We’re Going…Home?

When my fiancee Kris and I first started planning our holiday to South Africa, we were extremely excited to be going ‘home’. We would be returning to the friends and family that we’d left behind all those months ago, and it would be a momentous, happy occasion. Sitting here in Incheon airport, waiting to start the first of two flights that we need to take to return to Johannesburg, I feel strangely different.

Over the past few days, we have been frantically trying to scramble together all of the things that we need for our wedding (the main reason that we’re heading to South Africa in the first place). We took our cat, Catsby, to the home of friends where he will be staying for the month. We collected my suit and received Kris’ wedding dress back after modifications. We bought Christmas presents for the close family that will be there when we return. As the date of departure drew closer, I began to feel like we were actually leaving home, and not heading towards it.

The more I thought about it, the more conflicted I became. Surely South Africa was my home? It was where I was born. It was where I went to school and university. It was where I met and fell in love with Kris. I had spent the vast majority of my life there. Surely that was my home? I couldn’t put my finger on why I felt otherwise until I mentioned my feelings to Kris this very evening, and she hit me with wisdom that I simply couldn’t see.

You see, home isn’t about where things happen, or where you have property. It isn’t about how many experiences you have in a place. It isn’t about how long you’ve spent there. Home is about people. The people around you are what make a place a home. Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros accurately expressed this feeling in their song ‘Home‘, which Kris just happened to be whistling for most of the day.

Sure, we have friends and family in South Africa. We have many people that we frankly can’t wait to see, people that we haven’t seen for months or even years. But, now that we have spent many months living in Korea, we are also leaving a host of friends behind. These friendships, like those in South Africa, were forged through board games, Ultimate, food, or late-night deep conversations. And they are why Korea has felt like home – the amazing community that we have built around us.

In the end, my home will always be where Kris and I are together. For the next month, that will be South Africa, and we will relish our time catching up with those that we haven’t been able to hang out with due to the inconvenience of being on the other side of the world. After that, our home will once again be in Korea, where we will share our stories with our newer friends. Wherever Kris and I are together, we are home. And that is a pretty amazing feeling.

 

Old Habits, New Bliss

When we search for ways to make our current lives better, we often look to the latest new trend. The Internet is constantly bombarding us with the hottest new thing, as of this very second. Whether this is a new fitness regime, the latest and greatest development in fun technology, or maybe even just a friend suggestion on Facebook, the Internet tends to try and push us into new things.

Most of the time, this is perfectly fine. Without discovering new hobbies or music or social circles, we don’t grow or challenge ourselves. The past few days, however, I have greatly enjoyed doing the complete opposite. I’ve been sinking into hobbies and music that I loved at high school and university, but just haven’t engaged with in Korea or even in South Africa just before I left. In the last few years, my life has changed so drastically that I thought it would be an interesting experiment to see if I still found joy in the things that I delighted in only a few years ago.

Image from Pinterest

My first foray into past revelry was music. As the school year has wound down, I’ve had more time to play Overwatch and Dota. I usually don’t play music other than the in-game music, as it distracts me, but I was playing more casually than normal and felt like a change. So, I put on a YouTube playlist of Linkin Park, one of my absolute favourite bands of my teens and early university years. The first song I played was my personal favourite song, Numb. From there, I let YouTube’s algorithm take me where it wanted. Right from the first note, I had a smile on my face. Each passing song brought with it memories of high school study sessions or hanging out with friends in WARP (the geek club of my alma mater). Flashes of faces I hadn’t seen in years (to my shame) ran across my mind faster than the changes in the games. I had less success with System of a Down, a band I was particularly fond of in my mid-late teen years, but I was surprised by how connected my experience of life was to Linkin Park.

I am a firm advocate in the power of music to influence your day-to-day existence.Perhaps it is the raw emotional nature of Linkin Park’s music that causes such a strong reaction. Maybe I just stopped listening to them out of snobbery. Maybe they released a bad album or two and I lost faith. In any case, time-travelling through music is something I look forward to doing again soon. I am definitely going to see if the Linkin Park effect can be repeated by other past musical obsessions like Muse.

Beyond music, I have also been engaging in two hobbies that I have lost touch with in recent times – reading and model painting.

Image from Amazon

While I regularly read comics, I have only read two actual novels this entire year. A few weeks ago, I picked up a small collection of books from a fellow teacher. This past Saturday, I decided to crack open the treasure trove of stories for the first time. I elected to start Andy Weir’s The Martian, and I have been devouring it ever since. I have almost finished the story, and I cannot wait to see how it ends.

One catalyst to my high reading time has been an unintended plus of my LASEK surgery. In years past, I have been incredibly prone to motion sickness while in a car. I could not read or use a cellphone for more than fifteen minutes before I would feel queasy. Since my surgery, this time has grown exponentially, to the point where I found that I could read for the entire 90 minute bus trip to Seoul without feeling sick in the slightest. Combine this with trips to Seoul and Daejeon between Saturday and Monday, and I relished more than seven hours of reading time that I used to plow through Mark Watney’s exploits on the Red Planet.

Image from Pinterest

The other hobby that I found pathos in recently is model painting. At the wonderful Seoul Board Games Flea Market, I picked up a copy of the masterpiece that is Shadows Over Camelot. In the game, there are small plastic models for many different aspects in the game, including Arthurian knights, catapults, and even Excalibur and the Holy Grail. At university, I was a devout player of Warhammer 40 000 (Orks and Tyranids 4 lyf). I had spent dozens of hours bringing my Warbosses, Trukks, and other boiz to life. In the Shadows models, I saw an opportunity to test my skills and see if I could even paint. So, after my LASEK checkup yesterday (my eyes are still improving, yay!), I went to a popular hobby shop to kit myself out for bringing the Arthurian universe into full colour.

The dream! Image from Pinterest

I decided to start with the simpler models to warm my painting skills up. Once those were complete, I would move to the intricate Knights of the Round Table. I spent almost two hours walking between two shelves of paint, planning out my colour schemes. Which shade of green did I want for my Pict battle garments? (Lime Green) Did I really need Dried Blood and Fresh Blood? (Yes). I was in a zone that I hadn’t been in in years, and I left the store 90 000 won (R900ish for my South African audience, $85ish for Americans) poorer but with a deep sense of inner peace. I have already hit most of the models with a coat of white primer, and I will probably start painting the catapults today. We’ll see if they turn out like brown blobby triangles or beautiful examples of medieval siege weaponry.

So, if you’re tired of trying to look for the newest thing to add to your life, try looking back. For many hobbies or musical styles, you might have left them in the past for a reason. But you might just stumble upon something that you find moments of true joy or peace in, and you’ll be left wondering why you left it behind. Even if that heightened emotion is only temporary, it will be worth your time.

Writing Overdose

Writing, normally, is something that I have at least a moderate urge to do every single day. Whether it’s just sending a witty tweet out into the ether or sitting down and writing a long piece, most of the time, I have some drive to move my hands across a keyboard in a way that produces intelligible words. However, after completing NaNoWriMo with only hours to spare, I was completely and utterly drained, devoid of all will to produce any content whatsoever.

Most of this probably comes down to the way in which I completed NaNoWriMo. Despite my earlier post asserting myself to staying on track even though I was behind, I found myself increasingly distracted and busy during November. A substitution job that I thought would only last a couple of weeks turned out to last the entire month – there were hours of potential writing sessions, gone. I even managed to pick up extra work, which further whittled into my writing time. I also found various excuses on each day itself, justifying why I didn’t have to write that day. “I’ll just catch up on the weekend!”; “I can’t complete a chapter, so I might as well not write at all!”; “Oh no, I overslept!”; these were among the more justifiable of the ‘reasons’ I found to write little or not at all on multiple days.

As a result of this procrastination, I was left with the dubious task of writing over 30 000 words in the last five days of November. If I had kept pace with the recommended daily writing goals of NaNoWriMo, I would only have to write 1667 words per day. Instead, I needed over 6000 words per day to reach the finish line. And yet, somehow, I was determined to make it. I sat down, every day, churning out chapters for at least five hours every day. I finished the construction of my world, worked through the disasters and resolutions, and completed the story, all in less than a week. I pasted my text onto the submission form to confirm my victory and completion of 50 000 words. I was just over 600 words short. Somewhere in the 30 days of updating my word counts, I messed up big time. I added in some more detailed descriptions and additional dialog, and resubmitted. I hit 50 000 words exactly. I was done.

That’s what my word count graph ended up looking like once the dust had settled. I was incredibly proud of myself, particularly for pulling up my socks and getting the words out in the end. I also resolved to never fall behind like that when I do NaNoWriMo again next year. You hear that, Future Jodi? That doesn’t happen again!

Once the feeling of pride faded, I was left feeling completely devoid of will to write. I wanted to write a follow-up blog boasting about my victory, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. Now, after days of playing HearthStone, Dota, and generally just resting my writing brain, I’m back and ready to share my experiences with you all again. With a trip home, a new year, and my own wedding coming up soon, I’m sure that there will be tons to share!

Keep Pushin’ On

Writing 50 000 words in a month is no easy task after all. When I announced that I was going to do NaNoWriMo 2016, I was remarkably confident. 1667 words per day? Easy! And it was. The first few days went by with me exceeding the necessary word counts on a regular basis. I was doing great!

Until I wasn’t. The first signs of a downturn came on the first Friday. I had planned the week so that I wrote enough extra words in the four days to make up for the fact that I wouldn’t be writing at all on teh weekend (it was an Ultimate weekend, so no writing for me then!). However, I just wasn’t feeling writing at all on that Friday. No matter how long I stared at my computer screen or tried to scrape words out of nowhere, they just weren’t coming. So I said I would make it up on the Sunday evening when I got home and had a relaxing day instead. I’d deserved it, I thought. I had worked more than I needed to during the week, and I would be okay.

When Sunday came around, it is probably obvious to everyone that I definitely didn’t do any writing. I was wrecked from the weekend and just wanted to chill. So I did.

This pattern of saying that future Jodi will make up word counts has been an alarming trend of my NaNoWriMo 2016 so far. I did the same thing this past weekend, sacrificing what was going to be a word make up day to hang out in Seoul. Now, I sit almost 10 000 words behind where I need to be, with nearly half the month gone. I am essentially one quarter of the way through my words, but I’ve spent nearly half of my time to get there.  Eep.

But all is not lost. While I may not have the entire month anymore, I still have more than half of it. I have more than 12 000 words now than I had two weeks ago. Thinking of how far I’ve come helps me get motivated for the mountain that I still have to climb. What has also helped is people randomly asking me ‘How is the book coming?’ or saying that they can’t wait to read my book. I have often given up on goals in the past because there was little riding on them apart from my own personal pride and enjoyment. This is bigger than that. By putting it out there that I am doing this, people are waiting for my end result.

Currently, this end result is a long way from finished and even longer from being any good. And yet, with every day that  chip away at the word count, it gets closer to becoming a reality. The road ahead may be harder than it needs to be, and that added difficulty comes entirely from my own poor decisions. It may be uphill, but I am looking forward to puttering along that path, seeing where my story goes, and coming out the other side with a first draft I can hopefully craft into something worth sharing. Now, back to writing!

One Week to #NanoWriMo2016

November as a month is one that normally means two things: my brother’s birthday and my father’s birthday. Apart from these two significant events, it is a wholly unremarkable month. There are no Korean holidays. It is not the beginning or end of any season, but it does mean the end of the ROK-U Ultimate season (sniff). November 2016 is set to be drastically different, all due to one simple hashtag – #NaNoWriMo2016.

For those who are wondering if I my mind has finally succumbed to the numerous pulls on my sanity and I have begun spouting gibberish, fear not. National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo for short, is a movement that began in 1999. Its goal and purpose is simple – every year, aspiring novelists all around the world take up the challenge to complete an entire 50,000 word first draft of a novel during the month of November. It is a concept that caught my attention a couple of years ago, and was always one of those things that I said: “I should do that next year!” but never got around to. Until this year.

This year, I decided that the stars have sufficiently aligned in order to give me the highest possible chance of success. So, a week ago, I committed on Twitter to conquering the monemental task of 50,000 words in 30 days. Since then, I have been immersing myself in as many videos and articles about writing and NaNoWriMo as I possibly can. Yesterday, I sketched out the basic storyline and did character outlines for five characters. I am giving myself as few ways out as possible.

I do all of these things because I know myself. I have seen the story so many times. I begin with an earnest, heart-felt committal to better myself in some way. This could be achieving legend in Hearthstone, becoming a gaming streamer, or making myself into an eSports journalist. And yet, when things get a little tough, when I reach that first hurdle, I will turn around and say, “Well, I guess that wasn’t for me after all.” I’ll quit. And I’ll generally feel fine with myself for a little while afterwards, until the next hot idea burns its way into my head.

Not this time though. I have had the honour of a loving fiancee working hard full-time while I mess around in part-time work with the excuse that I am following my dreams. For the month of November, that will actually be perfectly accurate. Even if nothing comes of the novel – it can sit on my computer in first draft forever – but when I sit on the 31st of November with at least 50,000 shiny, new, creative, probably moderately unreadable words forming what I hope to be a coherent story, I will have proven that I can actually do the things I set out to do. I will show myself that I am more than just a lazy ass who plays games all day and sometimes writes about them and life and stuff. And with a few months left of part-time work before I have to re-evaluate my priorities for next year, that motivation could be what I need to take the next step and complete those goals I’ve failed to do up until now.

November will be a long, hard month. Although I only have to write about 1667 words per day to stay on track (about 3 times my usual blog post on here), I know that having to do so every day will be a challenge unlike any I’ve faced this year. There will be times when I want to kill my characters. There will be times when I don’t want to kill my characters but I’ll have to. There will be times when my cat will walk across the keyboard and delete my last half hour’s work and I’ll want to punt him across the room. And yet, I know that if I push through the hardships, I will have created a story that I’m proud to share (after many edits, of course). More importantly, I will have given myself something I have doubted up until now – the knowledge that I have the drive wthin me to complete my lofty goals after all. So bring on #NaNoWriMo2016. I’m ready. I think.

Mind Games: The Return to Ultimate

A few weeks ago, I underwent LASEK eye surgery to correct my severe astigmatism. I wrote a little bit about my experience shortly after the fact. Since then, my eyes have gradually been getting better and better. Objects are becoming less blurry, and I am able to see more clearly every day. However, there were some restrictions placed on me by the surgery, including being unable to engage in sweat-inducing sports (including my beloved Ultimate) for a month. That ban was lifted two weeks ago, and I have participated in two Ultimate weekends since then, with varying degrees of success.

My first Ultimate weekend post-surgery was a club tournament held in the coastal city of Ulsan. It was my first club tournament, and I was rather nervous for multiple reasons. I wasn’t sure how my eyes would cope with strenuous activity again. I wasn’t sure if I could keep up with my opponents, as I am normally not very quick and I hadn’t done any rigorous exercise for an entire month. I thought I might have lost some of my skills. Our wonderful, cheerful team also had many male substitutes. So, I decided to take it easy, only playing when needed and not putting myself onto the field too much.

This proved to be a wise approach. Even in the warm-ups before each game, I struggled slightly with depth perception and generally seeing the disc coming at me. I felt off-balance a lot of the time. I got winded more quickly than usual. I had lost a dash of speed. All of these played a role in not meeting my own personal expectations for the weekend. I dropped catches I should have caught. Opponents that wouldn’t have beaten me a month ago got past me for the score on multiple occasions. I even had to remove myself from the team environment during a break to listen to music and re-centre and re-focus myself.

The wonderful band of rapscallions that I played with in Ulsan

These mistakes and shortcomings aside, I enjoyed the first weekend back. Overall, I think I did alright – I didn’t let the team down too much, and we ended up with some great results. More importantly, there was always a positive attitude and atmosphere within the team, and we had great fun together. I took what I could from the Ulsan tournament, and looked ahead to my first weekend with my ROK-U team, the Wonju Knights.

Sadly for me, I hadn’t truly overcome the problems of the Ulsan weekend. I was still slower than I was, and for some reason my head just wasn’t in the right space. The Knights managed to win our first game of the weekend (something that would have been cause for celebration a season before), but I felt frustrated with my own performance. On the club team, I was a minnow and I knew it. On the Knights, I thought I would get more game time and play a more crucial role in the team. And yet, I would let others go on the field before me. I will generally sacrifice my own play time to make sure the more under-utilized men on our team get a run. It’s all about the spirit of the game and making sure everyone feels valued. Normally I would be okay with it – it’s what I do. But this time, I wasn’t mentally prepared for it. I both wanted to and didn’t want to sacrifice, but I did it anyway because that’s who I am. Once again, the team had a great time around me and enjoyed decent success, winning two of the three games that we played in and generally keeping spirits high in the process.

I guess the biggest impact that LASEK has had on my Ultimate game is not anything physical. I can see well enough to play at a decent level. My fitness (whatever small level I had to begin with) will return. The most significant hit I’ve taken appears to be mental. With a big weekend of important games this weekend, I need to take time to work through the mental obstacles preventing me from performing and enjoying the game I love. I need to stop thinking about dozens of different things and just get out there and have fun throwing a piece of plastic with my friends.

Andong: Mask Dance and Jjimdak

For months, our friends who live in the pokey town of Andong have been begging Kris and I to visit. We always thought that they were so intent on having us there because there was literally nothing to do in Andong, so they needed people to spice up the atmosphere there. So, during the annual Mask Dance festival in Andong, we decided to visit. We saw some performances, we shopped, and, most importantly for us, we tried our favourite Korean dish, jjimdak, in the town where it was born.

The Mask Dance festival is an annual celebration of Korean culture held in Andong. I thought it would be a small gathering with a few stalls and a handful of performers. What met us when we arrived was a sprawling city of tents, filled with food, curios, carnival games, and multiple stages of constant musical and dance shows. These ranged from foreign cover bands, taekwondo displays, and traditional Korean dance and music. My friends even showed off their Korean drumming skills, and gave an energetic and noisy performance that was enjoyed by all. If you’re in Korea and haven’t gone to the Andong Mask Dance festival, you really should go. It is a wonderful weekend. There is even an extravagant fireworks display (which we sadly missed).

For me and Kris, the attraction in Andong that drew us there the most (apart from our friends, of course) was jjimdak. I have raved about jjimdak in a previous post. Whenever someone asks me what my favourite Korean dish is, my answer is always jjimdak. Jjimdak is hard to describe – it is a hot, massive pot of steamed chicken and noodles in a sauce unlike any other. Kris and I both love it. Before eating it in Andong, we had only enjoyed it at one particular chain of restaurants. We were interested to see how the traditional style of jjimdak would differ from our favourite variant. We were nervous, but excited.

In the end, traditional jjimdak is drastically different from what we had experienced before. The option we tried had bones in the chicken, didn’t have cheese, and had more spring onions than our favourite variant. While it was still delicious, we still would rather have the jjimdak from the chain we’d loved before. Sorry, Andong. I’m definitely willing to try all of the other shops on jjimdak street though!

All in all, our time in Andong was full of exceeded expectations. Whilst it is nowhere near as large as major metropolitan cities, it is definitely worth a visit, especially for the Mask Dance festival. Even if I’d never been to Andong, I would still be thankful for the city’s existence, purely for the existence of jjimdak. I will keep you updated for further explorations into the world of Korean cooking!

Breathing in and Collecting

There have been many analogies for the creative process, and how it is to live as a person in which the creative fire burns hotter than the average. Two of my favourites come from The Oatmeal and Amanda Palmer. One likens living as a creative to breathing, and the other sees the creative process as a process of join-the-dots. Right now, I’m struggling to do both.

The breathing analogy comes from The Oatmeal, explored in this comic. It’s great and you should definitely give it a look, but slapping it here would disrupt the flow of this piece and might get me a grumpy email from him, so I’d rather not. Essentially, he details how his friend told him that creativity is like breathing. Exhaling is the production of your work, be it cartoons, writing, songs, or whatever creative outlet you could possibly choose. The inhaling is taking in all of the influences around you – your social interactions, books you read, games you play, adventures you go on. Inhale, then exhale. While most people see only the exhalation of words onto a page or melody in their ears, inhaling is also vitally important. Without inspiration and experiences to draw from, it is hard to find a unique perspective on anything.

Amanda Palmer’s image of creativity is as unique and striking as The Oatmeal’s. She divides creativity into three stages: collecting, connecting, and sharing.

Collecting is similar to The Oatmeal’s breathing in – the creative looks at the world around them and sees an array of dots – ideas that are poignant, striking, mundane yet interesting, or in any way worthy of retaining in their creative toolbox. After they have been collected, the creative will then connect these ideas in ways that most people wouldn’t see. They can make deep connections, humorous connections, or even bizarre connections – everyone connects differently. Once the connections have been made, they are shared. This can be a blog post, a tweet, a painting, a song, a piece of graffiti, a game, anything.

For the past few months, I’ve been inhaling and far more than I should. I’ve been lucky enough to have a supportive fiancee who has taken most of the financial responsibility in the house whilst I find myself, my medium, and my material. It’s not fair, and I see the jealousy in her eyes every day. What she doesn’t see is my agonizing over being able to find my mysterious, yet-to-be-harnessed ‘voice’. How do I express myself? Am I a singer? A writer? A caster? What am I? I still don’t even know. I’m still breathing in. Every now and then I let out a little puff of work, and I feel satisfied for a day or two before once again looking at the precipice of my own mediocrity.

Where I should have a deep pit of connections to share with the world, I look into my hands and see an embarrassingly small collection of mangled, fragmented ideas that still need nurturing, care, and forging before they can be deemed worthy of sharing with anyone.

I have been said to be living the dream, and most of the time I share their sentiment. I’m living comfortably with the one that I love and a cat that is not always an utter asshole. But on days like today, I wish that I would be satisfied with this, and not feel like I should be doing something more, something else. I wish the grass didn’t look so damn green. I wish that I didn’t see the twinkle of uniqueness every once in a while just to tease me into believing that I would have something interesting to share with the world. I wish my brain would just shut up and be content. But it isn’t. And it won’t. I’ll keep on collecting, connecting. Breathing in. I hope I can take a long breath out before I burst.

Engagement

As of today, I have been engaged for almost 2 months. While my fiancee and I had a great time seeing Seattle, eating its food, and experiencing The International, nothing from our short time in America will prove to be more impactful on our lives than my proposal to Kris. For some men, an engagement is something they meticulously plan down to the minute to give the biggest wow-factor possible. For others, it is a spur-of-the-moment action, forever immortalizing the pure feeling of a moment. For me, it was somewhere in the middle.

Our engagement was, as they say, a long time coming. We had been talking about it casually for years before, and I had a good idea of what I thought Kris would like to have for her engagement story. We had even discussed with her mother, who had offered her ring for me to use in my proposal.

My planning for the engagement began in earnest in April of 2016, a few months before our trip to Seattle. My aunt visited us from South Africa, bearing with her a number of treats that we had missed from home. Unbeknownst to Kristen, she also bore a crucial part of my proposal – her mother’s ring. Whilst she was showering or at work or otherwise indisposed, my aunt gave me the ring, and I hid it away from Kris, hoping to keep it a secret until the time was perfect.

I first hid the ring in a pocket of my laptop bag that I take to work every day. Keeping it on me for most of the time meant that there was no risk that Kris would stumble upon it whilst cleaning or just wandering the house while I wasn’t there. After a few weeks, I began to feel like Frodo, the weight of the ring bearing me down with anxiety. I also thought that I risked losing it myself, so I decided to rather hide it amongst some of the mess in our spare room, buried deep under clothes and bags. And there it lay, biding its time, for months.

Its time would come for certain when, shortly before our holiday, my mother informed me that my brother would be visiting us in Seattle for a weekend. I thought that his presence sealed the deal on an already impressive proposal package: a trip to a new city with many beautiful scenic places to propose, on a once-in-a-lifetime vacation, now with a family member present to take photos? I knew that it was a moment the likes of which I would not have again for a long time.

So, I colluded with my brother, telling him of my intentions. His duties were to take photos of the occasion and be his generally charming and bubbly self. He also provided me an excuse for Kris to have to wear a nice dress – my brother is known to suit up on occasion, and I told Kris to bring something fancyish to wear in case he wanted to go somewhere that warranted nicer clothes.

As for the venue, I was not one hundred percent set on the location of the proposal before we arrived in Seattle – I had narrowed it down to a couple of the more accessible and scenic parks, but I hadn’t made up my mind. Luckily for me, this was sorted when Kris was told about a local wine farm at which a friend’s mother worked, and expressed a keen interest to go. I smiled more than I probably should have, and suggested that it be somewhere we take my brother Jamie on his weekend. It was all set.

When the day came, I was perfectly calm. The schedule for the day was simple – we would go on an Underground tour in the morning, and then head to the wine farm in the afternoon. Kris, Jamie and I met up for breakfast at the local corner cafe, ate heartily, and left for the day. As we began the Underground tour, we stopped to take a photo at its start. It was here that we discovered that the memory card for the camera was….not in the camera. A proposal without pictures? That would certainly not go down well. Oh well, the fix was simple – we would head back to the apartment, get the memory card out of the computer (where I had left it after transferring photos from the TI6 press day), and then continue our journeys. Easy.

This was made distinctly less easy when we discovered that we (read: I) had somehow managed to lock the door with the keys still inside, and our host had left to visit his parents for the day. To say that I was freaking out would be akin to saying that sugar might in some way be linked to weight gain. Despite the level of tension within, I couldn’t seem too worried, because at this point, the proposal was still a surprise for Kris. If I completely had a meltdown over not being able to take photos at a seemingly innocuous wine farm, she would think something was up. So, I put on a brave, slightly crazed face, and quickly found a nearby store that sold memory cards. Crisis averted. No need to push the big red button. We got in an Uber and headed to the wine farm.

When we got there, I covertly told my brother to buy some champagne whist we were doing a wine tasting. He had had a rather big night the night before, and wasn’t exactly on speaking terms with alcohol quite yet. So, whilst we were listening to the nice wine hostess tell us about each wine before I nervously gulped it down with little pretense of appreciating it, he did. We finished our tasting, and left the main building. I suggested we take a walk around the grounds – it seemed quite pretty, and I wanted to enjoy greenery before we headed back to the cement forests of Korea. Kris obliged. My hands began to shake noticeably.

We wandered for a while before I spotted a small lake with some beautiful, leafy trees surrounding them. This was the place. There was no better spot on the wine farm. I told Jamie to get the camera out, and ask that Kris take off the bangle from the Underground tour – it wouldn’t look so good in photos, I said. She looked puzzled, but did so. We walked together to the edge of the lake. I breathed in. After a moment of complete and utter terror, I breathed out, looked Kris in the eye, and started a short, impromptu speech. I told her how much I loved her. I told her how happy she made me, in every possible way. I told her how she had helped me find and more readily express who I really am. I told her how she made me want to be a better person – to be more than just a person who forgets the memory card and house keys in the apartment. I may have sworn once out of nervousness. Then, I got down on one knee and asked her to marry me. She said yes. We drank champagne. We took photos. It was just as I had hoped.

In truth, I knew she would say yes. I knew I wanted to ask her from when I first got to know her, and she for some reason knew that she would say yes from the moment she got to know me. I was nervous because I wanted to give her a story that she would proudly tell whenever she would get asked ‘Well dear, how did he propose?’. And, in talks since then, she said I gave her a wonderful story. I could not have planned a better moment. That makes me proud. I could not have asked for a better person to spend my life with, and if I managed to give her what she dreamed of, there is no greater honour in the world.

The International 6: Everyone is a fan at heart

It’s been over a month since Kris and I attended the latest iteration of the biggest event in Dota 2 -The International 6. For one week, we were at the beating, bleeding heart of the game that we have spent thousands of hours playing, watching, learning, and loving. For most of the world, it was just another week, another stream on Twitch. Another event for gamers to make small talk about for a while. For us, it was a week that we’ve been dreaming about for years – a true nerdy dream come true.

From the moment that Kris and I first realized that we could attend TI6 and booked our tickets, I honestly had trouble processing that we were ACTUALLY GOING TO TI. For weeks, I caught myself thinking ‘Only 3 months until you’re going to TI’. It’s tough to describe in words what it felt like to even contemplate going to go and see players that I had been following for years.

With about a week to go, this hype elevated to another level. The crew head of GosuGamers (a gaming site that I have written for since last year) asked me to be the official interviewer for the site for the event. I was given press access to the whole event (meaning I went for free, and quickly sold my pre-bought tickets), and details about the press day that would happen the weekend before TI itself. I was actually going to meet the players. Talk to them. Try not to make jokes that were too bad.

Yeah, that’s a calm face. Totally. 

Before we knew it, the press day was upon us. A Saturday morning and early afternoon spent conversing about the game I love with the players I may or may not have significant feelings for. Or, to be more precise, to spend an hour too scared shitless and nervous to actually talk to anyone, before proceeding to actually be an effective(ish) interviewer for the rest of the time. I managed to interview AdmiralBulldog (a favourite player of Kris and I), Raven, GeNeral, Shadow, Ohaiyo, and the entire team of Escape Gaming, which was split up into two videos (qojqva and syNdereN and Khezu, Yapz0r and Era). I was incredibly nervous for most of the time, shown by my repeated head-bobbing (I look like my neck isn’t quite working properly).

Just chillin’ with the Admiral.

The face of a happy fangirl.

Despite my nerves, this day was arguably my favourite day of the entire tournament. Sure, we would see some sick plays and meet the community over the course of the following week. But in terms of level of dream achievement, I don’t think it got better than the press day for me. I was in Seattle, interviewing players, and writing pieces and doing videos about them. I have never felt more legitimate in the eSports world yet. Kris even dipped her toe into eSports journalism, writing a well-received piece on the cosplayers of TI6.

TI6 cosplay was incredible. Neither of these costumes were judged good enough to win.

While the press day may have been the high point in terms of personal legitimacy, the rest of TI certainly made my inner fanboy happy on an almost continuous basis. From being able to easily look from the screen where the action was taking place to their agonizing faces in the team booths, to obtaining piles of merchandise, to new heroes (yes, more than one!) being revealed and teased, to the overall high production value of the event, I almost constantly had a smile on my face more prominent than the pain in my neck from looking up at the screen for hours at a time.

Our view of teh action for the week.

Where the magic happened.

What I was struck by most at the main event was the community. Even though we were sitting with press, everyone seemed to just be there for the love of the game itself. Sure, they would feverishly write pieces during the action, but when there was a crucial play, bad decision, or upset, there would not be a person in Key Arena not watching. Some of my favourite moments were just sitting with some of the friends we made, talking about our lives, Dota, and how we were hoping to get one of the rare drops that occurred only for people in the stadium. The entirety of Key Arena was a true community, united in its love for Dota 2.

This sense of community extended to the players and personalities themselves. There were constant photo sessions, where us plebs could meet and take a photo with our favourite members of the community, from players to casters to hosts. We ony managed to get to one of these sessions, with Troels ‘syNdereN’ Nielsen.

Kris and Troels.

Troels plays for Escape Gaming, and he is the player that got me interested in Dota 2. I played Dota 1 back in high school, but left it behind me when I went to university. After a couple of years, I found out about Dota 2, and was playing it casually. Then I discovered Troels’ stream of the game. I watched him whenever I could, and loved that I could watch and learn from one of the best in the world. It helps that he was funny and, as I would discover on the press day and autograph session, an incredibly nice, warm guy. Only that kind of person would agree to the glorious photo that is the header image of this piece.

yelloweverybodythisispurgewithtwofansfromafar

 

Even outside of the assigned sessions, personalities were all very approachable. You could walk up to them while they were wandering the arena, and if they were free, they would happily talk to you and share some of their time. It warmed my heart that even though they were famous in the community, they didn’t see themselves as above everyone else. They earnestly thanked you for any kind words or stories you would share. They offered of themselves, both in time and energy.

Two beautiful ladies and a shlub in pink pants.

From interviewing to watching to prowling the arena looking to snag a photo with someone you know and love, TI6 was truly a dream weekend. Kris and I saw some of the best Dota 2 we’ve ever seen. We made friends that we will hopefully keep in touch with for years to come (even though I am terrible at social media). We met our idols. All in all, TI6 was a week of happiness that I will carry with me for the rest of my life. Can we go back yet?