and the company and/or team was back to square one.

I get that when the day is over, everyone does have to take care of number #1, but the reality is that when they take a job that they’re not gung-ho over, and keep their options open and get a bite somewhere shinier, they really are fucking over the employer, which nobody is going to lose any sleep over, but a whole bunch of colleagues who might not all be soul sucking shitheads that deserve such disrespectful dismissal, are typically going to get shortchanged in that they’re losing a co-worker who was hired to be depended upon for what is usually hoped to be a for a semi-permanent amount of time.

The positions that are suddenly vacated all have to start over from square one, and there’s no guarantee that all other possible candidates are on the board anymore.  Most places have to go through the whole process from the beginning, meaning they have to vet and bot resumes all over again, interview a set number of candidates, and for anyone whom they’re crawling back to, lose leverage and face towards someone that wanted the job previously, and are now looking at the employer with their own set of resentment and likely notion to flake on them increases.

Before I left my last job, we too were no stranger to the COVID-prompted mass migration of employment, and lots of people, those I knew or knew of, were bouncing out of the company left and right.  Meanwhile, the power vacuum as a result of such departures led to a lot of shitty unqualified fucks to get some high up positions, and by the time I threw in the towel and left, I was in a position where my cunt of a boss was actively trying to get me out the door.

Sure, I did migrate during COVID, and got a sweet 26% pay bump in the process, but honestly if my work-life wasn’t as toxic as it had become, I probably would’ve stayed and not even entertained the thought of looking somewhere else.  I really didn’t want to leave, but my boss forced my hand.

But at my current place of employment, I’m in but just year three now, but I’ve already witnessed an inordinate amount of people who have started working for the company, and within as little as two months, seen them bounce, leading to myself and everyone else to throw their hands up and basically say what the fuck?

And of course they’re taking care of themselves, but several of these people really did fuck over my team with their general flakiness, and this is why I’m starting to relish in the notion that job hopping’s notion of getting better money or better positions is starting to diminish, because I do feel some salt and some want for retribution towards this entitled and lazy, flaky workforce that has gotten the working world to this sorry state we’re in currently.

Maybe if more people are “forced” to stick with their jobs that they’re fortunate to have in the first place, perhaps companies can actually get some teams that gel and become competent through experience and tenure, and become you know, better companies, that produce better products and services, and suddenly miraculously become more successful based on performances from their workforces.

But fuck me right, everyone’s got to take care of themselves, and it’s okay to bounce every six months?

I wonder what it says that I relate so well to mommy bloggers

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

In the connected world we live in full of prying digital eyes and ears that seem to exist solely to collate information for algorithms and targeted content, I was fed this blog article from some mommy blogger, talking about how lonely it felt being everyone’s B-list friend.

It was a headline that I immediately knew what it was going to be about before I even started to read it, but like a masochist I clicked on it out of curiosity to see how someone else felt about this fairly accurately named affliction.

And unsurprisingly, I feel as if this entire article could have been written by me, except with a little more feminine eloquence and emotional neediness.  But I definitely felt this article so very hard, and the examples of where they were resultantly made to feel B-list resonate so much with me, especially since becoming a parent, and transitioning into the inevitable zone of I have kids and lots of my friends don’t, and the gradual position of not only being excluded by everyone, but also no longer even considered for invitation.

I’m seldom mad or upset about it, that just seems to be the way life is for people who age and people who have children, but one thing I’ve always said is that there is tremendous power and consideration in the act of the ask alone, and although I know and most everyone knows that asking me do something is nine times out of ten going to result in a no I can’t, I always appreciate the ask, because it makes me feel like people still think and consider me.

Honestly though, even before kids, I felt this way a lot of the time, mostly because I was the sad-sack single guy for eternity, and I get that nobody always wanted an odd-numbered wheel on their activities.  Things improved a little bit once mythical girlfriend-now-wife came into the picture, but now that we have children and have stepped onto a less-adjacent plane of existence as most everyone around us, going back onto the B-list feels more prevalent than ever.

But going back to the article, it clearly hit home hard enough to pop the synapses in my brain to want to write about it, because it was that thought-provoking.  I don’t think it hurts me as much as it hurts the author of this post, but I see, I acknowledge and I can relate to so much of this.

Frankly if I’m being honest here, the only people in my life that I don’t feel like put me on the B-list are my children.  As much as I bemoan the workload sometimes, feel like I’m overwhelmed and tired of being a parent at times, when the day is over, my girls are the only ones who don’t make me feel like I’m B-list ever.  When they have bad dreams and wake up at night, they call for me.  When it’s the morning and they know it’s time to get up and have breakfast, they know it’s me.  When they’re distressed and need a hug and snuggle, they come to me.

This isn’t to say I resent everyone else for making me feel like I’m B-list.  Everyone else just has their own shit going on their lives, and it’s easy to take a self-sufficient machine like me for granted.  I feel like everyone else already does a lot of the time, and I don’t always feel comfortable expressing such opinions too often, so it’s just the norm.

I agree with the author that it’s not good to measuring self-worth by the effort others put into our relationships, but at the same time, it’s also kind of impossible to ignore the scales of relationships and when those around us are putting us into the B-list.  It’s always easy to say one thing, but doing them is a whole different matter, and in this particular case, it’s not necessarily a bad thing to struggle with chessboard of where we’re positioned, because frankly I think it’s human nature that everyone does, and those who don’t are either blind or lying.

All the same though, going back to the title of this post, I wonder what it says about me, that such thought-provoking mommy content is what is fed to me, and resonates with me so much.

Kid-free weekend musings

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Despite the fact that I haven’t had to wake up before the sun rises to prepare and have breakfast ready for when my kids awake, I’ve still been getting up early.  The first morning, I had forgotten to disable my alarms that ensure that I’m up for the morning routine, and the second morning, the dog whined and woke me up because I had disabled my alarms but that meant she was stuck in the bedroom at the time in which her feeder would go off.

All the same, the idea of going back to sleep didn’t really cross my mind because I’m a neurotic doer who unfortunately often times sees sleep as a means to an end, and as much as I’d like to get more sleep in my life, as long as I feel like there’s an endless queue of things that need to be done instead, those will often times keep me out of bed despite knowing what pleasure sleeping without an alarm clock can bring.

So instead of sleeping more, or preparing a breakfast for the kids, I’ve actually had some calm mornings where I could actually feel a little bit like an old iteration of me for a little bit.  I went on a leisurely morning walk, alternatively to the virtual Peachtree Road Race I ran the morning prior.  I came back drenched in sweat because it’s humid as balls, but then I came home, changed clothes, logged into work, and unsurprisingly had a very slow remote day, where I was able to accomplish all sorts of side quests throughout the day.

Like hanging some picture frames that needed the 22 ft. ladder that I never get a chance to do when the kids are around, got an emissions test on my third car, went to the DMV to renew the tags and got out in two minutes because I used the self-serve kiosk that nobody else uses which left me feeling really good.  I did some kid laundry which felt good to not have to try to do it in a window in which they’re not sleeping so the noises don’t distract them, and I even got a new shelf for my garage to tidy up the shoe tornado that living in a home with nothing but females often results in.

Needless to say, I had a productive day which always puts me in a positive frame of mind, and I decided to reward myself by finally watching Fast X; a completely dumb movie which is about as surprising as white people liking Rivians, but also unsurprisingly enjoyable for me, even if I didn’t know that it was going to be a two-parter.

I won’t give anything away, but I have to say that casting Jason Momoa for the role he’s in seems like a whiff of colossal proportions.  I feel like the number one priority for the role was “look like he could be South American” but they didn’t take into account any of the character’s mannerisms, personality traits or general perceived look.  And as hunky as Momoa is, the reality is that he’s not a very talented actor, and it really says something when a Fast & Furious installment has pushed his acting chops beyond his capabilities.

All the same, can’t wait for the next one, which I feel like has to be the actual finale to the series.  Vin Diesel’s not getting any younger and it’s looking as such, the character development is heading in a direction that I’d say should be irreversible, but they seem to throw caution to the wind when it comes to those kind of rules, and the only thing I will give away is that Paul Walker’s character is still fucking alive despite the fact that the actor has been dead since Fast 7; they just can’t keep this ruse up forever!

Anyway, this morning, after the dog woke me up at 7:26am which might as well be 10am for me, I thought about possibly going back to sleep after taking her out to pee; but after we came back inside, the bowl was empty, because the feeder was empty because the dog eats like a horse, but then the tub of extra food was empty, which meant that I had to open up the new 40 lb. bag of dog food to fill the tub and feeder and bowl, and at that point I was just like fuck it, I’m staying up.

So, I got back on the horse and went for a run.  I’ve been coming to the grips that at this juncture in my life, my running speed isn’t what it used to be, and short of making some actual adjustments to my way of life, I don’t think it will get back there.  I’d been struggling to keep my pace under the 10 minute/mile as of late, and I chalked it up to poor diet, habits and complacency, and I was able to get it back down under ten, but that also was the result of several consecutive days of running while I was at my sister’s place in Richmond without having to be a parent.

My Virtual Peachtree was completed in 1:04:36, which I’m pretty sure the slowest timed 10K I’ve done since I started doing organized runs back in 2007 which was a little disappointing, but as I said, unless I really make some changes to a lot of things in my life, like taking stat points away from weight lifting and eating and putting them into running, things aren’t going to get any better as I age.

It’s a little inevitable since Father Time is undefeated, and the sooner I accept it, the less angst I’ll have about running as a whole.

So, I ran while trying to keep that mindset in place, and ran in a manner which didn’t have me gasping for air when I inevitably failed to complete a sub-30 minute 5K, which was the case, and just took solace in the fact that I was up and doing something, and when it comes to exercising, I’m fortunate to have always had the mindset that it is always a good use of time.

I’m not the fastest runner or strongest lifter, but I can confidently say that I’m probably the most consistent and dedicated exerciser that I know.  It’s never been a fad, it’s never been something I’ve done to attain a physical goal.  I made the choice to start hitting the gym and exercising back in 2006, and short of a few exceptions like coronavirus lockdowns, have I ever taken an extended period of time off from it.

No matter how down on life I might feel, how envious of the lives, accomplishments and lifestyles of other people, I feel like I always have exercise to fall back onto.  It is never a waste of time, and often times it helps get my head in a better place than which it started, or at least get my brain chugging along, which is what brought us to this point where I’ve been able to blather on so seamlessly this morning, after the run.

Rawdogging has got to be the dumbest flex in recent times

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Although there have been a few positive exceptions, social media has mostly spawned nothing but bullshit since, well, the inception of social media.  From stuff as stupid as kids eating Tide pods, illegal activities like teaching people how to steal Kias and Hyundais, to all sort of pointless, stupid bullshit often dubbed challenges like pretending to slip and fall in grocery stores while holding milk cartons or weird dances in public places.

Sure it’s easy to just chalk up my attitude being a grumpy old man, but I have a hard time trying to justify peoples’ defense of claiming that things are just fun, if they’re inconveniencing others, or you know, committing crimes.

Recently, I saw this thing where people are apparently bragging about their ability to ride on airplanes and do absolutely nothing at all.  No headphones to listen to music, no watching any in-flight entertainment, no napping, no snacks, seemingly no bathroom breaks, just sitting and doing absolutely nothing at all.  Some of these braggarts might have a cup of coffee that they brought onto the flight, or are allowing themselves to watch the flight status screen, but for all intents and purposes, they’re partaking in a challenge known as raw dogging flights, aka doing absolutely nothing at all for as long as they can.

For some reason, it seems to be limited to men participating in this flexing contest, and I’ve (unfortunately) seen people flexing seven hours, ten hours, 14 hours, on flights within the United States, and transcontinental flights to other countries.  Dudes boasting about how they raw dogged these flights, as if its something to be proud of to be so devoid of anything in their heads that they can stare mindlessly in front of them and absolutely nothing else.

Don’t get me wrong, my life has been chaotic to the point where I have been in the position to where I do want to just stare at a wall and do absolutely nothing, but with my inherent doer mentality, even at my worst, I probably could only last like 20-30 minutes before my brain turns back on and I feel the necessity to be making good use of my time instead of squandering it.

What I wouldn’t give  to have an hour, much less 7-11 hours on a flight to do all sorts of activities that I typically can’t do when I’m in my ordinary life because I’m so in the trenches of being a dad.  I would read books, magazines, I would write brog posts, I would binge television shows and movies from the list of titles that I’ve been trying to keep track of over the years since becoming a parent.  I’d listen to music, or play a video game, but the idea of squandering any bit of free time that flights inadvertently provide would be completely out of the question.

A long time ago, I was on a flight from Atlanta to Toronto, and I was reading a book.  I was seated next to this girl who appeared to be inadvertently raw dogging the flight, and at first I thought it was strange, but I was minding my own business.  After a while, I noticed how fidgety she was, and that she had skimmed through the in-flight magazine and it was pretty apparent that she was bored.  Finally, I put my book down, and asked her if she were bored, to which began a pleasant conversation for the remainder of our flight, how she was from Guadalajara, and learned a lot of English from watching English-language television, but the point being raw dogging was such a terrible experience that conversing with a total stranger was preferrable over it.

When I went on a work trip last year, I couldn’t wait to get on the plane, because of all the free time that awaited me once my ass was in the seat.  ATL to LAX meant I would have almost four hours to myself, and once we took off, I knocked out like two brog posts, and then watched half of the latest season of Castlevania and several episodes of the live-action One Piece.  After landing in Los Angeles, I felt productive and accomplished and got my head in a good place going into a work trip.  The flight back saw more Netflix and more writing and frankly catching up on my writing queue as well as binging through two shows that I had wanted to watch was a bigger accomplishment than lots of the work crap I had to do during the trip.

Very soon, I have a small flight coming up; it’s only going to Florida, so the in-air time is only going to be barely more than an hour.  But I’ll be damned if I’m going to sit and stare blankly in silence on the flight, because that’s an hour in which I could read a book that I haven’t finished yet, maybe knock out a brog post of something that I might’ve wanted to write about and haven’t had the time to do.  Or maybe I’ll put something to watch on my iPad and enjoy an episode or two or half of a movie.

The point is, raw dogging is about the stupidest thing to have ever been come up with in recent history, and I can’t help but express disdain for it as a whole.  All these brainless dorks flexing that the ability to do it is something to be proud of, clearly have little in their heads or are completely okay with wasting time that could be better used for any sort of things that aren’t just burning a large number of hours staring at nothing but a shitty 3D model of a flight screen.

One of those my age is catching up with me moments

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I participated in this hot chicken tenders eating contest, because it was hosted by Willy’s, basically my favorite eatery in the entire city of Atlanta metropolitan area.  This is the same company in which I became the self-proclaimed Burrito King™ of Atlanta when I won a promotion they had where I had to visit and make a transaction at all 28 Willy’s locations within a 30-day span which I accomplished in four.

Well, the Willy who created my favorite burrito joint got into hot chicken, and has been slowly expanding his restaurant portfolio into the hot chicken game, opening a location of one of his new ventures not terribly far from where I am.  And then I saw that there would be a hot chicken tender eating contest, and I thought to myself, no better way to flex on the small world of Willy’s than to go and win another contest.

After all, being Korean gives me a natural +10 in spicy food tolerance, and what the fuck do white people know about spicy food anyway, so I figured it would be a layup to roll in, crush three hot chicken tenders in the span of six minutes and walk away with a little bit of swag.  Honestly, the photo on their wall of winners was probably the most important prize of all, because when it comes to fat guy accolades, showing my superiority at spice tolerance is something that I wouldn’t mind flexing on all the pleebs who can’t handle heat.

Anyway, I came, went and saw, and much like I knew I could, crushed the three hot chicken tenders in six minutes and walked away a winner.  This wasn’t a contest where there was a last man standing, but basically series of waves, where 10 people take the challenge on at a time.  Six people bounced in the first wave, and I was a part of the second wave where another five people dropped out from the heat.  I didn’t stick around for the third wave, because I had already proven my point.

Howlin’ Willy’s hot chicken was definitely among the higher tiers of spicy I’ve ever had in my life, but I will maintain that it was still not the spiciest thing I’d ever eaten either; that distinction goes to some nuclear pork I had in Seoul, where mythical then-gf and I had to tap and waste the food, and the retribution was fairly immediate.  But as for Willy’s, I definitely felt the heat through the challenge, but I was able to make it through without much difficulty.  The heat was slow acting, but after it burns, it burns off quickly, and before I left the shopping center, I was already back to feeling fine.

That is until the remainder of the day progressed, and I started to get hit with what I’m guessing was the mother of heartburn.  I don’t really know, because I really didn’t know what heartburn was supposed to feel like.  It wasn’t like indigestion pain, but just this really dull ache in my stomach that made me want to stop whatever it was I was doing, and just put myself into a position where I could apply pressure to my gut or be in a folded position where the pressure would alleviate.

Effectively, the rest of my day was ruined, because I couldn’t really get comfortable, and it impacted my ability to be present with my kids and physically competent to operate at a normal level.  I crushed a bunch of Tums hoping it would help, and I don’t think it really did.  After the kids were down, I ran to the store to get some Pepto, since the thought of something coating my insides was an appealing one, and by the time I went to bed, I probably downed a quarter of the bottle.

I’d never felt more relieved when the indigestion did hit, because it was finally giving my body the opportunity to purge the hot chicken from my body and not to get too graphic but boy did it feel as hot evacuating the body as it did burning my mouth earlier in the day.

Fortunately, a night’s sleep seemed to cure what ailed me, but before going to bed, I expressed that I felt a lot of regret for participating in a fairly meaningless contest, even if it was held by Willy’s.  The prizes were minimal, but the punishment I put onto my 40+ year old body was pretty vicious.

At first, I was just wondering if this was just my body reacting to ghost pepper, something I don’t really think I’d ever had before.  But the reality is more likely that this was a stark reminder of how I’m not the 25-year old that could eat whatever I wanted and shrug it off within hours.  Lesson learned that this was a situation where I could’ve been smarter and erred on the side of not punishing my body for a pretty useless reason.  Even for Willy’s, no matter how much of a fan I am of the brand.

Because swearing is so cool

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Obviously, it is not lost on me that I do swear in my own writing and spoken vernacular from time to time, but it doesn’t change the reality that my attitude on it is that it’s still not cool when done to an excess, and especially when profanity is used mostly for the sake of it.  I think it loses meaning when it’s done too much, and I like to think that when I do it in my own writing or spoken word, it’s because I’m fired up about something, trying to be funny for ironic effect, and not just saying it because I have nothing else better to say.

That being said, I don’t particularly remember what I was doing, where I was or how I heard it, but I recently heard a song that was clearly a sampling of Eiffel 65’s Blue Da ba dee back from 1998.  Looking it up, it’s I’m Good (Blue) by David Guetta and Bebe Rexha, figures that I no particular qualm with, I like Guetta’s music, and I like Rexha’s general persona, and as a song, it’s not bad and I think it pays decent credit to the original song.

It’s just that my beef with it is the melody that repeats itself like what feels like 28 times:

‘Cause I’m good yeah, I’m feelin’ alright
Baby, I’mma have the best fuckin’ night of my life“

And so I’m hearing a big ass F-bomb over and over again seemingly, and each time I hear it, I feel like I lose a little bit more respect for the song each time, because I’m wondering to myself if it’s even so necessary to have it in the first place.  Yes, I know how old man this probably makes me sound, but frankly the excessive use of it makes me feel like the appeal of the song erodes each time it’s blurted out.

Which sucks too, because much like the original, I like the musical theme of the song, but this is definitely not something I can play around my kids, because much like me, I’m sure they’ll only hear FUCKIN over and over again, and knowing my luck this will be the one single word they decide to repeat.

Like I know that the rules of society change, and that a lot of standard profanity isn’t as incendiary as it used to be, at least in compared to a number of terms and slurs that have more bigoted meanings behind them, but there’s just something so sad and pathetic about having to hear the same f-bomb over and over again, and thinking that something like a song, as a whole, can still be considered to be remotely of high quality when it just sounds like it’s trying to make itself sound dumb by virtue of spamming cuss words because cussing is so cool to begin with

An introduction to One Piece, via Netflix

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Despite the fact that there was probably a small overlap towards the tail end of my weeby, anime watching days and when One Piece was introduced to the world, I never saw a single episode, read any manga, or actually learned a single thing about the entire franchise.

In itself that’s kind of a hard thing to do, given my general involvement in the anime, convention and nerdy communities, but over the years, no matter how big the property got, I never learned a single thing about it.

I knew solely based on artwork it had to do with pirates and the main character appeared to be some doofy looking guy with real gangly limbs.  But other than that, I had absolutely zero knowledge of the stories or any inkling of what the plot could be about.

Honestly, I never thought about watching it when the live action dropped on Netflix, because I figured my lack of familiarity of the anime would lessen my enjoyment perhaps.  That, and at any given point I have like 62 other shows and movies on a list that is my backlog that I should be tackling first.

But then it came to my attention that one of the key actors of the show was portrayed by the son of the late great Sonny Chiba.  The Son of Chiba.  Apparently he goes by the name Makenyu or something, but there’s no hiding the fact that it is Sonny Chiba’s boy in this show.  Honestly, I didn’t know he had a son, but considering his age and the fact that Chiba is about the manliest man of the east in history it shouldn’t be any surprise.  Regardless, it was enough to pique my curiosity and the circumstances lined up to where I figured I’d give the live One Piece a shot.

And I have to say, it was a rather pleasant debut season.  The story is pretty single, and they do a good job of rotating in various antagonists and delving into each character’s backgrounds at a pace that doesn’t feel dragged out.

The characters are all mostly delightful in the sense that it’s like at any given point their weaknesses are covered by another’s strengths and everyone gets some time to shine.  Luffy’s optimism and positivity is infectious, and it’s fun watching the growth of the Straw Hat Pirates coming together.

Son of Chiba is a badass as Roronoa Zoro, and I appreciate that in spite of how strong he’s portrayed there’s a tremendous amount of growth still with his character, and frankly such could be said about all of them.  Netflix did a decent job of ordering a sampler season that accomplished everything from a storyline, character development and wrapping it all up fairly nicely to not leave it hanging.

Needless to say, I’m a fan of the property, and I look forward to a future season(s).  If I had more time in my life, I’d considering turning to clock back to 2002 and delving into the anime and all of the films the series was able to spawn.  But for what it’s worth, for someone who had absolutely zero knowledge of One Piece, I think the Netflix series does a good job of being able to create interest and make new fans.