Tag: vacation

When did fanny packs become acceptable again?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

While out in Las Vegas over Labor Day weekend, I couldn’t help but notice that there was an unusually large number of people who were wearing fanny packs all over the place.  Not only were they wearing fanny packs, they were all wearing them slung across one shoulder and chest, like people used to wear messenger bags.  And after seeing the 350th person wearing a fanny pack like a satchel, it begs me to ask the question that this post is titled:

When did fanny packs become acceptable again?

I choose my words deliberately, and I don’t say cool, because to me, fanny packs were never not cool at any point in my lifetime, but there’s no mistaking that there was a large swath of time in which they were just not deemed acceptable by popular social standards. 

When I was a kid, I rocked a fanny pack between the grades 2-4; not only was it a great place to keep all my cash on hand, but it was the perfect place to stash absolutely anything, anything at all, without having to burden my hands.  Cool rocks or sticks I found in the woods, my WWF or TMNT action figures, the metaphorical golden treasure to a fat kid that was candy and/or gum.  I always had shit on hand, thanks to the utility and convenience of my fanny pack.

But at some point in time, I began to get ridicule, and I was eventually branded some sort of nerd for having my fanny pack.  I wasn’t sure if it was the culture shift I had gone through moving from rural Virginia to prestigious northern Virginia, just the changing of the times, or asshole kids being bullies to me, but it got to the point where I stopped with the fanny pack, and short of zubaz-wearing professional wrestlers, they were mostly unseen for the next three decades.

Obviously living under the rock I do, I have no idea of when specifically they’ve suddenly become so acceptable again, but I’m just noticing just how everyone seems to be getting their hands on them these days, and amongst the kids of today, they’re being treated like some brand-new innovation of style and convenience.  I’m sure a fanny pack is perfect for holding your phone without bulking up your pockets or if you don’t have pockets because male rompers seem to be acceptable too.  Battery packs and charging cables because everyone is so glued to their mobile devices that a single day’s charge is insufficient are nice to be able to stash close to your person too.

Man, fanny packs sure are fucking cool for all the utility and convenience they provide without having to commit to an entire backpack or messenger bag!

But I have to question the part where they’re being worn around the shoulder, because fashion not-withstanding, that’s just a poor distribution of weight, and on the long-term, can have some physical detriment to the body.  I used to carry around a messenger bag, and wear all my duffel bags over the shoulder, but after long periods of time, that shit begins to wear on you, with all the weight they’re putting on a single shoulder.

It’s not lost on me just how bitter old man this all makes me sound like, but you have to understand that the backlash fanny packs got back in the early 90s was pretty fierce, to the point where they practically went extinct overnight in like 1991.

I suppose this is something that generationally, everyone eventually goes through at some points in their lives.  Perhaps in the near future, I’ll get to the backlash on fanny packs a second time, but as a judgmental bystander, and watch with smug satisfaction as all the dumb kids of today shamefully hang theirs up as discreetly as they can, and be sad that the sheep of the world don’t like utility and convenience anymore.

Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge fails at first impression

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

While mythical wife and I were down at Disney for #1’s birthday, we earmarked one evening to go see Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge at Hollywood Studios.  Paid for the lightning lanes, made reservations at Oga’s, etc.  Capitalize on one evening away from parenting to see something with a monumental amount of hype behind it.

Now I like Star Wars just fine.  I’ll admit I’ve soured over the last few years because the fandom of the property has become insufferable and taints everything the IP produces, and I’m over other fans and the property itself at invalidating my fandom because I happened to really like all of the novella in the past, like Timothy Zahn and Kevin J. Anderson’s respective trilogies.

But I like Star Wars enough to watch all the movies and Disney+ originals with expediency, and enjoy them as is without even trying to entertain the idea of seeing what others have to think on the internet.  It works out best that way.

So I was looking forward to visiting Galaxy’s Edge, mostly to ride the new rides, as well as hoping I could maybe find some place that might sell reprints of the storyboard sketches from The Mandalorian or Book of Boba Fett.

Conditions were great to have a good first impression; the Florida evening was not hot and not was rather pleasant. The lightning lane mythical wife paid for would help us avoid oppressive lines, and the park itself wasn’t stupid crowded, going right at closing.

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Year two of forever (Dad brog #080)

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Under normal circumstances, I would’ve liked to have written something on the actual day.  But mythical wife and I were at Disney World with #1 celebrating her second birthday, so appropriately understandable, I just wasn’t around to take the time to write and reflect.

And just like that, my first child is two years old.  Naturally, the passage of time has felt like a blip, and I can still remember lots of the finer details of raising my daughter, and the world she grew up in and has been living in, still amazed at just how things have progressed in that span.

Over the last year, between first and second birthdays, a lot has most certainly occurred.  Not long after turning one, my daughter really kicked it into gear and began crawling like a speed demon obsessed, which was a might’ve been considered a little late in the development game, but honestly that part didn’t last long at all, because before we knew it she was suddenly upright, and it was barely a month after turning one, did she take her first steps and frankly, she hasn’t stopped running around since then.

#1 basically eats everything in sight now, and she went from being introduced to solids to not just inhaling everything that’s put in front of her, but now an innate curiosity and determination to utilize utensils and not just eat everything with fistfuls jammed into her mouth.

Obviously, one of the more substantial occurrences to have happened within the last year was that even though she was just one year old, #1 became a big sister already, when #2 was born in July, and my household had to deal with the harrowing realization of being a house with two under two, and the hard mode of life we were about to embark on.

In spite of everything I may have written detailing the difficulty and hell that parenting under these circumstances might have been, one of the joys to have emerged from it all has been witnessing just how much my now elder daughter, loves her little sister.  What started off as hesitation and fussing about the new edition to the home, #1 has taken to big sisterhood quite well, and fewer things bring genuine happiness to my heart than seeing her open up her arms and envelop her little sister in big hugs, whenever the opportunities present themselves.

Not a day goes by where I don’t just stop and watch my child at varying points throughout the days, just to see what she’ll do next.  Not a day goes by where it doesn’t seem like there’s some sort of growth or development with her, most of the time pertaining to absorption of the things she’s hearing and her ability to repeat and recollect, which also means that I have to really watch out for using profanity around her, because much like this meme, there’s no doubt that she’ll remember the bad words forever.

But every night while I wind her down for bedtime, I tell her that I love her so much, and it melts my heart every single time, when she repeats the words “love you so much.”  I know for now it’s mostly just repeating the words that I’m saying, but I’m hoping that one of these days eventually, she’ll be saying it as a declarative statement of her own volition and with understanding the meaning of the words.

As much as I love her though, all the same, has arrived the time of toddler defiance; a lot more no’s, a lot more fussiness at being told what to do, and a whole lot more determination to do things herself and her way, and not necessarily how others want her to do things.  I’m guessing this is probably the onset of the suppose terrible twos, but really it’s still just the never ending adventure of raising a child that I’m clearly experiencing first hand for the first time.  Hopefully she doesn’t make my life too hell as mythical wife and I embark on this next chapter of our parenting lives, but I’m confident that our love for our kids won’t waver, no matter how much trolling and exasperation they’re going to inevitably test us with throughout our lives.

Either way, I thought I’d have more to write about this than this, but I am still a tired dad with too much on his plate, and not enough time to accomplish everything he wants to do.  Regardless of the circumstances, a happy belated-in-writing birthday to my first child, whom I love so much, and will always love so much.  I look forward to watching her grow and develop, from the good to the bad, and there will never be a day where I am not thankful to be her dad.

What’s the point of dress codes if they’re not enforced?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

All snide social commentary that skews towards the obvious racism that is often associated with them, it is a serious question: if a place has a dress code and nobody enforces it, what’s the point of having it in the first place?

Down in Florida, my famiry went to dinner at a supposed upscale steakhouse at one of the numerous Disney resorts.  While we were packing for the trip, I had full intentions of going full vacation mode as in packing basically nothing but shorts, t-shirts, and with the intention of wearing nothing on my feet other than my slides the whole time, but mythical wife informed me that we had reservations at a place where there was a dress code and that I should pack accordingly; as in a collared shirt, and jeans were acceptable as long as they were not ripped up. 

Only slightly begrudgingly because I do like fine dining and don’t mind cleaning up from time to time, I did pack accordingly.  But I did mention to my wife that I would wager money that we would probably see people there that were nowhere close to adhering to the dress code, be it people slumming it up or just samples of the various Florida white trash that exists in the state.

When we got to the restaurant, I was compliant to the dress code because I have respect and follow rules, but completely unsurprising, were all the people I could see inside and waiting outside of the restaurant, that most definitely were not.  In most cases, it was a bunch of Ben Afflecks who looked like they rolled right off one of Orlando’s countless golf courses, in their polo shirts, but their non-compliant khaki shorts, but there were no shortage of people slumming it up in t-shirts and modes of dress that would be better suited to a mall food court rather than an upscale resort steakhouse.

And not that I have any issues with gay guys, but there was one fabulous dude wearing a men’s denim romper, with red bandanna around his neck, as if he were deliberately trying to look like a male version of Rosie the Riveter.  All classifications aside, that wasn’t compliant to the dress code either, but that didn’t stop him from being able to get inside and dine as well.

Which brings me back to the original query, if they’re never enforced, why do places even bother advertising any sort of dress code?  At the end of the day it’s fairly meaningless to me, but as a person who can respect and adhere to simple rules, it always irks me when other people don’t.  It’s not at all difficult to do, and it makes me wonder why people don’t want to take a little pride and clean themselves up.  I’m not saying that people need to go all Harry and Lloyd, but is it really fatal to just try?

All this really makes me want, is to see a video montage of people getting turned away at restaurants for not being compliant to dress codes, but much like the disappointment I feel in person when I see those who don’t, the internet really is no different.  I can’t find any compilations, much less any decent individual videos of such humiliations occurring, and just a whole bunch of depressing and disappointing news articles of black people getting turned away at restaurants.

At this point, abolish them all, if they’re never going to be enforced and only being used to inappropriately weed out racism.

2 Under 2: The First Disney Trip (#066)

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Going to Disney World with the kids was definitely something that was going to be inevitable, given its place as far as mythical wife and I are concerned.  A wedding in central Florida where the wife was to be one of the bridesmaids accelerated the trip, and no matter how ready or not we were, the time had arrived to take the girls down to Orlando for a lengthy trip that was chock full of memories, lessons, trials and tribulations, as far as I was concerned.

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Fulfilling the weeb dream

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

If anyone knew me 20 years ago, they might remember me as an anime-obsessed weeaboo who loved everything Japan, even more so than my own Korean heritage.  Most everything I was interested was related to anime or Japanese culture, and I even took four years of Japanese between high school and college to further enhance my fascination with the culture.

All the time, I would’ve loved to have visited Japan, but when you’re a teenager and have no money or means to make such trips happen, that was more or less of a pipedream that would probably never happen any time soon.

Eventually, I grew out of it, further embraced my true heritage and kind of went on with my life. As the years passed however, I’d watched people all around me eventually make their pilgrimages to the glorious nation.  Few have ever said anything bad about it, and generally everyone has nothing but glowing things to say about their trips to Japan.  But for whatever reasons, the boyhood dream of visiting glorious Nippon had always eluded me.  Just about all of my closest friends had been to Japan at some point and I began to feel like everyone but me had been there.

When I got with mythical wife when she was still mythical girlfriend and she made me realize foreign travel wasn’t as unattainable as I’d been living my life believing, we started going to a bunch of other countries together, as she too had already been to Japan, and it was mostly on the backburner for her.  Plus, by this time, I had stated that I wanted my first real foray into Asia to be Korea, holding loyal to my actual heritage, although that notion kind of went down the toilet when a European cruise we took, ported in Kusadasi, Turkey, which is technically on the Asia side of the country.  Fail.

Anyway, what I’m getting to is the fact that the time has finally come: I’m going to Japan.

All it took was a global pandemic and the country to close their borders for airfares to the glorious country to drop to make pulling the trigger a no-brainer, especially since I could cash in some SkyMiles to outright cover one of our fares, bringing our overall cost to laughable numbers.  But regardless, our tickets have been purchased and our dates set, and soon, I will be fulfilling the 20-year weeaboo boyhood dream of visiting the land of the rising sun.

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Life as a married man, brog post #2

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Honestly, there’s not nearly as much to say about the honeymoon as there was the wedding.  Frankly, much of this was split into two posts mostly because of my OCD of wanting to make sure a wedding photo was with the wedding post, and so that some picture from the honeymoon can also get displayed independently, therefore necessitating its own post.  Still, not to say that I can’t spout off about a honeymoon, but in the interest of transparency, this is the true impetus of this post coming to fruition.

Frankly, we’re just happy to have done a honeymoon, especially immediately after the wedding.  We’ve seen it happen to enough couples, where a honeymoon is planned anywhere from months to an entire year after the wedding to actually happen, and in some cases not even happen at all.  Yeah no, no disrespect to those who embark on similar paths, but the both of us most definitely wanted to have an actual honeymoon, where we could actually relax and take a well-earned break from the life of planning a wedding on top of our normal working lives.

In a nutshell, we went to Disney World for a few days, stayed at the Polynesian resort, and then transitioned onto a Disney cruise for the next week, where we sailed to Mexico for a few days, hit Disney’s private island Castaway Cay for a day, and then came back home.  The wife drove most of the itinerary, since she’s at least 200x more into Disney than I am, but I’m more than happy to go along for the ride, as long as the vast majority of my trip could be spent relaxing, eating like a pig, and generally having very little commitments at all.

Overall, my missions could very well be considered accomplished.  Maybe a little too much, because I still have no earthly idea what I’m doing with my life whenever I have free time back home.  I just watched Chinese Super Ninjas for the 80th time in my life last night, because I couldn’t triangulate on one better thing to do with two free hours than that.

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