I don't have much to post from my summer 2023 trip, as I went to the same countries and did similar stuff as last year.
My girlfriend and I ended up breaking up a couple weeks after I arrived in Belarus because I wasn't ready to marry her like I thought I was, and she didn't want to spend another year in a long distance relationship. We're still friends and we still talk online, but we felt it was better to separate and focus on our own lives.
After I left Belarus, I decided to skip my trip to Cyprus and go to the Philippines instead. While in the Philippines, I had fun on Day 1, then had diarrhea on Day 2, then felt good on Day 3. On Day 4, I felt bad again and ended up getting a serious viral infection that forced me to stay in my apartment for a few days before I booked an early flight home so I could go to the Emergency Room. I was able to mostly recover 10 days after that in time to go back to work.
After I returned to work, my stomach hurt for an entire week and I was crazy constipated, but I am luckily back to normal now as of today.
I will be going to Las Vegas this coming Friday so I can have a short vacation and bet on UFC 292, so I'm excited about that.
Overall, summer 2023 had some okay moments, but it was probably one of the worst summers I've had in a long time, both mentally and physically. I am healthy again and I am currently in my second week back to work. I don't have any plans to travel outside of America until 2024, but as of now, I don't have countries I'm excited to visit, and I don't want to travel internationally again until I get excited about traveling abroad again.
sup fellas? Tomorrow, I leave to Europe for my usual 1.5 month summer vacation, and I'll return on July 26.
I've noticed that once I started traveling a lot in summer 2018, we've lost a lot of active people every summer since then. While we don't have a lot of active people left, I hope that LP doesn't fully die before I return.
I'll be in Belarus for one month with my girlfriend, and then we'll go to Cyprus for two weeks. We might get married this summer, so that's interesting... As of now, we just talked about signing the paperwork and having a ceremony at a later date. I'll keep you guys updated with how that goes.
I'll of course post another blog with pics and information after I get back.
During the entirety of June and July 2022, I was traveling around various parts of Italy and Belarus. I returned to America on August 1, and I have been working ever since.
In June, I traveled around Italy with a girl who I met in Belarus in 2021. We flew from our home countries and met in Rome, where we did some touristic stuff for a few days, and then traveled to a small city on the top of a mountain called Perugia. While small, Perugia has a lot of life to it, great views, decent food, nice people, and free wifi in the city center. After two days in Perugia, we went to the eastern coast of the country to a beach town called Rimini, where we ate and relaxed for 5 days. While in Rimini, we did visit a nearby micro country called San Marino, which is a country within a country, and has preserved its old style for a long time. After we left Rimini, we found ourselves on the western side of the country in Florence. Florence seemed like a chill city that focused mostly on museums (it's the city with the most museums in the world), which wasn't my thing, but my girl enjoyed it. After 4-5 days in Florence, we decided that we didn't feel like traveling to a nearby country, and instead took a train to the north and visited Milan for 5 days. Milan has a lot of life in it, both from the restaurant scene, nice people, and it's the fashion capital of the world. After Milan, we took a flight to Vilnius, Lithuania.
While in Vilnius, we walked around and saw the sights while eating whatever we could. This was just a one day trip, as we flew here in order to take a bus from Vilnius to Minsk, which was the cheapest way for us to enter Belarus.
Once we arrived in Minsk, I felt like I was at home again, as I was previously in Minsk for one month in July 2021. It's difficult to explain, but Minsk is a great place to live if you're a foreigner, as it's a large city by size, but only has 2 million people in it. Minsk still has a small town feel, in that it's very safe and many people know each other, but it's also very advanced, and it reminds me of young Seoul, South Korea, in terms of how much potential it has for partying, restaurants, and overall growth (I used to live in Seoul in 2008 and 2009 when I worked in the Starcraft scene, and the city was still finding itself at the time, and seeing foreigners was far less common when compared to today). While in Minsk, I did everything from go to the gym 3 days a week to maintain my slim-fit physique, clubbing a few days a week, eating at a lot of good restaurants, visiting a few smaller cities and villages in western Belarus, and was blacklisted from my favorite casino from winning too much (I didn't win a ton of money, but it was probably that I went in there 15 times or so and only had 1 losing day -- luckily there are many casinos in Minsk). The good/interesting news is, there is a good chance that I will be buying an apartment in Minsk between now and summer 2023 -- I won't move there right away, but the price for apartments right now is really good, which is mostly due to the Pandemic and the invasion of Ukraine that has ruined tourism and other things in Belarus, which in turn has lowered the asking price for homes. After my time in Minsk came to an end, I returned to California and started working the very next day.
In regard to UFC/MMA, I still watch and bet on UFC every weekend, and have been doing well for the past 5 months or so, with a few hiccups in-between, but that's to be expected.
Due to me focusing on real life stuff, work, and my hobbies (gym + UFC betting), I have found it extremely difficult to devote any time to updating the main page of LP.net like I originally thought I was going to have. I will force myself to update the main page at some point, but as you can see with the Sports and Betting section, I don't put much effort into even updating that area. That being said, I plan to start contacting some of the remaining LP.net people to do some interviews as a way to bring some interest back to the website.
I am going back to Seoul this summer, and I'm checking to see if any of you will be there.
I will be in Seoul from June 19 to July 31, and my apartment is in Cheongpa-dong, which is right next to Seoul Station. If any of you want to meet up, let me know, and we can make it happen.
I will definitely be watching UFC events while in Korea, but I probably won't make any detailed threads on LP.net while I'm there.
On Sunday, July 1, I will be flying back to Seoul, South Korea, for the first time in 8.5 years. I will be in Seoul until July 31.
While I have a packed schedule ahead of me, I am interested in meeting up with those of you who are still in Korea. I'll still be watching UFC events while I'm in Korea, so if you want to watch those with me, we can do that and drink some beers and talk some shit (UFC starts at 7am/8am in Korea).
In regard to the UFC threads, I'll try to post them all (5 in total) before I leave to Korea. Nothing should change in regard to me being active during UFC events, aside from not being able to play in DraftKings events due to the country restriction.
Ten years after the original Ultimate Fighter television show put the UFC on the map, one of its cast members fell off. So … whatever happened to Jason Thacker, the quirky Canadian that trained out of the old abandoned truck stop?
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I’ve long been fascinated with Jason Thacker. It’s very possible I’m the only one. Why? It’s sort of complicated. I suspect it stems from overthinking a word like "belonging." In the short history of the UFC, he was a person that ended up in the exact wrong place at the exact right time. Or maybe it was the right place at the wrong time. Whatever it was, man did he catch a lot of hell just for being there. And back then, being there meant something. Remember that?
The original Ultimate Fighter began airing in January 2005, and has long since been accepted as the jolt the UFC needed to break through. If Stephan Bonnar and Forrest Griffin hadn’t had that rapturous, go-for-broke brawl on April 9 in the finale, there might not be a UFC today. That fight hit the broader living room like a magic potion. It was the culmination of something, but it doubled as a real-time epiphany — suddenly mixed martial arts was being translated for people who didn’t speak the language. All at once, it was as if light broke over the taboo.
People got it. Dana White later called it Zuffa’s "Trojan Horse."
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