Surprise, I’m going to … wait what?

November 25, 2016, 11:51 PM PST by Parkzer • General

This post is over 9 years old and may contain information that is incorrect, outdated, or no longer relevant.
My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.

I mentioned not that long ago that I had just recently returned to Illinois … but I left again already? As you might already know, my signature phrase is “surprise, I’m going to…” but there are no huge events coming up. So where am I going? I’ll reveal that soon, but until then, enjoy these photos from the sky.

Sushi in California is expensive.

November 21, 2016, 11:37 PM PST by Parkzer • Food

But sushi in Illinois? Not so much.

When I was in California for BlizzCon 2016 Opening Week, I ate a lot of sushi. There was a sushi place across the street from the hotel in which I was staying that had some pretty good sushi for a pretty good price – it was a little under $14 for a decently-sized lunch combo. (If you scroll down and look at some of my old posts from BlizzCon, this is the same sushi place that forgot to give me chopsticks one time, so I ate my food with two coffee stirrers.)

BlizzCon Opening Week is over now, and I’m back in my home state of Illinois. I went to a restaurant today called Ginza Buffet, which had an all-you-can-eat lunch option for only around US$12. The best part is that they had a sushi area.

The sushi here is (obviously) not as high-quality as the actual sushi restaurant in California (seeing as Ginza doesn’t seem to specialize in sushi), but the low price makes up for the slightly less delicious fish. I only took a photo of one of my plates, but overall, I had about three times as much sushi as what is shown in the photo (in addition to a little bit of other food and dessert).

If high-quality sushi was cheap, I’m pretty sure I would eat it every day, seeing as it seems to be healthy (at least it logically makes sense – it doesn’t come with any of the added grease, and people eat fish oil pills to maintain heart health anyway).

This is what happens when Ed gets too hungry

November 20, 2016, 11:25 PM PST by Parkzer • Dogs

I don’t really eat that much. I value bodily fitness, and because I don’t really move around as much as I used to, I eat proportionately less. Body fat reserves are related directly to excess calories in versus calories out, and there’s no reason for anyone to eat if they haven’t expended those calories during the day.

As a result, I’ll end up doing some insane things when I feel like I have a calorie overdose. For example, if I spend the entire day seated, I will only eat enough so that I have sufficient calories for sedentary, passive burn, and not more. If I notice that my belly is increasing in size, I’ll skip a few meals in a row in order to extract from fat reserves. I don’t abide by the conventional breakfast, lunch, and dinner meals; instead, I eat small meals whenever I’m hungry.

Ed … Ed is very much not like that.

Ed follows a very routine eating schedule of all three meals per day, at particular times throughout the day.

On the day that I took the photo above, I was meeting up with Ed to go get some food at a restaurant. Even though he had already eaten breakfast that day, he was apparently still very hungry because it was past his lunch time.

He expressed his hunger by curling up into a ball and laying on the ground. As you can see, Coco showed some concern for Ed’s well-being.

“Don’t go that way!”

November 10, 2016, 11:57 PM PST by Parkzer • General

“You’ll get messed up.”

I didn’t actually heed the warning, and just went “that way” anyway. Luckily, I guess I’m alive to tell the tale. … Saying I’m “alive to tell the tale” makes me feel like I’m making this way too suspenseful. I don’t think I was ever actually in danger.

Earlier tonight, I went to Chipotle to get some food. The nearest Chipotle to the team house was inside a pretty big shopping plaza. Chipotle specifically is deeper into the plaza, where you can only access it by walking there, rather than driving right up to the front door, parking, and entering. So, I had to find a parking spot a little off to the side, then walk to get my food.

After snaking around the busy California plaza, I finally managed to find a spot. I parked and started making my way to the restaurant when a random guy yelled out, “Don’t go that way! You’ll get messed up.” Confused, I assumed, possibly unwisely, that the warning wasn’t entirely justified, and that I wasn’t actually really in that much danger.

As I walked closer to Chipotle, I started hearing people yelling at each other. I still didn’t really feel tense or in danger, and I just wanted to get my food and go back to the team house, so I kept going. I proceeded to walk close enough to see what the thing that would “mess me up” was – two random people were fighting in the middle of the walkway in front of Chipotle, Panera Bread, and a bunch of other restaurants.

I quickly determined that it was an actual one-on-one fight. Meaning, it wasn’t one randomly guy being destructive to the public, and a hero fighting him. Had it been like that, it would’ve been in my best interest to probably leave, or else I might have actually gotten messed up. But, rather, they both looked intent on attacking each other. Thus, I just strolled right past them and entered Chipotle to put in my order.

After several minutes, I finished placing my order and got my food (which took some time because I was ordering food for other people too). On the way out, I realized that the fight had subsided. It seemed like a victor had emerged, fled, and left the victim behind. It seemed like someone had also already called an ambulance, because there was one in the parking lot.

The team’s gaming house is in a pretty wealthy area of California, so I determined that seeing something like this would be very rare, as higher-income areas tend to have lower crime rates. So, before I drove off, I turned around, looked through the back window of the car I was driving, and snapped this photo of the ambulance (I didn’t want to whip out my phone and take a photo of the actual fight, because I would rather not draw attention to myself, especially from those already engaged in a fight).

The moment I discovered Trump won the election

November 9, 2016, 1:47 AM PST by Parkzer • General

I really thought people would have the foresight to vote for Hillary Clinton. I guess I was wrong.

I think Trump is a great entertainer, but I don’t think he will make the best president. I realize that it’s appealing to bring in something new, fresh, and exciting, and it’s satisfying to “punish” someone for their wrongdoings – namely, ensuring Hillary Clinton doesn’t win the presidency because she did some bad things in the past and wasn’t properly punished. But, in my opinion, the election to determine the next president of the United States doesn’t really seem like the best context in which we can explore and try out these kinds of things.

I took this photo because I wanted to document the moment when I found out that Trump was officially declared to be the next president. I was at eSports Arena in Santa Ana, CA with some of Tempo Storm’s professional gamers. I was there to pick them up, as they were using some of the computers while I was busy preparing everything and setting up our own team computers in our new team house. On the way out, I saw that the staff at the eSports Arena front desk had this playing on YouTube. I know for sure that this presidency will be very different, and I like taking little snapshots of iconic moments that happen during my life.

I’m not exactly sure how “re-elections” or recounts work, but at this point, I think the only thing I can hope for is that all the Trump critics are wrong and he will make a great president, or that he will be a very mediocre president and the “Trumpocalypse” won’t actually be a thing.

I was never actually interested in politics whatsoever before I figured out that Donald Trump was actually making progress in the election. Simply because of how strange this whole scenario was, I got a little bit more interested in politics during this election. Chances are, now that it’s over, my interest in politics will wane again, and there won’t really be any noticeable changes in my life – and it will be just like that for most other Americans, too.

I guess we’ll find out. I’m curious.

Welcome to Anaheim

November 6, 2016, 11:24 PM PST by Parkzer • Tempo

“What’s with California and their obsession with palm trees?”

That’s what one of our professional Overwatch players asked me. With a quick search on Google, I found out that, apparently, palm trees were first introduced into the Los Angeles area during the 18th century by Spanish missionaries, and their popularity rose dramatically during the Victorian era. Palm trees are supposedly associated with desert weather, but it seems like they actually need a lot of water to grow, and the recent drought in this area has stunted their spread.

BlizzCon was at the Anaheim Convention Center, and we got here a few days early to get accustomed with the area. On the day of our arrival, a few of our pro players and I walked around Anaheim. We stopped by a restaurant that boasted meats with “no skin, no dairy, no trans fats, no fried stuff.” Then one of our players wanted to stop by a medical marijuana facility (which is legal in California) to see if he would qualify – unfortunately for him, a California identification was required (and an Australian passport was not accepted).

BlizzCon itself was pretty busy for me. I was there for work, but the press area was extremely crowded and loud, so there wasn’t really a nice place for me to work. I managed to find an out-of-the-way area where I was allowed to be because of my media badge, but even then, there were still hundreds of people flooding by right next to me to get to a different floor of the convention center.

I also realized that it probably isn’t the best idea to dispatch writers to BlizzCon to be on-site if I actually ever want content to be done. Conventions are pretty compelling, and I don’t really want to take away from writers who want to actually enjoy the convention … but seeing as there are non-stop shows and events and parties, it’s difficult for them to actually find the time to write.

Because of how busy I was, I wasn’t really too alert in terms of photographing things. Regardless, a lot of interesting stuff at BlizzCon I wasn’t able to photograph anyway, because they were in the restricted area where we were not allowed to photograph or share anything we were being told. But, I did still manage to get these two photos:

The first photo was the meal I had when I met up with our Merchandising Director. The second photo was from my spot next to reynad as we were setting up when he was doing a meet-and-greet in the Hearthstone tavern area of BlizzCon.

My plan was to leave California and head back to Illinois shortly after BlizzCon’s conclusion, but there has been a change of plans … I’ll be sticking around for a little bit longer while I do some setup of our new team house here in southern California.