Hello Tūrangi, New Zealand

by   •   Hiking, Travel
 

After spending a long afternoon at the Waitomo Glowworm Caves, we continued our New Zealand trip by heading east to Tūrangi, a small town on the North Island Volcanic Plateau situated on the west bank of the Tongariro River.

If you didn’t catch it from previous blog posts, I’ve been traveling together with my friend Doug Wreden and doing all our tourism activities together. However, this was the first day where we explored separately—Doug did a strenuous hike across the Tongariro Alpine Crossing, while I opted to do a lighter trail in town because my stamina is not as good as his and I was exhausted from the previous three days of physical activity.

After preparing some bacon, scrambled eggs, toast, Greek yogurt, and orange juice for breakfast in our lodge, I headed out to the Tongariro River Trail, one of the entrances of which was right outside our door.

The northern side of the trail had an incline and some switchbacks that went up a few hundred feet in elevation, allowing hikers to get a nice view of the town and its surrounding areas.

After taking in the scenery, I descended the hill and made my way down and under the bridge and overpass of New Zealand State Highway 1 going over the Tongariro River.

While continuing on the path, I saw a man fishing in the river.

On the way back, I took a more residential route so that I could also see the town.

It wasn’t very busy, so the residential areas made for a very calming and peaceful walk with a nice mountain view as a backdrop.

I made my way back to our lodge—The Cottage at River Birches.

Most of the inns, lodges, and motels in Tūrangi looked fairly dated and in need of renovations, and a lot of the better spots were farther out in the outskirts, so we had somewhat limited options for nice accommodations.

During my search, I came across River Birches and saw that it looked very well-maintained and had a good balance of modern touches while still sustaining a cozy cabin mood. They had an option to book out an entire three-bedroom cottage to ourselves; it was obviously much pricier than any of our other options, but because both Doug and I are financially comfortable, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to splurge for two nights to enhance our vacation.

The owners of the cottage made sure that we had any and all of our wishes fulfilled. There was incredible attention to detail in every aspect of the hospitality experience, and they provided a wealth of conveniences that made our stay feel seamless and pampered.

Our next overnight stop will be in Rotorua before looping back up north to Auckland.

 

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The San Francisco Bay Area round-up

by   •   Travel
 

I’m off on my next adventure after my week in the San Francisco Bay Area for Open Sauce, but I had some spare photos that didn’t fit in any of my pre­vi­ous topic-based blog posts, so I decided to do a final travel round-up.

But first, a story. I call this one… “How not to travel out of Burbank Airport.”

As is probably blatantly obvious by now, I travel a lot. Not only do I travel a lot in the conventional sense, but in case you’re new here and missed it, I used to travel literally full-time during 2021-2023 when I road tripped across the United States and Canada and lived out of hotel rooms for two years straight. Throughout my travels, I have become an expert and acquired some specialized knowledge.

Upon arriving at Hollywood Burbank Airport for my Alaska Airlines flight to San Francisco, I entered through Terminal B to get through security, as my plane was scheduled to board from the B gates. I noticed that the TSA line was unusually long, so I decided to walk to Terminal A to go through an al­ter­na­tive security checkpoint. I thought I had made a great choice, because upon my arrival, I noticed that the line in Terminal A was nearly non-existent. I entered through the TSA PreCheck® line and finished screening within two minutes.

After popping out the other end, I looked for the connector between Terminal A and Terminal B so I could get to my gate. I looked around and there was only one way forward, so I mindlessly started walking from Gate A1 deeper into the airport. I eventually made it to Gate A9, upon which I had a fateful encounter with a brick wall. Confused, I checked my GPS location on Google Maps and realized I had walked in the literal opposite direction, a­way from Terminal B. I turned around and walked all the way back to Gate A1.

But, remember how I said there was only one way forward after the security screening checkpoint? Once I made it back to Gate A1, I had that exact same problem. I needed to walk west. The only path forward was east, unless I wanted to leave the building and go outside. Confused, I explained my situation to a nearby officer, who let me know that there isn’t actually a gateside connector between Terminals A and B and that I would have to exit outdoors and go back through security in Terminal B.

By trying to outplay the system, I outplayed myself.

I went outside, walked back into Terminal B, and stood in line to go through Terminal B’s security checkpoint. I made my way to my gate with four mi­nutes to spare before boarding doors closed.

Here are some photos of Los Angeles on the way out.

Burbank to San Francisco is a short flight so there was no meal service, but I did get some snacks. I felt the need to take a picture of this bag of chips be­cause it only had about five chips inside it. (Insert disgruntled statement about shrinkflation here.)

Landing at San Francisco International Airport is always an interesting experience due to its location—SFO has runways extending into the San Fran­cisco Bay. This creates an amusing visual where it looks like your plane is about to dive directly into the water, up until asphalt magically spawns un­der you and you touch down safely.

If you followed my adventures during my road trip, you probably know that I’m a Marriott loyalist and achieved Ambassador Elite status from my time liv­ing out of hotels full-time. Unfortunately, I had to cheat on Marriott and stayed at a Hilton during Open Sauce because I had a room inside the des­ig­nat­ed special guest hotel.

I don’t have any special status with Hilton, so I didn’t have lounge access for free food (if there was even a lounge at all). This meant that, on the day I flew in, I had to go searching for my own food. I didn’t have a rental vehicle so I decided to order on a delivery app. Conveniently, the restaurant did not in­clude utensils with my tonkatsu donburi, so I had to pull off my hotel specialty: using two coffee stirrers as chopsticks.

I extended my stay in the San Francisco Bay Area after Open Sauce finished because I have a friend who lives in the area, and I figured it would be a good opportunity to spend time with her while I was already there. On the day after Open Sauce before I transferred from the special guest hotel to my own hotel, some friends and I stopped by ToToRo Ramen for lunch.

After ridesharing from San Mateo to downtown San Francisco, I checked into The Jay, an Autograph Collection hotel under Marriott. After the me­di­o­cre room and service from Hilton, stepping once again into a Marriott felt like coming back home.

On my way out, I decided to fly JSX from Oakland International Airport back to Hollywood Burbank Airport. I’ve generally had positive experiences with JSX from back when they were still known by their full name JetSuiteX, and because I was leaving from downtown San Francisco which was almost equidistant between SFO and OAK, I decided to go with OAK and fly JSX again (they only service OAK and not SFO).

That was a mistake. JSX’s quality of service has severely degraded to the point where I’d rather save the money and fly premium economy on a mass com­mer­cial airline from now on.

They used to have nice, luxurious lounges with food and drinks, but it seems like they got rid of all the food and only have a Starbucks dispensing ma­chine. The only trace of food available was cat and dog treats next to the sink. I had not eaten at all this day, so I was literally banking on having food at this lounge, and I could not. Note that JSX flies out of a separate hangar, so it’s not like I could walk to an airport restaurant and get food either.

The interior of the jet I got seemed to have not really been taken care of that well. The jets also used to be a 1-2 all-business-class configuration, but for some reason, this jet was a 1-1 configuration… except instead of using the extra space from the missing row of seats as just extra space, they installed gi­gan­tic blocky armrests that make the entire cabin look cramped and unnavigable.

My rideshare vehicle from my hotel to JSX’s Oakland hangar was a Tesla Model Y that had an extremely jerky ride so I was already very motion sick, and I ended up flying on an empty stomach; this combined was a great recipe to get severe air sicknesses. I was on the verge of throwing up the entire time, and the fact that there is more turbulence on JSX flights due to the small size of the jet didn’t help.

Fortunately, I made it back to my friend’s house without vomiting, but I got really close.

And finally, to close this blog post, here is an out-of-context photograph of my friend’s blanket after I wrapped it in plastic food wrap.

 

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Hello, Adam Savage’s workshop “The Cave”

by   •   Travel
 

I’m currently in San Mateo County of the San Francisco Bay Area in California for Open Sauce, a science and technology convention that I was invited to by my friend Billie-Rae. As part of the special guest itinerary, I had the opportunity and privilege to tour Adam Savage’s workshop, “The Cave.”

Adam Savage is best known for being the host of MythBusters, an educational show during which the cast uses scientific inquiry to test common myths in order to “confirm” or “bust” their truth and validity. Although I didn’t watch full episodes of the show when I was younger, I would sometimes watch highlights of the best moments that people would upload on YouTube.

The workshop was impressive. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many different objects so well-organized and compacted into such a condensed space. I think I spent a little over half an hour there and did multiple loops around the workshop, and I noticed something new and fascinating every time I re­visited an area.

I tried to capture pictures of as many props as possible, in hopes that I can share them with MythBusters fans and they would recognize seeing some of them in prior episodes. Here is a collection of photographs, in no particular order, that I think turned out the best.

There was a guest book for visitors of the workshop to sign and leave notes. My friend Sam made fun of me for only signing my name, so she left an ex­tra heartfelt message to make up for the both of us.

Open Sauce spans for a total of three days, between June 14-16, so I should have a few more convention blog posts coming soon.

 

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Food of Boston

by   •   Food, Travel
 

Today was my final full day in Boston. I have some miscellaneous photographs from attending PAX East and exploring the city, but I have so many food pictures that I figured it would be worth doing a blog post dedicated strictly to some of what I ate while traveling.

I landed in Boston at 9:16 PM EDT, and by the time I had made it to my hotel and got unpacked and washed up after my flight, it was already really late. I didn’t want to walk in the cold, so I checked some food delivery apps and found Lucky’s Lounge open late. I ordered salmon with roasted potatoes, as­par­a­gus, and salad. The salmon was underwhelming, the salad was way too sour, and the vegetables were passable.

My friends arrived in Boston the following night, and funny enough, the restaurant they picked to meet up… was Lucky’s Lounge again. This time I went in-person.

My dine-in order was a triple smash burger. It was strange, because smash burgers are usually supposed to be wide and thin, but this one was ag­gres­sive­ly tall. The burger lacked juiciness and tenderness and was overall underwhelming. The French fries were passable.

For one of the meals I had delivered to my hotel room after one of the convention days, I ordered a sashimi bowl and a sushi roll from Tora Japanese Res­tau­rant. It was pricey, but the fish variety and quality made it worth it. This was also the best shrimp head I’ve ever had.

Prior to my friends Dan and Jay’s first panel at PAX East, we went to Gyu-Kaku. Gyu-Kaku is a chain and has been a hit-or-miss in the Southern Cali­for­nia area, but this one near Boston was great. We all got the premium all-you-can-eat option and were very satisfied.

Beef tongue is one of my favorite cuts of meat at grill-your-own BBQ restaurants. Gyu-Kaku limits the number of orders of beef tongue you can put in because they label it as an extra premium dish, but luckily for me, none of my three friends I went with were a fan of beef tongue, so I got eat everyone’s portion on my own.

I got matcha ice cream for my dessert. This was the greenest and roundest scoop of green tea ice cream I’d ever seen.

Here is a takeout order of fish and chips from Stubbys that I got as a late night snack after one of the convention days.

After Dan and Jay’s second panel at PAX East, they had a meet-and-greet; while they were occupied, my friend Aidan (who runs the Skip the Tutorial You­Tube channel) and I left to get some lunch. I didn’t notice this until after I ordered, but coincidentally, the restaurant that Aidan picked was the same one from which I had ordered sushi a few nights prior—Tora.

I got a salmon bowl with three variants of salmon—regular, belly, and minced. The quality of the fish was fantastic. Considering that salmon belly is my second favorite type of sushi, I enjoyed it a lot.

Aidan is not a big fan of fish, so he got one pork and one beef dish.

I wasn’t too hungry so I didn’t get any dessert, but Aidan got some green tea ice cream.

For another one of my late night snacks near the end of my trip, I ordered a lengua burrito bowl from Chilacates Mexican Street Food. The portion size of meat was extremely small, which detracted from the overall flavor balance of the dish.

And for my final meal of Boston, and upon recommendation of one of my foodie friends, I ordered braised beef noodle soup, signature pork soup dump­lings, crispy-bottom pork buns, and iced soy milk from Nan Xiang Express. This tasted great, and eating it gave me a warm, cozy, homey feel.

When people online found out I was going to PAX East, I got a lot of recommendations of places to try out. Unfortunately, my breadth of exposure to res­tau­rants ended up being fairly limited, not only because I did not rent a vehicle, but also because it was very cold outside and it sapped away a lot of my motivation for going out.

I heard that PAX East 2025 is going to take place during the summer, so I’m guessing I’m going to end up checking out a lot more restaurants next year.

 

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Food of Seattle

by   •   Face, Food, Travel
 

When visiting Seattle this time for PAX West, I traveled with one of my friends who likes searching for and trying out good food. We went to a lot of different restaurants, and I captured enough food pictures that I decided to do a dedicated blog post solely spotlighting the food I ate during my trip.

On the first day of PAX, we left the convention center for a little bit to find some lunch. We decided on Ruth’s Chris Steak House, where I ordered a grilled chicken sandwich and some fries.

I’m not entirely sure if this actually counts as a food picture, but inside PAX, apparently Cheez-It decided to partner up with a gaming company to run their own exhibition booth. Funny enough, the booth was literally just entirely filled with Cheez-Its.

Although I had a four-day badge, my friend only purchased two one-day badges, so on one of the days where she couldn’t get into the convention center, we went to downtown Seattle and did a bit of exploring. For lunch on Saturday, we went to The Athenian Seafood Restaurant and Bar where we ordered some clams in garlic sauce.

Here is the aftermath.

Does water count as food?

My friend took a picture of me in front of Puget Sound because she specifically wanted me to have more photos of my face to post on my website. I guess you can technically argue that this could possibly be a food picture if you consider the fish in the water that you could hypothetically go out and eat…

🍆 … 💦?

The next day, we went to Noren Sushi, where we ordered agedashi tofu for our appetizer.

My lunch was a chirashi bowl.

That night, after the “Fight Mii” panel, we went to Hong Kong Bistro for some dim sum. The service was horrifically bad, but the food was decent. We accidentally ordered about 50% more food than our party of nine needed.

I overate, and we still had a ton of leftovers that we packed up in to-go containers; here is the aftermath after we were done:

For lunch the next day, my friend and I went to Musashi’s. We shared our entrées half-and-half, with the first one once again being a chirashi bowl.

The second entrée we got was grilled yellowtail collar.

For the final restaurant of the trip, we went to Meet Korean BBQ. Our cook was great, the meat was extremely high quality, and the restaurant quickly became one of my all-time favorite restaurants.

For our appetizer, we ordered steak tartare with American wagyu chuck, Asian pear, jalapeño, pine nuts, egg yolk, honey soy marinade, and toasted ba­guette.

As our main entrée, we each ordered the signature feast. This round came with American wagyu gold grade bavette, American wagyu gold grade chuck eye steak, and Kurobata pork belly. The feast also included kimchi fried rice, corn cheese, egg soufflé, and wagyu soybean stew.

Meet was very pricey, but if you’re flexible in budget or just want to treat yourself, it was an amazing experience and I highly recommend it.

That wraps up a brief overview of my food adventures in Seattle. I’m glad I traveled with a friend this time around, because it’s always nice to have some­one else scouting interesting places to visit and pulling me out of my hotel room where I otherwise would just be working until my scheduled e­vents at the convention.

 

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Photo dump from early 2023

by   •   Face, General, Travel
 

After spending the winter setting up a temporary home base at the Tempo headquarters in Long Beach, California, the time has come for me to continue to my next destination.

I spent more time there than I usually do because we had some behind-the-scenes stuff happening on the logistical and operational side of the company that I had to tend to, but that also meant that I didn’t have a chance to do as much exploring as I wanted to… not that the amount I wanted to was that much to begin with anyway, though.

I noticed that this has been a recurring theme every time I visit California—the traffic is so paralyzingly bad, and for some reason, I generally just feel less motivated than I usually am, so I end up just staying indoors a lot.

This means that I didn’t really do much that would warrant their own dedicated blog posts like I regularly did when I was out non-stop road tripping, but I do still have a smorgasbord of photographs, so I wanted to share a handful of them here.

This is my friend’s greyhound Majima. He is very lanky, awkward, and clearly ecstatic to be a part of this picture.

Adam Parkzer hugging a greyhound

The CEO of Tempo, one of our Producers, and I all share similar birthdays within the span of a few days, so near the end of January, we celebrated by going to some nice restaurants. One of them was the Naples Rib Company in Long Beach, California.

I’m still eating a diet low in saturated fat for heart health, so I ordered some swordfish instead of barbecue ribs. The swordfish filet was tender and juicy, the flavor was exactly what you’d expect from nicely-cooked swordfish, the sauce was perfectly complementary without being too overwhelming, and the sides added richness and texture to the main entrée.

While stationed at the residential quarters of Tempo’s facility, considering that I wasn’t personally paying for rent or otherwise being charged a fee like I do with hotels or other forms of lodging, I was more willing to go on air travel trips.

One convenient thing about the location of the company headquarters is that it is in close proximity to both Long Beach Airport (LGB) in Long Beach, California and John Wayne Airport (SNA) in Santa Ana, Orange County, California. This means that I can fly out of much smaller airports, as opposed to going all the way over to Los Angeles International Airport (LAX).

Here’s a photo of the Orange County suburbs:

… as well as the snowy mountains in northern California up by Lake Tahoe:

Air travel hasn’t been the best experience shortly after the initial surge of quarantine mandates during the pandemic, as most airlines decided to roll over everyone’s elite status, so it wasn’t special anymore to be a loyalty member—this meant that the upgrade list was oversaturated, so it was very rare to get free upgrades to first class if you weren’t one of the highest elite tiers.

However, in a “nature is healing” moment, I managed to be able to fly first class again on Delta Air Lines. Even better, regular meal service has been re­stored (as opposed to the “deluxe snack boxes” that they switched over to during the pandemic, where everything was pre-packaged to avoid physical con­tact by the flight attendants with the food). It wasn’t the best food ever, but definitely better than just having 8 different kinds of chips and crackers.

I also squeezed in a Las Vegas trip as well, for the usual—to check my mail, get a haircut, meet up with friends, and take care of some other errands. My hotel of choice for this trip was the ENGLiSH Hotel, part of the Marriott Tribute Portfolio, located in downtown Las Vegas on Main Street in the Arts District.

The hotel was pleasant, though I wasn’t a fan of the parking situation—the hotel’s lot is tiny, so I ended up having to street park… and downtown Las Vegas doesn’t exactly have the best reputation for being the most secure area in the Valley. Luckily, nothing happened to my truck.

Thanks to my Marriott Ambassador Elite status, I got to enjoy a free breakfast at The Pepper Club by Todd English, the restaurant directly connected to my hotel. I decided to order the Eggs Benedict with smoked salmon because it was priced perfectly efficiently to be able to use my entire breakfast credit.

Maybe it’s because I’m just used to staying at lower-end hotels for the bargain and convenience, but the Eggs Benedict was unexpectedly delicious. It tasted like an actual high-end breakfast restaurant dish—everything was cooked well, the presentation was nice, and the flavors had just the right amount of intensity. I’m also usually not the biggest fan of cheese, but the cheese sauce was just that—more of a sauce than actual cheese—so it didn’t have any of the moldy or vomit-ey smell that I prefer to avoid.

While in town in Las Vegas, I also met up with one of my friends and went to 138 Restaurant in Henderson, a restaurant that specializes in dry-aged food.

For my appetizer, I ordered duck confit wontons with chili oil, fried garlic, and sweet and sour sauce. I wasn’t a big fan of it—the pickled vegetables on top were way too sour, the sauce was overwhelming, and the wontons were over-fried, so I could barely even tell that there was any duck inside at all.

My friend ordered dry aged crispy pork belly with fennel butter, pickled shallots, apple, and pork jus.

For my main dish, I got Ōra King salmon with aloo gobi spiced cauliflower, red pepper coulis, cucumber, and cilantro, with a special request for it to be cooked less salty. I liked this much better than my appetizer—the flavors were much more complementary, and I could actually tell what the meat was that I was eating.

Although the menu didn’t clarify, the waitress said that the salmon had been dry aged. I couldn’t really tell, and it just tasted like I was pretty much just eating very normal salmon.

Finally, for dessert, I got some crème brûlée. I realized after-the-fact that the photograph makes it look small, but it was actually literally about double the portion size that I would expect from an already big portion. It tasted amazing, though I’m pretty sure I ate a week’s worth of sugar intake in just that one bowl.

🕵️

 

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