My Week in Korea: Part 2

Day 4: (Friday)

I was feeling pretty exhausted from the first three days in addition to still dealing with massive jetlag, so this was mostly just a sleep-in then chill day. I did still arrange a dinner meetup with NeverGG and some other TLers for the evening. During the day, I went to do some Christmas shopping and explored the shops NeverGG mentioned in this blog:









Then it's off to dinner with Freaky_Ivan (still don't remember the exact name ;, rotinegg, FuRong, Xenocide_Knight and NeverGG:



I even managed to capture the elusive NeverGG on camera! Do pokemon still get added to your pokedex if you only see part of them?



By the way, I haven't mentioned it yet, but Seoul was fricking cold. Like, the last day I was there was -7 C. I even bought a scarf to keep myself from freezing to death. Just to illustrate:



Day 5: (Saturday)

Today I was determined to get a seat at SPL, so I showed up a whopping 90 minutes early to the match. I was the 2nd in line, but only barely. Within 5 minutes of my arrival, a line had already formed outside the studio, with more people on the way.





Either way though, I was 2nd in line so I was guaranteed a seat right? Nope. Apparently they let the fanclubs in first and since it was Christmas eve, a lot of people showed up. By the time they let in the 'regular' people, not only were all the seats taken, but the first row of standing room was taken as well. FML. There is one saving grace to the story. While I was waiting in the line, the KT team actually walked past everyone into the studio and before I realized it, Reach was walking like 2 feet away from where I was standing. Ironically (and quite cliche) though, my first thought was "he's not as tall as I thought he would be." My second thought was "actually he's pretty damn short ;;" Unfortunately, I didn't have my camera out at the time so I didn't get a shot of him. Anyway, once we finally got in, it turned out that we were going to have a bit of a special SPL day due to it being Christmas and all. The commentators and players were dressed in Santa gear and we got a live performance form a Kpop group. So, I sort of got to experience a bit of a live K-pop concert as well, which was cool.























Now, I had promised my stream viewers that I would hold up a sign at SPL for them, and let me assure you, I tried my damn hardest. I made one for the Khan match on Wednesday but I was standing in the far back so there wasn't much chance of being shown. Since I managed to get a spot at the front this time, I thought I'd have a better chance. My first attempt, inspired by Harem's comment in my Seoul meetup thread:



I figured that having a generic sign as opposed to a player-specific one would give me more opportunities to use it. I didn't get any action during game one of the series, but in the 2nd game with BaBy vs Leta, the camera guy actually had the camera focused on my sign for like a full minute. Unfortunately, this was exactly when the proxy barracks was being made, so the camera never switched to the crowd view. In the next game, the camera never came back to my sign so I started thinking of a new plan. I also realized that perhaps the Korean producer guys google translate English signs before showing them, and "tasteless passion" might have some unfortunate mis-translations. After the game, I went back outside and implemented plan B:



Usually I have the same distaste that TL does of begging like this, but desperate times call for desperate measures. This one almost worked too. During the last game of the series, the camera was once again on my sign for like 30 seconds or so but I still didn't get shown In protest, I quickly ran outside just before the 'gg' and made a sign saying "This camera guy is killing ESPORTS!", but that didn't get me any TV time either. Okay I made that last one up, but if I'd thought of it at the time I totally would have done it.

On the bright side, I did manage to get a couple of CJ Entus shirts from CJ's PR guy. Many thanks to supernovamaniac for hooking me up.



For some reason, even though Team 8 lost the match they still did a fan meeting afterwards. There were too many fangirls there for me to even have a chance at autographs, but I did get sleepy Jaedong and reindeer Jaedong instead :D





I also met a couple more TLers after the match. The white guy (JGodbout) even managed to muscle his way through the JD fangirls for a picture and snagged a photo of JD doing a heart thing. Man I hate being Asian.



Afterwards we grabbed some takeout then went to a PC bang. From left to right: parisisokay, random Korean guy, JGodbout. The random Korean guy claimed to be bad at BW then raped me with his offrace when we played some LAN games. Go figure. Was good fun though



Day 6: (Sunday)

Comic World day!!! On Saturday and Sunday, there was an event called Comic World, which is more or less the Korean version of ComiKet. It's basically an anime/manga convention with lots of random fan-made goods being sold and cosplayers abound. I met up with NeverGG for this event as she's an experienced Comic World-goer and this was my first convention. It was really amazing to see all the different stalls/goods/cosplays there. I used to be a lot more into anime, but then BW casting pretty much took over my life. I think the passion for all things cute and animated has been re-ignited in me though, and I definitely plan to go to more conventions in the future.









Grim reaper guy was standing there for a long time. He was really dedicated.



My first purchase! I can't actually read the korean in this doujin but neither can NeverGG and that didn't stop her from buying a ton of them ;;



Unfortunately, my camera chose the absolute worst time to run out of batteries. I had just started taking pictures of the cosplayers before it died T_T







I was pretty bummed about not being able to take more pictures, but otherwise the event was awesome. Afterwards, NeverGG also took me to an even more awesome figure store where I managed to get a Christmas present for my brother, and the Coex mall where the MBCGame studio used to be.

Epilogue: (i.e. some extra random pics)

On my way to the airport for the return flight, I found something peculiar. I'm not really sure how to put it into words so it's best you see it for yourself:



I don't know what flavor that snack is supposed to be and I wasn't particularly inclined to try it, but at least it didn't put me off my final meal in Korea, a delicious bulgogi bibinbap:



And finally, the homeward journey, across the Misty Mountains and back to the Shire:





Here's my stash from the trip. There's the two CJ shirts, a photo of Boxer from the GSL studio wall, autographs from Boxer, Stork and Jangbi, the self-portrait of Kiett, and all the random stuff from Comic World.











This is my brother's room, but the two posters on the left and the statuette next to his computer are the things I bought him during my trip ^_^