Vegas: Buzzed bands and blurry nights

If there's one aspect to Vegas to be applauded, it would certainly be the robust options for entertainment and debauchery that spawn up throughout the city like dandelions on a well-watered field. Any day of the week, any time of year, you can spend a short time ambling along Las Vegas Boulevard, weaving your way through any number of casinos, and find some form of entertainment that tickles your fancy, whatever your fancy may be. Perhaps you enjoy a nice piano medley over a cocktail, or grungy guitars dueling it out over a draft beer, there's something for everyone. As a long time local to the city, I generally made a point of it to try to avoid the Strip proper because the sheer variety of options leads to a densely packed crowd of tourists churning through the city on the regular. Some weeks you might find the crowd to be composed primarily of glitter and neon bedazzled dancers and ravers flooding the city for the Electric Daisy Carnival, other times it'll be hoards of billiard players and their teams in the matching uniforms, carting their cues through the casino. The endlessly changing nature of the crowds means that the entertainment options, too, will evolve to try to keep pace and entice each new crowd into spending their cash.

Constant sensory overload is the name of the game, so if you find yourself overwhelmed by the happenings outside on the street you will find no sanctuary in stepping indoors. The casino floors are often the loudest, flashiest, and most chaotic of areas throughout the entire Strip, despite how crazed the streets may seem at times. This may be explained away by the cheap slots and ample free booze that are available inside, along with the air condition's respite from the absurd heat baking the streets beyond. Cool off, or heat up if you're digging the cocktail waitresses' uniforms. There's always the strip clubs just off the strip on industrial if you're getting a little too hot and bothered and want a place to really delve in without the shame of a prominent hard-on in Bally's. You do you, boo boo. 

Korea: Morning Commute from Hwajeong-shi

A necessary ritual in many modern lifestyles is the morning commute, the pilgrimage from a suburban respite into the bustling business centers of the city. My time in Korea was certainly marked with this ceremonial passage, morning and evening, as I made my way from the northern residential burb of Hwajeong down to Seoul proper to set up for the day. Every so often, I would get to work and begin setting up only for a coworker to awkwardly approach and ask if perhaps I'd misread the schedule, or maybe they had. Typically it was my fault that I'd misinterpreted my shift, and I'd end up having to find a way to fill the handful of hours at my destination until the shift began. Given how far out of the way Hwajeong was from, say, Lotte world, it didn't make much sense for me to go all the way home only to turn right back around and return, so I'd explore the nearby shopping centers or parks. As annoyed as I might have been in the moment for missing out on some additional sleep I might have garnered by staying home, it was generally a good thing that I explore these areas. The various Fun Caricature locations operating throughout Seoul are placed strategically in high-traffic touristy areas, after all, so the neighborhoods I'd coincidentally find myself arriving at too early in the day would have ample ways for me to entertain myself. 

The commute itself, though, had its own merits. While many mornings I'd take the time to catch up on podcasts, e-mails, or various threads on Reddit, the scenery wasn't unpleasant to look at by any stretch of the term. As the seasons evolved from one into the next, the scenery, too, would shift in shades and texture, providing an aesthetic affirmation of nature's workings. Depending on the time of day, I might pass a food stall with billowing plumes of dense and delicious steam flooding out onto the path, or vendors with freshly procured produce offering their wares.

The short walk to the train station, in and of itself, became a precious sort of journey. That green sign to the right in the photo above? That was my go-to market after returning home from work, as I could pop in and find most of the groceries I could possibly want at a reasonable price. E-mart, too, was just a bit further down the street on the trek home. There were several other groceries, department stores and markets all scattered about nearby, and there was a rather large one tucked into the basement level of the train station, too. No shortage of options available, that's for sure. Never underestimate the sheer convenience and walkability of the city of Seoul and it's suburban branches! It will truly spoil you to live in the area... I miss being able to walk to a store at any given time of day or night and find a hot meal or cold bottle of soju/beer/wine, or fried chicken, sweet and chewy egg bread... but I digress! I could write tomes about how tasty and bountiful the food is in Seoul...

Vegas: Accidents and Nature

Accidents happen. In a city where alcohol consumption is highly encouraged and made highly accessible, accidents might happen at a higher than average rate. I certainly have no idea whether the driver of the vehicle pictured above was drinking, and it was rather early in the day, but who knows. Life is mysterious and full of many unknowns and unanswered questions. One thing we do know for certain is that the driver of the aforementioned vehicle was not having the best day of her life, no sir. 

Hopefully things have all been taken care of, as this occurred several months back now. No one was injured, except for perhaps the driver's pride, but considering that it was a highly trafficked parking lot with a lot of pedestrian traffic, things really could have gone much worse. 

And while I wasn't involved in any direct way, I do have to admit that seeing car accidents can cause my anxiety to go up a wee bit. So, lucky for us, Antho happened to snap some nice shots of dew drops forming on grass, along with some other nature scenery, to take the edge off of the unfortunate collision of metal above.

There we go, much better. Look at those lovely shades of green! A lush oasis is hidden in the Vegas valley, in the midst of the Mojave desert! Lovely. The blue sky above speckled with scattered wisps of clouds, clear and bright. I mean, we all have accidents in life from time to time, and while it can be easy to dwell on the pain and inconvenience they can cause, we should really be grateful that we're able to walk away from them. There are so many ways to blink out of existence and be gone before we know what hit us, each day we make it out alive is a triumph over the odds.  I know that for me, that realization has made a profound impact on how I view aging and birthdays. It's a literal leveling up, and a lot of us drop out early in the game. I'm going on my third decade in life now and I can honestly say I'm glad to still be here, which wasn't something I necessarily expected to be able to say at some of the harder stages of my life. It hasn't always been easy, and there will be many challenges yet to come in the road ahead, but if we can confront them with gratitude and wisdom gleaned from time passed, we're on the right path. 

Of course, if you'd like to see more bent metal, there are more photos below...

Seattle: Japanese Garden

It probably goes without saying, but just in case you need to be reminded, I'm absolutely and utterly enamored with the country of Japan, from the beautiful scenery of the natural landscapes to the dense urban sprawl of Tokyo to the kind-hearted and incredibly generous people I met along the way, there's something just so magical about the place. Given this state of affairs, it should come as no surprise that when I learned of Seattle's Japanese garden, conveniently located within the gorgeous and expansive Washing University Arboteum, there was no doubt that we had to go. The 3 and a half acre park was constructed under the guidance of Juki Iida, a renowned designer of Japanese gardens, during the 1960s and has remained a fixture of the Seattle gardens scene ever since. The Emerald City itself is home to roughly 6,000 acres of parks, so even if you're not much of a Japanophile the city will have something green and gorgeous to appeal to you. This is a city that takes it public greenery seriously, and for that, among other reasons, I'm all the more in love with it. 

There's a reasonable fee for admission, but as I said, it's reasonable. You can park for free at the Arboretum nearby, which is a rare gift to find in Seattle. The grounds are meticulously maintained, and while it was a rainy day during our visit there were still plenty of people walking about taking in the beauty of the place. It was still the midst of fall during our stroll, so shades of red, orange and yellow burst through the green to add a spark of vivacity to the surroundings. It was an absolutely lovely stroll, even in the drizzling rain, and I look forward to seeing the garden again under the light of another season! It definitely gave me some hard nostalgic pangs for my time living in Japan, and for that, I have to applaud the designer. They knew exactly what they were doing since they were a professional designer of these gardens in Japan! 

There are plenty more photos to come, but if you ever get the chance to visit the gardens in person I seriously encourage you to do so! There's only so much I can capture in a photo, after all...

Seattle: Washington Park Arboretum

If you're a consumer of cannabis, which is now legal for recreational in 10 US states, you've likely heard of terpenes before at your local dispensary. If you're not a cannabis user, and the word terpene sounds like some crazy drug terminology, chill out, man, it's good stuff. Terpenes are aromatic oils released by plants that help them to communicate, and there are different kinds that can help you out in different ways- from easing the pain of migraines and muscular aches, to fighting infection or even depression. Think of them like essential oils, like how you can use lavender to help reduce stress! Given the history of marijuana prohibition through the US, it wasn't until more recent years that the study of terpenes in that particular crop and how it affects us has been done, but scientists throughout Japan and Korea have been finding that the terpenes and other compounds released by trees (forests) are extremely beneficial for human health and well-being.  Just walking among the trees for a brief, casual stroll can boost your immune system measurably, and the more time you spend among the foliage the better for your well-being. Pretty cool. We all know we should try to spend more time outdoors, with our modern, sedentary lifestyles leading us to wrap up and nestle into our climate controlled dwellings, but we're beings of the earth and need to get out there and actually experience it from time to time. It's good for your health!

If you're in or near the Seattle area, you're in luck. Not only is the Emerald city absolutely studded with trees at nearly every opportunity, there are roughly 6,000 acres of public parks incorporated into the city! There are so many options to get out and immerse yourself in nature, or to even just walk alongside a tree-laned path downtown to help break up the concrete and asphalt of the urban jungle. One of the parks you could visit, should you choose to do so, is the Washington Park Arboretum. This park alone comprises 230 acres, with distinct areas dedicated to different trees, so that you can better understand and appreciate the diversity of this common constituent of the local environment. It's free to park, and free to enter, and there's so much ground to cover that you can spend hours casually strolling and soaking in all those delicious terpenes. The longer you wander, the better for your health, after all! Not to mention the step count going up on your pedometer, if you're into that sort of thing.  I've been keeping track for years now, and I find it a valuable measure of how active I'm being, but to each their own. 

As I mentioned above, the Arboretum is free to park and free to enter! They do have a small gift shop near one of the parking areas, and we took the opportunity to grab a mycology book that Antho had heard good things about. They also offer coffee and tea, which is great for warming up on those chilly days!

More photos below~