January 2026 investment portfolio breakdown

by   •   Finance, Highlights
 

Disclaimer: I am not a registered investment advisor, and even if I was, I wouldn’t be your advisor. The information contained in this blog post is strictly anecdotal and should not be construed as financial advice. Everyone’s situation is uniquely different, so if you are seeking guidance, consult a licensed and certified professional for personalized assistance.

 
Another year, another investment portfolio breakdown. My overall investment strategy has remained consistent over time (i.e., dumping a majority of my money into very safe index funds), but compared to last year, there are still a handful of noticeable changes.

As a side note, I used to post updates every quarter, but as of the past few years, I have changed it to just doing annual breakdowns instead. When I did more frequent updates, I would build on previous blog posts and list those as prerequisite reading to supply the needed context, but after I lowered the frequency to once per year, I started writing them as standalone pieces. This means that you won’t have to go back and read an older blog post to understand what I’m talking about, but this also means that you might notice some repeated information here if you’ve read previous investment breakdowns.

 
Before I begin with the breakdown, I figured I would start with a quick story and a broader financial change that would not be apparent just from my categorical allocation breakdown.

On a random day, I received a phone call from someone claiming to be from Fidelity Investments, a financial services company I use as one of my brokerages. My immediate assumption was that it was a scammer trying to gain access to my Fidelity account by pretending to be an employee. Regardless, for my amusement, I still listened to what they had to say.

Rather than asking me for my address or social security number or any other personal information, the employee instead told me that he saw my Fidelity account and reached out to let me know that they have an investor center in Henderson of the Las Vegas Valley in Nevada, close to my home address. He wanted to invite me to stop by in-person for a visit at any time during business hours. That’s it.

I was now even more suspicious at this point, because obviously, the only thing more suspicious than a scammer is an actual real financial services employee trying to be genuinely helpful and welcoming. I thanked him for the call and let him know that I would stop by if I’m in the area or if I have any questions. Afterwards, I checked the phone number on the caller ID and confirmed that it did match up with that Fidelity branch.

Funny enough, this simple single phone call actually had a decent effect on me.

Historically, I only ever used Fidelity to manage my Health Savings Account, charitable giving account, and over-the-counter trades—all services that Vanguard did not offer. However, recently, I set up a regular individual brokerage account on Fidelity and started putting more money into it so I could split my assets more evenly between Vanguard and Fidelity as to serve as a form of risk mitigation in case I were to lose access to one of my accounts or get hacked.

The fact that there now seems to be a “human touch” on Fidelity’s end, with potentially an account manager with eyes on my portfolio, makes me quite a bit more willing to put more money into my Fidelity account while limiting my Vanguard account to just retirement contributions for now. That has been the strategy I’ve stuck with over the past year, so when I do security-by-security breakdowns in some of these categories, you might notice more Fidelity funds popping up.

 
With all that said, here is the percentage breakdown of how I distribute my money in my investment portfolio:

Cash

I have always said this, and I will continue to say it: I always prioritize time in the market over timing the market. As a result, I always encourage people to hold onto somewhere around 3-6 months’ worth of core living expenses, and then put the rest into investments right away, as soon as possible. It doesn’t always matter which investments you pick; the most important part is that you are not just holding it in deflating cash.

I personally err on the side of safety and lean closer to a buffer of six months’ worth of living expenses held in cash. Especially now with my company Tempo going through an uncertain and volatile financial period, I have been giving the company loans and delaying my personal compensation so that the corporation can have more working capital, so it is more important now than usual for me to have a cash buffer in my bank account.

(And in case you’re wondering, no, I did not just leak some exclusive insider information; because AVY Entertainment, Inc., d.b.a. Tempo had a Regulation CF offering, it has to file yearly Form C-ARs available for public viewing on the SEC’s website, so it is public knowledge by this point that our financial state is anything but stable.)

Most of the cash I hold as my emergency fund is inside a savings account at Discover Bank, which was recently acquired by Capital One. A limited amount of it is also inside my brokerage accounts’ settlement funds—Vanguard Federal Money Market Fund (VMFXX) on Vanguard and the Fidelity Government Money Market Fund (SPAXX) on Fidelity.

  1.408%

Domestic broad market index funds

Like usual, an overwhelming majority of my portfolio is still invested in domestic broad market index funds, a very boring but very safe category. Nothing much has changed here—I put little bits of money into interesting investments as I see the opportunities arise, but otherwise, the rest of my money goes into these index funds.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, I bought a lot of Vanguard High Dividend Yield Index Fund Admiral Shares (VHYAX) to try and weather out the uncertainty of the market, as dividend funds were not as unpredictable as growth funds. Before and after the pandemic, I mainly bought Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund Admiral Shares (VTSAX). As I mentioned above in the introduction, I haven’t been buying much Vanguard non-retirement funds and have been investing in Fidelity funds instead, so the shares of VHYAX and VTSAX I own are pretty old.

As for the new money I’ve been putting into domestic broad market index funds, it’s all been going into the Fidelity ZERO Total Market Index Fund (FZROX). One of the downsides of this Fidelity ZERO fund is that it is non-transferrable, so if I ever need to move this out to a different brokerage, I would have to have a gigantic taxable event to realize all my gains, as there are no in-kind securities at other brokerages. With that being said, I don’t foresee a major scenario where I would have to do that anytime soon, so that is a risk I was willing to take in exchange for the 0% expense ratio.

 43.056%

International broad market index funds

One of my main investment goals during 2025 was to invest more in the international market, and I definitely succeeded at that. During my end-of-2024 investment breakdown, I shared that my allocation in international broad market index funds was only just barely over 5%. Since then, I have doubled that to over 10%.

In 2025, I finished selling my entire position in Vanguard Total International Stock Index Fund Admiral Shares (VTIAX) for the purposes of tax loss harvesting. After waiting out the wash sale period, I put all that money (and more) back into the international market via the Fidelity ZERO International Index Fund (FZILX). (And yes, a lot of resources have told me that VTIAX and FZILX likely do not count as substantially similar enough to trigger a wash sale, but I wasn’t in a rush and preferred to just be safe.)

Although I am happy with how much progress I’ve made towards shifting my domestic vs. international ratio in the direction I wanted, I still think I need more exposure to international markets relative to the amount of belief I have in international markets. Thus, throughout this year as well, I will continue investing more into FZILX while not putting as much into FZROX.

 10.078%

Bonds

Back during the COVID-19 pandemic, I purchased Series I Savings Bonds from the United States Department of the Treasury as a hedge against the rampant inflation that was happening as a result of the government printing an insane amount of new money. Although the returns aren’t as crazy right now, I remember the annual rates exceeding 9% during the peak of pandemic relief efforts.

I haven’t sold my Series I Savings Bonds yet because there is a penalty on the interest if you sell it when the bond is less than five years old. However, in case you haven’t been keeping track, it’s already 2026, so my bonds’ five-year maturity dates are either approaching very quickly or have already passed. This is going to be one of my upcoming projects—checking the exact dates when I purchased the bonds, then coming up with a plan on when to sell them and how to reinvest the proceeds.

Apart from that, I also finished selling my entire position in Vanguard Total Bond Market Index Fund Admiral Shares (VBTLX) in 2025 for tax loss harvesting. After (again, potentially unnecessarily) waiting out the wash sale period, I put that money back into bonds via the Fidelity US Bond Index Fund (FXNAX).

For now, I’m unsure how I’m going to proceed with regards to purchasing more bonds. I am getting older, but I’m still not that old. I would consider myself as having a medium risk tolerance, which is high enough that I don’t want to doomsday prep by pulling out of the stock market and dumping everything into bonds. I will think on this a bit more over the next year and report back during my next investment portfolio breakdown.

  5.127%

Target date funds

I split my target date funds off into a separate category because they are a combination package of different kinds of index funds and bonds that automatically adjust based on which target year you pick. For example, if you elect a fund for 2030, it means that you are retiring soon and need stability (i.e., bonds) in your portfolio; if you elect a fund for 2070, it means that you’re a recent addition to the workforce and won’t be retiring for a long time, so you need growth (i.e., stocks) in your portfolio.

Considering how active of an investor I am, it may be strange to see that I take advantage of these “set it and forget it” kind of funds in exchange for paying a higher expense ratio. The reason I do it is a form of diversification in the sense that, if I ever become incapacitated up to the point where I am no longer able to manage my investment portfolio anymore, target date funds end up being a hedge against my money still being in highly volatile funds at the time of my retirement and potentially tanking due to a neglectful absence of response to a falling market.

When I first started buying target date funds, I bought shares of the Vanguard Target Retirement 2060 Fund (VTTSX). Over time, I realized that I am doing quite well financially, so I foresaw an earlier retirement and put new money into the Vanguard Target Retirement 2055 Fund (VFFVX) instead. Then, with even more time passing, I realized that I am doing better financially than I would’ve ever imagined, so now I’ve been putting all new retirement money into the Vanguard Target Retirement 2050 Fund (VFIFX).

As of today, VFIFX is composed of 51.9% Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund Institutional Plus Shares (VSMPX), 37.7% Vanguard Total International Stock Index Fund Investor Shares (VGTSX), 7.3% Vanguard Total Bond Market II Index Fund Investor Shares (VTBIX), and 3.1% Vanguard Total International Bond II Index Fund Institutional Shares (VTILX). The further-out VFFVX and VTTSX are both composed of 52.3% VSMPX, 38.1% VGTSX, 6.7% VTBIX, and 2.9% VTILX.

Note that I am only buying these inside my Roth IRA and SEP-IRA.

 22.253%

Real estate investment trusts (REITs)

I’m still keeping an eye out for good real estate purchase opportunities, but until something comes up, my only real estate exposure is through real estate investment trusts. Realistically, I foresee my first major real estate investment being an self-occupied property, but I’m having a great time being a nomad right now and not rushing to wrap up that chapter of my life yet. I can of course just become a landlord, but that comes with a lot of obligations and locks up a chunk of my capital that I could instead reserve as more liquid securities.

My position in Vanguard Real Estate Index Fund Admiral Shares (VGSLX) is still negative at the moment, so I’ve been selling it off little by little for tax loss harvesting and reinvesting it in other funds. For example, in early January 2026 when my tax-advantaged retirement account limits reset, I sold US$7,000.00 of VGSLX and did a Vanguard-to-Vanguard transfer into my Roth IRA account as a contribution, then purchased VFIFX with that balance.

I do still want to maintain real estate exposure though, so for whatever amount of VGSLX I sell, I end up buying a comparable amount of Fidelity Real Estate Index Fund (FSRNX) at some point in the future (after the wash sale period). In the further future where I finally jump on a property purchase opportunity, I will likely sell my REITs (to whatever extent is reasonable in a capital gains tax sense) and apply it towards a down payment on my mortgage.

  4.482%

Individual stocks and private companies

I had a phase during the COVID-19 pandemic during which I had a lot of fun trading individual stocks, but since then, that interest has faded. As of today, I only own individual stocks in Marriott International, Inc. (MAR), T-Mobile US, Inc. (TMUS), and TKO Group Holdings, Inc. (TKO).

Most notably, I finally sold off my position in Nxu, Inc. (NXU). For those missing the lore, I contributed US$564.80 during one of Atlis Motor Vehicles’ early funding rounds because I thought their electric pickup trucks seemed cool. Since then, the company became an absolute disaster, rebranded, and was fighting a constant struggle against being delisted because their stock price tanked so much. After holding on for a long time, I eventually gave up and sold my ownership for US$0.92, resulting in an overall loss of US$563.88.

For my next individual stock purchase, I’m looking at companies that give discounts or other perks to shareholders. For example, I learned that some cruise lines like Royal Caribbean International will give on-board credits to cruisers who own 100 shares of Royal Caribbean Cruises, Ltd. (RCL). Beyond travel, I also found out that companies like Ford offer special X-Plan Partner Pricing to people who own 100 shares of Ford Motor Company (F). A hundred shares of RCL is a commitment of over US$30,000.00 as of today, so that is something I would only buy if RCL completely crashes, but 100 shares of F is only a little over a thousand dollars, which I think is very manageable and could be useful if I ever end up wanting to buy a Ford or Lincoln vehicle later.

As a side note, I am not including my equity ownership of AVY Entertainment, Inc., d.b.a. Tempo in this portfolio breakdown, not only because it is a private company and pinpointing an accurate and up-to-date valuation is relatively tricky, but also because my ownership in the company is large enough that it would probably skew this breakdown and make it less useful from the general public’s perspective.

  2.416%

Debt instruments

New as of 2025, I diversified my portfolio even more by investing into debt instruments. In simpler terms, I have basically become a lender for people’s loans. Of course, I’m not going out there and literally letting people borrow money; instead, I purchased shares of the Fidelity Investment Grade Securitized ETF (FSEC).

I’ve noticed that people are borrowing a lot of money. After hearing stories that my friends in Los Angeles tell me, it seems like everyone is just buried in debt because they want to pretend like they’re rich and show off to their friends, and people are basically drowning under uncontrollable waves of interest payments. I’ve also noticed the rise of easy-approval “buy now, pay later” platforms that give out no-friction micro-loans for basic, day-to-day purchases that facilitate people going deeper into debt.

I think this is a problem, and I would like educational institutions to teach students more about personal finance so that people do not fall into these debt traps. With that being said, I’m also not going to simply pass on this category of investment. Although FSEC isn’t going to hold a substantial percentage of volatile short-term loans per se, it is still a way for me to try and make some profit from the lending industry.

  0.428%

Cryptocurrency

My cryptocurrency holdings are just as volatile as ever. As I write this, I am looking at the price of Bitcoin that has fallen to lows that have not been seen since April of last year. Fortunately, my cryptocurrency investment started as basically a gambling fund, and in the big-picture scope of things, I still have gargantuan returns from cryptocurrency.

I still have a little bit of cryptocurrency self-custodied in a cold hardware wallet, but my holdings are primarily in the form of the Grayscale Digital Large Cap Fund (GDLC), Grayscale Bitcoin Trust ETF (GBTC), Grayscale Bitcoin Mini Trust ETF (BTC), Bitwise 10 Crypto Index Fund (BITW), Bitwise Trendwise Bitcoin and Treasuries Rotation Strategy ETF (BITC), and ProShares Bitcoin ETF (BITO). As you can see, even within cryptocurrency, my holdings are decently diversified—I have exposure to Bitcoin, Bitcoin futures, and other smaller coins.

Although holding as much of my cryptocurrency as possible as actual tokens in my personal wallet is the most cost-efficient in terms of avoiding management fees, I still have all these in a traditional brokerage for two main reasons. The first is because I have a substantial amount of unrealized gains on my holdings, and selling all this off to repurchase it as actual coins would trigger a huge taxable event. The second is that most people still don’t know how to manage hardware wallets, so if I ever become incapacitated to the point where someone else has to manage my portfolio, I can rest easy that that’s easy to do on Fidelity, as opposed to my caretaker needing to fiddle around with what is basically a little USB drive.

  7.796%

International currency

As part of my efforts to increase my exposure to international investments, I also started purchasing international currency trusts alongside the aforementioned international broad market index funds. I started dabbling in currency in 2024, then expanded my holdings during 2025.

Right now, I own some shares in each of the Invesco CurrencyShares Euro Trust (FXE), Invesco CurrencyShares Japanese Yen Trust (FXY), Invesco CurrencyShares British Pound Sterling Trust (FXB), and Invesco CurrencyShares Australian Dollar Trust (FXA). There wasn’t really a whole lot of research or a solid foundational methodology behind selecting those currencies in particular; they just sounded familiar enough to me that I bought some. I didn’t feel the need to put a particularly deep amount of thought into it, considering that this only composes a very small percentage of my portfolio.

  1.657%

Precious metals

During the COVID-19 pandemic when I wanted to diversify my portfolio and invest in assets that could hedge against the volatile and crashing market, I bought some shares of Fidelity Select Gold Portfolio (FSAGX) and let it sit in my Fidelity brokerage account without thinking much about it.

Since then, I got some more motivation to look into investing in precious metals, only to discover that FSAGX technically counts as gold exposure, but isn’t quite as gold as it can get. I do have a vague memory of having wanted to invest in actual gold back in 2020 and 2021; I remember buying FSAGX because I wanted it to be a substitute to buying literal gold bars or gold nuggets and storing them in my closet. Thus, I technically made a mistake by investing in a precious metals mining and processing fund instead. Once I had that realization, my thirst for knowledge kicked in and I started doing more research.

I ultimately decided on selling my position in FSAGX and buying SPDR Gold Shares (GLD) instead. Unlike FSAGX, GLD actually holds physical gold bars, even though the shareholder ownership is structured as a paper proxy. As an individual retail investor, I can’t exactly “cash in” my shares of GLD in exchange for the aforementioned gold bars, but for my purposes, it seemed like the most reasonable and reliable way to get exposure to the price of physical gold.

FSAGX and GLD are not substantially identical securities, so I did not have to wait for any wash sale periods; the instant I sold FSAGX, I used that money to buy GLD. I’m glad I did, because gold has been skyrocketing throughout 2025, and my decision to buy exposure to gold has been quite a wise financial decision.

  1.053%

Fine art, and other collectibles

In 2022, I participated in StartEngine Collectibles Fund I, LLC’s Regulation A+ offering as a way to gain exposure to fine art and collectibles. Since then, StartEngine has been horrible to work with, and there has been little to no movement or development in their collectibles department. Even just holding onto this investment is just an administrative burden at this point.

I may subject this to the same fate as my shares in Nxu, Inc. (i.e., liquidating them entirely), but until I make that decision and work on executing the logistics of it, I guess this will just sit here collecting dust.

  0.246%

That concludes another investment portfolio breakdown, as well as an overview of what I’ve been up to investment-wise over the past year. If all goes as planned, I’ll see you again in early 2027 with some more juicy financial updates.

 

—§—

 

Hello, All Nippon Airways flight 6 from Narita to Los Angeles

by   •   Flights, Highlights
 

For the past two and a half weeks, I have been blogging daily about my visit to Tokyo, Japan to share my thoughts and photographs from various activities I did during my trip.

In case you missed the context of it, I decided to go to Japan because I had some friends I trust who were also going to be in Japan during some of the days that overlapped with my itinerary, so even though I was basically going on a solo trip, I wouldn’t entirely be alone because I would have people to meet up with on a case-by-case basis upon my arrival.

I had a chance to travel under this structure before, but I opted not to do so because I wasn’t sure I could go to a country that doesn’t speak English and be able to get the most out of my vacation. However, after going to Vietnam and having the trip turn out to be a success, I had more confidence to go to Japan and manage just fine on my own. Thus, I seized this opportunity.

If you haven’t been keeping up with my blog since late November, you’re in luck—with this blog post being the concluding post of the “Japan series,” I figured I’d give a preliminary table of contents here in case you want to do some chronological reading prior to this blog post about my flight back to the United States.

(Just to clarify, this is chronological on the basis of when I published the blog posts; I didn’t necessarily do the tourist activities in this order, and I sometimes scrambled up the ordering intentionally so that there would be more variety in the flow of blog posts, e.g., so there wouldn’t be back-to-back museums or back-to-back parks.)

The final verdict from the trip is that I loved it. Tokyo quickly became my second favorite city of all time, only losing first place to Las Vegas, which is literally the city I voluntarily picked as my home and isn’t really a fair comparison.

Everything just makes sense in Tokyo. I love going outside and walking around in big cities, and I like being able to blend in with a crowd and feel like I am just one regular person who is a component of a larger, bustling society. With that perspective in mind, I’m sure it’s easy to tell why I call Las Vegas home and why I decided to live on the Las Vegas Strip. Tokyo reminds me a lot of the Las Vegas Strip, but instead of being composed of degenerate drunk gamblers, Tokyo gives off a well-educated and professional vibe.

All of Tokyo feels highly efficient and optimized. The culture emphasizes the importance of not causing a disruption to others, so you can generally go about your life uninterrupted and gain full benefits from the various systems that are put into place. For example, the public transit system is highly reliable and makes it very easy to get around without a vehicle. Everything is highly intuitive and orderly, so as long as you’re paying attention, you should generally be able to pick up on things and fit in fairly easily.

Everyone I met in Japan was very kind and considerate. Being of Korean ethnicity, I was always told growing up that Japan is supposed to be my “enemy” because of the two countries’ past history, and I was always warned how Japanese people would be racist against me. I’m not necessarily trying dismiss the struggles and hardships that older Korean people faced, but on this trip, I personally found out first-hand that all the Korean people in my life were horrifically wrong about Japan. Although I am thoroughly an American, I am still visually Korean; even then, every single Japanese person I encountered was still very welcoming and respectful.

The food literally everywhere in Japan is just categorically better than the food in the United States. I’m sure a lot of it just has to do with personal preferences, especially considering that Japanese is my favorite cuisine, but even the worst possible food in Japan was above average to American standards, and the average in Japan was on par with some of the best restaurants I’ve been to in the United States. One of my friends who was with me in Japan said that one of her favorite snacks in Japan is to get an egg sandwich and freshly-heated chicken filet from 7-Eleven and combine the two; I tried this, and it was quite literally better than any chicken sandwich I remember ever having in the United States.

Within days of arriving in Tokyo, I was already looking up long-term housing options for my next trip. Because of my loyalty to Marriott, I stayed at the AC Hotel Ginza this time around, but that ended up being pretty pricey. I was willing to spend the extra money because I felt like I would be able to rely on the staff in case something went wrong, but then I realized that I can basically rely on literally anyone in Japan because of how willing everyone is to help out someone in need. I am looking forward to my next visit to Tokyo, and the next time I go, I’m hoping I can find a good serviced apartment so I can stay for longer without having to check out with a very expensive lodging bill.

 
So with that trip summary out of the way, here is an overview of the flight I took back to the United States. I opted for All Nippon Airways flight 6, cross-listed as United Airlines flight 7946, from Narita International Airport to Los Angeles International Airport.

As a side note, I intentionally booked two different airlines of the same alliance—United Airlines on the way out and All Nippon Airways on the way back—so I could experience two different long-haul business class flights serviced by two different carriers. I flew in and out of Narita International Airport because flights to Haneda International Airport were more expensive enough that it wasn’t worth the time savings on the shorter train ride. I flew from and to Los Angeles International Airport because Harry Reid International Airport back at home didn’t have any non-stops to Tokyo.

On the way to Narita International Airport, the timing didn’t quite work out for me to take the Keisei Narita Skyaccess line back to the airport like I took on my way to Ginza, so I instead rode the Asakusa line, which became the Keisei line. Although it took about half an hour longer, I’m glad I got the experience, because this line went through and had stops in the less populated areas between Tokyo and Narita, so I got a glimpse at what “country life” is like in Japan.

Upon arrival, I had a smooth entry into the airport. The lines at both immigration and security were short and quick, and I cleared both without incident.

After arriving at Satellite 5 of Terminal 1, I found an escalator to the upper floor with the airline lounges.

As part of my ticket, I was able to enjoy the ANA Lounge prior to departure. It wasn’t too busy when I arrived, though it did fill up pretty quickly over the next couple hours.

In addition to a standard buffet area that you’d expect to see in an airport lounge, the ANA Lounge also had a noodle bar. I ordered a nice, warm bowl of ramen.

After eating a decent amount of food and getting a good chunk of work done in the lounge, my departure time was approaching, so I headed down to my boarding gate.

After a short additional wait for the pre-boarding passengers, I was able to embark our Boeing 787-9.

Unfortunately, this plane had the older staggered configuration, so I wasn’t able to try ANA’s new The Room seats. If I wanted to fly in The Room, I would’ve had to take a layover in San Francisco first and pay a higher fare on the ticket. Even though I visited and spent time with friends in Los Angeles prior to my departure, it still technically counted as a “layover” from Las Vegas; I didn’t want to then take yet again another layover before flying across the ocean, so I just settled with the staggered business class seats.

With that being said, I was able to secure what is, in my opinion, the best seat of the aircraft: 13K. This seat is the last row of the business class cabin, so it has the most privacy, as nobody is behind you staring at the back of your head. Excluding during takeoff and landing, there is a curtain that blocks the pathway to the premium economy cabin, which adds to the privacy. This segment of the cabin only has six rows of seats, while the front segment has seven, which means there are fewer passengers in this cluster, thus adding to the feeling of peace.

The seat itself is an “inside” seat, meaning the table separates the seat from the aisle; these configurations alternate, so an even-numbered row would have the seat closer to the aisle, creating less distance from those walking by. It is situated on top of the wings for a more stable ride, and it is close to the engines so the engine noise can act as white noise and drown out any potential disruptive passengers. Some people say they don’t like the wing acting as an obstruction in their photographs, but I don’t mind; in fact, I personally like having the wing there, because I take horizontal photos, so I think the wing just adds an artistic element to the picture.

Here is what the rest of the cabin looks like. From this wide shot, you can tell what I mean by a seat being an “inside” seat, and how the seats and tables alternate depending on what row you’re in.

After boarding the flight and settling in, I took out my laptop and squeezed in even more work; I had been spending a lot of time out and about being a tourist, and I hadn’t been getting as much work done as I wanted to over the prior two weeks, so I had a decent chunk to catch up on.

After about half an hour, the boarding process was complete and I stowed my laptop away in the overhead bin to prepare for take-off. During that time, the sun had set and it was already pretty dark outside.

I was not aware of this, but I found out that ANA has a partnership with Pokémon and integrates Pokémon’s intellectual property into their safety videos. This was fun to see, as Pokémon is one of the franchises that I’m actually pretty familiar with because I grew up playing early-generation Pokémon games and watching the cartoons.

As part of the safety video, there was a note about how, if an emergency evacuation ever becomes necessary, photography is prohibited during the process. It might not necessarily be the case this instance, but really specific warnings or rules like this are often rooted in real-life events. It amuses me to think that there is technically a non-zero chance that someone forgot to get off the plane in an emergency because they were too busy taking pictures of everyone else deplaning instead.

After getting airborne, we received our amuse-bouche—pastrami chicken, cheese, and olive in a bowl, accompanied by two black sesame and walnut pistachio sticks. For my beverage, I ordered ANA’s original aromatic kabosu drink.

While waiting for meal service to begin, I also ordered a cup of ANA’s original Shizuoka-cha green tea matcha blend.

After a little while, the first dish of meal service was served—the “selection of morsels.” This consisted of barracuda sushi, herring sushi, vinegar-pickled ginger, fig with sesame cream, and smoked scallop.

Next was the first of two tidbits, marinated grilled mackerel in soy-based sauce with eggplant, green onion, and chili pepper.

The second tidbit was savory steamed egg custard with snow crab meat.

For my beverage to go along with my meal, I ordered some sugar-free cola. They brought out a regular Pepsi rather than a Diet Pepsi or Pepsi Max, which wasn’t to my preference, but wasn’t that big of a deal. The design on the can was unique and did not resemble anything I had seen in the United States before.

Afterwards was the main entrée, beef sukiyaki, served with a side of steamed rice, miso soup, and Japanese pickles.

For dessert, we had three options, two of which included a cheese plate or a fruit bowl. The one I decided on was chestnut mousse with cream and coffee jelly. This also came with a small square of white chocolate.

Although the portion sizes were relatively small, it still ended up being a fairly hearty-feeling meal considering how much food I had already eaten at the lounge. After relaxing for a bit and letting my stomach digest, I got tired enough to lean back and go to sleep for the night.

… Or so I thought.

Usually, long-haul flights will wake you up with about two hours left to go so that they can serve breakfast before landing. However, for some reason, this flight woke me up with a little over three hours prior to arrival. I technically could’ve just kept sleeping, but the cabin lights illuminating and the flight attendants moving around was enough of a distraction that I couldn’t stay asleep.

Eventually, the pilot made an announcement that the second meal service will be beginning earlier than normal due to some expected turbulence coming up about an hour before landing. Reasonably, they didn’t want a bunch of plates, cups, and silverware out on the tables during rough air. Although grumpy from early rising, the rationale was reasonable, so I switched my seat from bed mode to relax mode and waited for breakfast.

My meal this time came out all at once, instead of as separate courses. For breakfast, my main dish was grilled salmon with sake lees and steamed rice with a side of steamed chicken and marinated mizuna greens in sesame sauce, miso soup, and Japanese pickles.

In addition to some plain water, my flight attendant also brought me ANA’s original “Coffee Journal in the Sky.” I’m not enough of an enthusiast to know whether or not this was any special kind of coffee, but I did appreciate that I was able to try all of ANA’s signature beverages on the flight.

For the sake of getting some more value out of my flight, I asked for a second breakfast—negi miso ramen from Megumino, Hokkaido. This was a special soup blend containing medium-thick noodles, onions, sesame paste, and ginger. It was served warm and not hot, so I was able to enjoy it without worrying too much about temperature. This was filling and rounded out my breakfast well.

After finishing all my food, I reclined back and waited for the severe turbulence to begin.

… It never came.

Better safe than sorry though, I guess.

After about nine hours, we made it to Los Angeles airspace. Our runway was longitudinal going westbound, so we had to fly east out to the San Gabriel Valley first before looping around back to LAX. This allowed me to get a nice view of downtown Los Angeles during our descent.

After just shy of nine and a half hours of travel time, we pulled into our gate.

While the aircraft was preparing to deplane, an arrival video played on the screens, and I was welcomed back home to the United States by Pikachu.

After a very brief wait, I deplaned to the familiar sight of the Tom Bradley International Terminal at Los Angeles International Airport.

I don’t know if this observation was exacerbated by having just arrived from a country that is so accommodating as Japan, but I began seeing Terminal B at LAX with a different perspective and noticed how tricky it might be to foreigners. I noticed that everything was written in only English, which I found to be comparable to if I had landed in Japan and all the signs were in only Japanese. That would’ve obviously been a tremendous struggle for me, which implies that foreign tourists entering the United States are actually facing that struggle as a very real scenario.

I’m enrolled in Global Entry, which is a very convenient service for United States citizens that allows me to re-enter the country very quickly by just looking at a few identity-verifying cameras and walking through without any questioning. This is only for people who have enrolled in the service, passed a background check, and attended an in-person interview.

Unfortunately, non-English-speaking foreigners who had stood in the same line as me were getting rejected at the checkpoint over and over again, presumably because they were following everyone else around them and ended up in the wrong line without even realizing it. If having a bunch of common translations is not feasible, then I think it would still be nice to at least have some visual representation on where people are supposed to go upon arrival, e.g., mark the Global Entry line with a gigantic American flag, and then put a sign next to it with a picture of a bunch of different flags of other large countries across the world and draw an arrow to the other checkpoint.

I fly with only a carry-on bag, so I didn’t have to wait for luggage. This meant I was able to get off the plane and make it outside in a matter of only several minutes.

I like walking and getting blood circulation back in my legs after a flight, so I walked around half a mile from Terminal B to the end of Terminal 7 and called rideshare service to whisk me away from the airport. As a secondary reason, I like getting picked up at Terminal 7 instead of Terminal B so that I don’t have to sit in the car in traffic in the LAX horseshoe, and my driver can just take the East Way shortcut from Terminal 1 to Terminal 6 to come get me instead, upon which we can immediately leave airport property and be on our way.

I don’t think I have much more to add beyond the general overview I gave at the top of this blog post, in addition to the various thoughts and comments I shared throughout my 16 previous blog posts. I am very glad I decided to take this trip to Tokyo, and I will definitely be taking such an opportunity again if something comparable were to ever arise in the future.

In addition to revisiting Japan, I have two more countries on my near-future “want to go” list: Singapore and Taiwan. For a long time, Antarctica was the only place outside of the United States that I really wanted to visit, but with these successful Vietnam and Japan trips, I am much more inclined to expand my tourism into more areas of Asia.

 

—§—

 

Hello, EVA Air flights 398 and 12 from Hanoi to Taoyuan to Los Angeles

by   •   Flights, Highlights
 

My time in Hà Nội, Việt Nam has come to an end. I gave some more context about the trip in my blog post reviewing my EVA Air flights outbound from Los Angeles to Hanoi, but long story short, this was a good opportunity for me to go be a tourist in Asia for the first time while also overlapping it with checking out “Catch the Cash” by PK Gaming, the very first community-run in-person esports event for my company Tempo’s video game The Bazaar.

I’ve published several blog posts during my trip showing some of what I’ve been doing—learning about Vietnamese history at the Ho Chi Minh Museum, petting animals at the Baby Elephant Animal Park, looking at art in the Vincom Center for Contemporary Art, immersing myself in the lights of the HLC Starry Sky Art Museum, walking around inside the Vincom Mega Mall Royal City, and taking a serene stroll through the JW Marriott Lakeside Gardens, to name a handful. I also did some general sightseeing in the Ba Đình and West Lake Districts of Hanoi.

Although I’m usually a spontaneous and unstructured one-way flight kind of traveler, I booked a round-trip flight for this itinerary, not only because my Vietnamese travel visa prompted me for return flight details, but also because international round-trips end up algorithmically costing materially less than the identical flights booked as two one-ways. Because of that, I had my flights out of Hanoi already set—EVA Air flight 398 from Nội Bài International Airport in Hanoi to Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport servicing the Greater Taipei Area, and then EVA Air flight 12 from Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport to Los Angeles International Airport—the exact mirror flights that I took on my way to Hanoi.

Thanks to the concierge team at the JW Marriott Hotel Hanoi, I had a transport car waiting for me the morning of my day of departure. I had generally just used Grab to call rideshare services throughout my stay in Hanoi, but I figured I wanted to be extra safe in case there were issues with Grab (I had read some horror stories online of people trying to call a ride but having drivers chain-cancel on them), so that I wouldn’t miss my flight, be stranded in Vietnam, and accidentally overstay my visa. After about 40 minutes, we made it to Nội Bài International Airport and I was dropped off at departures.

After a very smooth, quick, and uneventful check-in and security process, I walked into the terminal and went upstairs to enter the SH Premium Lounge. Apparently the “SH” used to stand for Sông Hồng, which means “Red River” in Vietnamese, but at some point, they changed it to stand for “Service from the Heart” instead. … I think I like Sông Hồng better.

As boarding time approached and I was about to leave the lounge, I saw a sign by the exit saying that EVA Air flight 398 was delayed by about an hour. However, when I checked the EVA Air website, there was no such update posted online. In my paranoid fear of somehow missing my flight and being stranded in Vietnam on a visa expiring that same day, I still made my way downstairs to the gate to make absolute certain that I would not be left behind. Once I got there, I was able to confirm that my flight was indeed delayed.

To apologize for the delay, a staff member brought over a ton of complimentary meal kits to distribute to the affected passengers. I had just finished eating a meal and a half’s worth of free food at the airport lounge, so I passed on the meal and just accepted a bottle of water, in hopes that a different, extra hungry person would be able to take two meals instead. In my past decade of very frequent travel, I have never seen a United States airline do this, so it was a very pleasant surprise seeing this gesture from EVA Air.

The delay was extended by a bit and I ended up having to wait at the gate for about an hour and a half, but eventually, our Boeing 777-300ER aircraft arrived and was ready for boarding.

I mentioned this in the blog post that I wrote about my outbound flight, but I feel the need to mention this again. Yes, I flew business class for these flights. However, I paid out-of-pocket for my business class ticket. Even though I went to an event related to Tempo, I am not going on luxury trips and expensing the cost of them to Tempo. The company’s revenue is being reinvested back into further development of The Bazaar.

I settled into seat 11K in the final row of the business class cabin, which I selected because I think that it’s the seat that gives the most peace and privacy.

Because this was a relatively shorter flight, meal service started relatively promptly. As my hors d’oeuvre, I received a smoked duck, fruit, and vegetable salad.

For my main entrée, I opted for wok-fried Nile perch topped with crispy garlic and capsicums prepared Hong Kong style, with a side of rice and vegetables.

I picked two beverages to go along with my meal. From their mocktail menu, I ordered a non-alcoholic Amber Dream, made from apple juice, ginger ale, and cranberry juice. I also got a glass of Vigor Dong Shih (VDS) mixed carrot and fruit juice.

One thing I liked about Vietnam was that their juice selection includes a lot of options that are not available in the United States. I was glad to see that the trend continued into Taiwan; this carrot and fruit juice was probably one of the best juices I’ve ever had.

As a palate cleanser after my fish entrée, I received a cup of fresh fruit.

Finally, for dessert, the flight attendants distributed chocolate apricot cake.

After finishing my meal, I put in my earbuds so I could listen to music and relax for the remainder of the flight.

After a little over two and a half hours of travel time, we arrived at our gate at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport.

Because this is the same airport in which I had my previous layover, I was more familiar with the layout and didn’t walk around aimlessly in circles this time. I went straight upstairs to the lounge area, passing by the Oriental Club Lounge that I was previously in on my way to Hanoi. To be clear, there was nothing bad about the Oriental Club Lounge; I just wanted to try a different lounge this time to expand the breadth of my experiences.

Because my flight from Hanoi to Taoyuan was delayed, my layover wasn’t quite as long as it would have been, but I still had about an hour to relax and get some snacks in the EVA Air: The Infinity lounge.

With about half an hour to spare before departure, I made my way downstairs to the gate. After a smooth and uneventful boarding process, I sat down in seat 11A, again in the last row of the business class cabin.

The sun had already set over an hour prior to the departure of this flight; it was on the tail end of astronomical twilight, and was already pretty dark outside. Presumably to match the outdoors, the cabin lights were dimmed for takeoff, showing the sparkling ceiling lights resembling a starry night sky.

For my meal, I picked the “celebrity chef’s banquet,” a multi-course tasting menu designed by Wen-Kuang Hsu, an executive chef with a Michelin guide recommendation.

The prelude came with two small bites: a spicy sausage and mushroom tomato tart, and smoked salmon with avocado mousse.

The starter consisted of lotus root and okra with Sichuan pepper sauce, scallop and vegetables with passion fruit sauce, and Chaozhou-style crab aspic.

Next up was chicken soup with apple, dried scallop, and white jelly ear.

The first of the main course was braised abalone with shiitake mushroom in soy and oyster sauce.

The second plate of the main course was steamed lotus leaf rice with braised pork belly and preserved mustard greens.

For the sweets course (which is different than dessert), I was served a sakura blossom encased in Aiyu jelly.

And finally, for dessert, I got some ice cream. The menu said that this was Häagen-Dazs, but it was served in its own miniature glass bowl, so I guess I technically can’t fully confirm what brand it was.

After this hearty and filling meal, I reclined back in my lie-flat seat, replied to some emails and messages (because, by this point, it was already the morning in the Pacific time zone and people were waking up in the United States), and got a solid seven and a half hours of surprisingly restful sleep.

As I was about to complete my eighth hour of sleep, the cabin lights gently illuminated with an orange, red, and blue hue of colors that I imagine were designed to emulate a natural sunrise. This was actually quite pleasant, and I appreciated EVA Air’s nice touch to try and encourage passengers’ bodies to find a new circadian rhythm for the new continent.

To help me wake up, my flight attendant delivered a caffè latte with a crystallized brown sugar stick. I don’t get affected by caffeine so this didn’t quite work as she intended, but I was already pretty well-rested from my session of sleep anyway, and it was a nice warm beverage to sip on while meal service was being prepared.

For breakfast, I was served Chinese plain congee with wok-fried diced chicken and cashew nuts, green bean frittata, and other traditional delicatessens.

To wrap up my meal, I was served a plate of fresh fruit.

After about twelve and a half hours, we approached Los Angeles County. We were approaching eastbound, but our runway faced westbound, so we did a loop around the airport first; during the loop out, I looked out my window and snapped a photograph of the Sawtelle, Westwood, and Century City areas.

We landed about half an hour later than scheduled due to the flight path we had to take over the Pacific Ocean, but I obviously didn’t mind the delay, considering the relative comfort of business class seats.

Overall, I’d consider my trip to Vietnam to be pretty successful. I had originally been hesitant to travel by myself to a country where English is not spoken as the primary language. However, things went a lot more smoothly than I expected, and the language barrier didn’t really cause much of an issue. All the staff in my hotel spoke English, which obviously made things easier, but another major factor that helped a lot was just the advancement of technology. With mobile apps for rideshare and translation, I felt like I was able to handle pretty much any situation, albeit with a little bit of patience.

I had been eyeing a trip to Japan and Singapore at some point in the future, but I did not seize my latest opportunity to go to Japan because I wanted to wait until I was able to travel together with someone reliable, and preferably someone who spoke at least some amount of Japanese, who I could depend on if something were to go wrong. However, considering how well my solo trip to Vietnam went, basically all of my reservations have been relieved and I am far more inclined to take more spontaneous international trips now.

And with that, here is my updated travel map:

I made this map somewhere around a decade ago now, and as you can probably clearly tell, it was designed specifically to keep track of how many states I’ve been to in my home country of the United States of America. I obviously need to update this framework at some point, but until I find a chance to do that, I guess this will have to suffice.

 

—§—

 

Hello, “The Bazaar: Catch the Cash,” a tournament by PK Gaming in Hanoi, Vietnam

by   •   Face, Games, Highlights, Tempo
 

I already mentioned this in my blog post reviewing my flights on EVA Air from Los Angeles to Hanoi, but one of the major reasons I decided to travel to Hà Nội, Việt Nam was because my company Tempo’s game The Bazaar was having its very first community-run in-person esports event at PK Gaming Ngoại Giao Đoàn. This event happened earlier today (or yesterday, if you convert Hà Nội’s local time zone to my home time zone in Las Vegas).

As you probably expected, while I was in attendance, I took a lot of photographs.

The entryway to the gaming café had a banner advertising the tournament, which invited competitors to wander the bazaar in a paid event with a total cash prize pool of US$750.00.

The interior also had a banner, this one being significantly taller and larger.

Tempo’s Lead of People and Culture was also in attendance, and he was responsible for bringing over a bunch of prizes for the competitors.

There were some embroidered hoodies…

… some specially-branded mousepads in partnership with PK Gaming…

… and the grand prize trophy, a Founder’s Edition collectible statue of Dooley, one of the characters from The Bazaar.

I showed up pretty early, so while the venue was still almost empty, I had an opportunity to walk around and explore the rest of the gaming café.

As the players started trickling in, some of them got set up on the computers in the competition area and started warming up.

After everyone found their way to the café, the tournament started with a small opening ceremony by the casters.

Once all the rules were explained, the players took their positions and started playing.

The event was live streamed on Tempo’s Twitch channel from the “Alaska Zone” streaming booths.

This is a shot I got of the person who eventually went on to win the entire tournament.

As a reminder, I work solely on the corporate side of Tempo and have no involvement in game design or game development pretty much whatsoever, to the extent that I have literally never even played a single game of The Bazaar. It was an amusing experience going around and looking at people’s screens, only to be completely clueless as to what’s actually happening in the game.

The main stage of the gaming café was used to play the live stream for in-person spectators.

One of the spectators, of course, was the Dooley statue.

Once in a while, players would be brought into the casting booth after finishing a round so that they could get interviewed about their most recent game.

The tournament was going on for longer than I expected, so I decided to order some food from the on-site kitchen.

Their menu was in Vietnamese, and I couldn’t understand what their entrée options were, so I just went with the recommendation of one of the staff members at the gaming café. I ended up with some grilled chicken, vegetables, and white rice. This actually ended up being pretty unexpectedly delicious.

A handful of hours into the tournament, we were approaching the end, with only a couple players left needing to finish their final run.

I believe some people left early, but those who wanted to stick around gathered around the stage area to watch the final moments of gameplay.

Upon the conclusion of the tournament, the winner was crowned, and he received his limited edition Dooley statue.

In addition to the trophy, both the first place winner and the runner-ups received an envelope containing their cash prizes, and pretty much all participants got some form of consolation prize, be it a set of earbuds, a desk mat, or apparel.

After all the prizes were distributed, the casters gave their closing speech.

The tournament organizers hired an actual, professional photographer to take pictures throughout the event. I’m not sure what his name is so I can’t give proper credit at the moment, but I found these on PK Gaming Ngoại Giao Đoàn’s Facebook page in the Cộng Đồng The Bazaar group.

He captured this shot of me helping set some of the technical specifications of the live stream software to ensure a smooth broadcast…

… as well as this shot of me joining the casting booth for a little bit while the Vietnamese caster was busy helping tally up the final results.

Here’s a screenshot taken of the live broadcast from the short period during which I was filling in for one of the casters.

It is very amusing (and quite difficult) trying to be a commentator for a game that you’ve literally never personally played before and hardly even know the mechanics for. The other caster next to me hard carried both the play-by-play and color commentary, while I mainly contributed by telling stories of Tempo’s past and how The Bazaar came to become what it is today.

Before parting ways, we took a group photograph with everyone who stayed until the end of the event.

During my time at Tempo, I’ve been a member of the production teams behind a decent number of live events, so this one wasn’t particularly special for me. However, I could tell that everyone else in attendance was very excited for it, which was nice.

I went into this thinking the turnout would be in the low multi-hundreds. I didn’t know how or from where I established that expectation, but as you can see from the photographs, there were nowhere near even a single hundred competitors. With that being said, I might just be used to running events taking place in larger cities for more well-known games, and it’s possible that the turnout for “Catch the Cash” was still considered a success given the circumstances.

I thought the gaming café was decent and comparable in quality to some of the smaller and lower-budget gaming cafés you might find scattered throughout less populus areas of the United States. The food, though, was incredible. I found the chef and the literal full-blown kitchen to be amazing and comparable in quality to a very good street food vendor or a small family-owned restaurant that focuses on replicating authentic flavors derived from their local cuisines. I had two meals there—one on tournament day and one on the day prior during a walk-through preview—and both entrées were delicious.

With that being said, I had a persistent headache and an overall miserable time being in PK Gaming’s facility due to the smoking room.

Cigarette smoking is far more common in Việt Nam than it is in the United States. It is also far more socially and culturally accepted, so this gaming café had a designated smoking room indoors, directly in the center of the café. The smoking room had a door, but every time someone opened the door to go in or out, waves of cigarette smoke would escape and spread throughout the rest of the building.

As long as there’s good ventilation, it’s fine, right? Well, from what I could tell, it felt like they had no ventilation. They had fans running everywhere, so the cigarette smoke would expeditiously get blown around into all corners of the building to make sure everyone would smell it, while none of it got sucked up into the vents to be exchanged with fresh outdoor air.

Marinating in cigarette smoke for about 7 hours was horrific, and that alone was single-handedly enough to make me hate the entire thing. It is insane to me that everyone who showed up to compete had to be subjected to degrading their health from fairly dense second-hand smoke because some people were too lazy to spend one extra minute walking outdoors before smoking.

 

—§—

 

Hello, EVA Air flights 15 and 397 from Los Angeles to Taoyuan to Hanoi

by   •   Flights, Highlights
 

I mentioned this a few times in previous blog posts, but the reason I was still around Los Angeles County, even though I hate it and avoid it as much as I can, is because I had an international flight scheduled out of Los Angeles International Airport. My home airport of Harry Reid International Airport in the Las Vegas Valley has great coverage for many destinations, but for the particular route I was flying, LAX worked a bit better.

So where exactly am I going? Hà Nội, Việt Nam.

Yes, that does indeed sound like a pretty random place, especially for someone like me who generally stays within the United States and doesn’t travel internationally much, but there is a reason for going to Hà Nội in particular—my company Tempo’s video game The Bazaar is having its very first community-run in-person esports event at PK Gaming’s facility in the Ngoại Giao Đoàn neighborhood.

However, I’m not going for work, per se. Even though it’s my company’s game, I’m basically attending the event as a tourist (and then also being a tourist in other areas of Hà Nội while I’m there). I work on the corporate side of Tempo and pretty much never directly touch the development of The Bazaar itself, and have gone as far as to have never even played a single round of The Bazaar before, so I am quite literally just going into this as simply a spectator.

With that being said, coordinating this trip to overlap with an event for The Bazaar made the trip feel more meaningful, as opposed to arbitrarily picking a completely random city and country in Asia to visit for no underlying reason. Thus, late last night, I made my way over to LAX for my very long travel day.

(As you will immediately notice, yes, I did indeed fly business class for these flights. However, to be clear, I paid out-of-pocket for my business class ticket. Before anyone asks, no, I am not going on luxury trips and expensing it to Tempo. The company’s revenue is being reinvested back into further development of The Bazaar and is not being used to sponsor my premium travel itineraries.)

My night started at the Tom Bradley International Terminal with a smooth and uneventful check-in process due to having no checked baggage and being an enrollee of TSA PreCheck. After making my way airside, I navigated my way to the Star Alliance Lounge, the designated lounge for EVA Air due to EVA not having a dedicated lounge at LAX.

This lounge had an outdoor area with fire pits and a nice view of the tarmac. As far as I can recall, I think this is the one and only lounge I’ve ever been in that had an outdoor portion where you could get some fresh outside air.

The lounge also had a balcony area that overlooked the rest of the TBIT. This basically captures my favorite part about this lounge—it had so many different kinds of environments (even including a dim theater room) that pretty much anyone could have a comfortable time at the lounge, no matter what their preferences are.

I opted to relax in the balcony area while eating some food and people-watching.

The convenient thing about being in a Star Alliance lounge while flying on a Star Alliance airline was that they did announcements for Star Alliance flights, including one for mine. Once boarding time was imminent, they notified the lounge-goers that it was now time to start heading to the boarding gate.

After getting my travel visa verified and embarking the Boeing 777-300ER, I walked over to my seat, 11K. I picked this seat because it’s the last seat in the corner of the business class cabin, and there is usually a curtain that separates the business class and premium economy cabins, so seats 11A and 11K end up being the most private seats on the aircraft.

To make things even more private for me on this flight, I got lucky enough that all three seats adjacent to mine were empty.

While the flight attendants were preparing passenger meals, we were given a hot towel, beverage, and snack to keep us occupied while we wait. For my drink, I asked for a Coca-Cola Zero Sugar.

My flight attendant, whose name is Josie, came back with a can from the “Share a Coke with” series that had “Josie 麻吉麻” printed on the front. I’m not sure if this was a remarkable coincidence or not, but if it was intentionally arranged so that your Coca-Cola can has the name of your flight attendant on it, that’s some pretty impressive attention to detail.

For my appetizer, I received a lobster salad. The lobster was fresh, there was a satisfying ratio of seafood to vegetables, and everything was covered in a delicious sauce that had a perfect balance of spiciness and sweetness.

My main entrée was Chilean sea bass covered in a butter sauce and with a side of truffle gnocchi, asparagus, and tomatoes. The fish was extremely tender and flaky, and was comparable to something I’d find at a high-end seafood restaurant.

As a refresher, I got a small fruit plate containing cantaloupe, orange, and grapes.

Dessert was a lemon tart atop a berry sauce. This was the least remarkable part of the meal, as it just tasted like a generic pastry, but I still enjoyed it.

Shortly after meal service was over, they cleared everyone’s tables and dimmed the lights so we could go to sleep. The ceiling was illuminated with small lights resembling a starry night sky, which was a nice touch.

The lie-flat seat wasn’t the most comfortable I’ve ever felt, but they offered a mattress pad which was very helpful, and was still more than enough for a good night’s rest. I actually managed to get a nearly full eight hours of sleep, which I wasn’t expecting.

With just a couple hours left in the flight, the flight attendants started breakfast service. Josie brought me a cup of coffee with brown sugar to try and help me wake up (even though caffeine doesn’t affect me) (but I did not tell her that and just enjoyed the caffè latte).

For breakfast, I had Chinese plain congee with a side of cold delicatessens, black beans, pan-fried egg with shrimp, and braised pork ribs.

This was probably my all-time favorite airline meal. It wasn’t as delicious as the Chilean sea bass from earlier, but for some reason, this congee tasted very nostalgic, which is really funny, because I never had Chinese-style congee as a kid (my parents are Korean, not Chinese). This was an incredibly cozy-feeling meal, and it made me feel warm inside, not just from the warmth of the congee, but also from the sense of comfort that this flavor profile mysteriously brought to me.

For dessert, I received another fruit plate, this time with a bit more artistic presentation.

We soon flew over Taipei and approached the Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport.

After deplaning, I made my way over to the Oriental Club Lounge to wait out my layover until the second leg of my trip.

I wanted to be very cautious and not accidentally leave airside so I wouldn’t have to go through security again, and in my diligence, I happened to inadvertently avoid the area I needed to traverse through to get to the lounge. It was fine though; I walked two big circles around the airport for no reason, but at least I got my exercise in after the nearly 13-hour flight from Los Angeles.

The Oriental Club Lounge is apparently an award-winning lounge. It wasn’t the most impressive lounge I’ve ever seen, but it was definitely much better than average. I was very full by this point (and knew I had another in-flight meal coming up), so I opted not to get any food; instead, I just sipped on some Coca-Cola Zero throughout my stay in order to maintain my hydration.

With about 40 minutes to go until departure, I made my way to gate B7 to board my connecting flight. Unfortunately, there was a bit of a boarding delay, so I had to stand there for about half an hour in the unusually high heat and humidity.

Eventually, we made it on the plane, which was another Boeing 777-300ER. We had a different painting hung up at the front of the business class cabin on this aircraft, which made me curious how many people there are out there who travel on EVA Air so frequently that they keep track of which paintings they’ve seen and collect photographs of them as if they’re trading cards.

Here’s a view of TPE out my window. My plane didn’t have any special livery, but the plane parked at the neighboring gate had some Sanrio characters on it.

Not long after take-off, meal service began. As our appetizer, we received a shrimp cocktail.

For my main entrée, I picked Chef Huang Ching-Biao’s steamed pork ribs with chestnuts and vegetables atop fried Cantonese noodles. On the side, I had a piece of garlic bread. The pork ribs were unbelievably tender and took “melt in your mouth” and “fall right off the bone” to a whole new level.

This was just as delicious as the Chilean sea bass, and the three meals that I had on EVA Air landed squarely as the top three best in-flight meals I’ve ever had.

For dessert, I got another lemon tart, but this one was slightly different. Again, this tasted pretty close to a generic well-made pastry.

For my beverage, I ordered a non-alcoholic drink from their “mocktail” menu—a pineapple, cranberry, and ginger ale cocktail.

After finishing all my food, I reclined back, put in my earbuds, listened to music, and relaxed for the remainder of the flight.

After a little over three hours on board, we touched down at Nội Bài International Airport. Upon landing and deplaning, I stood in line to get through immigrations, which was smooth and uneventful. When passing through customs, I stood in the “goods to declare” line so that I could disclose the vitamins and supplements I had brought with me, but after sending my backpack and luggage through an x-ray machine, the customs officer waved me through without further questioning.

I am now at my hotel and concluded the longest travel day I’ve ever had in my life. If you include the time I spent ridesharing to LAX, waiting in the lounge, flying to TPE, waiting in the lounge some more, flying to HAN, standing in line, and ridesharing to my hotel, my overall total travel time clocked in at right around 26 hours.

That sounds like an excruciatingly long time, and I probably normally would have been completely exhausted, but upgrading myself to business class was absolutely worth it and made the day much easier. Thanks to the nice lounges and immaculate in-flight service on EVA Air, everything was made far more comfortable, and I feel well enough that I don’t think I will even need a rest and recovery day before getting started with my Hà Nội adventures.

 

—§—

 

Hello Open Sauce 2025

by   •   Conventions, Face, Highlights
 

FTC Disclosure: Open Sauce, Inc. did not explicitly ask me to write this blog post, did not pay me for this review, and did not have an opportunity to review or request changes to this piece prior to its publication. However, I did receive material incentive to attend Open Sauce 2025 by way of free admission, the comparable public retail value of which amounts to a VIP ticket worth US$1,499.00. All other expenses were self-funded.

 
After I had a great time last year at Open Sauce 2024, my friend Billie-Rae, an executive of and the head of marketing at the company running Open Sauce, invited me to attend again this year. Open Sauce 2024 was my all-time favorite convention, so I was happy to accept the invitation and head back to the San Francisco Bay Area last weekend, this year to the San Mateo County Event Center.

As a reminder, the reason why I liked Open Sauce so much last year is because it felt more like a large science fair than it did a regular convention. I’ve been to many conventions, both as part of my work at Tempo and for personal leisure, but many of them feel very commercialized. Open Sauce stood out in that it was a collection of people who were genuinely interested in science and wanted to show off and talk about their experiments and creations. Other conventions’ exhibition halls feel like a gigantic collection of advertisements, but Open Sauce’s exhibition halls are filled with passionate scientists and technology enthusiasts.

The advertisers and sponsors that do still go to Open Sauce are integrated very well and showcase their product in a way where it doesn’t feel like they’re trying to get you to buy their product, but rather, they’re demonstrating what their product can do and are leaving it up to you to decide. Sponsors whose primary objective is brand exposure are still integrated naturally; for example, PCBWay was back again this year with another batch of branded metallic circuit board credential badges that people could bring to their booth and personally solder components onto to make it light up.

When I received my itinerary this year, I noticed that there were fewer special experiences for creators and guests compared to last year. These special activities and parties were some of my favorite things from last year, so it wasn’t great news when I found out that there was less going on in 2025. On top of that, the one off-site activity they had was just a repeat of last year—a tour of Adam Savage’s workshop, “The Cave.” With that being said, I think we were just extra spoiled last year; there were still plenty of opportunities for people to congregate and network with each other this year, which I think is the priority for most of the creators and special guests when they attend events like this.

In a similar vein, there were a lot more content creators, members of the press, and special guests this year. Last year, there was a fairly limited scope of people in attendance, with a vast majority of the creators and guests being science and technology YouTubers. I liked this because these YouTubers felt, for a lack of a better word, normal. They were all pleasant and approachable people, and none of them had any of the undesirable characteristics that you usually find in Twitch live streaming or influencer culture of being self-centered, arrogant, and out of touch with reality. This year, I think there were more people who extended outside the “normal scientist” bubble and gave off a mild form of the “sheltered influencer” energy. With that being said, I think there was still a solid filter with regards to who was invited, and the spotlighted creators were nowhere near as bad as what you’d find in live streaming or video gaming conventions.

(Random side note: While I was in the creator lounge, I managed to meet Alan Melikdjanian, owner of the Captain Disillusion YouTube channel. I have watched his videos for a long time and not only admire his video editing skills but also his philosophy of exposing and combating misinformation through educating the public. We had a nice chat while waiting in line to get our share of catered lunch. I don’t really get starstruck when meeting people, but I think Captain Disillusion is as close as you can get to getting me starstruck for now, so I’m glad I was able to run into him at Open Sauce.)

No matter what the invited guest experience was like, the most important part of Open Sauce was still the exhibition hall. I concluded that, no matter how many special activities there were or who the special guests were, as long as the exhibition halls were the same as last year, it would still be a great convention. Fortunately, Open Sauce did indeed maintain its core identity, and the passionate energy of the exhibit halls remained the same as last year. I noticed that the convention this year was quite a bit larger than last year, so I was actually fairly impressed that they managed to scale it up to this degree, yet still not lose its charming identity in the exhibition halls.

My credentials gave me access to the exhibition halls across three total days, and I spent a good chunk of time on all three days exploring the halls. I walked multiple rounds through all three halls, made sure to try all the demonstrations I could, and even kept track of which ones I missed due to long lines so that I could go back and see it on a subsequent day. Just like last year, everyone was very welcoming and inviting, and I had a great time hearing about and trying out all the exhibits.

 
I’ll start with my favorite exhibit from this year, four-dimensional Counter-Strike. This little booth was set up with two computers from which you could play Counter-Strike, except some of the weapons were hooked up to real-life stimulants surrounding the gaming area.

Detonating a flashbang within range of your opponent would cause blindingly bright lights to turn on next to their computer station. Getting hit with an explosive grenade would cause the entire table to vibrate and make a rattling noise. Walking into the smoke of a smoke bomb would prompt a leaf blower to blow air in your face while a mist sprayed on you from behind.

My second favorite exhibit was a backpack with a motor inside that would gauge your lean and counter-rotate to balance you. The problem is that the motor is pretty heavy and it takes a split second for it to actually counter-rotate properly, so it perpetually feels like the backpack is both trying to kill you and save your life at the same time, which was a very amusing experience.

Here I am getting convinced into finding a Porygon in a Wii game… and ultimately failing.

Hello egg.

There was a crate with a sign that said “Open the crate… if you dare.” I dared.

Next to the daring crate was a computer with Super Crate Box on it. I don’t really play games anymore, but when I did, I was a keyboard-and-mouse gamer and am notoriously bad at using gaming controllers. Needless to say, I performed catastrophically poorly.

Hello hat.

I’m also notoriously bad at using joysticks because the movement feels vague to me and I can’t ever really tell how far in a direction I have to move the joystick in order for the command to register. … Again, needless to say, I performed monumentally poorly.

What I did better at was Crossy Road, but with real-life physical controls. Every time I jumped, a webcam would detect my movement and advance the bird one lane. I managed to get to the river… before tragically diving straight in and drowning.

This is a game of shuffleboard where the weights have sensors in them so they can detect where it ended up and automatically keep score for you. Unfortunately, they weren’t working that day, so I guess you could consider them to be extremely fragile hockey pucks instead.

This was a game where you had to keep a baby alive. I contributed to the effort by rocking the baby back and forth to relieve it of its tiredness, but then some random guy decided to grief and reached over to light a paper towel roll on fire (in-game), so I gave up and moved onto the next exhibit.

I think the objective of this game was to hack into some girl’s computer and read all her personal information. I couldn’t tell what else I needed to do beyond that, though.

This was a game about sushi where the controller was a samurai sword. You quickly unsheathe and sheathe the sword to slice the fish on screen and turn them into sashimi, and you press a button on the sword to block the aggressive fish from reaching you. This was a rhythm game, but the timing of the music was a bit off, so I didn’t do too well, but I got a hang of the delay later on and compensated, which made things better.

This game helped me discover that apparently I’m not very good at roguelikes either. At this point, it’s a mystery as to how I managed to help run a decently successful esports company several years ago.

Here is another photograph of me struggling with yet again another game.

Open Sauce this year had an outdoor section. There was a train out there blowing bubbles, so I decided to take a picture next to it. I didn’t realize how deceptively large the throughput of the bubbles were, and I managed to get soap residue all over my glasses from when the bubbles popped after hitting my face.

This chair is designed to force you to have great, balanced posture when seated; failure to do so will result in the stool tilting and trying to throw you off the edge. As you can see, I did a stellar job and was not at risk of drilling my face into the concrete block next to me at any point throughout the experience whatsoever.

This exhibit tested to see how good you were at balancing; you’d place one foot in the center and then use the other foot to move the gray sliders to match the distances as outlined on the screen beside the device.

Even though you might not be able to tell, I’m in this next photo as well; it apparently uses a camera to see what’s in front of it, but warps the image using circuitry in a pattern determined by which button you press on the controller.

My third favorite exhibit of Open Sauce this year was a robot that tore apart a microwave. As you can see, it was very popular when the demonstration was happening, so I wasn’t really able to get a good photograph of the destruction.

This was an activity where you press buttons to control a robot and attempt to knock out your opponent. I played against my cameraman and defeated him ruthlessly.

This was a modified version of Street Fighter where taking damage causes you to receive an electric shock through the joystick. I figured out a way to cheese it by only controlling the joystick with my fingernails instead of with the fleshy part of my fingers, but switched back to holding the joystick normally for the spirit of fair competition. I, again, played against my cameraman… but this time, I was the one who got defeated ruthlessly.

Here are some more photographs of random things I found interesting around the exhibition halls and stages.

And finally, here is a picture of me with one of my friends in the creator interview area. She agreed to be on my blog, but didn’t want her identity disclosed, so this is the solution I came up with.

Overall, Open Sauce remains my all-time favorite convention, with Open Sauce 2025 joining Open Sauce 2024 as my top two.

There are some elements that I liked better in 2024, and there are other elements that I liked better in 2025. However, the one thing I was overwhelmingly impressed at with 2025 is how much it had grown, yet still maintained its identity as a science fair instead of falling into the expected pipeline of becoming more like a conference. I think a lot of variables had to be controlled and accounted for to pull that off, which I applaud the Open Sauce team for.

I took a lot of pictures with con-goers, some of whom know me from my recent collaborations and guest appearances with some of my friends, while others dated back to my esports years with Tempo Storm; if you’re posting photos of us together on social media, feel free to tag me so I can browse through them.

 

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