Happy birthday to me!

Wow, what a late post about my birthday..... but in the spirit of updating blogs, I might as well put this one on too.

First celebration came from Cathy taking me to Half & Half..

With free upgrades for summer! Mmmmmm..... yum!!

And then we didn't know where to go for dinner.... so we decided to go to Kang Ho Dong Baekjeong! I think I gave up speaking Korean to Korean entirely after I came back :( I think it's just too weird to try speaking Korean when they all know how to speak English..... I probably will have to wait until I am in a class setting or around Koreans who cannot speak English to practice. How sad :(

But back to the bbq... it was really good!

Even with just one set, both of us were so full......

So yum!

.... I miss Korea. I don't know if I'll ever get used to Koreans though..... I always feel like my efficiency is too low for them..... sigh.

Anyways. On my actual birthday, my sis gave me these Sugarfina candies. Too exquisite!

I like the pineapple one from France better than the marshmallow eggs from America. Probably because they taste much differently from the American ones.... mmm...

And then I made a cake for my birthday buddy! I think he is the best birthday present I have... even though he's not really my present, it's just so awesome to have a birthday buddy who is so cool! I hope he turns out cool in the future too ;)

And that's it for my birthday!!

KCON 2017

The long awaited KCON post.... is finally here. Yeah, it's been a month since KCON happened, and I pretty much was dragging my feet in writing it... because... writing blog takes so much time, especially one with a lot of videos! Eek!

Anyways, the whole KCON thing was quite epic. First, Amanda took hours trying to get us tickets... and was only able to get the lowest priced section, which turned out to be pretty decent seats, but it was such a hassle. Second, the whole KCON thing was CONFUSING!! There was this thing called the "Fan Engagement" ticket, where if you get one with an artist's name on it, you get to go to a smaller room with lesser people than the entire KCON full of people, so you can see them a bit closer. Well, Amanda and I really want to see Got7, but we weren't sure how this ticket thing was gonna work.

So it turns out, you have to "check in" early so you can get your goodie bag along with this Fan Engagement ticket. Now, that is not the end of the story. Not every Fan Engagement ticket guarantees that you WILL be able to meet an artist. AND, the Fan Engagement sessions are set at different times, different days, for different artists.... and they randomly give these things out. For example, if you bought your ticket to the 2nd day concert,  so you picked up your SWAG the 2nd day, but you "could" still get a ticket for a 1st day session. Which renders your ticket useless. I know it's confusing, it took me a long time to figure out what was happening.

Long story short, I didn't want to miss a chance of not getting a ticket, so I planned to go at 7am on Saturday (even though our concert was on Sunday) to get the SWAG. However, since I don't want to pay for parking at LA Convention Center just to get the stuff, and Amanda has an open house that day, I asked Joyce if she can come along. She said yes, however, she will meet me there, and I was to pick up her mom from Diamond Bar, drive her to LA to meet Joyce because they were going to try on wedding dresses that morning. So... I picked up Joyce's mom early in the morning (sorry Joyce's mom), drove her to LA Convention Center, and gave her mom all the concert ticket stuff and sent her to find Joyce, while I drove around. I had no idea how long the whole thing was gonna take, but it went by pretty fast.... BECAUSE THE OTHER PEOPLE ALREADY PICKED IT UP ON THURSDAY OR FRIDAY! Geez, crazy girls! Joyce's mom had trouble finding Joyce and the SWAG pick up location at first, so she asked some girls who were there "is this where the Korean popstar is?" hahahaahahah... oh my goodness....

So it turns out that we didn't get anything :(

When I first saw it, I thought "SORRY" was a KPOP group I've never heard of. But no, it just means "Sorry, you got nothing". Bummer. 

However! I was looking on Facebook for a place where people can trade their Fan Engagement tickets and found some people selling Got7 tickets! Woohoo! Some people were quite scary... selling them for $400! No thanks! I didn't think that I would buy it, but since we're already coming to KCON, if the price is right, why not? So then I eagerly looked for tickets that day while Joyce was trying out her dress... and found two people who would sell each to me for about $20-25! Ok, acceptable price, I'm down!

So one person said to meet him/her at the convention, but I wasn't gonna go in until Sunday (your wristband is activated once you enter, and is only active for 24 hours), so I asked to meet him/her outside.... and after a long conversation here and there (and after messaging at least 10 people to try to find a decent priced ticket... it was like the FB mom's selling board....), they said they will meet me outside the convention center. So again, I drove to LA Convention Center, and this time, Joyce went down to meet this person. Since I communicated with him/her on FB messenger, I gave Joyce my phone to meet that person. I had no idea how this person looked like since they didn't really put a decent profile picture... so Joyce kind of just walked to the convention center. After 10 minutes or so, she came back and I said "so did you get the ticket from her?" And she said, "actually, it's a guy". I was like.... what?! She said she walked there and the guy walked to her and said "Ann?" and she said... "yeah?" and did the trade there. She said the guy looked more like a homebody, which I suppose may be interested in KPOP???

But hey! One down! So happy!

Apparently there were also a lot of scams on these tickets.... I mean, if you can sell them for $400, there is definitely a market! I mean, they were selling concert ticket at $1200!! Seriously! That's round trip to Korea! Seriously a rip off!! But I'm glad this one was authentic.... or else I would be so sad :(

I planned to get the other ticket from another girl the next day.... and that was Sunday. Which means we all have to go to church first before we get to convention, and this Fan Engagement thing starts at 12:30pm, which means we're gonna be cutting it really close. However, we got there around 11am (going to an earlier service) and I tried to look for the girl there. It was really hard finding these peoples..... because every one of them is at some event waiting to see another star. When we got there, everyone was waiting to see Wanna One at the entrance...

And so was that girl! It took me a while, but finally found her and got my second ticket! Oh by the way, we didn't get to see Wanna One at this first "gathering" because they came out the opposite end and we totally missed the direction. Oh well.

Alright, so we got in with our wristbands and all that good stuff.

It was almost time for the Got7 fan engagement to start.... so we quickly headed over there and whoa.... there was still a lot of people.

But.... we finally got to see them close enough in person! Whoa!! I can't believe it! After all these months of watching them on YouTube (haha), we saw them in the same room! Wow~

They looked super unenthusiastic and tired.... probably because they just arrived from Korea the day before. The only ones who seemed more energetic are the youngest ones, Bambam and Yugyeom. Life of entertainers.... hard job! But they were still good sports to entertain their fans.... 

So that was part of the highlight of the day :p.

As for the convention itself, it's really just alright. There was a lot of KPOP dancing, a LOT of Korean brands promoting themselves or just the KPOP culture in general. And a lot of free stuff that requires waiting in line. Innisfree made us go through three hoops to get three kinds of samples. Bleh. Here's one of the hoops... a picture with Innisfree booth on Instagram.

Oh well, we both look pretty good, so I'm ok with doing that to get samples ;)

We went to this workshop by my favorite Talk to Me in Korean host, Sun Hyunwoo! I also can't believe I saw him in person! I've been listening to their Korean podcast to learn Korean for almost 4 years (of course, on and off, or else I would be speaking better than I am now)... and he had a workshop on understanding Korean culture through Korean drama. Both Amanda and I felt that we understood the Korean culture a bit more after the session, although we felt that it wasn't as earth shattering as some of the other people felt in the room, probably because the Asian cultures are so similar, it wasn't as shocking to us as it was to the American culture.

Since the convention itself wasn't super exceptional, let me just combine all the cool stuff into one large section. 

Toyota had a section to promote their car... with these cameras set up so it can do this 180 degrees spin on the picture. So cool!!

This was definitely one of the highlights of the day! 

Took some pictures with Wanna One poster.

I looked too old to fit in.

Bibigo trying to promote their products by drawing with their sauces.

And then Bride of the Water God promoting their drama (it's not that interesting. Did not watch). They have really cool accessory for you to try!

We tried waiting for Wanna One again at this other booth... with lots of other people trying to get a glimpse of them.... and people sacrificing themselves to help their friends/daughter out. Quite a touching scene (I do say it with a bit of sarcasm).

I really don't know Wanna One that well enough to tell all 11 guys apart! All I have to say is.... their makeup is really good. They look like how they would on TV! Craziness!

Alright, time to eat.

So they had this Korean food street set up outside.... and it was so expensive! I mean, tteokbokki was $10! What...!? They were just 3,000 won in Korean :( So I got this bulgogi rice bowl thing.

This Hot-Star chicken is definitely not Korean.

Ok, time to go into the concert. We were in line for a while and right when we got to the front, the lady told Amanda she cannot bring her iPad. What?! Lesson learned, always check the restrictions on the venue before going! So we walked back to our car to put it away and came back to our line :( But we were early, so no harm done.

Long story short.... it was so fun!!!! Here are some videos of the people I recorded...

Heize wept a bit when she was singing... because the lyric says "is the star looking at me?" and we all took out our phone's flashlight and waved it around... she has such great voice!

Wanna One... I really don't know them very well...

And I want to apologize for my camera skills. I think I have a realization of how to record in a concert after reviewing my own video. 1) don't record the people AND screen at the same time!! 2) don't sing and wave your camera..... 

Got so excited when Got7 came out!! So cool!! And they sang live too!

I have to say that "Hard Carry" is one of those songs that I don't like from Got7.... most because I cringe every time I have to say "hard carry". What the heck is hard carry anyways! I hate singing English that doesn't make sense...... 

So fun!! We'll see who they have next year to decide whether we'll go back.... but the whole experience was so awesome. And I saw my student there who had been shocked to see me, even to this day....