Last month, I went to Seattle to attend this year's The International, a video-game tournament. It had been the second time this year I've been to America. I went to San Francisco for about four months to attend school, then I went to LA for my holiday. As much as I wanted to go to the East Coast, Seattle was actually one of the cities I really wanted to visit. And the fact that the place pretty much gave birth to a video game that I was really into, was the nail on the coffin for my decision to attend TI4. As usual, I took plenty of photos. My two weeks in Seattle, now that I think about it, really brought back a lot of memories -- for better or worse.

Centre court, Honolulu airport. I chose Hawaii Airlines because it was the cheapest option and because I originally wanted to go to Pearl Harbour. Well, I didn't get to go. Honolulu airport was unlike any other airport I've ever been to. For a place that's absolutely filled with the Japanese, this place felt nothing like Narita. It was very relaxing, very laid back, and the tempo of life here seemed to be very slow. Even the security guards were Hawaiian shirts and spent most of their time making jokes and socializing with the passengers. Occasionally you could hear the sound of ukulele. It was quite a pretty sight.

And here are the runways. That was the plane I boarded. The place was incredibly humid and hot. This was the closest I've ever gotten to the Equator. It was winter in New Zealand. I wore a woollen jumper to Hawaii. It was a big mistake.

A friend of mine came to pick me up. I was going to live at this apartment for the next two weeks. How I came to know him is actually bit of an incredible story. But that's a story for another day, I suppose. He also held up a hilarious sign which made this exhausting journey a bit more bearable.

He was living with a room-mate who was studying CompSci at the University of Washington two blocks away. He also read Dostoevsky and Ayn Rand, and my impression is that the latter had a profound affect on him since he was mostly indifferent to me and just about everyone. He spent most of the next week or so in his little corner, watching video game streams. He also ate a copious amount of bacon, and the smell of frying lard 7 in the morning made me feel very, very sick.

It was very, very hot in Seattle. It was actually cooler to stand outside in the sun then to be baked inside in his apartment. It was quite a nice place to live in, except for the fact that the rent was really high since it's so close to the university. His apartment definitely felt more sophisticated and probably more comfortable than the apartment I stayed in at Berkeley. But I couldn't bear the heat. So I went out.

Foliage outside the apartment. Very pretty. Already it seems that I must've been thinking about home, since I was looking at the blue skies and thinking about how closely this place resembled New Zealand.

University of Washington, Tacoma campus. It was a very, very beautiful school. There were lots of trees, unlike the University of Auckland which felt more like a jungle of concrete and glass. Down the lane you can see the Museum of Glass and the local history museum. My first impressions of Tacoma had been really good. But it felt different from Berkeley. Tacoma was an industrial hub, intersected with rail roads. It was not very cultural, it was very rustic, rugged and coarse. Berkeley had a lot more culture.

Union Station. 

Museum of Glass. It's literally what the name of the place suggested. There was a walkway over the rail hub that connected this side to the actual museum. The architecture had a Frank Gehry feel to it. The place, like the adjacent history museum, was almost devoid of people. The other side was connected to the ocean, and you could smell the tangy scent of saltwater. I spent a few minutes looking at the forest of sails and the dinghies and boats gently rocking in the water.

Downtown Tacoma.

As you can see, there really aren't a lot of people here 8 in the morning. By the time I got back to the museum, though, people were already lining up in droves at the local Starbucks. There were so many coffee shops here. Seattle gave birth to Starbucks, after all.

I also went to the local history museum. The place wasn't actually very impressive, and as expected I was the only person in there. The only thing that caught my sight was a gigantic model rail road. Like a child I spent about twenty minutes just staring at it.

I really don't see how this is supposed to make history cool. They were trying to brand people like Rosa Parks as some sort of cool role models for kids, with stuff like "Well, did you know that Rosa Parks didn't give nobody her bus seat? That's so cool!" The fact that I'm here at the museum is the living evidence that history is for wimps.

I didn't do too much else at Tacoma. In fact, there wasn't really that much to do to begin with. The weather was incredibly hot, and even with fans running 24/7 the apartment wasn't getting any cooler. The qualifiers for TI4 was also on, and my friend spent most of his time watching that. Thanks to the heat, I couldn't remember too much about the next three to four days. We didn't eat much, either. My friend was an awful cook, so I made curry which he really liked. His roommate also liked it and in a rare display of sympathy, he came to me asking how I made the curry so delicious. He also said that I would make a really good girlfriend, and I said that I wouldn't mind being a girl in my next life. We also went down to a Pho place, and in the end we went there so many times, I got nauseous just by smelling coriander. He promised me that we'd go to Seattle together but that never happened, and we just sat in front of the computer watching Twitch streams. I guess he really wasn't the outdoors type. It would've been a lot fun going out with him. Well, it would've been.

My friend and I were so incredibly different. He was a misogynist, while I'm a pretty big supporter of woman's rights. He was an atheist, while I'm Catholic. I believed in racial equality while he really, really doesn't like spics. I'm a vegetarian, and as a response he held up a giant chunk of frozen beef and proceeded to point to his stomach. I believe in environmentalism while he really couldn't care less about the melting of ice caps. I read a lot of books, while the only thing he reads are Twitch chat and Skype convos about who the best girl is. He was pretty big and tough while I'm a bundle of sticks. I make my bed every morning, while his bedroom resembled a war zone. And most importantly of all, he liked Chitoge while I liked Onodera. We must've been both thinking that the other guy is nuts.

A few days later, his friends (who were also TI4 attendees) also arrived. That made for a total of 7 people (8 if you include his old room-mate) and things were becoming unbearable. The heat and the fact that so many people were crammed in such a tiny space was making me very, very uneasy. I was also the only person there who showered on a daily basis, so not much could be said about hygiene, either. I wanted to clean up his room but my friend wasn't very happy about it (later on, my father commented that this was exactly how his college dorm was like, so it seemed like I was the outlier here). In any case, it wasn't very comfortable for me, but there was no point complaining about free lodging. Especially when my friend is actually such a nice guy in real life.

So yea, this is part one of my story. Next, I'll be going to Seattle.