Archives For korea

I look young. My older cousins, who are just a bit older than JeA is, still see me and still tap me on the head. I still get carded. When traveling or meeting new people in general they always ask me about school… and I don’t mean it like asking about university. They ask me about high school or wonder what I’m choosing to study at university.

I graduated from high school ten years ago (gosh!).

I usually look at people on movies or tv shows, watch their music videos, [1] and I think people… look like contemporaries of mine. When I google them, however, I’m surprised some of them are five or ten years younger than me. It’s crazy. So because I tend to look at myself and think of my age, my expectation of how young people look is skewed.

Strangely enough, JeA still surprises me.

Starting out, I thought she was older than she is. Mid-thirties instead of early. As the years go by, she seems to be getting younger and younger, though. In this promo photo for the Brown Eyed Girls comeback (YAY! Comeback!), JeA looks like she’s 16. It’s nuts. 14 if you consider the giant teddy ages her down. And the pout makes her maybe a year younger than that.

It’s crazy that with my skewed view on how ‘old’ people should look, JeA manages to look half my age. And what’s funny~ if we ever meet in person, she’ll probably be able to boss me around. Coz that’s her presence. xD

brown-eyed-girls-jea-black-box-beg-teddy

Also, I’m psyched about the new album. I’m lukewarm on the Recipe single, though.

Okay, I gotta admit South Korea- I’m jealous.

Some of you may complain about the political implications of choosing Park Geun-hye’s party, but you’re getting the cake. This is coming from someone less privileged than you in terms of political options. I don’t want to talk about my current president, but since President Park Geun-hye just made a splash on my TV speaking Mandarin at a speech she delivered just this week at Tsinghua University during her visit to Beijing [1], which apparently is self-taught [1][2] (that’s even way more accomplished!), I want to give a good mention to my Ex-Pres.

A couple of years back, when (now Ex-) President Hu Jintao was visiting the country when Alan Garcia was still president — and he gave us THIS SUPER AWKWARD photo of himself trying to hug/kiss Hu — Alan had the BRILLIANT idea of giving HIS own speech in Mandarin, even though he knows a lick of any Asian language (I doubt he knows anything about Asian culture outside what to eat at a Chifa [1], explaining why he tried to hug/kiss Hu, LOL).

The end result is, of course, madly hilarious if you speak Spanish.

Besides trying to sound out Mandarin, which you know it’s nearly impossible, he sounded out some “words” that sounded similar to other words in Spanish, included the now political-satire-classic “Soy chanchin,” which is a cute modification to the word “chancho,” meaning “pig.” So basically it sounded like he said “I’m a little fat.” Hilarious history in the making right there.

Surprisingly, Hu had the biggest poker face EVER. He didn’t blink, snorted, NOTHING. He’s either the best politician in the whole wide world, or his team warned him about this Garcia Mandarin stunt and he turned off any of his hearing aid, if he used any.

Guh. I can’t. I’ve been trying to fight it, really. For YEARS. But a while back, Gee made it into my iTunes library just because, and instead of staying in there, it migrated into my iPod.

And, it was sort of alright. Then I did my trip and Taiwan was obsessed with Kpop, so it was Korean varieties every night at the hotel (if it wasn’t Taiwanese food shows), and Taeyeon was in so many of them. And “that chick from SNSD” came to have a name, despite all of them meshing together coz they’re just so freaking many. And then, she’s just so damn funny.

I don’t have any opinion on her singing or dancing, though I think she’s above average singing- especially in the group. So I’m unwilling to add any of those tags. I also don’t think of her as particularly oozing sex appeal, but she’s very pretty. Like in Hyori’s case, I prefer her casual.

In regards of that Family Outing episode, though. I still would pick Hyori ;)

Well, Hyori has earned her “Comeback” title alright- she’s been absent for… like, what? Four or three years maybe? Since her 4th bad luck album was such a bust, she’s been sort of hovering on our lives as Kpop seemed to rise and leak into the worldwide pop culture subconscious.

Since those days, LOADS of rookie groups have debuted — all trained vocally and in dance ability, which puts them ahead of Hyori. But you know what? Who cares. Hyori is what I wanted Britney to be at some point. I wanted Brit to be well adjusted and charismatic, even if she had gradually lost her voice and, ultimately, her dance ability. One thing I never wanted her to lose was her ability to engage.

Hyori engages with her audience. At the end of her celebratory comeback presentation, she brings back 10 Minutes, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, and then she performs U-Go-Girl, with no post at ALL O_O You can hear her laugh while singing through the almost-bare and casual arrangements of the song, while she’s been squirted with water guns. And she tells them (and us) that she’s missed us. Or that’s how I’ve interpreted her bogoshippoyo.

The water gun squirts borders on a wet t-shirt contest, but Hyori is wearing silver leggins throughout the whole show, which really surprises me — I mean, she could’ve been wearing black hot pants like her over-exposed back-up dancers, but she isn’t. She’s actually quite casual through the whole segment until the water squirting gets ridiculous and she laughs. I love that.

Apparently the show lasted nearly 50min?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ySkD-05HpU

I’ve got some pretty nice recommendations to share.

yammag-amy-recommendations

Fandom crossover… of sorts. Obviously, otherwise I would have known about this sooner rather than later- if I were a hardcore f(x) or Anna Kendrick fan. But the Kpop humor nearly kills me. Kkkkkkk xD

My favorite detail about the clip, though, is when Kendrick is choreography-failing and she goes “Amber, if you could just teach me…” because you know what could happen when that happens. I see what you did there, Anna.

I think she deserves her tag now.

I’m not particularly fond of Girls Generation, but I like them THEM – they’re funny. I ran into this compilation of everyone’s pointing out at each others’ sleeping habits… which, you know, they’re always interesting to find. That’s one of the reasons I strongly believe in cohabitation before marriage; it’s always good to know other people’s sleeping (and living) habits.

My family’s habits are probably a lot closer to Taeyeon’s. My mother and I speak in our sleep — my cousin told us that there was once we were all on the same room sleeping, my mother sneezed in her sleep, I told her “bless you” and she responded with a “thank you” without ever waking up. LOL

Then of course there’s the infamous time when I was visiting my cousin in Hawaii, and I was sleeping in her room. At that time I was surrounded by a lot of Korean friends in my daily life who would speak a lot of Korean among themselves. There was a point that it was so much Korean, that I started understanding words out of nowhere. Apparently, that night in my cousin’s house, I was speaking something unintelligible. That day I told her I had dreamed about my Korean friends. So what say you? Did I speak unintelligible Korean in my sleep?

What language do you guys dream in?

I usually dream in both Spanish and English — sometimes it gets wacky because friends that I would normally speak in English to start speaking Spanish in my dream. Then it all gets a little fuzzy. I’ve never had that happen backwards, though.

I didn’t know Doona spoke English this great, but I’m more delighted to see how expressive she is when she talks. xD

No wonder she placed on #2 on my list three years ago, and I lvoe her even more so than I did then. If I were making that list again, she would be my #1.

I don’t want to say “POWERFUL!!!” because I will feel like the captioning person on Korean variety programs. However, I just stumbled upon this video of TINY-G doing the choreography of their debut [MV], which I liked more than the actual music video. For one, you can actually see what’s going on without much distractions, and you can appreciate that they’re bringing a lot of HMPH! to their dancing in the way that 90s pop music used to have women dancing in not-high-heels and stomping their feet looking that they’re dancing instead of seducing you.

There’s still a long LONG way to go for TINY-G, and we still need to see if their management ever dares to push the girls for a super girly concept for a comeback single like they love to do in Korea — which, sadly, seems like a huge possibility from the few comments I’ve been able to read asking why these tiny girls need to wear such baggy clothing when they’re so minuscule. Apparently people have issues with baggy clothes. Is it not feminine enough?

Would you rather see them stomping with high heels and minis, so they can eff up their kidneys… just so they can look feminine and show their slender bodies to you?

Looking at TINY-G, it brings back memories of me rooting for Britney.

TINY-G’s concept is funny. Short girls, who don’t fit he Korean girl group standard of being 1.60m in height at least, are put together. They’re all 18 except for the member who is 15 (the short-haired one). And it doesn’t hurt that they’re all super cute in a non-lolita way. They wear super baggy clothing and look more like they can pull a prank on you than put a move on a guy.

As far as Korean pop music concepts, it doesn’t hurt.

Their latest single, MINIMANIMO [MV], is quite catchy. However, I’m most taken aback by the non-speaking member Mint, from Thailand. So she’s still learning to speak Korean (very well a commendable choice), I wouldn’t even mind at all if TINY-G ever decided to drop a whole verse in Thai just for kicks in one of their future singles.

Having said that, I’m crazy for Mint’s hair. It looks flawless. And she seems to be the shortest one. She’s already become my bias in a group I don’t really have a bias for.