Nintendo is right, Nascar is wrong.

Royals Win!!!!1!

noreply@blogger.com (Jae-hak) — Wed, 04 Nov 2015 12:27:00 +0000

Kaufman Stadium, May 2000

Everyone and their dog is writing a Royals piece now, to which I say: woof woof.

I watched the Royals win the World Series in an empty Korean classroom on a computer, then gave out virtual high fives on Facebook and Twitter. While I wish I could have joined the party on Mass Street or Westport or Citi Field, I was fine where I was. It doesn't matter what continent I was on. The Royals won the World Series. The Royals. Won. The World Series. I was there.

I was there in 1985 too, in the family room when the Royals beat the Cardinals. I didn't know anything about baseball and I didn't really follow sports. The Bears and the Royals were the best teams in the world, and I just assumed that my teams always had been and always would be.

I don't remember the first Royals game I attended in person, though it was definitely in the mid-80s. I do remember my first double header. It was July 3, 1987, and the Royals were playing two against Toronto. The Old Man and I arrived late for the first game but saw the Royals seal the victory, then we watched the team retire its first number - Dick Howser's 10. Howser had died from a brain tumor just a couple weeks before. The Royals were down 4-3 in the bottom of the 9th with one out. They got a single, and Willie Wilson came in to pinch run, then promptly stole second. Kevin Seitzer struck out, and Toronto intentionally walked George Brett, then accidentally walked Danny Tartabull to load the bases. Enter Frank White. On a wild pitch, Wilson scored to tie the game and Brett advanced to third. Frank White hit the walk off single to score George Brett, and all was right with the 1987 Kansas City world. We got home from the game after midnight, but I didn't sleep for a second on the hour long drive even though it was the latest I'd ever been up.

The Royals were competitive throughout the rest of my childhood. I got to see Bo Jackson hit some towering blasts and break some bats over his knee. In 1993 they spent much of the year in first place before fading, and I cheered out loud in that family room at my parents' house when Bo Jackson finally came back from hip replacement surgery and hit a home run in the playoffs in his first at-bat - in a playoff game no less - even though he was now playing for the White Sox. Watching Kansas City stars make huge plays in other teams' uniforms was something that I would have to get used to. The Royals were on a 14 game win streak when the MLB went on strike in 1994, and the game's economics changed and the Royals began their long dive.

I mainly ignored the Royals during their uninspiring Bob Boone years in the mid-90s, but fell back in love when Tony Muser took over. The late 90s/early aughts outfield of Johnny Damon, Carlos Beltran, and Jermaine Dye was exhilarating. Carlos Febles was an exciting young player, Joe Randa was solid at 3rd, Rey Sanchez couldn't hit but stole hits on the regular at shortstop, and Mike Sweeney was a star in the making. However, the Royals bullpen was a disaster - no lead was safe. Ricky Bottalico seemed to blow saves every single night.

Johnny Damon was the first to leave. He was a homegrown, hometown guy who made it clear he would go to any team that paid him an extra nickel. The Royals traded him for Roberto Hernandez, the closer they desperately needed, but Hernandez ended up falling apart, and without Damon's bat and base running, the Royals weren't in the position to blow saves as often anymore.

Despite the losing, the team still remained fun and interesting with Sweeney, Dye, Beltran, and Randa. In 2000, I went to a game with some buddies. Some credit card company was offering a free Royals baseball for applying, so we all applied for cards, knowing full well our derelict college-aged asses would be rejected. Free baseball either way. As the game continued, we moved to better and better seats in the half full Kaufman Stadium, and we finally ended up a couple rows away from Buck O'neil. Buck was, as always, diligently watching the game and keeping score, so we approached him during an inning break to say hi, shake his hand, and ask him to sign our credit-card company provided baseballs, to which he of course obliged. We were absolutely starstruck. I really wish one of us would have gotten a picture instead of an autograph. Shortly after, the Royals won on a Joe Randa walk-off grand slam.

The Royals managed to sign Mike Sweeney on a creative contract that required the Royals to go over .500 in order to lock up the deal, In 2002 they lost 100 games for the first time in club history and fired Muser. Through largely smoke and mirrors, in 2003 they finally won - barely, going 83-79. Sweeney's back problems would begin soon after, and both sides were locked in an unhappy 5 year marriage as the Royals tumbled back to last place in 2004. They would lose 100 games and be the worst team in baseball for the next 3 years.

In 2006, The Royals hired Dayton Moore as GM, but most people had stopped paying attention. Another GM promising wins. A GM who wanted to emulate small market winners like Tampa Bay and Minnesota. At the time, success on the Twins level, i.e. winning the division and getting creamed by the Yankees in the ALDS, seemed unimaginable for the Royals at the time.

How do I know? Because I was there, like I said. I was there when Muser wanted the team to stop eating milk and cookies, I was there when Tony Pena jumped in the shower with his clothes on, I was there when Trey Hillman also was for some reason, I was there when Buddy Bell said it could always get worse and delivered on his promise. I never thought this, this World Series, could happen. I was there when the Royals traded future World Series MVP Jermaine Dye for Neifi Fucking Perez and Carlos Beltran for spare change.

The Royals showed improvement under Ned Yost, I actually liked the Wil Myers for Jamie Shields (and Wade Davis) deal and the Zack Greinke for Lo Cain and Alcides Escobar deal at the time they happened. Everyone knew the young up and comers like Eric Hosmer, Mike Moustakas, and Salvy Perez could be the real deal. Still, I never believed THIS was possible until September 30, 2014 when the Royals came back from 4 runs down agains the Oakland A's in the Wild Card game, the most exciting baseball game I've ever seen.

I was bum(garnered) after Game 7 last year, but I always thought we'd be back. I never bought into the doubters who thought the Royals would regress this year. In a way, winning this year is even better than winning last year would have been. Last year the Royals were "cute," the little engine that could, America's favorite underdog. Winning this year, winning it all this year, that was for Kansas City. Our fiery starting pitchers were quick with the chin music, and other American League fan bases grew to hate us. Good. I want the scumbag Toronto fans that throw beers at their own brethren to hate us.

I still can't believe we won, but the way THIS TEAM was constructed, I never thought we could lose. Not after that game in Houston. Wasn't going to happen.

We'll never see another team quite like the 2015 Royals. I've never loved a baseball team more.

The Super Bowl and Jaehak

noreply@blogger.com (Jae-hak) — Thu, 16 Jan 2014 09:28:00 +0000

Again with the football. And no, I'm not going to talk about that game. Being a Chiefs fan sucks.

Today I'm going to talk about the most noble of American traditions, the Super Bowl. See, a lot of people gather together to watch the Super Bowl each year, often in the same location year after year. I kind of miss this notion, but then again, it's not something I've ever really done. As a chronic expat, rootless type, I've managed to see the Super Bowl most every year, but I never watch it in the same place twice.

The last time I watched two consecutive Super Bowls in the same room on the same TV was twenty years ago. Today, I'm going to break that down. If you are a football fan, a Jaehak fan, or an expat, this may ring true for you in some way as well. If not, whatever, I already have your click.

I'm going to list this by Super Bowl year, not regular season year.

1994 - Dallas defeats Buffalo for the second consecutive time, and I watched the game in my parents' living room on the family Sony for the 9th consecutive time.

1995 - I was too cool at this point to watch the game with my parents. Instead, I watched the 49ers murder the Chargers on my crappy 13 inch Toshiba in my parents's basement, my current home. My friends came over to watch the game. Mom brought nachos downstairs for us.

1996 - I saw the Steelers almost come back against the Cowboys at my buddy Doug's place with a couple other people.

1997 - My first non-Lawrence Super Bowl. I watched the Packers beat the Patriots in my friend Becky's dorm room. Becky had no interest in the game, but she had a better TV than me.

1998 - I watched the game with my roommates and friends at our shitty south Lawrence apartment. I was horrified to see the Broncos win, and I still wasn't over the Chiefs heartbreaking loss to the Broncos at Arrowhead in a game where Denver took cheating to a new level. Equally upset with the loss was my buddy Doug, who watched the game with us. Doug would die in a car accident 9 months later, so this would be the last Super Bowl he ever saw.

1999 - The Broncos beat Atlanta in a game that should have been a Denver-Minnesota classic. I watched it with my mom and brother at home on the family Sony for the final time.

2000 - Wow, those last two Super Bowls were depressing, and this one wasn't much better. I watched it alone at my terrible converted garage apartment in the student ghetto in Lawrence. All of my friends were out of town, and my mom moved to Baltimore on this very day. St. Louis defeated Tennessee in a boring game with a great fourth quarter.

2001 - I had just moved to Florida, so I watched the game at my dad's house with him and his girlfriend. The game was in Tampa, so we had gone out the night before to party with random Giants and Ravens fans. My dad's girlfriend had cooked wings that were so spicy, I inadvertently drank seven Coronas in 30 minutes.

2002 - I was back in Lawrence, and I watched the Patriots upset the Rams at a bar in Lawrence with a bunch of friends. This game is most noted for my buddy Daniel jumping up from the table and yelling "Where's your god now Kurt (Warner)!" when Adam Vinatieri hit the winning kick. Good times.

2003 - I was living in Chicago now, and I went to watch the game at my buddy Dennis's house in Elmhurst. The Bucs killed the Raiders in the Gruden Bowl.

2004 - Going it alone again, I watched the highly entertaining Nipple Bowl in my shitty studio apartment on a terrible 13 inch Curtis Mathis TV. I had plans to go to watch the game with friends in Wicker Park, but I was too lazy to take the El and too broke to take a cab.

2005 - I was living in a better apartment with my brother in Chicago at this point. Both the Chiefs and the Bears were terrible all year, so Dr. Kickass and I had both adopted the Eagles early in the year. We watched the game at a friend's apartment in Ravenswood, and were sad to see the Patriots beat our adopted team. We promptly ditched Eagles fanhood.

2006 - I was on a European trip during this game. I watched the AFC Championship at home and the NFC Championship at the bar in O'hare. I didn't see this game live, though I did hear the result when I was in Munich. My brother DVRd it for me, so I watched it in our Chicago apartment about a week after the fact.

2007 - My first Korean Super Bowl. In Korea, the game happens Monday morning due to time zones. I stayed in a shitty hotel in Itaewon the night before the game so that I could get up early and watch the game at the bar. I ended up with a great seat at 3 Alley Pub, sitting in a chair with an unobstructed view of the projection screen. I sat next to this old retired DoD guy. Sadly, the Bears lost to Indy because Rex Grossman. I stopped drinking at halftime because I had to go to work in the afternoon.

2008 - Without a real rooting interest, I was too lazy to bother going to Itaewon for the game. Fortunately, It was on Korean TV. I only saw the 4th quarter, but that was the only entertaining part of this game, as the Giants helmet-caught their way to victory.

2009 - I was back in America. I watched the AFC Championship with my step brother and a bunch of people at a big house party, but as Baltimore lost there were no parties for the big game. I watched the Steelers eek it out over Arizona with my mom and step dad at their house.

2010 - Back in Korea, a bar near my house had the NFL package and agreed to open early to show the Super Bowl. My buddy Don and I were the only people to show up to see the Saints defeat the Colts. I stopped drinking after the third quarter, then went to the gym to sweat out the booze before going to work.

2011 - I was unemployed (with a job starting in March) and crashing at Don's place in the Seoul suburbs. I had the NFL package, so we watched the AFC and NFC championships live. As the Bears lost to Green Bay, I no longer cared about watching the Super Bowl live so I immediately booked a flight to the Philippines. This would be my second tip there, and the one in which I would meet Cores. I was in Cebu the night before the game, and a local sports bar assured me they would be showing the game live at 6:30 a.m. Turned out I didn't go since I stayed out at the bars until some sort of unreasonable hour. I thought I would be able to watch it when I got back to Korea, but the NFL package that I paid $250 for would not allow me to watch the game a couple weeks after the fact. I hated both teams anyway, so whatever. This would end up being the first Super Bowl since 1985 that I did not see at all. Given the trip, missing this game was well worth it.

2012 - Another Pats-Giants game, another Giants win. I didn't buy the NFL package that year, I was still mad that they wouldn't let me watch the previous Super Bowl after the fact. I found a nice pirate feed to watch the game live at my cool central Seoul apartment.

2013 - America again, Baltimore again. As the Ravens were in this one, I went out to a bar with my mom, step-dad, and some friends. I'd never watched the game in the city of the winning team before, so that part was cool.

2014 - TBD. I work mornings now, so I can't watch the game and go to work. However, unlike previous Korean jobs, I have sick days now, so there's a better than 90% chance that I'll call in sick to watch the game live, likely at Osan Air Base or Itaewon.

NFL Hall of Fame QBs: Current Players' Chances

noreply@blogger.com (Jae-hak) — Thu, 26 Dec 2013 14:22:00 +0000

Along with watching shady pirated game streams at work, I’ve been watching a lot of football highlights on YouTube and episodes of “A Football Life” as of late. The playoffs are nearly here. Living in Korea, football in general and the NFL specifically has become a long distance relationship for me, but the love is still there. Apropos of nothing, I feel like talking about Hall of Fame Quarterbacks – current members as well as breaking down those most likely to be enshrined.

The NFL Hall of Fame currently has 30 quarterbacks. For the purposes of this post, I’m just going to call it 31 since the only thing that could prevent Brett Favre from being inducted on his first ballot is the apocalypse. Kurt Warner is likely a shoo-in as well, but for now I’m going to leave him out of the conversation since his odds of going to Canton are slightly less than Favre’s 100%.

We football fans (I use the we here, as I assume you must be a football fan if you’ve bothered to make it to the third paragraph) are experiencing the most prolific passing offenses in the history of the game. Stats that I am too lazy to look up would probably show that Don Coryell and Bill Walsh would be considered run-oriented coaches if they were to run their exact offenses in today’s aerial focused game. This begs the question – with such a pass-dominated league, are we currently witnessing the largest influx of quarterback talent in league history?

The answer to this rhetorical question is probably yes, but I want to examine whether we are also watching the most Hall of Fame QB –rich season in history. I think we can all agree that the only way Jay Cutler will ever be in Canton is if he’s invited to Brandon Marshall’s induction. Yet, if Cutler time traveled to 1972, 1982, or even 1992 and somehow kept the same stats he puts up now, he would have been first ballot.

If you are around my age, you probably recall the great quarterbacks of the 1980s and 90s. In 1993 and 1994, the NFL boasted a whopping 8 future Hall of Fame starting QBs. The league had 28 teams at the time, so a remarkable 28.5% of teams started a hall of famer:

Kansas City – Joe Montana

Denver – John Elway

Buffalo – Jim Kelly

Dallas – Troy Aikman

San Francisco – Steve Young

Green Bay – Brett Favre

Miami – Dan Marino

Houston (1993)/Minnesota (1994) – Warren Moon

Surely, this was the most dense population of starting Hall of Fame quarterbacks, right? Shockingly, no. In 1971, there were 26 teams in the league, and NINE starting hall of fame signal callers. Over a third of the league!

New York Giants – Fran Tarkenton

Washington – Sonny Jurgensen

Green Bay – Bart Star

Dallas - Roger Staubach

Kansas City – Len Dawson

Baltimore – Johnny Unitas

New York Jets – Joe Namath

Miami - Bob Griese

Pittsburgh – Terry Bradshaw

Plus, for good measure, George Blanda threw a few passes for Oakland but was by no means the starter.

Now, one could argue that a lot of those QBs are like prominent hitters in the dead ball era, and probably couldn’t beat out Alex Smith for a starting job today. Other than a couple standout seasons and one super famous guarantee, Joe Namath was a pretty mediocre quarterback. Yet, on that list of 1971 QBs, “Namath” was the only uncommon surname that spellcheck recognized. I’ll save that argument for another day.

With these names in mind, let’s take a look at the quarterbacks of 2013 and weigh the hall of fame chances for each. I’ll go division by division, and I’ll start with the AFC West, if for no other reason than the NFC East always gets to go first in these sorts of lists, so fuck them.

AFC WEST

Kansas City – Alex Smith – Probably no chance.

Denver – Peyton Manning – As certain as Favre. The NFL Hall of Fame is more likely to shut down entirely than it is to snub Peyton.

San Diego – Phil Rivers – He seemed to have HoF potential at first and he’s had a solid year, but he had too many down years and too little postseason success.

Oakland – Matt McGloin/Terrelle Pryor – I should probably put them in the “too early to tell” category, but I think it’s a pretty safe bet that these guys are not Hall QBs.

AFC NORTH

Pittsburgh – Ben Roethlisberger – Really tough call for Ol’ Rapey. Successful team, 3 Super Bowl appearances, two wins, maybe the best game-winning TD pass of all time all point toward Canton. Then again, when I watch Rapey play, I never feel like I’m watching one of the best players ever. I don’t seek out his highlights or tune in to Steelers games to see him play. I don’t think anyone else does either. Plus, he’s a dirty rapist. I’d say definitely not first ballot, and 50-50 overall without a whole lot of upward mobility there.

Cincinnati – Andy Dalton – the Bengals seem to win a lot with him, and he can play. I’ll go with a too young to call for him, but he will have to do A LOT to get in.

Baltimore – Joe Flacco – He had pretty much the best postseason in NFL history last year, causing the Ravens to overpay him by 50 million dollars or so. Unless he repeats his January 2013 performance a couple more times, he has no chance.

Cleveland – This year’s plethora of Cleveland starting quarterbacks have roughly the same odds of making the NFL Hall of Fame as I do.

AFC SOUTH

Tennessee – Jake Locker is still young, but I think he’s probably shown enough to assure he won’t be in the Hall.

Indianapolis – Andrew Luck – Still way too early to make a call, but I think he has the potential to make it.

Houston – Matt Schaub, Case Keenum – Both probably have roughly the same 0% odds as David Carr.

Jacksonville – no.

AFC EAST

New England – Tom Brady – Yes. Bold call, I know.

Miami – Ryan Tannehill – I think he’s a good player and I’d be happy to have him on my team. I’ll cop out and throw him in the too young to pick category, but I’d lean heavily towards no.

New York Jets – Geno Smith – Too early to tell.

Buffalo Bills – EJ Manuel – Way too early to tell.

NFC WEST

Seattle – Russell Wilson – Too early to tell, but he’s look awful promising so far.

San Francisco – Colin Kaepernick – ditto.

St. Louis – Sam Bradford – no chance.

Arizona – Carson Palmer – ditto.

NFC NORTH

Green Bay - Aaron Rodgers – Tough to say he would be a sure shot if he retired today, but I’m pretty sure he plans to keep playing. If he continues on his current trajectory, he should be in. This should be a good place to mention that I hate the Packers. Two back-to-back Hall of Fame QBs covering over 20 years. Over that same time period, my beloved Chiefs and Bears have gone through a combined 437 starting quarterbacks with maybe 5 Pro Bowl appearances between them.

Chicago – Jay Cutler – Not unless a whole lot changes. So, no.

Detroit – Matt Stafford - I think Brandon Weeden could throw for 4,000 yards if he had Magatron.

Minnesota – Ponder/Cassel/Freeman – Nope.

NFC SOUTH

Atlanta – Matt Ryan is a very talented starting quarterback, but he has no place in Canton.

Carolina – Cam Newton – Another too early to tell, but he hasn’t eliminated himself from the running yet.

New Orleans – Drew Brees – Absolutely.

Tampa – Mike Glennon – Way too early to tell. Also, I haven’t seen the Bucs play a single time this season.

NFC EAST

Dallas – Tony Romo – Dude has all the talent in the world, but he’s going to need at least 2, maybe 3 Super Bowl wins to overcome all his gaffes. The way Jerry Jones runs his team, I don’t think those Super Bowls are coming anytime soon. Gotta say no.

Washington - Robert Griffin – He was on my fantasy team last year and I loved watching him play. He should be in the too early to tell camp, but unfortunately I feel like he’s just too injury prone. Out of the 5 young stars (Newton, Kaepernick, Wilson, Luck and RGIII) that dominated the preseason hype this year, I’m now of the mind that Griffin is the least likely one to make the Hall. I hope I’m wrong.

Philadelphia – Nick Foles –Definitely too early to tell, but he’s really come around this season. He could be the most likely Hall of Fame QB in this division, which would have seemed impossible as recently as October.

New York – Eli Manning – Full disclosure – I’ve always hated Eli. He came into the league as a whiney bitch at the draft. I don’t like using the term whiney bitch, as it could be construed as sexist and it’s also pretty played out, but I have no problem using it to describe Eli. Eli’s crying at the draft was reminiscent of John Elway, and Elway is my least favorite athlete of all time. In the end, Elway made the Hall, and deservedly so. Eli, on the other hand, will not be there. Two years ago, he was a borderline candidate – Super Bowl glory and clutch postseason performance mixed with mid-season inconsistency. However, he’s spent the last two years playing his way out of Hall of Fame consideration, a development that I’ve probably enjoyed more than I should have. Then again, I know the Giants are Freddy Krueger, and they could end up going 8-8 and winning the crappy NFC East next year, then going on another playoff run. No QB has ever won three Super Bowls and failed to get to Canton.

So, to recap, the current NFL landscape is populated by three absolute hall locks (Manning, Brees, Brady), one very likely inductee (Rodgers), one coin toss (Rapey), six young upstarts with legit chances (Luck, Wilson, Kaepernick, Foles, Newton, Dalton), three rookies that we don’t know enough about yet (Glennon, Manuel, Smith), and a bunch of guys who range from terrible to very good, but just not good enough.

This means that as many as 14 quarterbacks that started games in 2013 could end up in the Hall. Will that happen? Of course not. 11 of them would have to get in to match the same percentage of starters as the 9 HoFers from 1971. I doubt that 11 of these 14 will make it. I think that the percentage of starters making the hall of fame in 1971 probably won’t ever be eclipsed. Still, I’d rather watch 20 or so of today’s starters than Bob Griese or Sonny Jurgensen.

Range

noreply@blogger.com (Jae-hak) — Fri, 12 Jul 2013 00:16:00 +0000

I'm a pretty big idiot. You know this if you read here often.

Take, for example, my new embrace of stand up comedy. I've always been interested in standup, but I couldn't have gone about it more idiotically. I grew up and spent most of my college years in Lawrence, Kansas, as arty of a town as you could find. I did comedy there a total of once. I opened for a popular local band at their reunion show. I ran a 15 minute set that I put together in two days in front of around 200 people, and I killed. It would be over a decade until I went up again.

I lived in Chicago for four years. Unquestionably one of the three or four best standup towns in the world. The only other cities in the conversation would be New York, Los Angeles, and Toronto. I went to a total of one open mic night in my years there, and I didn't go up.

I lived in Seoul for around 5 years all told. Seoul is the peerless creative hub in Korea for music, art, and yes, comedy. My last year in Seoul, I was living in the center, a short distance away from all the open mics. My second-last year, I was living farther away in Nowon but I was making a ton of money (by ESL standards) so cabs were no problem. I went up a total of once, 4 days before I left town.

Now I live in Cheonan, and I go up as often as I can. Problem is, Cheonan is no place to do comedy. I've done a few open mics here, but it's not a comedy scene. Cheonan is a nice enough town, easily the best in Chungnam Province, but it's a comedy backwater. Going to comedy shows in Seoul is no problem in theory, but they pretty much all happen on weekdays and I work in the morning, so that doesn't work so well.

Bah.

I'm still down. Today, I ate at McDonald's and I didn't even enjoy it. I didn't finish my fries. I had just walked 20 km or so, I thought I'd be hungrier.

Maybe talking about past awesomeness will pick me up.

I've been a popular kid, a nerd, a football player, a stoner, a punk rocker, a failed novelist, a radio DJ, a crooked convenience store cashier, a good student, a bad student, a TV cameraman, a Hollywood intern, a beach bum, a fake producer, a desperate gambler winning with my last dollar, a Eurotrash intellectual, a failed artist, a drunk, a permanent resident of my car, a hustler, a pyramid scam participant, a corporate whore, a Chicago Democratic Party operative, a failed screenwriter, an unemployed video game junkie, an honest fireworks salesman, a broke and unemployed dude living abroad, a teacher, a celibate, a lady's man, a magazine writer, a backpacker, a lover, a fighter, a fair to middling blogger, and a standup comedian. I have literally slept in 5 star hotels and the gutter, both of which I paid for.

I've got range.

Leave/Return

noreply@blogger.com (Jae-hak) — Sun, 14 Apr 2013 03:23:00 +0000

When describing the expat life, wiser writers than I have discouraged it. To be an expat is an eternal sense of bittersweet. There are people, places, things, and ideas that I miss no matter what country I happen to lay my head.

Long haul flights take on a different form for a chronic expat. The first time I flew westbound across the Pacific, I was definitely leaving home. The first time I flew back to America, I was probably coming home. On my ensuing flights, the grey area has been absolute. I am simply flying from A to B, both leaving and arriving, neither leaving nor arriving. To be an expat is to be at home everywhere and nowhere.

There is not a country in the world in which I can use all of my technology without the aid of plug adapters. More importantly, there is no land in which I don’t terribly miss people on the other side of the ocean.

Tomorrow will be one of those crazy expat days. A day of beginnings, endings, and continuations. A day spent in international waters and international airports. Two full days will pass during two long flights.

To those I am leaving behind – I will miss you, and I hope to see you soon. In a country with ubiquitous wifi, I will never be far. To those I will see on the other side, I can’t wait to see you again. Again.

Commercial Takes

noreply@blogger.com (Jae-hak) — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 20:38:00 +0000

March Madness commercials are always a curse. Hours and hours of basketball on 10 different days means a whole lot of commercial breaks, and it seems like they run the same ads in every single break. Here are some that I particularly hate so far.

NCAA PSAs – about how much the NCAA supports their student athletes. Sure. This would be like if Taco Bell’s commercials talked about the ways they benefited me.

Buffalo Wild Wings – Jesus Christ, I can’t believe they are still doing this sort of thing. If you are a sports bar, why would you appear to have no clue how sports fans think? Just like how nobody is cheering for a game to go into overtime, I’m pretty sure there isn’t a college hoops fan alive who wants the tournament to expand. We already expended from 64 to 68, and NOBOBY acknowledges or cares about those Dayton games or the “first four.”

The Bud Lite blind date – it took two or three viewings before I really hated this commercial, so good on them. I loathe it now. Who says “here we go” on a blind date? This is terribly contrived writing to try to squeeze in Bud Lite’s meh slogan in a situation that it didn’t fit. Of course, I also hate the couple, although part of that hate may come from the fact that they are drinking Bud Lite, the foulest beer I can imagine. Girls can get a pass, but when I see a dude drinking Bud Lite, I judge.

Tru TV promos – I’d never watched Tru TV before this tournament. After watching the promos for their programming, I expect to resume that habit as soon as they stop showing tournament games.

My favorite may be the Ludacris bit – “Oh yeah, I watch the madness and lay down music in the studio at the same time.” I know this is a promo for online games, but I think it works better as a PSA extolling the dangers of multitasking.

Bracket Takes

noreply@blogger.com (Jae-hak) — Sun, 17 Mar 2013 22:43:00 +0000

Ah, Selection Sunday, maybe the finest sports holiday of the year. Of course, the downside of Selection Sunday is that it comes with this crappy post, as Bracket Takes is by far my longest-running gimmick. It began as a mass email in 2003, back when I actually sort of new what I was talking about. The nadir was likely 2007, a year in which I did not see a single college basketball game, yet still wrote this piece.

My breadth of knowledge in college hoops is pretty narrow. I’ll admit this starting out. I did not watch a single game all season that didn’t involve the Kansas Basketball Jayhawks. I’m a bit out of my element when it comes to the non-Big XII world. Then again, my living room was college basketball central in 2002. My friends and I watched every game, even set up two TVs so we could watch simultaneous conference tournament matchups. I correctly picked deep runs by Cindarellas like Kent State and Southern Illinois because I had seen both teams play. Even then, I still lost a bracket challenge to a girl who picked the winners based on her mascot preferences.

As always, I will not be bothering to look at my previous Bracket Takes posts before I write this one, so expect some recycled jokes. Also, I will be writing this in real time as the field is announced on the selection show.

Midwest Region

Louisville is overall number 1. It seems like they get picked for that a lot. Fortunately, they never actually win titles and Pitino always goes home early, so I’m looking forward to that.

Go Liberty! They are 15-20.

Larry Eustachy is back! Wow, Eustachy versus Mizzou. Don’t want to see either win, but of course I never cheer for Missouri.

A 5 seems low for Oklahoma State. Oregon is a dangerous 12, tough draw for the Pokes.

I thought St. Louis would be a higher seed.

Duke is a 2! That means we are a 1!!!11!

Kickin' in Chuncheon

noreply@blogger.com (Jae-hak) — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 06:09:00 +0000

Note - I haven't updated this blog since sometime around the last time my buddy Don got laid, so it's high time to post something. As I generally spend my time these days sitting in the hot tub drinking whiskey or playing God of War II on a CRT TV, I don't actually have anything interesting to say about my current lot. Fortunately, I've got some old stuff (new to you) that I can run. Today, I'm posting an article that I originally wrote for 10 Magazine, but that never actually ran because of timing issues. I visited the city of Chuncheon way back in December 2010.

Also, I should not that the article's title is a tip of the cap the EV Boys and their famed Korean expat video, as true today as ever.

Want to get out of town? What if I told you there’s a place 90 minutes from Seoul with mountains, lakes, clean air, respectable nightlife, and is the home base of what may well be Korea’s best single local dish? What if also mentioned that that you can get there for 2,000 won? Is that something you’d be interested in?

Entourage jokes aside, that’s what we’ve got in Chuncheon, thanks to the latest expansion of the Seoul Subway.

Dalkgalbi

Dinner for two, for one.

Let’s start where I always tend to - with the food. Dalkgalbi was recently voted the most-loved Korean dish by this very magazine. I agree wholeheartedly. Chuncheon invented dalkgalbi, and it isn’t shy about advertising this. Downtown Chuncheon features Dalkgalbi Street, in which seemingly every restaurant serves this dish exclusively. Certain guidebooks claim that it’s impossible to eat at any of these joints alone. My Chuncheon trip was solo, so I worried about this notion, but I had no trouble getting a plate of the town’s signature dish. I chose Youmi Dalkgalbi (033-244-4455) because it was busy but not full, and it proved to be delightful.

This is the entrance to Dalkgalbi Street downtown. Good Eatin.'

Nightlife

My lovely love motel, Motel Papaya

While nobody would mistake Chuncheon for Seoul or Busan, it has enough going on to entertain anybody for a weekend. Chuncheon is a college town, and there are a number of bars, hofs, and restaurants clustered around Gangwon University. The two most interesting spots that I came across in this area were Sheriff and the Hard Rock Bar. Hard Rock is a casual student-dominated pub while Sheriff was a bit more popular amongst the expat crowd. To get to the university area, take a taxi to “Gangwon hoomoon.” The taxi will stop right in front of Sheriff. Hard Rock is in the alley around back and to the left.

I saw this ad at Lotteria in Chuncheon. The burger is almost as big as her waist.

The preeminent expat bar in Chuncheon has to be Tombstone, though it’s popular with young locals as well. This establishment features dart boards, cheap beer, and easy conversation. Tombstone had the largest and most energetic crowd of any bar that I visited in town. To get here, take a taxi to “Hi Mart.” The Taxi will drop you across the street from the bar.

Nature

Chuncheon is known for its lakes and mountains. I headed for lovely Uiam Lake, an easy 20 to 30 minute walk from downtown. A bike trail runs along the coast, and passes the architecturally (and otherwise) interesting Memorial Hall for Ethiopian Veterans of the Korean War. Jung-do looms as the largest island in this lake, and provides a number of summer outdoor activities.

Down the road and outside of Chuncheon proper, Gangchon is a fun town to explore on a rented motorcycle or ATV. The primary attraction here is the Gugok Waterfall. I skipped the motorized options and opted for the somewhat lengthy though enjoyable trek, if for no other reason than burning off some of that dalkgalbi. The winding trail provides mountain views without any brutally taxing inclines. Gugok Waterfall really shines in the dead of winter, when the falls themselves freeze and ice climbers tackle its challenge. Gangchon can be reached via buses 3, 5, 50, or 50-1 from downtown Chuncheon’s main road, Jungangno. Buses 50 and 50-1 go all the way to the falls, but they are quite rare. Gangchon is also on the subway line between Seoul and Chuncheon.

It was cold.

The mountain trail to the waterfal in Gangchon

Icy waterfall

Farther afield, two of the most famous places in the region are Soyang Lake, to the northeast of town, and Nami Island, to the Southwest. Soyang is the largest lake in the region. Nami Island is famous for its trees, and for being the setting of the Korean drama “Winter Sonata” Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to visit either on my trip. On the plus side, now I have a reason to go back to Chuncheon.

Getting There

As you can see, I went to Chuncheon so long ago, it involved a ride on a real train rather than a subway.

From Seoul, getting to Chuncheon is a breeze. Simply take the Chuncheon subway line. All trains pass through Mangu Station, and some originate from Sangbong Station. From outside Seoul, express buses run to Chuncheon. To get downtown from the train or bus station, take a taxi to “Myeongdong.”

Saturday Night: Special?

noreply@blogger.com (Jae-hak) — Fri, 20 Jul 2012 11:02:00 +0000

After an abysmally boring one in Lawrence, Kansas a few days before I started my Asia trip, I put together a string of pretty impressive Saturday nights.

Of course, more often than not, I threw down pretty well on a Saturday night in Seoul. It would also be a big night out any time I was on the road in Korea, and often when I was on the road internationally.

This trip started out with 10 bang-up Saturday nights in a row -

Seoul - usual Itaewon craziness, went home at 6 a.m. or so and was up at 9 the next day to watch KU beat Ohio State in the Final Four. Of course, then I slept the next two days.

Kuala Lumpur - went out in Chinatown with the crew I met the day before, and capped it off at the roof of my hostel.

Melaka - met this random group of people, ended up singing "Sweet Home Alabama" at three a.m. in a Chinese karaoke bar with some British dude.

Cameron Highlands - pretty low key, but I'd made friends with this girl the night before and had a few beers with her until the streets rolled up at 11. Had a more proper Saturday-ish night the following night in Penang, when I was out until 5 or 6 with a group of Aussies and Euros.

Krabi - an epic night in which I met like 15 people and hung out at this local bar swilling whiskey and smoking weed until the wee hours. The band was decent too.

Ko Phi Phi - on this island of crazy boozing and partying every night, Saturday was certainly my signature adventure.

Ko Samui - was out until all hours at the Chewang clubs with these crazy Danish dudes.

Ko Tao - see Ko Phi Phi, only Tao's Saturday was much more fun.

Chiang Mai - met two British girls and a bunch of Thai waitresses and bartendresses at an early evening bar, went out to the clubs with them until 5 or 6.

Ko Samet - My beach swan song.

Ko Samet was the first weekend in June. Since that? Well, my Saturday nights have a lot less rock star and a lot more monk. Case in point - the following weekend, I literally slept in a monastery. Went to bed at 9 p.m. after consuming zero beers.

The following Saturday was in Mandalay. Mandalay doesn't have a whole lot going on at night, even Saturday night. Since I'd taken a long bus ride that day, I once again went to bed super early without going to the bar.

I spent a portion of the next Saturday night in Bangkok and caught a buzz, so that must have been cool, yeah? Not so much - I was boozing at the airport before getting on a redeye flight.

I actually went out to bars the next Saturday, watching live bands and hanging out with Cores in Dumaguete. This was the only notable and fun Saturday of the bunch, but I still managed to go home early.

I spent my next Saturday night on an overnight train. I suppose I spent a cool 45 minutes in the bar car before going to sleep at 11:30.

A few days ago may have been the lamest one yet. I slept in Phonsavan, Laos. Sure, this is a country that goes to bed early, but Phonsavan is especially boring. I hung out in a cafe and wrote until they seemed to be shutting down - at 9:30. Then I went home and went to sleep. Oh well, people come to Phonsavan to see the Plain of Jars, not to party.

This Saturday, I'll be in Vientiane, the big city here, the capital of Laos. Will my streak of boring Saturdays end? Vientiane has a reputation for being the dullest capital in Southeast Asia (other than teetotaling BSB in Brunei), so I'm not extremely hopeful. If nothing else, I meet my buddies Martin and Kris in Phnom Penh next Saturday, so that should be a rager.

Other Guy

noreply@blogger.com (Jae-hak) — Tue, 03 Jul 2012 09:33:00 +0000

The only way that Barack Obama loses the election is if the American electorate is even more spiteful and ignorant than I perceive them to be, and I'm no optimist. I'm not saying this as a Democrat nor Obama supporter (full disclosure: I am both), but as a student of American elections.

Here is why Mitt Romney will not win - his only selling point is that he is the "Other Guy." Without a real agenda or personality, the Other Guy never wins. In fact, the only time the Other Guy has ever won the American Presidency in the last century and change may surprise you.

Let's take a look back. For brevity, I will skip elections in which the incumbent won, as the incumbent cannot possibly be the Other Guy.

2008 - Obama wins by building a Hope/Change phenomenon and energizing an unprecedented number of first time voters, combined with McCain shooting himself in the foot by choosing That Woman.

2000 - Gore was very much not the Other Guy, and he technically won. Beyond that though, George W. Bush was a large state governor with universal name recognition and the son of a former president. He was hardly Other Guy either, as he had been extremely famous for at least 10 years before his election.

1992 - Clinton was certainly a less-famous candidate going into the primaries, and many bigger Democratic stars sat out the 1992 election since George H.W. Bush looked unbeatable in 1991. However, during the general election, Clinton definitely had a message ("It's the Economy, Stupid"), and definitely had a massive personality. Fleetwood Mac, Rock the Vote, playing the sax on Arsenio, Clinton carved his own niche. He was the first Baby Boomer president (and Bush was the second. If Obama wins in 2012, they could conceivably be the only two since Barack is too young to be a Boomer).

1988 - George H.W. Bush - the consummate insider, George 41could have never been Other Guy.

1980 - Ronald Reagan defeated an incumbent, but by this point he had been famous for decades and a political force for twenty years.

1976- Jimmy Carter. Really the only one to come out of nowhere and win. Governor of then-backwater Georgia with virtually no national profile a couple years before the election. Of course, he was running against Gerald Ford, the only man to hold the presidency without being elected as president or vice president. Ford and Carter were both good guys, but neither of them should have been president I suppose. 1976 really should have been an epic battle between Ted Kennedy and Ronald Reagan, but it was not to be.

1968 - Richard Nixon, former vice president, hardly Other Guy material. Plus, Bobby Kennedy was the presumptive Democratic nominee but was assassinated, and LBJ opted not to run again, so Tricky Dick basically had a bye in the general election.

1960 - JFK. The Kennedys had been famous for some time at this point. It also helped that he had LBJ and Mayor Daley behind him, helping him to "legitimately" win key races in Texas and Illinois.

1952 - Dwight D. Eisenhower won. This being only seven years after World War II ended, Ike was almost certainly the most famous person alive at the time.

1932 - FDR. He was a little bit Other Guy since Hoover was massively unpopular, but FDR definitely had a strong personality and a definitive agenda that he ran on. Plus, he was governor of New York and related to Teddy, so it wasn't like he was an unknown.

1928 - Hoover. The American economy had soared in the 1920s under Republican leadership, so why would we change things up now?

1920 - Warren G. Harding. Okay, maybe he was Other Guy too, since he was virtually unknown before a crooked convention gave him the nomination after several votes. My source - Boardwalk Empire, so I assume it must be true.

So there you go. Romney has no base or supporters of his own or of his policies, he just has Republicans who want to vote for the Other Guy. So worst case scenario for Romney - he loses. Best case scenario - he wins and follows in the steps of Jimmy Carter and Warren G. Harding.

A vote for Romney is essentially "cheering for clothes," as Jerry Seinfeld famously quipped. I've done the same, of course. I voted for John Kerry, Other Guy extraordaire. When I was a kid, I rooted for Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis, total Other Guys. Of course, Other Guy theory stood strong in those days, as it shall again. There was no President Mondale, President Dukakis, President Kerry, nor will there be a President Romney.

Stuff

noreply@blogger.com (Jae-hak) — Wed, 30 May 2012 04:58:00 +0000

George Carlin has a famous bit on "stuff." I'm at an absurd degree, particularly today.

Back in the spring of 2006, I lived in an apartment in Chicago with essentially all of my stuff. Sure, there were old grade school yearbooks or childhood toys at my parents' houses, but this stuff was more theirs than mine. My stuff was all at my place.

The dissolution of my stuff began when my buddy was in Chicago for the weekend, maybe two weeks before I moved out of town. I gave him my camping equipment to hang onto, and I've recently been assured that it still exists at his ex-girlfriend's apartment.

Shortly thereafter, I moved to my mom's house, a move brought on by the fact that I was broke and unemployed. As I couldn't fit all my stuff in my car and was too broke for a U-Haul, I gave away my bed and loaned my original NES and all my games to my cousin. I also stashed a bunch of stuff at another cousin's house, consisting of things I hope to re-acquire one day (books and maps) and stuff I hope she has thrown away (an ancient printer and TV, maybe a VCR).

I moved to Korea in the fall of 2006, leaving lots of stuff behind at my mom's house, but then returned to America in late 2008 to couch surf around the country for eight months or so. While at my mom's, I managed to sell or trash some of my stuff so that I would leave less behind when I returned to Korea in the fall of 2009. Of course, I couldn't get rid of my pictures or my video game systems, so those are still there, along with some clothes that I could potentially wear again some day.

I left Korea at the end of February to attend my brother's wedding. Here's where things get tricky.

I got on the plane with a winter coat, a big backpack, a messenger bag, and two checked roller bags. After the wedding weekend, I sent the larger roller bag off with my dad, so that stuff (I already forget what all is there) is at his house now. I left my wireless router at one friend's house, because she didn't have one and I must have wifi everywhere I go. I left the large backpack and messenger bag at another friend's house, along with my laptop and DVDs. I bought a new backpack for this trip, and took it and the small roller bag back to Korea with me.

I left this small roller bag at yet another buddy's apartment, in Seoul. That way, If I decide to move back there, I'll have something to wear on a job interview. I wore my winter coat, travel vest, and backpack to Inceheon airport, and I purposely ditched the coat at the McDonald's there.

A few days ago, I left my hiking boots and some clothes that I never wear (long pants, socks, long sleeve shirt) at my guesthouse on Khao San Road. I also left my passport in Bangkok since I'm getting a Burmese visa processed. I headed to Chiang Mai with less stuff, and after three nights decided to head to Pai. Since the only way in or out of Pai is via Chiang Mai, I left my big backpack there and just brought a day bag and the vest here.
Today, I went off to the countryside on my rented motorbike. Of course, I left most of my stuff in my room, but brought some stuff in my day bag on the ride. While riding around, I passed some elephant farms and decided to do an elephant ride. They allowed me to change clothes there, since the elephant ride involves getting wet. I wore shorts and a shirt from the farm, and my sandals and boxers. I locked up my bag and clothes and walked to the elephant carrying only my camera and sunglasses.

The elephant trainer told me to take off my shoes before I got on the elephant, so I left them right next to the huge beast. When we got to the river, I gave the trainer my camera and sunglasses to keep on the river shore. Suddenly, I was down to my very last degree of stuff - my boxers.

So, all told, thats self, shore, stable, locker, guesthouse in Pai, guesthouse in Chiang Mai, guesthouse in Bangkok, Seoul, Lawrence (3 places), Florida, Baltimore, Chicago (2 places). Twelve degrees of stuff, covering two continents, three countries, four timezones, and eight cities. I think that might be as far as this degrees of stuff game can be taken. At least I hope so.

First Day in Thailand

noreply@blogger.com (Jae-hak) — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 06:39:00 +0000

I posted this at my other blog with pictures, but I feel like it has the misenthropic voice of NES/NAS so I'm running it here too. If you want pics, check out jaehak.wordpress.com

It seems I've overkicked my coverage a bit. I didn't really plan to be in Trang yet, the plan was to head to Langkawi, Malaysia to spend the last of my ringet on cheap beachside beer. Unfortunately, getting to Langkawi from Penang turned out to be more difficult than I anticipated. There are two ferries between these islands (conveniently at 8:15 a.m. and 8:30 a.m. Way to spread out your ferries, Malaysia) that I never intended to take. I planned to go overland, but apparently this is an unreliable way to get there and I likely would have had to spend the night in Alor Setor or Kuala Kedah. That, or I could have stayed another night in Penang and taken the ferry the next day. Neither of these options appealed to me, so I called an audible and caught a minivan to Thailand.

And so I got in a van with a 24-year old Aussie chick (named Sheila, no shit) who had been traveling for 4 years, a leftist Spanish girl who felt that nobody should have to work ever and that people who participate in Amarillo-style eating contests deserved to die, and a few Chinese businessmen. I opted for my headphones.

In Hat Yai, I had to change to a local Thai minibus. It was full to the brim and quite different than Korean, or even Malaysian transit. On a Korean bus, everyone, literally everyone on the bus pass the time with smart phones or tablets. On this minibus, everyone just rode in silence, looking at the back of the chair in front of them. I felt it would be douchey to whip out the iPad to watch a movie, but fortunately I had a long Carolla podcast to burn.

Other than a tip from a buddy of mine that Trang was a good place to start in southern Thailand and a cursory glance at Travelfish, Wikitravel, and Lonely Planet, I knew nothing about the town whatsoever. Thailand is a whole different animal than Malaysia. English ability is much lower, and the script is indecipherable to me. Malaysian is written in Roman letters, so even if I don't understand the signs, I can read them and make out a few loan words (kompleks, motorsikal, stessen, sentral, bas, feri, etc). I was the last passenger on the bus, and I told the driver to take me to the train station (which is basically the only word in Thai that I know). I knew from my quick research that there was at least one guesthouse by the station.

Despite the fact that I pretty much felt like I fell off the turnip truck, the train station proved to be a good choice. Lots of guesthouses and coffee shops, near some cool markets. Best of all, I found a nice cafe with good-for-Indochina wifi to write and do research.

Trang town is nice, but there isn't a whole lot to do other than researching places further afield. It's the landlocked capital of a southern province known for it's beaches. I imagine my current situation is similar to that of an Asian backpacker visiting Tallahassee.

'Merica

noreply@blogger.com (Jae-hak) — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 11:29:00 +0000

As I'm sure you've noticed, I've been kinda lazy on this space. Fear not, I am launching a new blog dedicated to my current backpacking trip, filled with tons of pictures. It's called Jaehak's Megatrip, and it's at jaehak.wordpress.com. There's already two posts! I'll still post non-travel related stuff here from time to time, but the Blogger app doesn't work very well and I have no laptop, so most of my work over the next few months will be elsewhere.

I recently broke up my Asia-centric life with a trip back to America. With the exception of the airport and one lunch, I spent the whole of the trip within the limits of the great state of Kansas, and happened to be in town for the state to display its best (KU beating Carolina to get to the Final 4! Rock Chalk!) and worst (Ricky Assjuice winning the Kansas Caucus) idiosyncrasies. These examples don't teach us any new information. We already knew that Kansas Basketball is awesome and that Kansas voters are ridiculous. I suppose I was further reminded why Kansas, and America will always be home, but I don't think I'll be living there anytime soon.

Some thoughts:

Sometimes I forget what a car-culture the U.S. is, to the point of inconvenience really. Most banks don't have a walk-up ATM, just a drive-up. These banks also have 4 lanes of drive-thru banking with tellers, but only one lane of ATMs. Who uses these drive-up teller lanes anymore? I haven't used one since at least the mid-90s, and I don't think my friends do either. Older people like my parents used to use them, but I don't think they do anymore. C'mon banks, get rid of these dinosaurs and add more ATMs.

I don't understand late-nite drive-thrus that don't serve pedestrians. Shitfaced at 3 a.m. and hungry for Taco Bell? Sorry chief, no Gordita for you, unless you want to drive.

My first day in the States, I walked down to Target. I got lots of strange looks from drivers for, y'know, walking. Target itself was a wonder to behold though. Korea has big-box stores, so it's not like I'm not used to those, I'm just not used to being in one that has so many products that I would actually want to buy. Still, I kinda shook my head at the tastes of the masses when I saw that, in the DVD Section, there was only one copy left of "According to Jim." Season Five. People actually spend money on the fifth season of horrible shows. The number one selling book at Target was called "Heaven is Real" or something like that, about some kid with a near-death experience who met Jesus and whatnot. Filed under non-fiction, of course.

I was surprised and impressed and/or shamed with some other than matters than my newfound love of Best Buy and Home Depot and, fuck it, Wal-Mart. Most everyone I know in Kansas suddenly knows a great deal about DIY and home repair and gardening and that sort of thing. One night, while I sat with a couple friends, the main topics of conversation were weddings, kids, and mortgage rates. The fuck? Somehow while I was out becoming an Old Asia Hand, people back home were just becoming old. Or maybe I'm just Peter Pan. Hell, what other 30 something douchebags do you know traveling around Malaysia by bus?

Now I'm on the road, as I said, traveling the famed Banana Pancake Trail. Americans in these parts are hard to come by, likely because of our short vacations and our massive distance from Southeast Asia. Fortunately, there are plenty of people talking about it.

I'm no patriot, of course. I'm not proud to being born in America anymore than I'm proud of being born white or being born male or being born devastatingly handsome. I had nothing to do with any of these matters, so it seems to be a foolish thing to be proud of. That said, while it's fine for me to continually insult my friends or my family members, that doesn't make it okay for everyone to do so.

The world is less anti-American than you think, at least this part of the world, and in general everyone I've met has been cool, other than one particular group - Euro (usually British) girls. I can pretty much promise this - if I end up in some horrific Laotian jail cell (and I'm sure a lot of you are betting that I will), it will be for punching an English girl in the face.

Anyway, don't forget to check out the new blog!

Bracket Takes 2012

noreply@blogger.com (Jae-hak) — Sun, 11 Mar 2012 22:48:00 +0000

Since not doing my annual bracket takes post didn't help the Kansas Basketball Jayhawks win the title last year, it's time to bring it back. This is a guaranteed gambling winner, by the way. If you bet heavily against every prediction that I make here, you can't lose. I'm less informed than ever, having seen a total of two college basketball games all year.

Is is tradition, I'm writing my first takes, live as they are announced on the NCAA Selection Show. I suppose this could be considered "live blogging," but this gimmick got it's start as a mass email in 2003 or so, making this the 10th beating of this dead horse. I'm going more high tech then ever of course, writing this on an ipad as i watch the selection show on my iphone, feeling smug in my douchitude throughout.

Here we go!

First off, couldn't be happier with my douchy set-up.

Kentucky is one overall. I look forward to their forthcoming tournament games being vacated in three years.

Cuse in the East, but we all knew that was coming. Carolina got what was probably our one before Baylor, and Michigan State gets shipped west. I suppose I have no complaints with this, but I'm still shocked that the Big 10 is considered the best conference.

Buffering. Oh no! I hate my douchy set-up!

It's back. Commercials! I paid 4 bucks for this app, damnit! How dare they subject me to commercials.

Wow, this is the first full 4 minute commercial break that I've experienced in years. I didn't care for it.

Iowa State is an 8 and gets Kentucky in their second potential game. Seems kinda ow for them. UCONN is a 9? Wow, I'm way behind on basketball this year.

Uh-oh, the Shockers may get 12-5ed by that team from Virginia that I will not mention.

Wait, theres a New Mexico State?

As guaranteed by NCAA law, Duke plays in Greensboro.

Baylor clawed up to a 3 seed. I wonder what uniform abortion they'll create for that.

Wow, I completely forgot that the University of Colorado even existed. I think that they're the only team that I'm not really mad at for leaving the Big XII. They're only lasting contributions were the Harrison brothers and that wack job born again football coach who would probably do well in today's GOP primaries. Oh, and they cheated in the Orange Bowl to beat Notre Dame.

West time. LIU Brooklyn? That's a thing? The Fighting Hipsters, I presume.

New Mexico has two teams in this thing? That must be a first.

Memphis-St. Louis? I guess they battle it out for the highest murder rate every year. The winner should be allowed to move to a better town.

Davidson's satellite feed was a little slow.

Yep, Missurah is getting shipped out west. No shock there. Missouri gets Norfolk State. They always seem to get teams I've never heard of ever. Go Virginia or Florida.

Marquette is a 3? I guess it's Travis Diener's senior year again.

Wow, Murray State is a 6 seed! Awesome, they usually get a 15 or something. Go Racers! OVC Title goes through Murray State baby!

Buffering! Hopefully I'm just missing commercials since KU's fate will be decided soon. I just missed a whole segment I think.

Midwest, here we go. I missed the East. Awesome. Didn't miss any commercials, of course.

UNC in Greensboro too. It could be no other way.

I still don't understand the 11 and 12 seeded teams getting play-in games. Michigan won the Big 10 regular season, yeah? Shouldn't they get higher than a 4?

KU is a 2 in Carolina's bracket. Perfect, just what I wanted. No sarcasm. Detroit eh? I'm sure I'll be terrified of them by Friday. St. Mary's and Purdue as a potential second round battle. I'm sure I'll be petrified come Sunday. Yep, I know absolutely nothing about the teams on our half of the bracket. Oh no, Clark Kellogg just said "it could be their year" about KU. Obama better stay away from us this year. Pick Kentucky or Carolina, Mr. President.

Meh, I'm not going to make half-assed predictions right now, I'm just gonna post. More to come most likely. Rock Chalk and Muck Fizzou.

tech!

noreply@blogger.com (Jae-hak) — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 15:05:00 +0000

I've always been a quasi-tech nerd. I'm not an early adapter by any means, not in the true sense, but I have had a gadget or two before most of my friends. This isn't saying much, of course, as most of my friends back home still don't have Skype. I like technology, so tonight I'm going to run the top ten tech toys that have influenced me the most. There's been way more than 10 of course, so I have to leave out my first TV and my first video camera and my old VCR that allowed me to record syndicated Wonder Years episodes in junior high. So it goes. I'm going chronological order here, as I'm too lazy to rank.

10. The ghetto blaster. This was my first boombox. It wasn't even a real brand, it was some J.C. Penny store model. The ghetto blaster included two tape decks and a radio along with speakers. I used it to record the radio, to record other tapes, and to record my own radio shows when I was a little kid. Because of the ghetto blaster, I owned a copy of the entire Europe album rather than just "The Final Countdown" single, because I recorded my buddy Daniel's original. BTW, the real one was black, not red, but this is the closest style match I could find otherwise.

9. Walkman. I owned several walkmen. My first was an Emerson with a graphic equalizer. After that, I went high end and only bought expensive Sony Sports walkmen with auto-reverse and bass boost. Once I acquired my first in the late 80s, I pretty much had one on me at all times for nearly a decade until I got my first Discman.

8. Nintendo Entertainment System. Like this wasn't going to be here. I was late to the NES game, and didn't get one until 1989 or so. This one never became irrelevant. I have an NES emulator on my current computer, and though my ghetto blaster and walkmen are long gone, I still have my original NES. Still works too, as I long as I jiggle the cartridge after blowing in it. It's on loan to my cousin, who I will kill with an axe if she lost or broke it.

7. My 13 inch Toshiba TV. Amazingly, this cost $240 new. I worked all summer mowing lawns to save up for it. Prior to this, I had a 4.5 inch black and white TV that didn't get cable, though I was able to watch Arsenio on it. On the Toshiba, I could watch anything.

6. My first computer. Now we jump ahead a few years, from grade school to freshman year of college. My first computer was an HP desktop with a 1 GB hard drive. It ran on Windows 95, though I later updated to a pirate version of 98. This was my only computer throughout college. It did not play DVDs, and it could not burn CDs. In the year 2000, I gutted the whole thing and erased every program but AOL and Word so that I could run a video editing program that was a bit too much for the old girl. I used this for the sake of making a Eurotrip vid, which took such precedent that I basically didn't go to class for 3 weeks. I miss college.

5. The Samsung Uproar. This was both my first cell phone and my first mp3 player. It had 64 MB of space for music, and it retailed for $300 in its day. When I left Lawrence and went on the road for the summer, it became my primary phone. It was also one of my longest running cell phones, as I had it for nearly two years.

4. My first iPod. I bought a 3rd generation iPod, white, greyscale, 10 GB, and it changed my life. It was my third mp3 player, but the first that I could but essentially my whole music collection on. It was also one of the first million iPods sold, and it converted me from staunch Windows guy to staunch Mac guy. I owned two Windows PCs at the time (a desktop an a laptop ) and bought a Mac desktop shortly thereafter. Like the rest of the world a couple years later, I went from album to playlist. I'm not sure if this made me a better person, in fact I'm almost sure it made me worse, but I can't imagine going back the other way now.

3. My Samsung A-640. Smart phones, at least in the modern sense, did not exist at the time. However, due to my expat lifestyle, this remains the smartest phone I've ever owned. For its time, the A-640 had everything. Most importantly, it had a mini-SD card, so it was functional off-network. I'd had camera phones before, but the card slot made this a real digital camera. Since I got this phone (and a long series of cameras) I haven't bought any disposables or film. Like everything else on this list other than the NES, I no longer own it. Some items I sold, some I broke, this one I lost.

2. My Mac Book. This laptop is still my primary computer, and it has been for over four years. This was my fourth computer, but it was the first that did everything. It's portable. It had (and I mean had in the past tense) a long battery life. It edits video like a dream. It burns DVDs. It's on its last legs now, but it is now my longest tenured primary computer ever.

1. My iPad. I wish I would have gotten the 3G, but the iPad is still amazing. I can use it to write, to watch videos, to surf the internet, to read books, to play games, and to rock. Thus far, it's been crazy awesome on the road. On airplanes, I used to take out a series of things to put in the pouch in front of my seat - a book, a paper notebook, an iPod, a DS, and probably other stuff. On my last fight, I just took out the iPad. It's the last thing I use every night, and it's the first thing I turn on in the morning. It's also become my primary word processing device since I got a bluetooth keyboard for it.

0. Since I originally wrote this, I've upgraded my tech to a near-perfect pitch. First, I bought a WiBro Egg. Essentially, this is portable 4G wireless in a pocket-sized package. It works anywhere in Seoul, and pretty much anywhere in urban Korea. This solved my 3G problem on the iPad. Next, since my old iPod was on the fritz, I bought a second-hand iPhone 4, but didn't connect it to service. 3G be damned though, the iPhone can do everything but call on wifi, and as stated I have wifi everywhere. Now I can run web, text, Voxer, Skype, FaceTime, Facebook, Twitter, Kakao, Tango, plus anything that works on an iPod. High speed internet on both devices costs me a mere 15 bucks a month with the WiBro. 90% of the time, I don't even carry my real phone anymore.

Is your list similar? I'm always down for nerd talk.

Travel, Eat, Repeat.

noreply@blogger.com (Jae-hak) — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 16:26:00 +0000

Time to rank every country that I've ever been to, in a culinary way. My friend and coworker Dre suggested that I rank the Asian countries that I've been to based on food. Too difficult, I thought. Somehow, ranking EVERY country that I've been to seemed to make more sense. Anyway, here's a hodgepodge of countries based on my thoughts on their food, at least those lucky countries that I've chosen to inhabit for a time. Of course, these things are always done in reverse order, so that's the way it shall be done..

26. Vatican City - I'm sure the Cardinal Cafeteria is beyond reproach, but I only spent few hours in VC and never managed to eat within its walls. Default is a cheap loss, but a loss nonetheless.

25. Monaco - I'm pretty sure I didn't eat anything here either. It beat Vatican because I was here in the world's second smallest country for several minutes more than I spent in the Holy See, thus it's entirely possible that I may have bought a bag of chips at a convenience store that I've since forgotten about.

24. Bahamas - I've been there twice on cruises, so I ate, um, food, on the boat since it was free. I had a few beers in the Bahamas on my second trip, so I guess that counts as food.

23. Denmark - Finally, a country I actually ate in. Sure I could have started the countdown here, but then how could I brag about having been to Monte Carlo? I spent a night in Copenhagen due to an airline strike, so both my dinner and breakfast were free. The price was really the only good thing about them.

22. Czech Republic - I always seek out local food in every country I go to, sometimes just to do it. In Prague, I dined on a traditional Czech meal of pork, potatoes, and cabbage early on in my time there. Having scratched that off my list, I had no problem eating the remainder of my Bohemian meals at McDonald's.

21. Austria - This was another country where I spent more time at the dreaded Mac than I should have. The proper Austrian meals that I ate were nothing worth writing about in my Moleskene while hanging out in Viennese cafes.

20. Germany - As I'm sure you can guess from the previous few - I'm no fan of Northern European food. Germany was ranked higher because of the massive amount of Turkish restaurants around.

19. Netherlands - I ate a delicious meal in Leiden that almost redeemed Holland for me, although that restaurant was largely French. I'll never forget spending $30 for salad and a couple beers in Amsterdam back in the day. I must have been high.

18. Morocco - I dug the Moroccan food I ate. Thing is, I was only in he country for a few hours. Also, the best Moroccan restaurant that I've ever been to was in Seoul. The second best was in Disney World. Of course, I was only in Tangier, maybe if I explore the real part of the country I'd find better food.

17. Canada - It was American food. It was. Canada invented adding gravy to fries. That's it.

16. Spain - To be fair, when I was in Spain, Tapas weren't popular in America yet, so I didn't really get it. That said, when I met a girl on the train, I ended up taking her to dinner at... McD, because every other place we checked out at the Barcelona train station looked wretched.

15. Taiwan - Now we are getting to countries that offered food that I truly loved. I don't have anything bad to say about Taiwanese food, but here it is at 15. If I spent a couple weeks in Taiwan, I'm sure it would rise.

14. Japan - How is Japan 14? Well, I've been to some pretty goddamn delicious countries. It loses points for being expensive, I suppose.

13. Philippines - Is Filipino food better than Japanese or Taiwanese? Of course not. The Philippines wins a lot of points for its massive international assortment, along with having awesome grocery stores.

12. UK - Like the Phils, the UK gets mad points for international influence. Fish and chips suck, but the best Indian food in the world is probably in London.

11. Belgium - I've got a soft spot for moules and frites. Chocolate and beer push Belgium over the edge.

10. Korea - Two weeks ago, Korea would have been a couple spots lower. I've long had a love-hate relationship with Korean food. Barbecue is awesome, most everything else isn't. Free kimbap arrived in the office the other day, and it was a moral dilemma. Should I eat kimbap,or spend money on something good? What bumped Korea up? My recent discoveries of chicken fried rice and bulgogi fried noodles. Awesome.

9. Indonesia - My only experience in Indonesia was in Bali. I presume some of the food I ate was traditional Indonesian. It was all awesome, except for this one Mexican place I went. Lesson learned. Don't eat Mexican in Indonesia. I presume the reciprocal rule is also true.

8. China - I feel like I'm cheating by saying "China" here. I haven't been to the PRC proper, just Hong Kong. Sure, since 1997 Hong Kong is technically China, except if one is considering internet accessibility, currency, visa regulations, law, the side of the road people drive on, freedom of the press, or language. The food in Hong Kong was unbelievable. Sure, the local Dim Sum brings you in, but Hong Kong has a million cultural cuisines. Indian. Malaysian. Chicagoan. And tell me another place that someone could come across an all-you-can-eat Brazilian steakhouse for under 10 bucks (outside Vegas).

7. Mexico - Mexican food is probably my single favorite ethnic food. I admit, I haven't been to any major cities in Mexico, but my main reason for Mexico not being higher is the lack of variety.

6. Italy - hot damn, is there some good food in Italy. Italian cuisine is rangier than you thought (unless you are an actual foodie, in which case, why the hell are you at this blog?) and the slow food/fresh ingredient scenes has been going on there for some time. #6 is good, but why isn't Italy higher? I'm a daego, after all. One word - Venice. Unless you are either a) spending a shit ton of money, or b) know somebody who took you to some crazy back alley place that the tourists could never find; then the food sucks. High school cafeterias offer up better food than any restaurant between San Marco and the Rialto. Side-note - that's why I prefer Florence. Florence keeps its cool nightlife hidden from the tourist masses, but every corner trattoria puts an earnest effort into making quality food.

5. Thailand - This will surprise nobody - Thai food is good. If you've never been to Thailand, this will bum you out - you can get better Thai food than you've ever had on the streets of Bangkok for fifty cents.

4.Singapore - Singapore is a city-state made of Chinese, Indians, and Malays. They all brought food.

3. France - I don't need to tell you that the French are pretty goddamn good at putting together a solid dish. As a general total, I probably like Thai, Italian, and Mexican food more than French food. France still beats them out on this list. The deciding factor there would be the fact that France was the venue for the single best meal I've ever had in my life. The Monster Burger that I ate at a Hardee's in Bozeman, Montana after living exclusively on bread and mustard for 3 days comes close, but I would have to give the nod to the decadent multi-course French meal that I ate with some friends in Versailles. If Hardee's served decent wine, or even shitty wine, I might have a different number one. As it stands, the ridiculous spread that we devoured in the shadow of a blushing Louis's ghost will have to hold the top rank.

2. Malaysia - The best cuisine that you've never had, and one probably better than anything you have. Malaysian food is a magical mix of Thai, Indian, and Chinese with an Arab twist. Melded together, it is the single best national cuisine, particularly in Penang. Case in point - I've strayed from the path and ordered non-local dishes in culinary capitals like Tokyo, Bangkok, Hong Kong, Paris, and Rome. Hell, in Singapore, I even went to a Hardee's, although to be fair it's probably the only Hardee's in Asia. When I went to Penang, I ate 100% local, and had no desire to do otherwise.

1. USA - C'mon. What else goes with Number One like USA? Beyond 'merican staples, pretty much any of these cuisines can be had in any sizable city in the States. New York, Chicago, and San Francisco are easily 3 of the best 5 culinary cities in the world.

SOTU

noreply@blogger.com (Jae-hak) — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 06:03:00 +0000

I've got a couple posts in the hopper. Two of my favorite subjects will soon be covered here - technology and food. The posts are ready to go, have been for a while. I was going to post one tonight, but... I dunno, I kinda feel like doing a state-of-the-union sort of thing. A lot of things have happened that I haven't gotten around to addressing.

First off, I would be remiss if I didn't toot my own horn. I'm proud to say that a throwaway joke post from a couple months ago now has over 9,000 hits. I think this means I finally graduate internet junior high. My readership has expanded for 7 months straight. Thanks to all of you, especially the 12 of you that actually read SOTU-type pieces like this.

I'm leaving Korea soon, for an undetermined to indefinite period of time. My contract ends and Dr. Kickass is getting hitched, so my presence is required in 'merica. I was pretty bummed about this for a while. The blog is doing well, I'm generally at peace with my situation here, I was offered a monthly column for a magazine here, my tech set-up is pretty much perfect, I like my apartment and my neighborhood, and there's been a lot of interesting things going on. Life is, dare I say, pretty good.

Fortunately, I've hit a pretty good run of travel luck as of late, and I'm no longer bummed to be leaving, mainly because what lies ahead is going to be motherfucking awesome. My school, as pursuant to their contractual obligations, has purchased me a ticket back home. Fortunately for me, they bought me a round-trip ticket rather than a one way since it was cheaper that way. This means that a month after I return home, I've got a free ride back across the Pacific. I planned on traveling in either Southeast Asia or South America for a few months after the wedding, but I didn't know which to choose. I know, real first world problem here, determining my extended third world home. I was leaning toward Asia anyway, and now that I can get back here for free, the choice is obvious. I've already bought a dirt cheap ticket from Seoul to Kuala Lumpur, so this trip that I've been talking about for a thousand years finally kicks off in April.

Sure, I'm nervous. I'll land in KL and take the bus (which I've already paid for) into the city. When my bus arrives at KL Sentral Station, I'm on my own. I'll be futureless. I'll be looking for a hostel to spend my first night on the road in. Hell, maybe I'll chicken out and book that hostel in advance, but I'll still be pretty much exclusively living in the present tense. Home is where my iPad is. Planes, buses, trains, boats, or stay, my options will be pretty much limitless every single day, at least until I run out of money. There is no exit strategy. I could be on the road 4 months, 10 months, 2 years, or the rest of my life. I could be robbed on the streets of Bangkok a few days in and have to go home, or I could pick up random bar tending and English teaching gigs and stay out there indefinitely. Actually, other than the getting robbed thing, all of this sounds pretty awesome, so that outweighs the nervousness.

So, where will this leave this here blog? That's to be determined, but I presume there will be some considerable change. I'm not sure if my core audience wants to hear a bunch of stories about trekking though the jungles of Sumatra or drinking at the beach bars of Sumatra. Chances are, I'll spin off a new blog specifically about the trip for anybody who cares about my adventures or travel writing. I presume I'll still keep this space as well for everything else, the usual assortment of girls, sports, pop culture, dick and fart jokes, election stuff, and general misanthropy. I'm sure that I'll complain in both spaces. In frigid Korea, I can't wait to start complaining about the tropical heat in April.

Speaking of complaints, I have a few unrelated things I want to complain about. Surprising, I know.

First - stamp cards from restaurants. I had 4 stamps on a Dunkin Donuts breakfast sandwich card, and I only needed 5 to get a free one. Sure, I acquired all 4 last year and haven't been to Dunkin since, even though there is one 3 minutes from my house. Anyway, I went there for breakfast on Saturday and was more excited than I should have been about stamp number 5. I ordered a sandwich and pulled out my card (which had of course spent the whole year in my wallet) but was denied, that promotion was over. I figured my best move was to kill myself then and there, but since I didn't have any sort of lethal weapon on my person at the time I begrudgingly paid $3.50 for my sandwich and got on the subway to eat it. I realized that if I suddenly had access to a time machine, the first thing I would do was to go back to January of 2011 to purchase one additional bagel sandwich. Not two, one. Knowing I had one potential free breakfast sandwich would be far more valuable than actually getting one. Time permitting, I would also kill Hitler, but priority number one had to be my Dunkin Donuts stamp.

Second - casinos. I went to the casino on Sunday, and I'll never understand their logic. There was one $5 blackjack table (packed, of course), another full $10 table, and then a bunch of empty $50 and $100 tables. The house has an advantage in blackjack, right? Why not change a $100 table to a fiver? The whole time we were there, zero people sat at the $100 table. Sunday evening clearly isn't the time for high rollers. Why not double the amount of space for low-class scumbags such as myself? Sure, winning big bets is better for the casino, but isn't it better to win small bets than to pay a dealer to sit and do her nails at an empty table? It's not like we would have decided to play at the $100 table instead, not on a Sunday at 7 p.m.

Third - the election. But mainly because I miss Perry, Cain, Trump, Bachman, even Palin. That was some world-class crazy. Good times. Plus, just when I'm trying to figure out if I hate Romney or Gingrich more, Santorum came back today. Oh yeah, I forgot about him, he's the worst of all. I'm not a move-to-Canada if my guy doesn't win kinda guy, but I can pretty much guarantee that I will not set foot in America if Santorum wins. Empty threat, I know, cuz like I said before, he won't. My sports predictions are always wrong, but I'm right about this kind of stuff.

That's that, for now. End communication.

Kuala Lumpur

noreply@blogger.com (Jae-hak) — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 15:22:00 +0000

II wrote this a million years ago but forgot to post it. This seems fitting to post today, since I just booked a flight to KL.

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, might be the greatest city in the world. It doesn’t have the art or architecture or cultural relevance of a New York, Paris, or Tokyo. There is no beach. It lacks the Vienna or Prague high culture. There’s no skiing. It doesn’t share the anything-goes vibe with Amsterdam, Las Vegas, of even Seoul. In fact, I retract my original statement. Kuala Lumpur is not the greatest city in the world. However, I’ve been to a lot of cities over the last few years, and there are none that I would rather live in.

I’ve often known that a city halfway between two others takes on properties of both. San Francisco has something of a half-Seattle, half-LA feel. People in SF are more laid back than their LA counterparts, but not as much as Seattelites. It never rains in LA, it always rains in Seattle, so fittingly it sometimes rains in SF. The same could be said for St. Louis being halfway between Kansas City and Chicago. Kansas City has a lot of murders, Chicago has a lot of murders. St. Louis, in the middle of both, boasts as many murders as KC and Chicago combined. Kuala Lumpur falls within the first half or this theory, ie, adopting good properties of both cities, only more so. KL is between Bangkok and Singapore.

Singapore is super-orderly, expensive, and nearly German in it’s efficiency. Despite it being a meeting point of Chinese, Indian, Malay, and Arab culture, it is almost more American than Baltimore. It’s often the European ideal of an American city, yet thoroughly Asian. English is the predominant language, and the town boast establishments like Border’s and other large English bookstores, jazz bars, and Orange Julius. Singapore has a top-notch public transit system, and one of the two or three best airports in the world. The food is fantastic.

Bangkok is chaos. It is international, but not American nor European in the way that Singapore is. Asia is the only continent that Bangkok could exist in. It is full of warm people that will go out of their way to help, and scam artists that will try any trick in the book. English language books are for sale, sure, but only on the street, and haggling is necessary. The public transit, outside the Skytrain, is disastrous. Taxis take an hour to get anywhere. The airport is shiny and new, yet still as shady as Patpong tout. Threats of all out revolution loom everywhere in town. Also, the food is fantastic.

KL, at least in my eyes, seemed to be the perfect mix. Efficient when it came time to get from point A to point B, crooked when it came time to buy movies or sunglasses. Stable politically, yet not the kind of place to issue jaywalking tickets. Not as cheap to go out in as Bangkok, but considerably cheaper than Singapore. The airport is far closer to Singapore standards than Bangkok. And yes, the food is fantastic.

I like a good mix of legitimacy and corruption in my cities. This is a factor in the years I spent in Chicago. This kind of mix is hard to find. In Asia, it’s safe to assume that most cities are corrupt outside of Japan and Singapore, and that Japan and Singapore lean too far the other way. Without a little corruption, every city may as well be Zurich.

I’ve brought it up in passing, but I should mention the food. KL is a multicultural town, like Singapore. It’s denizens include Indians, Chinese, Malays, Thais, and a large expat community. For cheap eats, hawker centers take center stage. A hawker center is a large number of food stands that each make one specific dish. Hawker centers also feature lax smoking policies and cheap beer. I stayed in Chinatown, and beyond the hawker centers, there are numerous 24-hour restaurants that are hopping at 3 a.m. I ate at a joint that served a killer shrimp-fried noodle - and nothing else. No ordering required, just sit down and tell the waiter whether or not I wanted a beer with my noodles. Beyond the brilliant local and ethnic food, KL also boasted a spread of American chains that could spawn envy in any Seoul expat. Wendy’s and Chili’s were a couple obvious gems (yes, I ate at Wendy’s. I live in Korea. Shut up). Less obvious was the fact that McDonald’s sold Quarter Pounders, another item that simply doesn’t exist in Seoul.

The right balance of corruption and the food are hardly the only reasons to move to KL. The weather is hot, maybe a little too hot sometimes, but that still beats the recent 6-month drudgery of an extended Seoul winter.

Kuala Lumpur is big, 1.5 million people or so, but not huge. It’s entirely possible to walk from the National Mosque on the southwestern fringe of the old city to the famed Petronas Towers across town in under two hours. In Seoul, a subway ride that never leaves the city limits could conceivably take that long.

Finally, as I so often do, I must bring it back to airports. A top feature of Kuala Lumpur is the fact that it’s the hub of Air Asia. Air Asia is the Southwest Airlines of Southeast Asia. Thus, if Kuala Lumpur started closing in on me and I had to get away for a weekend, I could fly to Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, Cambodia, or Malaysian Borneo for under $100 round trip. For a little more, India or China are in play. Even Australia is a possibility.

KL is a nice place to visit, but I’d really rather live there.

I'm Killin yo FB Memes

noreply@blogger.com (Jae-hak) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 12:57:00 +0000

There’s a new(ish) FB meme floating around called The Travel Challenge List. 100 places are named, and people check off where they have been. Everyone gets around 25 or 30 of the 100 and then complains about how poorly traveled they are. This is similar to the “BBC” book list that circulated around Facebook a while back - in that both lists are completely arbitrary bullshit.

The plus side - for lazy writers like me, the only easier column gimmick than making a list of some sort is to poke holes in an existing list. Let’s have some fun.

Here are my major complaints:

A lot of the sites are range from "okay" to "worth checking out if you happen to be in the same postal code, but otherwise lame." All of the sites are theoretically impressive, but some of the lamer ones include:

Devil's Tower, Wyoming. I've never been, but I've seen pictures. No way is it amongst the most impressive places in the world. Shiprock in New Mexico didn't make the cut, and it looks far more awesome to me. Ditto Saddle Rock in Arizona. That's just two superior monoliths in the Western US that I can think of off the top of my head. Extend this to the world, and no way should Devil's Tower be included.

The Gateway Arch - come on. It's a fucking arch.

Gettysburg Battlefield - Sure, an important battle to the US, but it's the only battlefield on the list. Lazy, lazy pick.

Hollywood Boulevard - If they wanted to list a place to see washed up celebs and score hookers and blow, they should have gone with Avenue Revolution in Tijuana.

Napa Valley - I've never been. I''m sure it's nice. Other nice places to see grapevines include Chianti, Tuscany and the Loire Valley in France. I'm sure the latter are much nicer than the former, but only Napa makes the list as a wine country rep.

Niagara Falls - Angel Falls and Victoria Falls do make the list, as does another waterfall in Africa that I've never heard of. Do we really need four waterfalls on the list? Wouldn't two work?

Portland Head Lighthouse - it's a fucking lighthouse.

Sears Tower - See, I'm not just being a homer here. The Sears is the tallest and most famous skyscraper in Chicago, but it's not in my top 20 Chicago sights. If Chicago gets one attraction (and on a list of the 100 best sights in the world, I'm okay that Chicago only gets one) then it should be the Tribune Tower. Or Millennium Park. Science and Industry would work too. I'd have no argument with Wrigley Field. Michigan Avenue or State Street or The Loop would suffice. Even the John Hancock Building or the new Trump Tower would be more worthy of this spot.

The Space Needle - Why? I love Seattle, and I know the Needle is the most famous landmark, but there are plenty of more architecturally interesting observation towers in the world. I'd actually rank Seoul Tower higher, and I have no great love for Seoul Tower.

The Alamo - I've never been, but all accounts I've heard have been underwhelming. Historical significance you say? Sure, if you're a Texan. Why not Deally Plaza? At least that's national history rather than just Texas history. If history is key, then why not Westminster Fucking Abbey? Did the Roman Forum do something wrong?

The Leaning Tower of Pisa - insanely famous, but Pisa sucks. There are plenty of more interesting things to see in Italy. The Leaning Tower is probably the most famous place that I've been to that's far more interesting in pictures than real life.

The Pebble Beaches of Nice - interesting I suppose, but there are far better beaches in the world. Hell, there are far better beaches in France.

Atlantic City Boardwalk - y'know, downtown Gary, Indiana was important in the earlier part of the 20th century as well. Since I don't have much interest in getting shot, I'll avoid them both for the time being.

A lot of these sights are in clumps, either right next to each other or visible from one another.

St. Peter's Cathedral and the Sistene Chapel - right fucking next to each other. Everybody sees them both in the same day. Sure, both are worthy sights, but couldn't they have just listed "The Vatican" and been done with it?

The Washington Monument/The White House/The Smithsonian. Why not just go with "The National Mall?" There are several vantage points in DC from which all three of these sights are visible.

New York - do we really need to include The Empire State Building, Times Square, The Met, and the Statue of Liberty? I'm not knocking the Apple here - no one city, neh, borough, should include 1/25th of this sort of list. Between New York and DC (4 hour train ride), one could theoretically see 7 of the top 100 sights in the world in a single day.

This list is WAY too US-centric specifically, and Western in general. I'm not saying this as an apologist. I think the west has awesome sights, and America particularly so. I understand that this list has to be grounded in some sort of travel realpolitik, and I know most people reading this list would much prefer to visit the 8th best sight in Spain than the best sight in Burkina Faso. Still, this list includes:

An insane 32 places in America. 32! Nearly a third of the list is in the States. The island of Manhattan (33.7 square miles) ties the continent of Africa (11,668,599 square miles) at 4.

On top of that, the western world (North America, Europe, Australia) makes up a whopping 70 sights.

Southeast Asia has two sights, which is one more than Wyoming. Russia has one sight, which is one more than Indonesia. Even Canada gets slighted at one, which ties it with the city of St. Louis.

Nuts. Lazy. Bullshit.

Finally, this list leaves off all kinds of worthy sights, which I suppose is predictable. Where is Boracay? Where is Bali? Did Shanghai do something wrong to piss off the creators of this list? Did Dubai? On a U.S.-centric list like this, where the fuck is Yellowstone?

I admit that creating a list of this ilk is an absolutely impossible task, and I'd have an argument with it even if it were my own personal list. However, I maintain that they could have done better than this steaming pile of wildebeest excrement.

Fire It Up!! (part 2)

noreply@blogger.com (Jae-hak) — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 12:39:00 +0000

If you missed part one, click here

The Culture

So, how do you keep staff at a horrible job with next to no chance for success? Here's were the marketing work that they were promising in their ads really comes in. You essentially create a cult around the business. You ... I don't know why the fuck I'm writing in the second person.

I mentioned the charming interviewers/branch managers and the morning meetings before. These are not minor details, these are the core of the business, especially a business that values constantly hiring new recruits above moving product, since new recruits create new warm markets to move the product into. Every branch manager openly brags about how much money they make in their position every single day. Why? To dangle the carrot, so that hopeless recruits will continue to sling art door to door in hopes of opening their own branch one day.

What else do the short meetings achieve? They kill a longer part of each peon's day, which makes each peon less likely to have a life outside of work. Life outside of work is bad. Outsiders might have crazy ideas about what a horrible job this is, and the less time a peon is exposed to outsiders, ie, friends and family, the better.

The job also thrives on the cult of positivity. If someone said "what's up?" it was forbidden to respond with the usual "nothin' much." The only acceptable answer was "Everything!" See, positivity breeds good feelings toward the company, makes a peon less likely to walk. My unshakable cynicism kept me from ever taking this job too seriously.

What did the meetings consist of? A whole bunch of chants and cheers. Lots of seemingly intelligent people yelling "Fire it up!" in a shitty warehouse in an office park. Lots of loud music. Lots of jumping around. Of course, there was always a recitation of the "5 and 8," ie, the 5 steps of a sale and the 8 steps to success. I wish I remembered them or could find them online.

The message board community regarding these companies is unbelievable too. Try googling any pertinent information in this post - any time somebody starts a thread dissing one of these companies (art or otherwise, they're all the same), there's always a douchy customer response. The response always blames the individual peon because they couldn't hack it, couldn't take advantage of the greatest opportunity ever. You'll notice that I haven't named any names throughout this lengthy post, largely because I don't want to attract the vindictive Kool-Aid drinking victims of this scheme to this space. I've openly attacked Mark Zuckerburg here before (hey Zuckerburg, fuck you!) , but I also know that he and his people are too busy to come down here to NES/NAS, the Gary, Indiana of the internets, whereas my former bosses are not and would totally sue me.

These responses and the meetings also regularly cast aside normal working folk. I was jealous of every single office worker I ever pitched to, because they had a real job. The "company" preached that these people had a JOB, Just Over Broke, and they were slaves to their four walls. We had the whole world to experience on a daily basis, even if that "whole world" was just the next office or store or restaurant on Lincoln Avenue that also wouldn't be buying fake art from me.

The original want ad promised travel, and it did deliver. One week, the whole operation went on the road to exotic Bloomington, Illinois. I was back in Kansas for the first part of the week, so I originally opted out of the trip. I even went out on my own to look for sales.

It came to my attention that I had an ancient bank account in Rock Island, Illinois with $104 in it, and it would be closing and I would lose the money, and I had to collect the money in person. Destitute bastard that I was, I drove 3 hours to Rock Island to collect my cash. Bloomington was now a shorter drive than home, so I joined the work road trip. I shared a room in the Bloomington Motel 6 (as nice as it sounds!) with a fellow peon, and was told my portion of the room would be taken out of my future profits, should they happen. These trips were supposed to be awesome and fun and rock and roll, according to all the hype I'd heard at last weeks meeting. I helped people move art from one hotel room to another. Then, nobody was doing anything. My roommate went to sleep. I went to the liquor store next to the hotel and purchased two 40s, which I proceeded to drink in the hotel parking lot alone. Rock!

Everyone went to breakfast the next day, and I hated it. Spending eight bucks at the Cracker Barrel for breakfast felt obscene, but I couldn't get out of it, it was "team building." Of course, at real team building exercises at real companies, the boss pays for breakfast. My portion of the hotel the night before was $18. On the road, I would have to buy my own lunch rather than eating ramen in my apartment. Add in gas, and $45 of my $104 windfall was gone, and I had maybe 11 bucks in my bank account.

For most of the day, I did horribly in Bloomington, just like in Chicago. At the end of the day, I finally hit a pretty big score at a truck stop restaurant. Lots of the staff, fry cooks, busboys, and other people I was jealous of bought several prints. I went to the hotel to cash out. After room and breakfast, I still got $68. Huzzah! The staff was staying in Bloomington another day. I knew to cash out while I was hot. Rather than paying another 18 bucks for a room, I went home. Why drink 40s alone in a parking lot when I could do it indoors in my shitty apartment while watching TV?

Getting Out

I pretty much hated every second of life working this job. I hated the meetings, I hated the commute, I hated the selling, I hated the lies, and I hated the fact that I made such little money that saving up for rent was pointless - I generally spend half my earnings at the bar.

One day, like any other, I got up early, I fought traffic, I went to the stupid meeting, I fought traffic, and I started hitting up businesses on Lincoln Avenue. Then, I got the call. A phone slinging job in Evanston that I'd applied to and interviewed at months ago wanted to hire me, and wanted me to start work the next day. They paid an actual salary, so I would make a wage every day. They were in Evanston, so I could take the El to work and skip traffic. They were a JOB, but unlike my current "career," I would move from destitute to legit middle class wages in a few months.

The call came at around 9:30. In one of the great moments of my life, I immediately stopped hustlin' Lincoln Av. I drove home, and got there in time for The Price is Right. After that, I took a nap. I read some, and played some Nintendo. I went back to the "office" at 6 and unloaded all of the art from my car. I was impervious to their hard sell as I did it. I was another statistic, another turnover. I suppose I owe them something on the positivity tip, since that was their thing. Basically every single day since I quit that didn't involve a death in the family or a break up has been better than any of the 16 days that I sold art out of my car.

Fire it up!

noreply@blogger.com (Jae-hak) — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 04:29:00 +0000

I've had a lot of bad jobs. I've slung phones. I've (poorly) advised people on how to fill out their student loan applications. I've called alumni to beg for money for a university that I only attended during freshman year. I had a job that I rather liked as a cameraman for a TV station, but it required me to wake up at 4:18 a.m., and after tolls and gas for a daily 68 mile round trip, it actually cost me money. I've sold fireworks for 14 hours a day in a non-air conditioned shipping container in July, although I dug that job too. I've worked for the dreaded McD. Still, if I'm asked my worst job, the unequivocal answer requires less than .00001 seconds of thought.

See, for 16 days (not counting weekends, holidays, or days that I was out of town), I sold art out of my car. I've already made it sound far better than it was. Already, I'm sure you imagine that I painted something, or that people that I knew put together a sculpture, and that I was parked next to some public square and selling art to passers-by that may have been a self-selecting bunch that may care about the arts. Real life at this job was far less romantic. I sold Monet and Van Gogh and Dali prints to businesses door to door. Door to door.

Essentially, I would walk into a place of business, be it a law firm or a KFC, and I would bring a couple prints with me. I would present the "company's" scripted lies (Hey, I'm with a design company, and we were just decorating an office across the street. We have a couple paintings left over and we're selling them for 80% off. Would you be interested in checking out a couple?) Generally, it was my job to get kicked out of places. Hey, why not? I'm good at getting kicked out of places.

The want ad

Maybe this would be a good time to talk about the "company," and why I use the term "company." When I first moved to Chicago, I was flat broke. Flat broke. I applied for every job in the paper. Some of these jobs were "marketing" opportunities, which my major was somewhat related to. I responded to ads that said things like "Account Executive needed! Work in a rock and roll atmosphere. $600-$1000 a week to start. Advancement opportunities. Only apply if you love to travel." Of course this sounded good, as it would to pretty much anybody, and I was in my early 20s so I didn't know any better.

The Interview Process

The economy sucks now, but it wasn't super awesome then either, at least not compared to what I grew up with in the Clinton years. I never heard back from most of the jobs that I applied to, but I heard back from these sorts of ads. I would get a call a day after applying, and the secretary would ask me to come in the next day for an interview. I was broke, so I would, even though I still knew nothing about the job. At the interview the next day (always in the suburbs), I would be greeted by the super foxy secretary and asked to fill out an application. I would go to the interview, always a really charming dude in a suit talking about magical opportunity, but very little about the job itself. Again, I was young, so I was kinda too dumb to ask about job specifics. I would invariably be asked back to a second interview, which was always the next day.

At the second interview at the first company of this sort that I interviewed at, I realized the game. I was partnered with a sales rep, and was told it was a whole day interview. He drove us to Lake in the Hills or some far flung suburb like that, and then we went door to door selling coupons for office supplies to businesses. At lunch (I paid for mine) I was told how I could become a manager in 6 weeks and be making six figures within a year. I stuck around for the whole "interview," largely because I didn't have a car with me and din't have enough money in my bank account to cover the $70 taxi ride back to my car from Lake in the Hills. After watching this cold calling all day, I decided this wasn't for me. Once we got back to the office, I pretty much skipped out and drove home.

Trouble is, I was still broke, and I still wasn't getting calls from legit companies. A couple days later, I went to a similar first interview. I agreed to a second interview, knowing that I would be selling for free, but I asked the guy if I could drive my own car and follow from place to place. No dice. This company was selling spa treatment coupons to women in malls, and everyone who worked there was stunningly good looking and well dressed. I'd just spent 4 months driving across America and camping in Montana and drinking in Mexico. I had nothing in common with these people. Fortunately, the "second interviewer's" territory was Orland Square Mall, in the south burbs. I sorta knew the area, and more importantly, I knew how to figure out the bus system there. After watching this dude hustle mall customers and fail for an hour or so, I ducked out for a smoke. I took the chance away from the "rep" to catch a suburban bus back into town and then the El back to my car.

I went to another interview with Vector Marketing. They were in the same north Chicago building as the 50th ward alderman's office. I hoped that Vector had something to do with the Chicago Democrats, but sadly they were focused on selling knives door to door. We had a group interview, and I got up and left in the middle of the presentation. I felt like a rock star walking out.

You would have thought I'd have learned my lesson, but I still needed to pay my rent and had no source of income. I went to yet another interview with a shady company because they called. I didn't even pay attention to the spiel at the first interview. I knew what the second interview would be, cold sales all day, but I didn't care, I came back for it anyway. I had nothing else to do the next day anyway.

It seemed like the universe wanted me to work at a shady door-to-door sales company. This last interview, selling art, seemed like the least obnoxious of the groups I had come across. I decided to throw in my lot with whatever this company was called. They changed their name often enough that it didn't really matter.

The Work Day

Being on time and meetings were of the utmost importance with these people, so there was a morning meeting at 8 a.m. every day. The "office," (an unmarked warehouse space with a couple offices) was in a business park exactly 11 miles north of my apartment, but nowhere near the El so I had to drive to the meeting. Because of traffic, it took at least an hour to cover those 11 miles, so I left home before 7. At the office, we would load our cars with art and have a meeting, which I will discuss at length shortly. At 8:30, we were free to go to our territories. I had no interest in going to Lake in the Hills or some far-flung burb, so I was assigned a territory in the city. My turf would be Lincoln Avenue, from the Chicago line all the way to the road's terminus down in Lincoln Park. Thus, at 8:30, I left the "office" and drove back into town, still during rush hour. It would take another 45 minutes to get the the far northern parts of the city.

We kept our unsold pieces in our cars at all times, in case we wanted to sell after hours or on the weekend. My car was filled to the brim with framed prints. Since I didn't sell much, I didn't have much need to reload. As the meetings were totally ridiculous but required, I basically left my house at 6:45 and got to my territory to start selling at 9:15. Two and a half hours killed to get to an area that was a 15 minute drive from my house.

One of the tenets of the company was the "5 at 5." We were officially done at 5 p.m., but we were expected to hit up 5 more businesses after 5 struck, then to return to the office (again, at rush hour). As I plied Lincoln Avenue from north to south each day (covering about a mile a day, there are A LOT of businesses on Lincoln), I would always finish the day a mile closer to home than I started, but then had to return to the office in a northern burb.

Why go back to the office? To cash out, of course. If I made any sales (it wasn't a daily occurrence), then I had to got back to the office to give my money to the boss and get my paltry cut. Even if I didn't make sales, I had to go back for a "rap session." I would get back to the office at around 6 (I learned that showing up before that was bad, I obviously wasn't committing to the "5 at 5."). By the time I got back home, it would be close to 7, because again, rush hour. four times a day. I was away from home over 12 hours a day, and 4 of those hours were to make pointless trips to the office.

The System

My job, and the other jobs that I interviewed for selling office supplies or spa coupons or knives were all multi-level-marketing schemes, which are legally not pyramid schemes but employ some similar practices. Only the absolute most gifted salesmen in the world could actually make a living making cold calls with no leads and no customer qualification. The way to make money in the short run and to keep the bosses happy and rich is to use warm leads, i.e., selling useless shit to friends and family. Since I'm not one to bug my peeps about products they don't need nor want, I was a dead end.

The way to make money in the long run is to recruit friends, family, or suckers into the fold of the company and make a commission off their sales to their warm leads. Recruit a few people to the fold, and you move from an "associate" to a "trainer." See, the guy who gave me my "second interview" was actually "training" me, thus he would get a piece of anything I sold. If you are a trainer, you rotate who trains what new meat, and get a percentage of anyone that sticks around. Train enough people that stick, and you become an "assistant manager." Assistants, of course, get a vig off of every trainer under them and every peon under them. Assistants take n00bs on their second training, two weeks after the n00b starts. Of course, the assistant gets 100% of that day's sales take, just like the trainer did on the "second interview," only now the n00b is a little more likely to make them money.

From assistant, one can become a branch manager, who runs the office. He's the cat that ran the bullshit meetings and spent most of the day hanging out in the office, although he still went out and sold too. That was always one of my questions early - why is a guy who claims to make 6 figures managing an office out doing the same bullshit that I did? It couldn't have been for fun, nobody could enjoy cold call outside sales. Of course, the manager made cuts off of everyone in the office. Above him was the regional manager, and now we get to people that have actually been entrenched in the company for awhile, people that have the top of the, um, triangle on speed dial. The regional manager that I dealt with ran an older Chicagoland branch, and a Google search shows that she is still with the company. She really doesn't go out in the field, and she really does stay at the office and rake in cash. The people above her in Seattle or Atlanta or Cleveland (the location of the main office was kind of a moving target) do likewise.

I'm sure you get the pattern. So yeah, there's good money to be made, the peon just has to wait for people in the regional management level or above to be promoted, or to quit, or to get fired, or to die. Thing is, they never do. They hang around forever like an unwanted party guest. If I were to look up the middle and upper management of Sprint, I'm sure it would be vastly different now than it was when I left. Recently, I've done some research on my old art sales "company," and the middle and upper management are the exact same people it was nearly a decade ago when I was there. Like any self-respecting gang, the street level has constant turnover, but the king stay the king. Best way to make money at a pyra.. er, MLM - be early to the party.

Happy Old Year

noreply@blogger.com (Jae-hak) — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 09:04:00 +0000

2011 is ending the way it began for me - in a confused and terrified rage. Just like in late December of 2010, I have absolutely no clue where I'll be or what I'll be doing this time next year. Nothing would particularly surprise me, other than, say, toasting the Chiefs team that I personally coached to 16-0, looking forward to hosting a playoff game that we would invariably lose.

Lots of pretty cool shit has happened this year though. If 2011 happened to fall in the 90s, I'd probably rank it the best year ever. Last winter was arguably the best of my life, and the summer was no slouch either.

I had two absolute top-5 pantheon trips to the Philippines.

The Old Man visited.

I had cups of coffee (and beer) in Taiwan, Thailand, and Hong Kong.

I quit smoking. Hell, it was so easy to do, I did it several times.

You all know I hate meeting new people and making friends, but I've met more cool people this year than most 3 combined.

I walked to every Gu in Seoul, and then for good measure walked on to the suburbs.

I went 1-1 in Hongdae street brawls. To be fair, the one I lost was to like 30 dudes.

I was absolutely murdered on the girl front in a way that hasn't been seen in years and rendered dead inside, but bounced back.

Osama bin Laden, Gadaffi, and Kim Jong Il all died. Pretty much the worst humans alive that never wore number 7 for the Broncos. I didn't actually have anything to do with this, but I'm still willing to take credit.

This blog had it's biggest year ever, and by an exponential standard.

My fantasy football team in one league might win the championship. Somehow, I've never done that before.

I became a regular contributor to an actual print magazine. 10s of people have likely read my articles while taking a shit in an Itaewon bar.

All in all, the term "all in all" is a horrible transition into a conclusion, but I'm using it anyway. If 1999 was an "A" and 2005 was an "F," I'll give 2011 a B+.

Happy New Year all.

Top 11

noreply@blogger.com (Jae-hak) — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 05:47:00 +0000

So it's come to this. The blog version of the clip show. In a totally subjective move, I'm ranking the top 11 posts for 2011. If you missed any of these along the way, they are all totally worth checking out. Or at least clicking on so I get the hit. Either way, Merry holidays and all, and enjoy.

11. Dork. Geek. Nerd. Wanker. Turdburgler. Etc... . I thought it was kinda funny, and it changed the course of this site, ramping up the hits.

10. Gobble Humbug. Complaining about Thanksgiving, which I maintain is a stupid holiday.

9. The Epikest Walk (so far) - a representative photoblog. I've done many. This was one of the better ones this year.

8. FB World - some solid jokes making fun of other countries
Internets Forget

7. Get off my Lawn! - I'm old.

6. ऍम इ अ हिपस्टर? - or maybe I'm hip.

5. Philipines Photoblog - A lifetime top-5 trip is in the top 5 for the blog year.

4. The Only Band That Matters - cuz I'll think of 2011 any time I hear SNSD.

3. The Internets Forget - last week's post was two months in the making. Google tells me you didn't read it, so check it out.

2. This One Goes Out to All the Bitches Out There (and harlots, hood rats, wenches, and gold diggers) - only because of the massive amount of hits this post gets.

1. The Gu Project -This is probably my best idea of the year. It is really 6 posts, but this is the introduction.

Good times.

The Internets Forget

noreply@blogger.com (Jae-hak) — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 15:05:00 +0000

My youth is largely forgotten.

Sure, this is a common sentiment, but in my case, I mean forgotten by the internet. I can't be expected to remember everything. However, if iconic pop culture elements of my childhood and youth don't exist at all on the internet, how long will it be before they are gone forever?

There are a couple reasons for this lack of being able to dig up awesome nuggets on the web. For one thing, I'm old. Or I'm not. I fall into something of an online gap. The boomers have all of their memories covered on the web, since there are so goddamn many of them. The millennials do too, since they were able to create more web content. I'm in a grey area.

Another factor - I'm from Lawrence, Kansas. Sure, Larry is a great town and a stone's throw from the Kansas City metro area, but a lot of KC's non-coastal, non-Great Lakes collective pop culture memory simply does not exist on the web.

Finally - I'm weird. There's shit that sticks out for me that most people wouldn't care about.

Some things that do not exist on the web -

The Billy Smith professional tree climber PSA. I don't know anyone from back home who cannot quote this spot verbatim, yet nary a Youtube clip exists. Anybody within 5 years of me from within a 100 mile radius of me certainly must know of the kid who climbed trees all his life, but never near overhead lines. Best I could find was a recent reference on Grantland.com.

Lazlo the Great, Teller of Fortunes. I was so obsessed with this talking fortune telling machine that I actually created a cult surrounding it in the early 90s. Amazingly, the machine still exists. It is located in an Indiana Beach arcade in northwest Indiana. Tens of thousands of people go to IB every year, and many come across Lazlo. Somehow, on the entire Internet, there is one picture of him. One. There is more Lazlo media on my hard drive than on the whole of the internet. In all these years, nobody has decided to take a video of him and post it? There's no way that the company that built the Lazlo machine still exists, so it can't be a matter of Youtube taking down videos of him. Allow me to literally double the internets' Lazlo collection:

Quackers. This is an awesome ball rolling game, also at Indiana Beach. Somehow, it's classic line of "Give it another quack" is not recorded anywhere online.

The Orient Express. For a couple decades, this was Kansas City's primary roller coaster. It was torn down in 2003. 2003 ain't that long ago. Sure, the internets has tons of information regarding the former coaster, but only one non-CGI first person recording of the ride exists on YouTube, and that single recording was from 1993 and is of putrid quality. People had digital cameras in 2003. How did nobody bother to record and post the Orient Express? Some rides are just rides. The Orient Express was essentially a Kansas City Bar Mitzvah. Once you ride it, you are a man. Case in point - I had zero friends who made it to second base before riding it.  

When I was a little kid, there was an alphabet learning 45 that I used to listen to. Well, "A My Name is Alice" does not fucking exist anywhere. It still pops into my head from time to time. "A my name is Alice, I live in a palace, and every afternoon at three my footman serves me tea." Go ahead, google it. There are articles, but no fucking recording. The real mystery - I was like three when I used to rock this on my Fisher Price record player. I didn't know what a footman was at the time. I doubt I knew what tea was either. How do I remember a lyric for vocabulary that I didn't have?

On slightly more recent music - good luck finding anything by the band Black Label online, or even anything about them. Yeah, they were a shitty local punk band in Lawrence in the mid-90s, but they were a pretty well known shitty local punk rock band. I may have the largest remaining Black Label collection in the world. My freshman year of college, the drummer, a sorta buddy of mine, gave me a copy of their new 7 inch because I had a radio show in Tacoma, Washington. I lost the 7 inch a long time ago, but I played a few of the songs from it on my show, and I recorded my show on a damn boombox at my dorm. I found those tapes a couple years ago and converted them to MP3. So basically, the only known extant Black Label recording was a record played over the radio, then recorded onto cassette, then converted to digital. As you may expect, it is not of high quality.

Black Label and kids songs aside, for me the holy grail of missing music has long been some random late 90's rock song that includes the lyric "You can call it familiarrrrrr...." While Black Label probably only got radio airplay on my show, this song was on legit radio all the time in Lawrence. It wasn't even that great of a song, I just want to find it to prove I didn't make it up.

Some of my internet gaps aren't even from America. It's not just a Lawrence thing. In my Euro days, I used to frequent a bar in Florence called Stonehenge, or Stonehenge Rock Club. Stonehenge was THE SPOT back in the day. Every other bar and club that we frequented was less awesome and often less busy, yet all of them have a web presence now. It was a bar with no sign on the outside, just a nondescript door. Keep in mind, this was before every other bar in Brooklyn adopted this model. Stonehenge required a membership, it is was rocking every night of the week until at least 5. I don't think we ever went there before 2 or 3. Maybe Stonehenge shut down in 2000 or 2001 and missed the true web explosion. Maybe they stayed underground enough to avoid any web presence. Still, if the Shenago Lounge in Lawrence can be easily googled, I would think anything could be.

As a closer, I should mention the ultimate internet transgression. There are all kinds of songs, institutions, and roller coasters that I hold dear that don't exist on the internet. What have I forgotten so far? People, of course. Lots of people that I care about, or at some point cared about do not exist in any capacity online. I could go down an ex-girlfriend tangent here, but this isn't that kind of post. Perhaps the most inexplicable internet absence would be my buddy Stong. This is a cat that actually more than flirted with a congressional, neh, Congressional run a couple years back, yet does not exist online. A dude who essentially coined the phrase "some dude." Yet, Stong doesn't even have a Facebook or Twitter. A google search of Stong leads to dead ends, then back NES/NAS. For all you know, I made him up. If he didn't really exist, I probably would have. Only trick is, I can't come up with lines like "I took the uptown train, and she took the downtown, and that's the last I saw of her."

HK PI

noreply@blogger.com (Jae-hak) — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 15:20:00 +0000

Rick Santorum will not be president. Greg Maddux was a good pitcher. Missouri is a horrible place. Only assholes wear stocking caps when it's warm. Communism didn't work. I've been on a lot of trips. You know all of these things already.

Some trips involve setting off to new places, crossing the unknown void. Some trips go backwards, retrace old steps, and prove that you can go home again, or you can't, whatever "home" may happen to be. Sometimes, like last week, a person such as me can get lucky and follow both paths. I headed off to Hong Kong and the Philippines, two somewhat known quantities for me, and in both spots I strived to check out uncharted territory while returning to old haunts. Both the road less traveled and the superhighway lead me in directions I never expected.

Enough. On to the reason you're here - cool pics of cool places.

The Harbourplace Mall entrance in Kowloon, Hong Kong. These are just figurines, they don't move or talk or anything. I have no idea why it draws such a crowd.

Jollibee in Kongers! The Pinoys are here and they're selling Champ Burgers!

I.M. Pei's Bank of China Building is the one on the left. Easily my favorite Hong Kong skyscraper.

Night View from Victoria Peak. I never made it to The Peak on my first trip to Hong Kong, even though I was there for four nights. No clue why, really, it's pretty much the most famous sight in town. Getting there was easy, no line for the tram on the way up. Getting back down was more difficult. There was a massive line. The line was only made worse by the fact that the Chinese (likely Mainlanders, I doubt many locals go to such a touristy spot) cut in line like crazy. This was a common occurrence everywhere I went in Hong Kong. It seems the Brits didn't impart any of their love of queuing to the locals.

The Koreans are here, and they're selling food with hilarious vaguely racist signs.

My crappy guesthouse room my first night. This was far and away my most expensive hotel room of the trip. The computer monitor there was the TV, and one of the 14 channels I got was a CCTV feed for the building. It was oddly hypnotic, watching random strangers ride the elevator and walk through the hall in real time.

One of the nerdy skyscraper websites that I frequent ranks the Hong Kong skyline at number one in the world, and Chicago at two. I may agree. HK is the only city that may, may have a better skyline than Chi-town, at least that I've seen.

The south end of Nathan Road in Kowloon. Nathan Road is a pretty amazing place. Hong Kong calls itself "Asia's World City," and I really can't argue. Nathan Road feels like New York or London - every nationality seems represented. The number of languages overheard while walking a block is mind boggling. The road is home to some of the world's finest hotels, and some of the world's worst.

Signs overhang the road all over the place in Hong Kong, particularly in Kowloon. From the second deck on a two-level bus, they really scream.

My second night in Hong Kong, one week after the first. This is a view from the Star Ferry, the best 25 cent public transit option in the world.

The gate to Temple Street Night Market.

Chinese knock-off Legos for sale at Temple Market.

More large overhanging signs.

Japan gets all the press for this, but I guess Hong Kong also gets A List Hollywood celebs doing ads. I feel like Korea kinda gets cheated in this regard.

Hong Kong is a great city, but it can be pretty lonely on your own. It probably didn't help that I was pretty much permanently hungover while I was there. Fortunately, I spent most of my trip in the much friendlier islands of the Philippines.

Alona Beach in Panglao, an island off Bohol. This was my first trip to Bohol, so it was cool to check out a new island or two. It was as hot as it looks.

Alona Beach.

A wider view of Alona.

Alona sunset. Sure, it's no Boracay sunset on a south-facing beach, but it wasn't without its charms.

A final look at Alona.

Robinson's Mall in Dumaguete. Strangely, the Robinson's in Duma is far nicer than the dump of a Robinson's in Cebu, though Cebu is a much larger city.

Pura Vida resort in Dauin, just outside of Dumaguete. Here's what I did that day in Dauin: Nothing. It was awesome.

Looking out at the dive boats along the beach at Dauin. I would have gone diving, but that would have required leaving the lounge chair. Who needs that?

Boats at the little wharf to the north of Dumaguete when I headed back to Cebu.

I took the bus to Cebu. That's it, on the left. It needed a little help from this rickety ferry to get to Cebu Island.

C'mon, like I wasn't going to finish with hilarious Engrish? I saw this sign near the Peak in Hong Kong. I still have no idea what it means.