South Korea Trip!

Went to South Korea last month, and I'm finally getting around to posting it lol. I'm going back to using bullets because this post will already be long enough. :P

Thursday/Friday, April 11-12:

• Flew to Korea, which took 15 hours
• Arrived in time for dinner
• Explored our AirBnb apartment before exploring the area nearby
• Ate dinner at this place nearby. We mainly chose our food based off of the pictures lol
• Bought a bunch of snacks from a nearby convenience store

Saturday, April 13:

• Woke up super early around five because of jetlag
• Bought more snacks at E-Mart
• Went to a ramen place nearby for breakfast and experienced our first time ordering by kiosk over there
• Explored Yongsan Electronics Market, which was a whole street full of new, old, vintage, or limited edition games and game systems
• Went to this huge mall and spent a lot of time in a giant bookstore buying souvenirs for people
• Rested at a Gundam store in the mall while Kyle shopped around
• Found a street vendor at the train station near our AirBnb who sold these corn snacks that we haven't eaten since childhood!

Sunday, April 14:

• Ate convenience store onigiri for breakfast
• Spent most of the day in Myeongdong
• Explored the underground markets
• Ate so much street food
• Got pooped on by a pigeon
• Played at a cat cafe
• Ate dinner at someplace tasty (I forgot lol)

Monday, April 15:

• Explored Kukje Electronics
• Bought a bunch of cute My Hero Academia figurines from Gachapons and made a friend from it because I owned too many Bakugos and she had Ochako lol
• Explored SMTOWN Coex Artium and bought an EXO souvenir cup at the cafe
• Visited the Seoul Sky Tower and took lots of pics
• Ate ramen at a restaurant called Lamen's at the Lotte World Mall

Tuesday, April 16:

• Ate fried chicken for brunch at Mom's Touch lol
• Bought funny looking snacks at the nearby convenience store to try
• Ran across King's Cross Cafe on the way to get Korean BBQ
• Explored Mapo-gu while waiting for our turn for dinner
• Saw this beret wearing guy looking down at us from the third floor of the neighboring restaurant and all automatically thought that he was a douchebag lol
• Ate the best kimchi ever at the KBBQ restaurant
• Went back to King's Cross Cafe for alcoholic butterbear
• Only explored the top floor to take pictures in the robes because it was closing time

Wednesday, April 17:

• Ate breakfast at Innisfree Cafe back in Myeongdong
• Explored Gyeongbokgung Palace the day after Robert Downey Jr posted a pic of him there on Instagram
• Ate bingsoo at a little hidden cafe somewhat nearby
• Ate dinner at a traditional Korean restaurant where we had to sit down on cushions on the floor with our shoes off
• Walked around Hanok village
• Explored a tea museum and got a fresh cup of tea with the entrance fee
• Played with a bunch of dogs at a dog cafe
• Bought a bunch of takoyaki from a street vendor near our AirBnb

Thursday, April 18:

• Went to a kimchi museum, tried different kimchi samples and got free kimchi to take home
• Took a break at a traditional tea house
• Went back to King's Cross cafe during the day time and tried the cafe drinks and snacks
• Took a lot of pictures there
• Played Splendor at a board game cafe where Tawanda dropped her phone in the toilet and panicked for a while
• Ate a typical Korean restaurant nearby and finally got to eat authentic kimchi jiggae and pig's feet (they even gave us gloves to eat it with lol)

Friday, April 19:

• Explored another Gundam/anime store because of Kyle
• Rested at a mint cafe, so mint was in everything
• Went back to Mapo-gu to explore the stores again
• Walked past potential idols since they were recording themselves with a giant selfie stick and had a dude record them with a big DSLR camera
• Walked around and watched a lot of street performers
• Stumbled across a video game cat cafe, so we played with a bunch of cats and video games

Then we went back home the next day.

What did I learn during this trip? 1) Being illiterate in another country can be really funny if it doesn't stress you out lol. 2) Choose your travel companions carefully.

We asked Tawanda if she wanted to come along with us since her boyfriend had moved to South Korea six months ago, so she said yes. Then we quickly realized that she was never on the same page as us. We'd say something, and then a minute or two later, she'd say the same thing. Then she'd always lag behind, and we'd always have to check to make sure that she was still there. Then there was the whole dropping the phone down the toilet issue that turned into her drinking too much on an empty stomach and projectile vomiting at two in the morning.

So yeah, this trip made us think about how we can't keep inviting people all willy nilly for our future trips. We don't want anymore incidents like this, especially when we're out of the country.

Weekly Haul (115)

Ended up buying a couple of more books this month lol.

Stupid Love Comedy Omnibus by Syusyusyu Sakurai

Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? vol. 13 by Fujino Omori

Kenka Bancho Otome vol. 2 by Chie Shimada

Escape Rooms, Sleepovers, Hanging Out, Movies, Birthdays, Bridesmaids Dress Shopping, Confrontations, & Stolen Phones

March was pretty busy! So was April, so I'm finally getting around to catching up with all of my posts lol. My weekends were packed!

Well, okay, the first weekend was pretty chill. Michelle surprised Kyle by booking an escape room, and we ended up going with Sam, Lance, Dom, Archana, and Sonali. It was just the right amount of people to have the whole escape room to ourselves lol. We made plans to get dinner around 6, so Dom, Archana, Michelle, and I hungout in one of the huddle rooms in our office until then. Archana really wanted to learn how to knit, so Michelle brought some knitting stuff, and even Dom learned how to do it by the time we left.

Then we went to Cinco's for dinner. Sonali was supposed to meet up with us there, but she was super late. She came after we got our food. Then she was late to the escape room (she arrived on time but left to take a call so she missed out on all of the rules and stuff), so we lost a couple of minutes in the beginning. Then she made us lose some more minutes because she somehow missed all of the DO NOT TOUCH stickers on all of the pictures on the wall and picked up one of the giant picture frames, so we got in trouble for that.

Ugh, she was annoying the whole night. I'm pretty sure she made no contribution to finding any of the clues other than helping look through a book to get the right words since there were four books to go through. All she did was hover unnecessarily close to everyone and touch us to feel included. All in all, our score could have been higher.

However, during the dinner that night, Michelle invited Archana over the next weekend to hangout, so she did. Dom couldn't make it since she already had plans lol. Archana brought some mix over to make this fried doughy treat to eat with tea, so that was fun to do. She also spent a lot of time learning about stuff from Michelle. I was just goofing around and doing push ups since I already heard all of her stories lol.

The next Friday, I took the day off since I had a dentist and doctor's appointment. Then I drove down to Warner Robins and hungout with Mikey since I hadn't seen him in a while. We watched the new My Hero Academia movie! It was good lol.

Mikey, Alec, and I went to Thai Pepper the next night to bother David at work. It was fun, especially since David would keep on stopping by whenever there was a lull with work. We stayed until closing, and I went home with him.

The next morning, David and I got brunch at IHOP before meeting Alec and Mikey at the movies to go watch Captain Marvel. The movie was so good!

That past Friday and Sunday were Jack and Ebony's birthday, so we went out after work on Wednesday to celebrate. We went to Punch Bowl Social at the Battery for food and drinks, and Julie, Jack's twin sister, came out to celebrate. Unfortunately, Anita couldn't come, so Julie couldn't meet her, which was who she was most excited to meet lol.

That Saturday, we met up to go bridesmaids dress shopping for Emily's wedding. It was the first time most of us have seen each other since Emily's wedding dress shopping a couple of months ago, so it was really nice to catch up in between trying on lots of dresses lol. Afterwards, most of us went to get lunch at Jinya Ramen bar and hangout at my place since we had to drop Meethu at the train station.

We were supposed to have a sleepover with all five of us that next weekend since we haven't had a proper get together in a long time, but things didn't pan out, so that was postponed for Meethu's bachelorette party lol.

Instead, a series of passive aggressive emails led me to chewing Brian out at work that Friday. It's kind of complicated, but basically, he's in charge of these videos, which I needed the link to them for another big project. However, because he didn't change the names to make them consistent with what we have on our LMS, I needed his help to find all of the links. He briefly mentioned that I would be able to find the links on this one Trello board that he uses with all of the other video contributors one time before the end of his day, but I forgot about it because I was looking for lots of other links as well, so I sent him an email asking for links to five different videos.

The next morning, I get a passive aggressive email from him saying that if I had listened to him, I would have found the links on the Trello board and told me where to find it instead of just giving me the damn links. I got so pissed, especially after I found out from Anita that Irene, our manager, has asked him to rename the videos for consistency multiple times before. What has he done? NOT THAT.

It just made me even more mad that I had to do all of this in the first place because technically, Brian should be doing this since these videos are his responsibilities, but since Excel sheets freak him out and we knew he wouldn't finish it in time, I was assigned the task. And I was wasting hours of my time trying to track down all of these videos when he should have been doing it instead.

So I responded to his email at the end of the day as politely (as polite as an asshole can be lol) as possible, emphasizing that we having naming conventions and rename things for organizational consistency multiple times. I then pointed out that instead of telling me where everything was, he could have just given me the links in the first place so it would save time for everyone involved.

Then he had the audacity to message me the next morning assuming that I read his email and asking if he made me upset. It just pissed me off even more because 1) Don't assume that you're important enough for me to read your email first thing; I've got other things to do and 2) I don't know how he inferred that I was upset when my answering email was anything but politely pissed. I told him that I hadn't read it yet since I was working on a video, and then he tells me that he wouldn't be able to help me find the links if I couldn't find them because they should be on Trello.

Ohhhh I got so pissed when I read that. Then I noticed that his status didn't say that he was working from home that day, so I got even more mad because I couldn't believe that he wouldn't even come over to talk to me and was just messaging me over Skype even though our cubes are only a couple of feet away from each other.

So I marched over to his cube to make sure he was here and confronted him. All he did was stutter and apologize and said that he wasn't efficient like Anita and me (like it's our fault that we're good at our jobs???), so he's never had to bother with naming consistencies before. He promised to be more cognizant about maintaining consistency, especially when starting new projects and promised to fix all of the names for the videos, and I went back to my desk still high on adrenaline.

Since it was Friday, a lot of people were working from home, so the office was really quiet. So pretty much everyone heard our confrontation... Jack stopped in my cube after I sat back down and was making that "Whew!" gesture for how intense the conversation was that he overheard lol. He asked me if I needed a cool down lap, so we walked over to Dom and Archana's desk and told them what happened. Lol he told me how as soon as he heard me walk past his cube and said, "Oh, you're here" to Brian, he immediately took off his headphones and messaged Ebony to do the same to eavesdrop! XD

That night, I went out to eat Korean BBQ at Iron Age with Michelle, Kyle, and Kyle's cousin and his wife. It was an eventful day lol.

Since my plans that weekend got cancelled, I went home to visit the parents with Michelle and Kyle that weekend. My friends had planned on going to the Cherry Blossom festival on Sunday, so I was planning on going for a bit before heading home.

It didn't happen because my dad lost his phone the night before, and we only found out about it the next day. Then one of his workers called my mom and asked if my dad found his phone since he got a call from his phone, but the person who called him immediately hung up after he said hello. That's when we realized that someone took his phone, so we used the Find My Phone feature on iPhones and found its location, but even after driving around and looking around, we couldn't find it.

Eventually, dad called it a loss and said that he'd just cancel that phone and get a new one. It was fine since he due for an upgrade a year or two ago lol. He had an iPhone 5, so clearly, it wasn't a huge loss for him. We spent the next couple of hours buying him and mom a new phone since her phone was having dialing issues anyway and transferring all of their content.

By the time we were done with everything, the Cherry Blossom Festival was already over. :(

So yeah, it was an eventful month full of ups and downs.

Books I Want to Read This Month

I thought I'd read at least one book during the plane ride. Who was I kidding. I watched movies and slept the entire ride there and back lol. I'll try to do better this month! :)

1. Captive Prince by C.S. Pacat
2. Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls In a Dungeon? vol. 10 by Fujino Omori & Suzuhito Yasuda
3. Dengeki Daisy vol. 1 by Kyousuke Motomi
4. Stupid Love Comedy vol. 1 by Sakurai Syusyusyu
5. Stupid Love Comedy vol. 2 by Sakurai Syusyusyu
6. Stupid Love Comedy vol. 3 by Sakurai Syusyusyu
7. The Best We Could Do by Thi Bui
8. Love Looks Pretty on You by Lang Leav
9. Unfollowing You by Komal Kapoor
10. Love Poems by Pablo Neruda
11. becoming. by Renaada Williams
12. On Love by Alain de Botton
13. The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman
14. The Consumption of Magic by T.J. Klune
15. Anatomy of a Scandal by Sarah Vaughan

April in Retrospect

Whoops! Forgot to post this last week! April has been a very busy month, and I'm kind of too lazy to write it all out. Lol we'll see if I do it or not!

Anyway, I managed to read a lot during the first half of the month since I got addicted to Chinese Light Novels. The only downside is that most of the ones I'm interested in are still being translated, so I'm waiting for chapters to be updated all of the time. In the mean time, I caught up with a couple of manga/webtoons that I've been reading over the years.

Then I ended up watching a bunch of movies during the second half of the month because of the long flight to and from South Korea. I watched a lot of good ones!

I read:

• The Reader and the Protagonist Definitely Have to be in True Love by 颓
• Spring Trees and Sunset Clouds by Wei Liang
• You are My Only Sunshine! vol. 1 by Kaori Hoshiya
• You are My Only Sunshine! vol. 2 by Kaori Hoshiya
• A Man Like You by Waje
• Namaikizakari vol. 13 by Miyuki Mitsubachi
• Namaikizakari vol. 14 by Miyuki Mitsubachi
• Namaikizakari vol. 15 by Miyuki Mitsubachi
• At the End of the Road by Haribo

I watched:

• Bad Things at the El Royale (2018)
• The Great Battle (2018)
• The Mortal Engines (2018)
• Romance is a Bonus Book (2019)
• Robin Hood (2018)
• Artemis Hotel (2018)
• The Darkest Minds (2018)
• Big Fish & Begnoia (2016)
• Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms (2018)
• Black Panther (2018)