Almost every night in Korea, i would be LINE-ing Pat and Shan. My kpop besties. Spamming each other with our and each other’s biases photos. Shan w her onew , SHAN and PAT with their infinite, me with my Key and recently ..EXO.
It was thanks to this poster that they LINE-ed me, and thats how i got to know about the free concert. I forwarded the picture to Zx, yeah my god-bro.
And asked him to help me translate cuz i was too sian of reading hangeul.
And cuz i had some errands to run, so i decided to kill 2 birds w a stone, go to exo popup store to buy some stuff + go for the free concert and see my SHINee!
Prior to the concert, i was only interested in SHINee. Exo? Not much. Can see,ok lor. Cannot see, nevermind lor. No emotions.
Shirley, Joyce and Nadya joined us. We were wondering what time would be the best to start queueing up.
Shirley: heyy meet a 7am ^^
me: WHUTTT?! The concert starts at 7pm !?
Shirley: yeah but SHINee having comeback and exo fans are crazyyy
me: T_T ok ok
I thought that if we went at 7am, it would be empty and we would be the first. But…..this is what we saw.
THIS IS THE NUMBER OF FANS WHO ARE PRESENT AT 7AM!!!!!!
When Grace and I went there, I was like, ‘ this is crazy, these fans are crazy , no way would i sleep on streets’
The fans are very well equipped. They brought blankets, stools, earmuffs, radio , like some urban picnic. And armed with professional cameras. And when they extend the lens of the camera, its like half the length of my arm!!! Talk about fandom to the imba level.
We didnt where to start queuing so we asked those foreigners who were in the queue and the staff on site directed us.
My initial plan was to chop the queue then Grace help me chop while i go and find exo shop at sinsadong. But then the staff told us that once we are in the queue, no chopping. We have to stay in the queue the whole day. I was like sian…. Then we gauged that even if we queued, we cant get good view. So no point queuing. And so we decided to give up and leave.
I thought that the popup store would be hard to locate, but turned out to be very easy to find. The moment i see young girls looking excited…hint that the shop is near.
the popup exo store
the menu
side view of the store
when you walk in, you will pass by this corridor
and see this common room
on the left is the cafe, on the right is the cashier and cafe ordering booth
then you proceed upstairs and be overwhelmed by photos and fans
this is the stairscase to the 3rd floor if i dont remember wrongly.
oops covered bacon’s face
sorry bacon!
there were lotsa fan in the store, but very few buying. Everything is overpriced, the cap is like 80000won??!? Being a foreigner is good, when they spoke to me in korean not to take photo. I pretended not to understand and gave the blank look. Then i snapppeeeddd some more photos until they do the hand gesture then i stopped. heheheh photos taken ^^v
Some of the fans were happily taking photo with their biases. The staff were rather helpful despite the language barrier. I was helping my friend to buy a top and she chose a certain design. When i asked for a new piece, and the design werent the same. The staff helped me to find one that was the most similar. With the help of my korean-english dictionary + hand gestures. Pleasant shopping experience.
Directions: lazy to give the directions so just refer to this website for directions
Grace kept thinking if we should go back to Q so we decide to turn back to the concert venue again. YOLO. And the queue GREW. like..obviously -.-
It was then we realised that if we didnt leave, we could have end up right beside the stage. Miscalculations. We didnt know the fans could squeeze up THAT MUCH.
Oh and some info about the fans age,
in Korea, kpop is popular among the teenagers, like 18years old and below. When we queued up, we were like among the oldest. And the young fans, they put on heavy makeup.
LIke helloo, the idols have so many fans, would he notice you? I find it amusing like, some put it just to see their idols. Also, the fans are professional in putting on makeup. Some brought entire makeup set, like eyeshadow, blusher, foundation, brushes and a lot other cosmetics stuff that i dont even know what it is used for.
Yes i do idolise my shinee, but not to the extent whereby i would put on makeup for him. Uh thats plain unrealistic. As much as i like Shinee, i know very well that they dono me. Yes idols will say i love you all. Yeah duh, you buy his CDs, of course you help him earn money. The entertainment company CEO sees that they can make money from the idol, they will promote the idol. So obviously the idol will love the fans. Without the fans, the idol will lose his money making potential and the company will stop promoting the idol. Vice-versa.
Not saying that all idols are like this, but you never know the truth yeah. What you see on TV is just for your eyes. You dont get to see the full picture.
For me? its just a matter of time for me to stop idolising them. I dont know when it will occur, but in the near future as i can feel my interest in them slowly subsiding. Yes, even SHINee. Thats life. There will be things whereby you go crazy over it then later on your craziness subsides.
The concert started with some less known singers. I only know A* mei, the rest i dono.
We were at the B area.
A collage of all the idol groups, ill post the rest in facebook.
this male fan is daebak. He had a ladder and those pro cameras. imba fandom level.
for shan and pat to ogle at, your infinite
for myself ogle at, my shinee hehehe
At some point, some fan club started giving out balloons. I find this move a double edged sword. Firstly, the pros is that it shows your support for the idol. The cons is,
IT FUCKING BLOCKS OTHER FANS’ VIEW!
sorry for the expletive but it occurred to me so often. I tried to watch the concert and the fans keep waving, KEEP ,KEEP KEEP KEEP WAVING THE BLOODY BALLOONS.
Damn bloody irritating, at that split moment, i hated balloons to the core. And hello , prior to that, i love balloons. i think there should be a rule on when balloons are allowed and when it isnt allowed.
When 90% of the concertgoers are females, when the boybands performs, i had a hard time videoing even with my arms outstretched well above my head, and my neck stretched as vertical as possible so that i could see what i was recording on my camera. Cuz all the fans were either jumping with happiness or waving the balloons much to my dismay. But when the girlband performed, i didnt even need to stretch my neck. I could just look straight. If only 90% were male fans, then my videorecording wouldnt be so tiring.
Overall for the concert, we queued from aftnn till 7pm. somehow i didnt feel any hunger pangs. Only after the concert has ended, suddenly i felt super hungry.
cheers to us for managing to get in section B despite leaving the queue in the morning, and free concert hehe, managed to see my keyyy
super love growl by exo. and 365.
We went to gangnam to find food since it was nearer and on the way home. We had our dinner at the MC Kang Ho Dong’s restaurant.
Review: Tasted average like other restaurants. It seems like all the restaurants uses the same sauce that im fond of, so all the meat are yummmy. Price wise is slightly higher, our total bill was 18000. we order 2 bowls of rice and 2 portions of meat.
Directions: im too lazy to search the map for directions, anyway i research on the directions and found this blogger , so folo her directions yeah (:
hehe back home to selca w my wrist tag before i remove it , a souvenir (;
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