{"id":6593,"date":"2025-03-26T21:19:28","date_gmt":"2025-03-27T04:19:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.xephalon.net\/updates\/?p=6593"},"modified":"2025-04-03T21:06:09","modified_gmt":"2025-04-04T04:06:09","slug":"once-upon-a-time-in-k-wood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.xephalon.net\/updates\/2025\/03\/26\/once-upon-a-time-in-k-wood\/","title":{"rendered":"Once Upon a Time in K-wood"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a>We decided to take a short trip to LA to enjoy some movie magic and Korean food for Spring Break. Melody was on call Saturday and I had a conference in San Diego. So I flew out first to give my gene therapy talk at Sonoma Eye<\/a>, stuffed myself with Yangzhou cuisine at Hometown Taste<\/a>, then slept through the afternoon and stayed late for the evening gala at the hotel<\/a>. On Sunday morning, I joined Melody and Westley at LAX Hertz<\/a> to drive to Sun Nong Dan<\/a> for their breakfast seolleongtang special. We then explored the California Science Center<\/a> to learn about fire safety, body functions, ecosystems, and space travel, which ended with an inspiring IMAX<\/a> show about the James Webb Space Telescope<\/a>. After lunch at Jinsol Gukbap<\/a>, we explored gundam and K-pop paraphernalia at Koreatown Plaza<\/a>, and indulged in a kream spanner and kream bomb (i.e. cube croissant) at Le Kream<\/a>. Our Airbnb<\/a> apartment was in the same building as our prior K-town visit, just a short distance to MDK noodles’<\/a> kalguksu and dumplings for dinner. On Monday, our early access and lightning passes at Universal Studios Hollywood<\/a> helped us skip the lines to enjoy the Mario Kart ride<\/a> at Super Nintendo World<\/a>, a wet ride<\/a> at Jurassic World<\/a>, and an immersive Harry Potter ride<\/a> at Hogwarts<\/a>. The fish & chips and butter beer at the Three Broomsticks<\/a> were surprisingly delicious, and the $20 mushroom soup at Toadstool Cafe<\/a> at least got us a Mario mushroom bowl to go. We spent the rest of our visit at the studio tour<\/a>, Minion Land<\/a>, and Springfield<\/a> before retreating home to watch Moana 2<\/a>, snack on Every Favor Beans<\/a>, and feast at Soowon Galbi<\/a> for amazing a la carte BBQ.\u00a0 We awoke Tuesday to Han Bat’s<\/a> Shul Lung Tang and Surawon’s<\/a> soondubu for breakfast and lunch on the way to WB’s Studio Tour<\/a>. Despite a lackluster trolly tour guide, we enjoyed photographing ourselves on the sets of Friends<\/a> and Big Bang Theory<\/a>, and learned about sound stages, green screens, ADR, and sound editing. We wrapped up our trip with kim bap from the oldest K-town grocery store<\/a> while waiting to board our upgraded flight home. For a 3-day trip, we were glad to have both our hearts and bellies fulfilled.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We decided to take a short trip to LA to enjoy some movie magic and Korean food for Spring Break. Melody was on call Saturday and I had a conference in San Diego. So I flew out first to give … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xephalon.net\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6593","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xephalon.net\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xephalon.net\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xephalon.net\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xephalon.net\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6593"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.xephalon.net\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6593\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6604,"href":"https:\/\/www.xephalon.net\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6593\/revisions\/6604"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xephalon.net\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xephalon.net\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xephalon.net\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}