Going to Disney World with the kids was definitely something that was going to be inevitable, given its place as far as mythical wife and I are concerned. A wedding in central Florida where the wife was to be one of the bridesmaids accelerated the trip, and no matter how ready or not we were, the time had arrived to take the girls down to Orlando for a lengthy trip that was chock full of memories, lessons, trials and tribulations, as far as I was concerned.
Tag: vacation
Fulfilling the weeb dream
If anyone knew me 20 years ago, they might remember me as an anime-obsessed weeaboo who loved everything Japan, even more so than my own Korean heritage. Most everything I was interested was related to anime or Japanese culture, and I even took four years of Japanese between high school and college to further enhance my fascination with the culture.
All the time, I would’ve loved to have visited Japan, but when you’re a teenager and have no money or means to make such trips happen, that was more or less of a pipedream that would probably never happen any time soon.
Eventually, I grew out of it, further embraced my true heritage and kind of went on with my life. As the years passed however, I’d watched people all around me eventually make their pilgrimages to the glorious nation. Few have ever said anything bad about it, and generally everyone has nothing but glowing things to say about their trips to Japan. But for whatever reasons, the boyhood dream of visiting glorious Nippon had always eluded me. Just about all of my closest friends had been to Japan at some point and I began to feel like everyone but me had been there.
When I got with mythical wife when she was still mythical girlfriend and she made me realize foreign travel wasn’t as unattainable as I’d been living my life believing, we started going to a bunch of other countries together, as she too had already been to Japan, and it was mostly on the backburner for her. Plus, by this time, I had stated that I wanted my first real foray into Asia to be Korea, holding loyal to my actual heritage, although that notion kind of went down the toilet when a European cruise we took, ported in Kusadasi, Turkey, which is technically on the Asia side of the country. Fail.
Anyway, what I’m getting to is the fact that the time has finally come: I’m going to Japan.
All it took was a global pandemic and the country to close their borders for airfares to the glorious country to drop to make pulling the trigger a no-brainer, especially since I could cash in some SkyMiles to outright cover one of our fares, bringing our overall cost to laughable numbers. But regardless, our tickets have been purchased and our dates set, and soon, I will be fulfilling the 20-year weeaboo boyhood dream of visiting the land of the rising sun.
Life as a married man, brog post #2
Honestly, there’s not nearly as much to say about the honeymoon as there was the wedding. Frankly, much of this was split into two posts mostly because of my OCD of wanting to make sure a wedding photo was with the wedding post, and so that some picture from the honeymoon can also get displayed independently, therefore necessitating its own post. Still, not to say that I can’t spout off about a honeymoon, but in the interest of transparency, this is the true impetus of this post coming to fruition.
Frankly, we’re just happy to have done a honeymoon, especially immediately after the wedding. We’ve seen it happen to enough couples, where a honeymoon is planned anywhere from months to an entire year after the wedding to actually happen, and in some cases not even happen at all. Yeah no, no disrespect to those who embark on similar paths, but the both of us most definitely wanted to have an actual honeymoon, where we could actually relax and take a well-earned break from the life of planning a wedding on top of our normal working lives.
In a nutshell, we went to Disney World for a few days, stayed at the Polynesian resort, and then transitioned onto a Disney cruise for the next week, where we sailed to Mexico for a few days, hit Disney’s private island Castaway Cay for a day, and then came back home. The wife drove most of the itinerary, since she’s at least 200x more into Disney than I am, but I’m more than happy to go along for the ride, as long as the vast majority of my trip could be spent relaxing, eating like a pig, and generally having very little commitments at all.
Overall, my missions could very well be considered accomplished. Maybe a little too much, because I still have no earthly idea what I’m doing with my life whenever I have free time back home. I just watched Chinese Super Ninjas for the 80th time in my life last night, because I couldn’t triangulate on one better thing to do with two free hours than that.
The year-end post, circa 2018
As I believe more and more with each passing year, time begins to feel like it moves faster the older we get. I go to work in the morning, do my thing there, come home, have dinner, tidy things up and do one or two tasks I had in mind, and then it’s suddenly 10 pm, and now I’m at the point of the day where I can’t really commit to anything too time-consuming, lest I put myself into a position of going to bed too late, and then being tired at work the next day, and therefore I usually just end up going to bed at a sensible time.
Rinse, repeat, and suddenly it’s the end of December, and we’re on the cusp of closing out 2018 and entering 2019.
I’ve often said in the past that it seems silly the notion of encapsulating things into calendar years, and having hope that things will miraculously be better the following year for no reason at all other than the fact that the last number in the date has ticked up one. I say that, but I still find myself at the end of every year putting together these kinds of posts reflecting on a calendar year, and deciding whether it was good, whether it was bad, or more often than not, somewhere in the middle.
As far as two thousand and eighteen is concerned, I’m fairly confident that I can say with conviction that it was a pretty good year. Not somewhere in the middle, but definitely up in the upper quartile of being good. To those who kind of follow my life, the reasons for such are pretty obvious, but it kind of goes without saying that I’ve made some pretty big strides in my life in general, with none of them being larger than proposing to mythical gf, and making her mythical fiancée and soon-to-be future wifey.
I always figured there would be marriage in my life at some point, and it’s been an enjoyable albeit steady and deliberate ride, as that’s pretty much how I do most important things in my life, but I knew I was making the right choice moving forward, because as has been often times the case with the things in our relationship, things just felt right, and it was just time to make it more right, and move forward in our relationship to the next logical step.
Before I go any further reminiscing, getting engaged is what sets 2018 high atop years past, and by that logic, 2019 already has the groundwork laid down for it to be hopefully better.
Thoughts on a European vacation
So for our 2018 vacation, mythical gf future wifey and I went to Europe. Specifically Munich, Germany, Budapest, Hungary, and Vienna, Austria. These are all places that I’d never been to before, but such could very easily be said about anywhere on the planet, because in the grand spectrum of things, the world is pretty large.
Needless to say, the trip was pretty much excellent. All three places were great in their own ways, and I look back fondly to the exploration, food and drinking of each of them.
Munich, completely redeems the entire country of Germany for me. When I was younger, I’d often said that Germany was a country that I’d most want to visit in my life, because it seemed like the one country where it was a pretty drastic change to everyday life without having to go into the bush. In 2016, I went to Germany for the first time, but it was to Berlin, which turned out to be a city that embodied hostility, owned their unfriendliness and was just basically an unpleasant place that really made me question my choice of places I wanted to go. I was as relieved to leave Berlin as much as they probably bid good riddance, and I really debated on whether or not I wanted to ever go to Germany again.
Thankfully, future wifey convinced me that Munich would be different, and our 2018 European vacation would both start and end in Munich, which turned out to be a pretty good thing in the end. From the very start, arriving in Munich was arriving in a traditionally beautiful city that had classic European architecture all around, and the historic building and landmarks were stuff like cathedrals and monuments, and not just dingy vandalized wall fragments.
The people of Munich were also way friendlier, spoke more English, which is another thing that I don’t take for granted when traveling abroad, because I’m always impressed and grateful as hell whenever I go to other countries, and there are always people who can speak English as opposed to how it’s like in America where so few people speak anything otherwise.
And the trains in Munich, they actually worked, unlike Berlin, where they were always broken, closed for maintenance, and made absolutely no sense to where they actually went. Much of our time in Munich was spent walking around from tourist destinations to bier hauses, and in a country where beer is pretty much the same cost as water, needless to say, we did a good bit of bier drinking. Hofbrauhaus was a fun tourist destination, but Paulaner was definitely of superior quality in food and beer, but if any one place is worth remembering, it’s the literal cave like cellar of Augustiner, which turned out to be a really cool place in the end.
Photos: Europe Trip 2018
[2020 note]: moar unposted content, this time, photos from mythical then-gf and I’s trip to Europe, encompassing time spent in Munich, Budapest, Vienna and then back to Munich prior to heading back home.
It was a wonderful trip, and all three cities are places that I’d definitely enjoy going back to in future European trips.
I lost a mythical gf
On this day, I no longer have a girlfriend.
I have a fiancée now.
Marriage is one of those things that I always imagined would be in my future. Even though jaded people like to claim that it’s an archaic institution or something that doesn’t really mean much these days, the eternal romantic in me always saw it as something that I figured I’d want to attain in my life. I’ve watched couples that I’ve always thought were great, mothers and fathers of children, and even my own parents dissolve and divorce which I’d be lying didn’t give me concerns for pursuing it myself, but it just seems like one of those things that always had a place in my life, personally.
And fortunately, I’ve had an accommodating partner throughout this journey towards marriage, and the once-mythical gf has stuck with me throughout the last four years, and kind of made it something of a no-brainer that we just might work out in the long haul. I’m lucky to have a girl in my life that loves and accepts me, is supportive of my pursuits, and encourages me to be the best person that I can be, and I’m pretty stoked and excited to go through the awkward transition of calling her “my girl-I mean fiancée,” and eventually, my wife.
It’s funny because despite the fact that it took four years to get to this point, this is something that has been on my mind for a way lot longer. But I didn’t want to be one of those people who were just giddy to be in a relationship, and rush straight into marriage, without really knowing their better halves, and despite the fact that I was wondering if this could go in this direction, I always erred on the side of steady, to let things grow, feel things out, and really be more and more sure of, well everything.