Photo dump from winter 2024-2025

by   •   General
 

Today is the first day of astronomical spring, so I decided to do another photo dump of miscellaneous pictures I took last season that didn’t warrant having their own dedicated blog posts. (Yes, I know I usually go off meteorological seasons, but it was just more convenient this time to go off astronomical seasons because I was busier than usual at the beginning of this month.)

I don’t actually remember which restaurants these first two photos are from because they were so long ago, but here is a random bowl of noodles and a random chirashi bowl I had.

For dinner one day, I met up with a friend who lives in the southeastern Las Vegas Valley and checked out Noodle Master, which I was told was a relatively new restaurant. Pictured below was our appetizer, spicy pork wontons in chili oil sauce, topped with green onions and served with a side of wonton sauce.

From where we were sitting, we got a decent view of the kitchen where we were able to watch them make noodles. For my main entrée, I ordered hand-pulled wide dandan noodles with minced pork, cucumber, crushed peanuts, spicy soy sauce, and Sichuan pepper, but I forgot to take a picture of it.

Earlier this month, there were some severe fires in Southern California. I have friends who live in the at-risk areas, so I headed over to Los Angeles County to help out with disaster prevention and recovery where I could.

This photograph was taken at almost 11 PM on the night the Eaton Fire started. The smoke was so thick and had already covered such a wide area that it illuminated the night sky and made the moon look like a glowing orb of fire.

The severity of the fires was amplified due to severe winds. The winds also caused direct damage on top of spreading the fire; they toppled a lot of trees, many of which fell into roadways and blocked the flow of traffic.

While in the Southern California area, I met up with one of my friends for dinner. She ordered cheese katsu curry thinking that it would literally just be a chunk of cheese with breading, presumably envisioning a fancier mozzarella stick dish. Well, it ended up being pork dunked in a layer of cheese, which was then covered in panko bread crumbs and fried.

She’s particular about meats and did not like this pork, so she musical-chairsed the dish over to me. I don’t like cheese, but I also don’t like wasting food, so I ate it anyway. … I guess that is one way to make me to eat cheese.

My company Tempo used to have team houses in Southern California back when we still competed in esports, but since entirely realigning the company towards game development, we’ve gone fully remote and no longer have any team houses or offices. That’s made it rare for us to ever see each other in person, so when an opportunity does arise, I usually show up.

Our CEO was in Los Angeles County for some unrelated business, so while he was there, we had a small gathering at the Sea Level Restaurant and Lounge at the Shade Hotel Redondo Beach. I don’t quite remember what we ordered, but just based on the photos, it seems like I got the catch of the day, and the other person whose meal I photographed got some kind of salmon dish.

After dinner, we went for a walk together around the marina, which gave me nostalgia from when we had our Redondo Beach and Long Beach team houses a handful of years ago.

This is the Holy Apple. No further context will be provided.

I finally got an opportunity to watch the Fountains of Bellagio’s choreographed water show from the western point of view. Now all I need to do is go for a swim and watch the show from under the water jets, and then I will have seen the show from every possible angle and perspective.

For dinner one day, I dined at the Yellowtail Japanese Restaurant & Lounge at the Bellagio Hotel & Casino. Pictured below are our dishes of edamame with sweet chili, cucumber salad with sesame and ume amazu, rock shrimp with Korean chili aïoli, and what I believe is a matcha cheesecake (but I don’t remember for sure).

One day, I was driving southbound on South Las Vegas Boulevard when I ran into an insane amount of congestion that was backed up to around Resorts World Las Vegas. After making it closer to the intersection of Fashion Show Drive and skimming through some local Las Vegas news websites on my phone in standstill, bumper-to-bumper traffic, I found out that there was a group of protestors who were planning on marching north on the Strip, turning left onto Fashion Show Drive, and concluding their demonstration in front of Trump International Hotel Las Vegas.

Well, I guess the Trump Hotel got tipped off about this and they (reasonably) didn’t want their business operations disrupted and didn’t want to have a bunch of non-clientele trespassers on their private property, so it seems like they somehow convinced the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department to shut down all westbound travel on the entirety of Fashion Show Drive, both foot traffic and vehicular traffic, starting from South Las Vegas Boulevard.

The protestors comically did not know what to do anymore, so I guess they sort of just … stood there. Overflowing onto the street. Which then prompted the police to also have to close a few lanes of travel on South Las Vegas Boulevard to make sure the protestors didn’t get hit by cars while they tried to rally them back onto the sidewalk.

What a clown fiesta.

Back when Tempo was still in esports and we had a professional H1Z1 team, we were forced to work with the Rio Hotel & Casino as the temporary competitor housing provider for the league. Back then, the Rio was still owned by Caesars Entertainment. My experience with the Rio was so catastrophically bad that it sort of just ruined all Caesars properties for me, so I generally avoid anything Caesars-related.

With that being said, I usually don’t let my grudges interfere with my friends’ wishes. One of my friends was in town for a conference, and Mon Ami Gabi at the Paris Las Vegas Hotel & Casino was in a convenient location for dinner, so I decided to finally give a Caesars property’s restaurant a chance.

We started with some melted brie with apricot jam, brown butter walnuts, and mint with a side of croutons. This was basically a gigantic chunk of heavy, greasy cheese that tasted like I was dumping a bottle of coagulated cooking oil into my mouth. At least the walnuts were decent, I guess.

Next was onion soup au gratin, baked with gruyère cheese. … I will let the photograph speak for itself.

Yes, this is exactly how it came out from the kitchen.

A photograph of a small bowl of onion soup with a dry, crusted layer sitting on top of the soup, many globs and streaks of soup that had overflowed around the edges of the bowl and dripped down the sides, and drops of dried soup on the saucer under the bowl.

My friend was craving a burger, so we got le cheeseburger & frites with tomme de savoie cheese, pickles, and diced onion. The burger patty was dry and flavorless.

Needless to say, based on this particular dinner, I cannot recommend Mon Ami Gabi.

I, Adam Parkzer, am always ready for a picture, at all times, no matter what.

Always.

One day, I was driving southbound on South Las Vegas Boulevard (not too far away from the photo near Fashion Show Drive above) when, again, there was an insane amount of congestion. I eventually approached the intersection of Mystère Dreams Avenue where I discovered that there seemed to be… an obstruction in the road.

Now, driving long vehicles is not easy. I drive a pickup truck and even that can sometimes get tricky in tight areas, so driving an entire bus is obviously going to be very difficult, especially in a place like the Las Vegas Strip where there’s a lot going on. In order to not swipe things with the tail end of the bus, you have to make very wide turns, i.e., you have to drive “outwards” first, and then actually make the turn afterwards.

Well, apparently this bus took the most inopportune time to break down: right as the bus driver reached the peak of the “outward” portion of the wide turn. This bus broke down in a way that blocked three out of the four travel lanes on South Las Vegas Boulevard.

Have I mentioned anything about clown fiestas yet?

I usually go get a haircut about once every two months. Two months is a long time, and a lot can happen in two months. Well, apparently, at some point in the last two months, something happened that prompted the hair salon I go to to post a new, interesting sign below their Clark County business license.

… I would like to personally meet and shake the hand of the person who walked into this building, saw several people sitting in salon chairs and styling stations getting their hair done, and genuinely thought they had stumbled across a medical facility.

It’s common for people to smoke indoors in Las Vegas casinos while gambling, and that is also one of the things that I find most annoying about Las Vegas casinos.

I somehow missed this when it happened, but apparently, Park MGM Las Vegas decided to convert to a non-smoking property back in late 2020. To show my appreciation, I decided to go for a walk around the Park MGM one day and stopped by La Pizzeria alla Romana in La Cucina del Mercato at Eataly for a quick lunch.

The pizza was … underwhelming.

And finally, here is a random photo of shishito peppers.

 

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Hello, “American Duet: Jazz & Abstract Art” at the Bellagio Gallery of Fine Art

by   •   Las Vegas
 

The Bellagio Resort & Casino on the Las Vegas Strip in Paradise, Nevada has two seasonally-rotating attractions. I checked out “The Birds and The B’s” at the Conservatory and Botanical Gardens a few days ago, so it seemed reasonable to also visit the Gallery of Fine Art as well.

I’ve known that this art gallery existed for a while now, but this was my first time going. As a Las Vegas resident, I got a locals discount and purchased an admission ticket for US$15.00 (the non-discounted ticket price is US$19.00).

The gallery was a lot smaller than I expected, and it took me less than an hour to see everything, even with reading every plaque. It was a very calming and peaceful experience, though, which I found very pleasant—there were not many other patrons in the museum, and the room was humidity-controlled, which felt refreshing relative to the dry Las Vegas air.

Until summer of this year, the collection on display is called “American Duet: Jazz & Abstract Art.” Some artists are apparently able to see colors in music, and the gallery showcased some pieces of abstract art that were inspired by and sourced from jazz music.

One thing that I noticed from these exhibits that I liked is how three-dimensional the art was. Other art museums tend to have a lot of prints or paintings on flat canvas, but this collection at the Bellagio had a lot of pieces with enough depth and layers that I was able to manipulate the angle at which I viewed the piece, combined with different light trajectories, to see a lot more from the art than what you’d be able to gather from just a head-on view of a print.

Here are some photographs I took throughout the gallery:

 

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Hello, “The Birds and The B’s” at the Bellagio Conservatory on the Las Vegas Strip

by   •   Las Vegas
 

Last week, a new seasonal installation went live at the Bellagio Conservatory & Botanical Gardens inside MGM Resorts’ Bellagio Resort & Casino on the Las Vegas Strip in Paradise, Nevada. I was there last month to enjoy their “Lunar New Year 2025: Year of the Snake” display; I headed back over again to check out their new spring arrangement called “The Birds and the B’s.”

(Don’t be too harsh on my photos; I took them with one hand at 2 AM while holding a large Mountain Dew Baja Blast Zero from the Taco Bell Cantina with my other hand.)

 

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Hello, Arte Museum Las Vegas in Paradise, Nevada

by   •   Las Vegas
 

I had some free time this evening, so I decided to go check out Arte Museum Las Vegas at CityCenter on the Las Vegas Strip in Paradise, Nevada.

My ticket was US$45.00, which included admission to the museum and a drink at the Arte Café experience. That was after a US$10.00 locals’ discount for being a Las Vegas resident; those without a Nevada identification would need to pay US$55.00 for the same access.

To put it simply, the Arte Museum was a light show experience with a combination of visuals, sounds, and scents. There were a bunch of different rooms, and although not many of them were literally interactive per se, it was interactive in the sense that you could immerse yourself into the exhibits and feel fully surrounded by the varying kinds of stimulation.

The first room was called “Waterfall Infinite.”

The second area was called “Flower.” This had a few subsections: “Rose,” “Roses – Vincent van Gogh,” and “Camellia Underwater.”

Next was “Whale,” a dancing whale surrounded by the waves of the sea. I’m not sure if this was an intentional part of this room or if it was just a coincidence, but I believe even the walls were shaking and vibrating in this room in synchronization with the crashing waves.

Down the hall and through an aisle in the corner was “Star: Raindrops,” a collection of color-changing paper lanterns of different sizes hung at different heights.

Outside of “Star” was “Giant Camellia,” another flower display, but all my photos of it somehow unfortunately came out blurry, so that is unpictured here. Next to “Giant Camellia” was “Live Sketchbook: Light Safari,” an interactive exhibit where you could draw and scan animals to make them appear on the screen.

The path led up to the upper floor where I entered “Starry Beach.”

The room I spent the most time in was “Garden,” a large space with screens or mirrors on all the walls, floors, and central structures. “Garden” had three different displays on rotation: “Threads of Connection,” “Beach Aurora,” and “Light of Las Vegas.”

As the series of museum exhibits neared the end, it was time to take a short break at the café. As part of my extended access ticket, I was able to order a free drink, so I selected the seasonal lavender milk tea. I enjoyed my drink at a special table with a projector overhead that detected and followed my drink cup around with a label containing my name.

The final display was “Jungle: Glow.”

They turned the exit of the museum into an exhibit as well—it was called “Sunset” and showed the transition of colors throughout sundown as you descended the stairs.

Each of the major rooms had a special scent tied to it to make patrons’ experience more immersive. Not many museums take advantage of all your senses like Arte Museum does, and that was one of my favorite aspects of this museum. After descending “Sunset” and making it into the gift shop, I was pleased to find that the scents used in the rooms were actually for sale, so that if there was one you particularly liked, you could bring it home with you.

I think US$55.00 for a non-locals ticket for the full experience is very pricey. I obviously don’t know what their finances look like, so maybe there are enough visitors that the steep pricepoint is justifiable, but compared to other museums I’ve been to, US$55.00 seems pretty high. I went on a weekday two hours before closing time and spent an hour and a half going through everything, and it was relatively empty and peaceful.

If you want this kind of experience, then a show at the Sphere may be something to also consider and research—even though it won’t have the scents and the movement-based interactivity and immersion, the light show aspect will be comparable.

With that being said, I had a good time at Arte Museum. I think the photographs I shared here don’t really do it justice, because they’re all zoomed out as far as my camera would let me go; in-person, the displays tower over you and truly make you feel surrounded.

As a side note, if you end up visiting, make sure to actually experience the exhibits in full. The animations and light shows are on a cycle and they have a beginning and end; I saw a lot of people casually walking through the exhibits without seeing the whole thing, so if you want maximum value out of your ticket, make sure you stick around until you’ve watched the full loop for each room.

 

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Photo dump from the Phoenix Metropolitan Area, Arizona

by   •   Travel
 

My trip to Phoenix, Arizona and the surrounding cities and suburbs has come to an end. I already published a bunch of blog posts over the past couple weeks showing some of the tourist activities I’ve done; here is an index, in case you missed them:

Like usual, I have some miscellaneous photos from my travels for which it wouldn’t make sense to have individual dedicated blog posts, so as a wrap-up to my time in Phoenix, here is a dump of my remaining pictures.

When I arrived in Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, I saw on Google Maps that there was a museum inside the airport. On my way out of the terminal and while walking towards the PHX Sky Train, I made a quick stop at the Phoenix Airport Museum.

One of my favorite things about Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport is the fact that there is a free transit system that moves you off of the main airport terminal area. I appreciate airports that do this because it reduces landside congestion a substantial amount—it lets people choose whether to get curbside pickup or spend a few extra minutes getting off-property to save a higher ratio of time with ground transportation.

When I first started traveling a lot, I was intrigued trying out different hotel brands under the Marriott family and taking pictures of different rooms. However, after having lived full-time out of hotel rooms during my multi-year road trip, they got less interesting to me.

A long time ago, I used to post photos of my hotel rooms, but since then, I’ve stopped; a few people have asked me to resume, so here is the room I stayed in at the AC Hotel by Marriott Phoenix Downtown.

On the night of my arrival, I had dinner at the Moira Sushi Bar & Kitchen on East McKinley Street.

I ordered a chirashi bowl, my go-to sushi dish when I go to a new restaurant because of how uniquely different it can be across different restaurants and how well it captures the style of each individual chef.

Having stayed in downtown, a lot of things were in walking distance for me, so I did a lot of walking during my trip. There are some interesting buildings and structures in Phoenix; here are a few that I thought were nice or interesting enough to photograph.

For one of my dinners, I met up with some friends and went to Guiseppe’s on 28th (which, funny enough, technically isn’t on 28th, but on East Indian School Road due to the direction its front door faces).

As our appetizer, we got a medley of four variants of their bruschetta: fresh tomato and basil, creamy gorgonzola cheese and honey, brie with Tuscan salami vino cotto, and house-made pesto and fresh tomato.

My friends got gnocchi and butternut squash ravioli as their main entrées. The gnocchi was mixed in with a cream and tomato cardinale sauce, and the ravioli was tossed in sage brown butter.

I decided to order a signature dish and got spaghetti neri—house-made squid ink pasta with shrimp, calamari, and clams in tomato broth.

For dessert, we shared a tiramisu with cocoa, espresso, and mascarpone cheese.

During one of my late afternoons and evenings, I went for a walk at Papago Park. I hiked up to the Hole-in-the-Rock and was able to enjoy some nice, panoramic views of the surrounding area.

And with that trip complete and a new city achieved, I updated my travel map.

I started this travel map several years ago when I first started traveling for esports events with Tempo Storm, and I didn’t really expect it to get this dense, so I didn’t exactly build it in a particularly scalable way (even the resolution is so low that I have to use Photoshop’s resizing algorithm to generate a higher-resolution version to render on 4K monitors).

I may make a new, more robust and expandable travel map in the future, but until then, here is where I’ve been in the United States so far.

 

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Hello, Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix, Arizona

by   •   Tourism
 

After I went for a hike around Papago Park during my trip to Phoenix, Arizona, I continued walking about a mile north that same day through the desert and along the Galvin Bikeway to check out the Desert Botanical Garden.

I intentionally timed my visit to start at twilight and continue past sunset because I saw that they have a special exhibit called LIGHT BLOOM by HYBYCOZO until the end of March, and I figured it would be best viewed when dark. That was a wise decision—this meant that I was able to check out the desert vegetation and scenery, then stay for when the geometric light installations came on and cast intricate shapes across the ground.

I paid US$32.95 for general admission, which I thought was comparatively reasonable considering the size of the botanical garden, density of plant volume, and number of unique elements.

Here are some photos I captured during my visit:

 

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