Rites of Passage

I feel like I've crossed some sort of line and become a legit fan. While I feel a bit...surprised at my own actions because I have repeatedly promised myself I wouldn't give in to such fervour and become one of the rabid fans I laugh at, I feel that its all worth it after all I've experienced. Why Bernadette, how cryptic of you! Just read okay, I can't blather in this whole post so I thought I would spread it out.

Day Before:

So here I was, changing to rush to town and meet some friends when I received a text from an ex-schoolmate I haven't seen in a long long long while asking me if I wanted FREE TICKETS TO Seoul'd Out! I obviously said YES PLEASE OMG OMG OMG THANKYOU I LOVE YOU(wanted to go desperately but was/am broke) so hey, miracles do happen alright. The most confusing bit is that the tickets to the Sundown Festival weren't even his, it was a friend of his friends. Meaning I got free tickets to Seoul'd out through a friend of a friend of a friend. WHOEVER YOU ARE, THANK YOU.

I don't know if any of you are familiar with what Seoul'd Out/Sundown Festival is, its this all korean concert that happens every two years or so if I am not mistaken! Anyways, I didn't want to pay 85 dollars for it earlier because a)Saving for ipod b)I THOUGHT I would only wanna see Brown Eyed Girls(WHO I ADORE) but wrongly assumed the rest wouldn't be worth it(because as much as I like FT Island, I didn't love them THAT much, but its a different story now)

Day 1:
I asked Christine along because I thought she would appreciate and enjoy it the most(I was right MWAHA) and also because she went to the airport alone on Friday to catch a glimpse of Brown Eyed Girls but there was a last minute change of flight, so she had to endure getting shoved around by Primadonnas(what the fan group of FT Island are called btw) for nothing, so I felt morally obligated to right this wrong hehe.
We decided to head down to Fort Canning at 2.30pm to queue up even thought the gates would only open at 5.30 and the concert would start at 7, to get prime seats. We thought we were early but hell were we wrong. There were already a WHOLE LINE of people ahead of us, but better then than later. Finally got in the doors around 6. Sat down near the front and bought overpriced pepsi, spicy korean fishcake and KIMBAP! THE KIMBAP WAS AWESOME!
Annoyingly, the only entertainment we had for that one hour was the DJ one song OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN, in between the repeats were sponsor ads and Sparking Korea campaign ads. Sparking Korea ads feature a few seconds of Suju and DBSK and I tell you, EVERYTIME THOSE PARTS WERE FLASHED, the whole area would be filled with SCREAMS(I was guilty too LOL) even after the fifth time HAHA.


It was pretty funny because even though the crowd of 7000 knew that DBSK and Suju were going to appear again and again, there would be genuine screams of delight and excitement. What I thought was funniest was that when the ad for Lee Minho's concert repeated for the 5th time, the whole place was filled with sounds of disgust and EURGH STOP PLAYING THAT, but a few seconds later when Suju and DBSK's ads replayed the whole place was just filled with such happiness hehe.

So the entire concert was a blast, I even enjoyed the groups that I previously didn't care about.

First up was the Miso Musical which showcased traditional korean acts.



Jinjo Crew, fantastic B-Boys!



Then Park Shin Ae and Mario, Park Shin Ae has a really strong voice and Mario was awesome as well!


Lee Ji Su, better known as the balladeer that sang that song from My Girl. He is a COMPLETE sweetheart. He couldn't speak english very well and was trying to aplogise for it and it was the cutest thing!
Lee Ji Su: Ummm Hi, I can't uhhh, speak english well so ummmm hahahahaha *apologetic look*
Everyone in audience: AWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!*shouts of "ITS OKAY OPPA!"



Next was T-Max, also known as the group which Kim Jun from Kkotboda Namja(Boys Over Flowers) is from. They weren't bad at all, the leader was extremely entertaining and the maknae looked like a japanese version of Heechul!



THEN THEN THEN, it was FINALLY FT ISLAND. For those who don't know who FT Island are,(which makes about...all of you haha) they are a K-poprock group, but really there are more of a boyband than anything, but whatever because their music is pretty good and they are all really handsome and funny.



AHHHH. FT ISLAND!!!! I kept trying to snap pictures of Jong Hun because he is extremely extremely handsome but Hong Ki(lead singer) kept jumping in the way! AURGH, as much as I love Hong Ki and think he is entertaining to no end, I wanted to tell him to move away or something >:( But at last, SUCCESS!


JONGHUN!!!! Do you have any idea how goodlooking he is? No, you probably don't and the picture I took is way to small, so I shall show you.


He is the blonde curly-haired boy sitting second from the front in the first line. SO HANDSOME RIGHT? Here, more of Jonghun. ♥


And then it was the most anticipated act of the night(for me at least) Brown Eyed Girls! AURGH, I LOVE THEM SO MUCH, you have no idea! They are much more talented than the other girl groups around*cough*SNSD*cough* and have so much more character, they may not be my number 1 favourite girl group but they are comfortably in the top 3!

A fancam of their performance of Abracadabra taken by me, I've always wanted to be one of those fancam people and here I am MWAHA.




Ga-In was nearest to me, which was fantastic because I absolutely adore her!(The one in the long blazer that is furthest right in that last pic, well in that she's the furthest from me, but that was only for a few seconds) And I guess that kind of makes up for Jonghun being all the way at the other end huh.

The Brown Eyed Girls WERE AMAZING, Miryo speaks english VERY VERY well and they hinted that they would be back sometime next year for a concert of their own! Will be anticipating that! They performed some of their older stuff like Eojjeoda and L.O.V.E which I was very happy for, along with Abracadabra and Sign as well as an a cover of You Raise Me Up. Good stuff!

Then, as the concert was ending, Christine and I had the smart plan of rushing towards the end of the crowd(to watch the final bow) so we would be in an advantageous position to run to the backgates to watch them leave. Pure genius.
We practically sprinted(okay fine, more like LIMPED, but honestly, we had been on our feet for hours and my knees just wouldn't straighten after that, but it all paid off because we were RIGHT IN FRONT of the driveway!
So the acts left one by one, waved to the Miso people and Jinjo crew who stolled past us. And then all hell broke loose when the bigger acts started emerging. JONGHUN WAS IN THE SEAT NEAREST TO ME! And he looked at us! He tried to show us something on his phone, but I couldn't see it ;_; but whatever, he was SO NEAR ME, less than one metre away!(albeit a car door was in between us) but WHATEVER.
He is as handsome in real life, it was so surreal!
It was extremely chaotic and the security kept getting mad at the silly girls who wouldn't get off the roads, but I guess I can't blame them.

Got home and finally ate my FIRST MEAL of the day just before midnight. Aurgh, for someone who has never even skipped a meal before... (well I had three pieces of Kimbap and a can of pepsi so I guess that counts as sort of not really a meal?)

Day 2:

Christine asked whether I wanted to stake out the Marina area(where the K-groups) were staying with her, in hopes of seeing one of them, so I crawled out of bed around 10, dead tired and looking like hell.
Was going to eat breakfast when Andrea called me SCREAMING about how she was working at Orchard Central and that there were signs saying that there was gonna be a Brown Eyed Girls fansign at 1pm. Ditched breakfast, grabbed my phone and camera and ran off.
The queues were already too long to join and there was literally no where I could stand to see them, so Andrea and I tried to grab a spot on the floor above, BOYS PUSHING US EVERYWHERE >:( Damn, the one thing I hate about girlgroups is that the fans are mostly hormonal boys who are alot harder to manouver around because they smell



FINALLY! It was awesome! We stared at them signing posters for about 20 minutes and then they left. There was a mad scramble to find a spot to see them, people trying to get in lifts and stuff, I got to see Ga-In's forehead closeup! The rest of her was blocked haha.

Andrea had to go back to work, but Christine and I headed down to Marina to get some stalking actiontry to catch a glimpse of them. Decided to head to their hotel instead of wandering around because we weren't having much luck. It was a few hellish hours, I felt like a beggar sitting with the primadonnas(what FT island fans are called) and it was just awkward because there were all so young! No other BEG fans around at all ):

After 2 hours or so of waiting! Narsha, JeA and Miryo returned to the hotel in a sedan!




Narsha in boots! These girls don't look 28 AT ALL(3 of them are 28, with Ga In at 21 being the youngest)JeA's back in the hotel, wearing red hightops!

I didn't manage to snap Miryo, but she looked awesome!

At this point I abandoned the camera because when you try to take pictures you aren't able to focus on looking at them properly and I can always get pics of them online, but I'll only be near them this once!

Lee Ji Su came back just before this too, he was so SWEET. He waved to us and some lucky girls ran to shake his hand and they reported how soft it was HAHA.

Waited for MANY MANY more hours and night finally fell and the acts started heading for the airport. It was complete madness everytime one of them would emerge, girls swarming the vans etc...(I didn't by the way, I still maintained a certain level of dignity)

MARIO WAVED AND SMILED AT ME! The other girls ran to the other door to try and intercept him but I was too lazy and was left alone, so I waved to Mario instead of running to him and HE SMILED, TILTED HIS HEAD AND WAVED BACK!!!!

Then FT Island came out and we all lost it, it was utter chaos, people started running INTO the hotel itself(I must admit, I entered as well) AND HONG KI STOPPED BEING A DIVA FOR ONCE AND ACTUALLY WAVED AT US HAPPILY! I was standing beside the glass door with NO ONE inbetween and it just so happened that JONGHUN WALKED RIGHT PAST ME, IT WAS SO CLOSE. SO CLOSE!!!!!

Then ANOTHER HOUR LATER(So sick of waiting by this point, but I knew I had to!) BEG finally emerged! OH MY GOODNESS, IT WAS WORTH THE WAIT! Most of the fans had gone of because they were ALL primadonnas and didn't care about BEG so there were about 15 of us left? I got so close to BEG that I could literally smell their perfume(smelt like marshmellows), I believe I said "GAIN SARANGHAE!~" and told them that they were pretty in korean. It was so sweeet! Gain smiled at us! I think JeA waved, but I no longer remember because by this point we were just screaming about how they smelt like marshmellows.

Went home and had my first meal of the day ): Being dinner.

Going to head to IMM on the 19th to queue for a chance to buy tickets to FT Island's fanmeet. Wish us luck!