Life is complicated

I specifically earmarked this particular day to write about how I was about to embark on a vacation back to Korea, with a brief stop in the Philippines, and how excited I was.  It was exciting to be going back to the Motherland, because I had such an amazing time when I went for the first time last year, and I was really pumped up about this time going with mythical gf, since she’s such a Koreeb, and it would be fun to kind of witness the excitement of a first visit through her eyes as well.

This is a trip that had been planned for the better part of the entire 2017 year, where lots of money, planning and more money had gone into nailing down travel and lodging in order to get the optimal prices at the optimal times in order to accommodate both our work schedules and allotted vacation times.  But it was done a long time ago, and since then, it’s always been the constant milestone to look forward to, the thing we’ve been counting down the months, then the weeks, and then the days, up until today, when we eventually embark.

But as its often said, life doesn’t operate in a vacuum, and an infinite number of things exist all around us at any given time.  I don’t really know to segue to it in a smoother transition, but based on the title of this post alone, it should be expected that an unfortunate turn is bound to happen.  But there’s a medical issue in my family and to cut to the chase, there is an uncertainty on the amount of time this person has left. 

As far as I’m concerned, this could not possibly have happened at any worse of a time, but naturally I am not the actual person concerned.  But it doesn’t make it suck any less that a life hangs in the uncertain balance, and I’m in a trapped feeling position of not knowing what I can do, because life isn’t about me, there are others involved, and every choice affects others in a variety of manners.

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The whitest thing I’ve ever done

Last weekend, mythical gf and I went to South Carolina to see the Carolina Cup, which is a series of horse races.  Leading up to what, I have no fucking clue, but it was billed to me as an event of drinking, eating, drinking, socializing, drinking and if you’re lucky, you might even get to see a horse run by.  I mean, it sounded like a good idea to me, honestly.

Now I don’t intend for the title of this post to imply that I did not have a good time, quite the contrary, I enjoyed myself a good deal, and I would be happy doing it again in the future.  But make absolutely no mistake that the headline is 100% accurate, and of all the things I’ve ever done in my life, there is without any hesitation, question or debate that this was undoubtedly the whitest thing I’ve ever done.

Men frolicking around in linen suits and/or khaki everything, with shirts featuring more pastels than Crayola’s Easter crayon collection.  Women wearing gaudy dresses and gigantic doofy hats.  And food and alcohol pretty much everywhere, and for an event that’s revolves around four horse races, people bring enough to indulge for at least sun up until sun down.

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APORKALYPSE NOW

Last weekend, I drove past a Hardee’s in South Carolina, and I saw on a fairly nondescript roadside sign saying “APORKALYPSE IS HERE.”  The sign was pointing at a Hardee’s, but the name “aporkalypse” definitely caught my attention.

Was this a rogue franchise making up an item?  Or was this something on a broader-scale release?  It didn’t matter what, I couldn’t stop repeating the word in my head, and I felt that I had to know.

Man, it’s hard to imagine the times in our lives when we all didn’t have smartphones and mobile internet, and couldn’t acquire information at the drop of a hat, wherever we were.  Thankfully being out in the sticks of South Carolina wasn’t enough to choke out mobile data and I was able to Google what aporkalypse was, and now I know what I’m going to have for breakfast over this weekend.

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The obligatory 2016 year in review post

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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Photos: League of Legends World Championship, Season 6

[2020 note]: this is unposted content from 2016, photographs from mythical and I’s trip out to Los Angeles for the 2016 LCK Fall Championship AKA Worlds, the season 6 world championship.

It also dawned on me that this trip capped off a span of two months where I visited Europe, Korea, went to Disney Food & Wine, and then Worlds, so basically an insane amount of leisurely travel in a short amount of time.

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The LCK Fall Split Finals AKA Worlds 2016

For the second year in a row, mythical gf and I decided to go see the finals to the League of Legends World Championship.  For the second year in a row, the finalists were both teams out of Korea; hence the renaming of Worlds to League Champions Korea’s Fall Split, since for the fourth year in a row, Korea has run roughshod over the competition and would be champion of the game.

Thankfully, 2016 would be a year in which Worlds was held in the United States, absolving me from making a third international trip within the span of six weeks.  Instead, it was merely a leisurely weekend trip to Los Angeles, which saw a miserable flight out to LA, lots of junk food and Pikachu Game on top of League-related activity.

But for simplicity sake, we’ll stick to the Worlds experience, because honestly, there’s not a whole lot to talk about in regards to playing Pikachu Game on the Santa Monica Pier, and being sat next to a 400 pound blob on a flight.

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This is me lately

Minus the caffeine pill addiction, but it’s how I feel way more often than naught.

I have a lot of things that I feel I need to do: edit down nearly 2,000 pictures from Europe and Korea.  Write about experiences in Korea.  Build a prop.  Take care of household chores, like replacing the kitchen light and paring down the shrubs.  Write some more, about random, inane things for a brog that’s been down since fucking April, that nobody will see until I migrate my site.  Clean my house, so that I can someday sell my house.  I need a haircut.

So what do I do?  Write about how I feel like I don’t have enough time, or any time, instead.

In my defense, I am currently not in a place where I can do much of my self-imposed workload, although I could write about Korea but I was there for two weeks how can i parse it all down to a few words???

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