For about the next week, I’m going to be at Disney World.
Suffice to say, there will not be any substantial posts going up for about that time.
It’s safe to assume that any posts that miraculously emerge while I’m on vacation will likely be to a state of extreme relaxation, or inebriation. Either way, I will have no regrets about them.
Have a good week everyone.
Oddly to say it, but it’s been a while since I made a post like this. If it’s not obvious, I tend to do a lot of my writing well in advance, and post them on a daily basis, to give off the impression that I’m churning out brog posts on a daily basis. I hate to kill the reality, but that’s not always entirely true. I still contend that I’m the most dedicated blogger I know as well as out there, since I’ve been doing this regularly for over twelve years now, but this is a little glimpse into the reality that is my own. I write pretty consistently on a daily basis, but there are stretches of time where I actually don’t have the time to write something, every single day.
Anyway, this is something I haven’t done in a while; a post where I’ve started writing with little or no real objective, and where I’ll actually hit “post” upon completion or when I don’t feel like writing anymore, and it will go up in at real of time as there ever is, instead of hitting “save as draft,” and saving it until Monday, because I tend to not really do much, if any, writing over the weekends, because I’m lazy like that, and frankly people don’t really use the internet on weekends aside from needs, sports scores, or Facebook; along those monotonous ways.
Overall, I can say that Dragon*Con was a pretty good time, and about what I expect out of the D*C experience on a yearly basis. I got to see and hang out with a bunch of people, I took a lot of pictures, and I shared good food and drink with decent folks. Sometimes I think it’s a little absurd that I dump a ton of money into doing such things, but eh, it’s once a year, why the heck not?
A couple of notable things happened during my weekend – like spending most of Friday night at the hospital because one of my friends called me and explained his dire need to go to urgent care out of the blue (nothing severe, but still necessary). Then there was the ironically good sense of mind I had on one night to decide to sleep on the floor that prevented me from getting puked on that makes me realize how lucky I was on one evening. And then there’s the always fun instances of watching a fellow nerd decide to handcuff himself in proposed matrimony that always is a joyous occasion at D*C. Hospitals, puking and engagements, oh my.
I know just about all of it has to do with the fact that I can be a cheap motherfucker from time to time. Often times I feel like I have to tell myself that it’s okay to spend money that I’ve saved up for the occasional splurge, vacation, emergency or rainy day. I’m pretty sure I get my reluctance to drop large sums of money from my own fairly financially conservative family, and it doesn’t help that given some of the circumstances of my parents’ divorce, there’s an expectation of my sister and I that we’re going to have to help financially support both of them at some point, when I’m struggling on a fairly consistent basis to keep my own head above water.
But right now, I kind of hate my family. I kind of hate all Koreans for that matter. The feeling will obviously eventually subside, and we’ll all find some sort of compromise to living again eventually, but at this very moment, I’m kind of pissed off at life, and I have only my family to thank for that.
Does this make me sound selfish? Yeah sure, but I’m coming to the conclusion to a potential personal belief that everyone needs to have some selfish in them in order to prevent themselves from missing out on well, life.
During the tail end of my latest miserable visit up to Northern Virginia, the place where I grew up and now the place I dread going to more than jury duty or a workload of 380+ slide PowerPoints, the family was having another argument. Typical Korean story bullshit, but then my mom pipes in that she now “gets” why the grandparents in Korean dramas are always pining for themselves to finally just die, so that they could alleviate the burden of their existence of their struggling children.
Sometimes I wish my parents would go back to Korea, just so they could stop using their inability to have learned competent basic English as an excuse to be irresponsible and push the burden of their woes onto my sister and I. It sounds terrible, but I sometimes believe that if the monumental, albeit imaginary, language and cultural barrier didn’t stand in front of them, my parents might be able to take care of their own bullshit as opposed to heaping the responsibilities onto their children.
I understand the value of family and that we’re all supposed to be there for one another unconditionally, but in order for things to genuinely have any remote shot at success, all lines of communication must be open, and there has to be a mutual respect and acceptance that exists from all parties involved. I have no problem with helping my family or other people in general, because I like to imagine myself as a fairly decent person at the core, but it gets to a point where people that people who don’t help themselves are beyond any external help. That’s how I feel about my family sometimes, and it makes me feel genuinely lousy.
The story goes like this: Second-generation Koreans emigrate to the United States to do some sort of blue-collar work, whether it’s something agricultural or something more mundane like dry cleaning or operating a liquor store. I can’t say that I necessarily understand the rationale behind it, but often times the justification is “for the kids,” and often times “to have a better life.” The third generation of Koreans are essentially raised as Americans with as much Korean ideals as they are forcibly engrained with. In the perfect ending to this story, they become successful and make a boatload of money to where they can support their aging parents through the remainder of their lives as well as sustaining themselves and produce the next generation and sustain them too, with hopes that they will repeat the cycle, however theoretically from a higher starting point.
But the world ain’t perfect, and we live in reality. There aren’t nearly enough happy endings.
Continue reading “There are times when I resent being Korean”
Last week, I had a general idea of a schedule in which I wanted to write what I wanted to write about SDCC, and when I wanted to have my Comic-Con photos all sorted, processed and ultimately uploaded. Basically, I told myself that I wanted to have everything done in a week. Because, I was going out of town during the weekend to gather another bobblehead as well as see a new baseball park, and then I would have more photos to sort and share, and something else to write about next week.
I made my trip out of town over the weekend, but apparently the rains that have plagued Georgia over the last fucking year two months decided to come along with me, and proceed to ruin the one thing I really wanted to accomplish. Needless to say, it rained just enough for the Danville Braves to cancel the one game I had planned on going to see. Naturally, the announcement came LITRALLY minutes before my brother and I pulled into the parking lot, not to mention that it had actually stopped raining when we entered Danville itself. But all the prior rain had sufficiently soaked the outfield to unsafe playing conditions and for the D-Braves to call the game.
