☊ first shinhwa spazz session ☊

Coffee and pretty pastries at Paris Baguette ^^. This was how I finally met my dear friend who introduced me to this Shinhwa madness! We met in person for the first time and spent 3 hours (i think, could be more?) spazzing over Shinhwa oppa's ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ We bored the hell out of my other friend hahahaha but there was just no stopping the powerful fangirl loving ^^.

Patient Zero... she to me is the root of all this hysteria ㅋㅋㅋ. No matter what, I will always be thankful to those key influences who shared this great happiness and eternal inspiration in my life. Until we meet again!!!! 진심으로 고마워요 ^^

☊ time is passing ☊

와 진짜 오랜만이다 … I really intended to diligently exercise my right to spazz through this space but the past months were just thoroughly overwhelming. 힘들텐데 … 난 그냥 멘붕이야~

I left things here while at the brink of transforming into a full blown Shinhwa Changjo. I really didn't understand what I was getting into at that time. I've always considered myself to be a single fandom type of fangirl as my world revolved around being an ELF for the past 5 years. It was a strange, somehow burdensome and a very scary feeling to be drowning in yet another sea of fanchants, balloons, and unending screams.

근데, 어떡하지? There was no use swimming against the tides. In these 6 months, I went back to my early 2008 phase again~ wild eyed and scouring the web for old youtube videos, songs, pictures, profiles, and whatnots to satisfy my Shinhwa fixation. The sensation was very familiar as I went through these same motions with Super Junior. One blog led into another and prompted infinite video searches which filled plenty of my sleepless nights. My external drive began screaming for help as I unexpectedly filled it with Shinhwa downloads of all sorts. My once fanatical sapphire blue world has inevitably been tinged with a very potent shade of orange.


☆ Hyesung oppa looking so MAGNIFICENTLY PERFECT in an old clip~~~ kyaaaaaaaaaaa^^ ☆

I surrendered to confusion and stopped writing. I missed out on sharing my drenched SMTown SG experience, Sungmin's birthday, SJM's new album, KRY's new releases and all the tears from skipping SS5 in Seoul. I can always claim that my hectic work schedules and holiday celebrations ate up most of my time. And they did (honestly, they did) but I had more serious challenges than those. Deep inside, I knew that I was struggling more on how my Eric-biased RICSYUNG fanaticism was transforming into a HYESUNG-bias RICSYUNG obsession hahaha. Oh well, silly things consume what's left of my sanity as always.


☆ Celebrated Ming's birthday with a strawberry cake! ☆

I wasn't able to visit Seoul last year (and that sucked big time) so I was really looking forward to coming for SS5. So imagine how UNBELIEVABLY amazing it would have been to come for Shinhwa's 15th Anniversary Concert (last weekend) and stay in for SS5 (this weekend)? Ah, but the heavens conspired against me and gave me a major work commitment for Q1-2 ㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠ. I literally shed painful tears realizing how messed up my plans have become. The drama queen in me started nitpicking on my fangirl retirement seeing how things were becoming too inexplicably wrong ...

And so I decided to start writing again. I had to diffuse a bit of the chaotic nonsense in my head. I figured that if I can try to keep things up in here again then I might not feel too defeated with my missed Seoul opportunity. There will be other concerts ... and somehow I will learn to accept my ever growing limitations as a foreign fangirl ... and soon enough I'll manage to find the balance between my 2 major biases ... I just have to keep moving forward.

So I'm (hopefully) back. I'll try to piece together my delayed spazzing updates in the next days. And you'll definitely see more of my idol oppas from here on. Here's to making choices and braving through them!

☊ celebrating 90’s kpop fandom ☊

Smoldering passions, excruciating heartaches, simple-minded yet mortifying mistakes, and outrageous hormones. Smells like high school!!! ㅋㅋㅋ



Watching 응답하라 1997 is like returning to those insanely cruel years... It made me look back and wonder how the heck I lived back then. And I started to wish that I was part of this grand fandom starting from its heydays in the 90's! It feels like an out of body experience NOW ~~~ I'm seeing my more recent fangirl struggles circa 2008-2012 happen during the era of my own teenage drama years. Ahhh this is crazy!!!




Discovering this world of hot-blooded fangirls from the 90's is infinitely fascinating! It is hard to imagine Korea and kpop before this age of netizens took over. The girls lining up all night to buy concert tickets, recording the broadcasts on VHS tapes, and calling from payphones for something similar to the "Starcall" we have now... WOW, those were some real trying times. I can imagine how those first generation fangirls would scoff at how we now worry about raising youtube views for our idols. How our present day crises must seem laughable to them hehe~




And so Sung Siwon's character commented that fangirls have it easy nowadays as almost everything can be done online already. But if you look at it closely, "easy" is not exactly accurate. I would say that fangirling is most definitely different nowadays. Hallyu brought international fame and added a new complication to fandom. Korean fans had to welcome this change and make the most out of it. I've heard plenty of stories on how some k-fans are disappointed at the behavior of international fans during concerts and live broadcasts. It can be a love-hate relationship between fans of the same group! So indeed, diversity can be both magically amazing and painfully challenging at the same time.

And then you have to consider the perspective of a foreign fan as well. It could be a foreign fan living in Korea, a foreign fan living overseas who has been a fan for multiple years, or lastly a foreign fan who was a more recent captive of Hallyu... The difficulties vary for all three types but the feeling of being an outsider with your heart on your sleeve must be the same.



I wonder if they will make a drama or movie about US (foreign fans) in the future ㅋㅋㅋ How crazy we are doing our best learning Korean, lining up for concerts and plays we don't understand and streaming on online music sites like there is no tomorrow. I wonder how nostalgic THAT would feel...