Hello, San Diego Padres vs. Los Angeles Dodgers & One Piece Night at Dodger Stadium

by   •   Face, Highlights, Tourism
 

Just under a year ago, I had a tragically poor experience attending Hello Kitty Night 2025 at Dodger Stadium due to some poor planning and poor logistics on the part of the person who organized the trip. However, I learned a lot from that experience, and now I am much more familiar with Dodger Stadium (and non-suite seating at sporting venues in general).

About a month or so ago, one of my friends asked me if I wanted to join her for One Piece Night at Dodger Stadium on July 2, 2026 during the night the Los Angeles Dodgers hosted the San Diego Padres. She wanted to go because they were giving away One Piece gift bags consisting of a Luffy straw hat and a collectible trading card, and she really wanted those exclusive items. I don’t really care at all about One Piece, but this is a friend who I trust and enjoy spending time with, so I agreed to come along.

She told me that she had never been to a baseball game before, and this would be her first time. I immediately had a flashback to Hello Kitty Night 2025 and realized I had this untapped encyclopedia of knowledge in my brain about how to go to a baseball game without wanting to kill yourself. I told her that I would help handle a majority of the logistics so that we can have as pleasant of an experience as possible.

I first looked into buying individual tickets to shared suites, but upon more diligent research, I found out that there is a high risk of those kinds of shared suite tickets not coming with a gift entitlement, which would defeat the purpose of us going. I then looked into some tickets classed as “baseline club” and “dugout club,” which came with private lounge access and front-row seats to the action; those were between $1,000-2,000 per ticket. I would’ve been fine getting those tickets, but after discussing with my friend, we decided to go for something cheaper as a trial for her first baseball game, because she didn’t know if she would even enjoy the game at all.

I ultimately decided on executive club seats, which were a much more reasonable ~$400 per ticket. Although they didn’t come with a private lounge, they were on the same floor as the suites, which meant that it was much more peaceful and less congested than the regular general admission floors.

Our welcome email told us that the entry gates open two hours before the game starts, and the parking lot opens an additional half an hour before that. We ended up arriving about three hours before the game started because my friend wanted to make absolutely certain that they wouldn’t run out of gift bags. We were expecting to need to wait before being let in, but apparently, so many people were arriving so early that day that they were backed up into the street and causing a traffic jam, so they had no choice but to start letting people in early.

Two and a half hours before the first pitch, the lines to get in were already completely packed.

Fortunately, the executive club seats also come with priority access. The line was still pretty long, but nowhere near as long as the loge and reserve entrances. We had to wait for a while, but there was a friendly guy in line near us who was chatting with us, and that combined with conversing amongst ourselves made it so the wait didn’t feel that long.

Upon walking through the metal detector and passing security, we were given our straw hat and collectible card. After that point, there were no more lines for the rest of the night.

This is the entrance to the suite and club level of the field.

We made our way over to our seats in Section 229CL. This was the closest section next to where the suites start, so in theory, we were in the section with the next best possible elevated view without being inside an actual suite. I also liked that this section had an overhang; it didn’t matter for this particular game, but it sounds very convenient as shade for days when the game starts earlier, or as shelter for days when it rains.

This is what the rest of the club level looked like. As you can see, it is substantially nicer than general admission, and I think it is absolutely worth the upcharge. There are far fewer seats, more legroom, nice padding on the seat bottoms, and more space to walk around. In general, this space felt far more relaxed and easy-going than the other levels of the stadium.

The collectible cards came in their own plastic packaging, but my friend wanted to be extra safe and put the cards in another layer of hard plastic covers. We went as a group of three, and these are the three cards we got.

I told her to take pictures of the cards with her at the stadium so that the photographs could act as a substitute certificate of authenticity, in case she ever wants to sell them. However, she ultimately decided that the cards made her happy and she wanted to keep them for her own collection.

There was a lot of One Piece branding spread out throughout the stadium for the collaboration, including on the massive screens in the outfield.

The elevation of this level was perfect—far away enough that you could get a perfect bird’s-eye view of the entire field, but not so far away that everything was too small. Because we arrived early, we were able to see the players warming up.

There were some signs on the wall near the concession stand, and I tried to use it as reference to find out how to navigate to other areas of the stadium. … Then I found out that they were just decorative.

This is the view from the outfield, from the far edge of the club level. I walked over here because I was looking for a set of stairs to use to go downstairs to the loge level because my friend wanted some pizza, and there was no pizza concession stand on the suite and club level.

This far edge of the club level also had a view of the entrance. I thought it was a very funny visual seeing everyone wearing their straw hat on the inside of the gate.

We made it down to the loge level and I basically got an episode of PTSD from my prior Dodger Stadium experience. There was still about two hours to go before the first pitch, so most people still hadn’t arrived yet, but it was still absolutely packed. It wasn’t shoulder-to-shoulder like it is after the game starts, but it was still extremely congested. My friend said that she was instantly overstimulated by how many people there were everywhere already.

… Here is a random picture of a cameraman.

After walking all the way around from left outfield to first base, we made it to the pizza vendor, Batter’s Box Pizza.

My friend got a personal cheese pizza, and I got a personal pepperoni pizza. There was not enough sauce, but it was still extremely salty. It was very doughy, so I guess you’d like this pizza if the crust is your favorite part of pizza. I was not a fan of this pizza.

For my drink, I ordered a fruity non-alcoholic mocktail. It tasted like I was served a full cup of ice with a little bit of pineapple juice and grapefruit juice mixed in.

While enjoying my pizza and juice, I was able to watch the crew prepare the field for play.

In celebration of One Piece Night, someone got dressed up in a Luffy costume and threw the first pitch.

After celebrating his pitch, Luffy went up to the cameras and officially declared the start of the baseball game.

I noticed that this particular section of seats was empty for some reason. It was funny thinking that maybe someone just bought out all the seats in that area because they happened to be cheaper and they just wanted to collect more gift bags. The collectible cards from previous collaborations have sold on auction websites for several hundreds to thousands of dollars, so technically, I guess this could be quite a lucrative way to make a profit.

To the grave disappointment of Los Angeles Dodgers fans, the San Diego Padres started the game with quite a substantial lead.

The personal pizza wasn’t enough to fill me up, so I also ordered some surf and turf tacos. I am pretty sure they put about six times more salt into the tacos than the recipe called for. They were edible, but not even remotely good, and I would never get them again.

I ordered this along with some Diet Coke in a standard, non-souvenir fountain drink cup. It was much smaller than I expected, and it is unfortunate that fountain drinks do not come with refills, but fortunately, I was able to get free tap (non-bottled) water.

My friend got ground beef nachos. They were marginally better than the tacos, but still way too salty.

For dessert, we shared a churro sundae. This was the best thing we ate at the stadium—not because it was delicious, but because it was the only thing that wasn’t bad. It basically tasted like generic ice cream that you’d get in bulk from a grocery store.

Partway through the game, my friend decided to enter the Los Angeles Dodgers Foundation’s 50/50 Raffle. This is a program where you buy raffle tickets and your purchase price is added to a jackpot pool. At the end of the eighth inning, a winner is selected from the raffle tickets; the winner wins half the jackpot, and the other half of the jackpot is donated to the charity.

The raffle entries scale up depending on how much you spend. If you pay US$20, you get 10 tickets; if you pay US$50, you get 50 tickets; if you pay US$100, you get 150 tickets; and if you pay US$150, you get 300 tickets. My friend opted to get 300 tickets for $150, so she ended up with a comically long receipt with all her raffle entry numbers.

At the seventh inning stretch, I got up from my seat and went to the edge of the suite level beyond the overhang so I could get a picture of everyone standing up with their Luffy straw hats on.

One nice thing about having executive club seats is that you get your own server who will take your orders and deliver food and drinks directly to you. Apparently they can also arrange special celebration desserts, like for this person who was celebrating his birthday.

At the bottom of the eighth, the winner of the 50/50 Raffle was selected. My friend did not win. In fact, she failed to even match the third digit…

With only one strikeout to go at the top of the ninth, we left our seats and headed downstairs to the field level. The Los Angeles Dodgers had a hefty lead by this point, so it seemed like the bottom of the ninth would not be played and the Dodgers had basically secured a win already.

The reason we came all the way down? Because we heard that there would be a One Piece drone show after the game ended, and they would be letting fans onto the field to watch the show from there so they can get a better view. It seems like other people were aware of this as well, because field level was packed with people waiting (with their straw hats on, of course) for the gates to open.

After the game was fully wrapped up, they opened the gates and a flood of fans entered the field.

They soon dimmed the lights in preparation for the drone show.

In an ultimate bait-and-switch, the drone show started… far in the distance. The view was blocked by the structure of the stadium. I’m pretty sure we would’ve gotten a better view just by staying in our seats.

Regardless, it was neat to be able to go on the field, and I’m glad I was able to get that opportunity. I didn’t even get to do that when I went on the paid tour last time, so it was nice that they let fans have that experience for free after the game.

In an effort to try and get a better view, we walked out of the stadium, but then we had some issues with tall trees blocking a portion of the drone show instead.

On our way out into the parking lot, I saw a jumbo replica of the Los Angeles Dodgers’ 2025 World Series Championship ring.

I didn’t wear the straw hat at all during the game, but I figured I should probably at least get a goofy picture with it at the end, for the memories. So, here I am with the Luffy straw hat. … I look like a rice farmer.

Overall, I had quite a fun and pleasant experience this time around. The type of seats you buy absolutely matters at Dodger Stadium, and I think the premium price of executive club seats was beyond worth it for the money. It was a perfect balance of getting both a public and private experience—public in the sense that you still feel like you’re in the middle of the action, but private in the sense that you have your own special floor with far fewer other people to deal with.

 

—§—

 

Hello, Collect-A-Con Las Vegas 2026

by   •   Conventions, Face, Las Vegas
 

Earlier today, I attended the second day of Collect-A-Con Las Vegas. As you can probably tell by the name, Collect-A-Con is a convention dedicated to collectibles, primarily trading cards and anime products. Those who know me well will probably be surprised that I decided to go to a convention like this, considering that I don’t really collect anything and I actually don’t even like having too many physical possessions, especially things that don’t serve some kind of practical or utilitarian purpose.

The closest I got to being a collector was buying singles of every different Absol Pokémon card in every rarity, variant, and language I could find. I started doing that in 2018 and it lasted a little while before I lost interest. Nowadays, I only revisit it once every couple of years to see if there are any easy gaps in my collection to fill in from recent releases.

This may sound ironic or counterproductive, but… the fact that I am not a collector is actually the precise reason why I decided to go to this convention. I’ve been to a lot of conventions, but I noticed that they were mostly just the same ones over and over again. For example, I got sick of going to PAX twice a year, every year, and basically seeing the exact same thing time after time. Upon this realization, I decided that I will no longer go to PAX anymore unless I am invited to be a speaker or something, and I will generally avoid conventions that are just repeats of ones I’ve been to in the past. Instead, I want to check out conventions, events, and shows that are different from what I’m used to.

Collect-A-Con is still pretty related to video games, so it wasn’t that new to me. Also, my friend Erin Song, who runs the AgentDMG collectibles brand and consignment company with her husband, was also attending Collect-A-Con Las Vegas, so it wasn’t like I was going into it completely alone and blind. Regardless, it was still an adventurous step into new territory for me.

Upon arriving at the Las Vegas Convention Center, I picked up my wristband and headed into the hall. My first impression of it was that the convention didn’t really seem like a convention. Instead, it felt like a really big farmers’ market, but for cardboard instead of food.

When I think of a convention, I imagine a gathering of a broad variety of industry-specific professionals and enthusiasts who are all coming together to contribute their own little piece of the industry. For example, I expect to see companies premiering new flagship additions to their product lines, start-up companies seeking investment or capital, innovators showing off the latest technology and other developments, sponsors and advertisers selling goods, presenters and speakers sharing knowledge, students seeking to build a network for future employment, and entertainers providing color and flavor to the event, among others. However, when I walked into Collect-A-Con, an overwhelming majority of the booths were just people who were buying and selling trading cards.

With that being said, there were still a few booths that were unique and distinct. For example, I especially liked the ones that had custom-made art and other goods based on the intellectual property of their favorite franchises (and I will conveniently ignore the fact that they most likely did not get a proper license to do so, because it’s nice to see people’s passion projects). I also liked the live music.

Within several minutes of my arrival, I noticed some music coming from the far rear of the convention hall. I slowly made my way through the crowd and to the stage in the back, at which point I discovered that it was Jason Paige singing. I recognized him as the person who sang the original Pokémon theme song for the cartoons. He was performing a small set of Pokémon and Pokémon-related songs, and he closed his show with the main theme song that I (and probably many other people) know him for.

This was overwhelmingly my favorite part of the show. I’m someone who watched Pokémon as a kid, and when I do live stream broadcasts on my Twitch channel and take song requests, I often get asked to play the Pokémon theme song. Thus, it was quite exciting to see it being performed live in front of me as a surprise by the vocalist who originally sang it. Apparently Jason Paige is one of the recurring headliners of Collect-A-Con and does a small set every time, but because this was my first time at this convention, it was my first time seeing Jason Paige, and it was a great experience.

What made this extra funny is that Jason Paige is apparently a particularly controversial figure among the card collector community. Specifically, he was recently accused of “scamming” a child during a trade-up challenge. I was curious and did some research into it, and I found out that the accusation was made by some random guy named Bryan Kuznitz from “Boosters and Bangers Collectibles” who did a combination of making up fake facts and leaving out important context to try and make Jason Paige look bad. I didn’t look for it myself to confirm because I’m not interested in scrolling through Bryan’s social media profiles, but he allegedly posted a follow-up video apologizing for misleading the community, which is an implied admission of guilt.

With that being said, apparently there are a lot of people who just don’t like Jason Paige—in general, and unrelated to this false scamming accusation incident—which is fine. This was evident by the confused reactions I got when people would ask me what I liked most about the convention, and I answered that my favorite part was Jason Paige singing the Pokémon theme song. I don’t know Jason personally and did not even go to his meet-and-greet or autograph session afterwards. However, I can say for sure that I thoroughly enjoyed the three minutes during which he sang the Pokémon song, and I thought it was fantastic.

My overall assessment of Collect-A-Con is that I am glad I went once to see what it’s like, but I most likely would not attend again in the future. I think this is heavily catered towards people who like actually buying and selling physical collectibles, and the amount of activities to do outside of that is very limited. I’d be willing to tag along with some friends again if they wanted to go to the Las Vegas stop of the Collect-A-Con tour circuit and I didn’t have to travel anywhere for it, but that would mainly be just to spend time together with friends, rather than for the convention itself.

Of course, I took a lot of pictures at the convention. I didn’t really have a structured plan for my photography; basically, whenever I saw something that looked remotely interesting, I snapped a shot. Here is a random collection of photos I took of random things around me, with no particular meaning or significance in their selection or order:

 

—§—

 

Hello, Zoox Explorer at Resorts World Las Vegas in Nevada

by   •   Face, Las Vegas
 

I haven’t been as diligent about keeping up with new technology as I was when I was a kid. Young Adam used to be pretty dedicated to reading tech news and trying to adopt as much of it into his life as quickly as possible, but current Adam only notices these things if they are either locally relevant or have advanced to a stage of development where it’s about to have a big impact on society.

Self-driving cars have hit both of those metrics.

With Tesla and Elon Musk having local ties to Nevada and Las Vegas, I’ve noticed them as one of the pioneers of self-driving technology. I’ve never really liked Tesla ever since around 2017 when I took a ride in my aunt and uncle’s Model X and realized how poorly it was built. Although I have not been particularly vocal about my dislike of Tesla ever since Elon Musk’s involvement in politics because I don’t want to be mistaken as some leftist Democrat who is just jumping on the Elon Musk hate bandwagon, my opinions of Tesla are still generally the same. I’ve always thought that Tesla should’ve just been a technology company and not a car manufacturer. With that being said, to my understanding, the work that Tesla conducts in Las Vegas is heavily focused on that technology aspect, which I think is a good thing.

Other companies, like Waymo, have joined in on developing self-driving technology and have outpaced Tesla. When I took a trip to the Phoenix Metropolitan Area in Arizona, I rode around exclusively in Waymos instead of using human-driven rideshare services. This is obviously a big change to society.

I am looking forward to self-driving technology becoming good enough to the point where people won’t have to drive their own vehicles anymore. I still drive my 2018 GMC Canyon gasoline pickup truck; once that breaks down or otherwise becomes inoperable, I expect to buy an electric pickup truck to replace it. I anticipate that to be the last vehicle I buy that I need to drive myself; I think that if I keep my Canyon for a handful more years and then drive my new EV for a decade and a half, self-driving cars should probably be the norm that far into the future.

With all that context in mind, along with knowing that I am optimistic about the future of self-driving vehicles, I’m sure it’s not surprising to hear that I was one of the first people to join the Zoox Explorer program as part of their partnership with Resorts World Las Vegas. Zoox is a company that is also working on self-driving technology like Waymo, and they are at a phase of development where they’re able to test their vehicles on public roads. For the past few years, I have seen quite a few supervised Zoox vehicles driving around Las Vegas for testing; I was excited to hear that they were now ready to be tested fully autonomously.

Zoox had a little booth set up in front of the southern entrance off Goh Tong Way. From here, people who were interested in taking a ride in a Zoox were able to scan a QR code, register for an account, and join the waitlist.

Right around 20 minutes after my friend and I signed up for a demo ride, a Zoox arrived to pick us up. As you can tell from the photographs, the interior of these vehicles are designed to not have a driver at all. There is no driver’s seat or front passenger’s seat; there are just four seats for occupants.

They also don’t look like a normal vehicle with a tapered hood area that encases either the engine in gasoline vehicles or a front trunk in electric vehicles; instead, they are basically just rectangular prisms (which I imagine might not be the best for aerodynamics).

Once inside, there was a message on the control screen welcoming us to the ride and briefing us on the estimated length of our demo ride. Shortly thereafter, a button popped up that allowed us to begin the ride.

There is a little screen next to each occupant from which the climate control and music can be adjusted.

People sometimes ask me (presumably as a joke) how I can prove that I went somewhere or did something if I take pictures of things around me, but not of myself. Well, here is a remarkably low-quality picture of myself sitting in the Zoox.

There were two demo rides available—a short one just around Resorts World Las Vegas, and a long one all the way up the Las Vegas Strip. Interestingly, our Zoox decided to have a mind of its own and not follow the mapped route; instead, it took us all the way out to Koval Lane. Here is a photograph of the MGM Grand at the intersection of Tropicana Avenue.

When I mentioned this detour to a Zoox staff member after the conclusion of the ride, he said that the system sometimes takes different routes to avoid construction if it knows that it will be stuck in congestion.

Eventually, it found its way back onto Las Vegas Boulevard. The vehicle has a dual-pane sunroof, which acted as a convenient window through which we could see the lights of the Strip.

After about half an hour, the Zoox completed its loop and returned us back to Resorts World.

I found most of the ride to be not too different from what I experienced in a Waymo. However, there were two things that were significantly worse.

First, the headrest is extremely hard. It feels like it is an insanely dense block of foam or something. Not only does it jut out a bit so it feels like your head is leaning forward the entire time, but it is so solid that, if the Zoox ever has to brake hard and your head gets thrown back, it will impact with the foam and probably give you a pretty bad headache. In Waymos, I liked that the headrest was basically just a regular vehicle headrest that was firm enough to give proper support but still soft enough to be comfortable.

Second, the seats do not recline at all. This is a problem for someone like me who gets easily car sick. In Waymos, I’m able to sit in the front passenger seat and recline the seat back pretty far so that I’m in a relaxed, leaned position and my motion sickness is mitigated. However, in the Zoox, I had to sit upright the entire time, and my motion sickness got bad enough near the end that it almost felt like I had to vomit.

Overall, I thought this was a great experience, and I’m glad I was able to participate in the program and volunteer some of my time to test out a new autonomous vehicle. To be clear, I did not get compensated to write this blog post, and I didn’t even receive a special private invitation or anything; I just saw that this was a thing and tried it out along with the rest of the general public.

I don’t know how long this testing phase will stay open, but if you’re on or around the Las Vegas Strip and want to check it out, I think it would serve as a fun way to spend half an hour.

I think this would be especially compelling if you’ve never ridden in a Waymo before. This wasn’t as novel of an experience for me as it could have been because of my plethora of Waymo rides from Phoenix, but I’ve heard from people who have never been in a fully self-driving car before that their first time was pretty surreal.

I mentioned earlier in this blog post that I’m looking to buy an electric pickup truck as my next vehicle. I decided to save this photo for last because it’s not fully relevant to Zoox (apart from the Zoox vehicles also being electric), but I drove a Ford F-150 Lightning as my rental vehicle while I was in Las Vegas.

(For those wondering, the reason I had a rental and didn’t just drive my own personal pickup truck is because I recently flew from Hà Nội to Los Angeles and had a small window of time to head back home to Las Vegas before needing to return to Los Angeles again to attend an event, so instead of driving to Las Vegas, I parked my truck at my friend’s home and flew.)

When I rent vehicles, I always select the pickup truck class because I’m used to driving pickup trucks and feel more comfortable in taller vehicles with better visibility. Luckily for me, apparently Avis just classes all full-size pickup trucks together, regardless of whether they are a basic trim or an EV. I figured this was a good opportunity to test out a Ford F-150 Lightning for the first time, so I specifically asked for it when I went to the rental counter, and the customer service representative gladly fulfilled my request.

The charging infrastructure in the Las Vegas Valley isn’t the best if you don’t have access to the Tesla Supercharger network (which I did not, because the F-150 Lightning rental did not come with a proper adapter to allow me to plug in a Tesla Charging Connector into the currently more common CCS connector for non-Tesla EVs). I ended up having to drive down to the Shell Recharge south of South Point for fast charging, as a majority of other locations I found only had ~7 kW charging rate instead of the full ~180 kW DC. Unfortunately, the price there was pretty expensive, and considering the kilowatt-hours per mile used by the F-150 Lightning, it was barely any cheaper than if I had a gasoline F-150 with an EcoBoost engine.

With that being said, I heard that Tesla is working on making their facilities more universal and friendly to other non-Tesla vehicles as well, and they will allegedly retrofit their stations to have built-in adapters. On top of that, charging technology is only going to get better, so in a handful of years when I’m ready to buy a new pickup truck, I imagine that charging will no longer be much of an issue.

The F-150 Lighting was probably the most stable and smooth ride I’ve ever felt in a pickup truck. I love that the heavy batteries bring the center of gravity down low, so it significantly reduces the chances of a dangerous rollover in the case of a collision, and it overall just makes the vehicle feel more firm and solid. I felt like I could easily take curves faster than my smaller mid-size pickup truck and still not have as much of a sensation of inertia from centripetal force.

If a car rental company has an F-150 Lightning available, I am definitely asking for it again in the future. Once you get the hang of it, charging at a fast charge station isn’t too bad—you plug it into the charger, get back in the vehicle, turn on the air conditioning or heat to stay comfortable (without needing to idle the engine like you would with a gasoline vehicle), plug your laptop into the household outlet that F-150s have, and treat the truck like a little mobile office.

As for Zoox, I’m looking forward to seeing how they iterate on the interior design of their vehicles. Hopefully they implement some more comfort features in the cabin so that I can consider using them on a routine basis without needing to be worried about motion sickness.

 

—§—

 

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 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.

 

—§—

 

Hello, High Roller at the LINQ Hotel + Experience on the Las Vegas Strip in Paradise, Nevada

by   •   Face, Las Vegas
 

I’ve been living in Las Vegas for almost five years now, since 2018 (this excludes the couple years I spent road tripping across the United States and living out of hotel rooms), but there are still a lot of iconic things in the city that I haven’t experienced. Up until yesterday, one of those things was taking a ride on the High Roller Ferris wheel at Caesars Entertainment’s LINQ Hotel + Experience on the Las Vegas Strip.

One of my friends is in town for a work conference near the central Strip, and while we were going for a walk around the LINQ Promenade together after picking up her admission credentials, the entrance to High Roller caught our attention. There was no wait and the box office was nearly empty, so we made an impulse decision to go for a ride around the wheel.

The wheel constantly spins at a very slow rate and you enter your pod while it still in motion, sort of like how you mount a bench on a ski lift. Because of how few people there were on a Tuesday late afternoon, my friend and I were able to get our own private pod without needing to share with any other parties.

I used to live in high-rise condos on the Las Vegas Strip, so as we ascended in altitude, I got waves of nostalgia looking out onto the city.

A little after ten minutes into our climb, we were high enough that we passed the elevation at which I lived in my old condos.

My friend took some photos of me in the pod. Here is me being confused why she is holding the camera up so high…

… and here is me looking like I somehow just now finally noticed that they put the Sphere there.

About 15 minutes into our ride, we reached the summit of 550 feet (~168 meters). From the top, I was able to get some great 360° views and captured some nice photographs of the sunset.

Soon after, we began our descent, and after about half an hour, our loop was over.

Going into the ride, I assumed that I would only end up liking it a moderate amount because of how desensitized I am to the view after living in high-rise condos, staying in rooms on upper floors of Strip hotels, and riding in aircraft over Las Vegas. However, surprisingly, I enjoyed High Roller a lot more than I expected.

I imagine a big part of it was attributed to the fact that we were able to get a fun, private experience in our own personal pod. There was amazing lighting due to the pod being fully surrounded by large glass windows and the setting sun shining in, so my friend had a great time taking glowing selfies. I was also able to roam around freely taking a lot of photographs of the view without feeling like I was distracting or detracting from others’ experience.

Apparently High Roller has flexible pricing depending on demand and time of day, with adult tickets starting at US$29 each and sometimes being eligible for discounts if you purchase ahead of time. My friend and I ended up paying US$33 each at the box office, which isn’t exactly cheap, but also wasn’t too bad in my opinion.

 

—§—