My Week in Korea: Part 1

Day 1: (Tuesday)

I had a bumpy start to my trip, with my train getting canceled and my flight reservation getting somewhat lost by the airline, but eventually I arrived in the holy land. My first goal was to seek out the drink of champions:



Revitalized and feeling the power of 400 eapm coursing through my body, I made my way to the hotel I'd booked at the last minute. My flight had landed at around 4am that day but I still had plans to go meet up with Kiett and go to SPL that afternoon, so I needed to get some rest. Thankfully, the hotel was actually quite decent:



I managed to get in touch with Kiett with my handy-dandy rented iPhone (thanks to Rekrul for the tip), and braved the wilderness of the Seoul subway to get to our rendezvous point. On the way, I saw a larger-than-life smart phone:



and a parade of South Korea's finest decked out in the latest military technology:



I managed to find Kiett and was met by a "you look a lot different than I imagined." Clearly I was far more handsome than she'd expected. I get that a lot. There was still some time to kill before SPL so we did some shopping and got some delicious street food:



Then, at long last, I attended my first live Proleague match. We arrived a bit late so we didn't get seats, but it didn't matter. I was there in the crowd. I could see the stage, the booths, the players with my own eyes. I could feel the energy of the crowd. The feeling was amazing.







At the beginning of the match, we met up with Kiett's friend RunningInSquares (aka white guy in the SPL commercial), and later on a couple more TLers approached us, drawn in by the aura of the white man.



From left to right: Xenocide_Knight, his friend (Freaky_Ivan or something like that), Kiett, RunningInSquares. After the match, the SKT guys lined up for some photos but ran away before anybody could get any one-on-one shots or autographs. This is the only good picture I got:



After the match, we decided to go out and grab some dinner. Kiett took us to a nice all-you-can-eat chicken place:



Then, we were faced with a choice: no rae bang (karaoke) or PC bang. I haven't had such an easy decision to make since picking protoss.







Xenocide and his friend had to leave us near the end to go meet up with some other people, but since it was Kiett's last night in Korea, we decided to make it last by going to a PC bang:



We ended up spending most of the time just browsing TL and chilling, and parted ways at around 3am. Before we left though, Kiett gave me a lovely memento of the occasion: a self portrait sketched on some SPL cheerful paper:



Back at the hotel, I got a nice little treat before going to bed. Broodwar on TV baby, oh yeah. +10 cool points to anyone who can guess who's playing:



Day 2: (Wednesday)

More SPL! This time it was Team 8 vs Khan. Since I was planning to skip the matches on Sunday to go to Comic World with NeverGG, this was my only chance to watch my favorite team play and get the autograph of my hero Stork.







I also got some shots of the cool wall at the back of the studio:





Thankfully, Khan wins the match and comes out for a fan meeting:



Words cannot describe how awesome this was:







Unfortunately though, I seem to have done something wrong when approaching Jangbi. After getting Stork's autograph, I wandered over to Jangbi who was in the middle of a semicircle of fangirls all talking to him. I decided to wait a little bit and after some more chatting, the group seemed to do a semi-formal 'conclusion' with each girl introducing herself to Jangbi. After the last girl finished, I thought they were done so I approached Jangbi and asked for his autograph/picture. Oh boy. The glare Jangbi gave me made JD's death stare look like a sideways glance from Fluttershy. That shit was scary. He also just kept glaring for a while too, not at all reacting to me asking for his autograph. One of the fangirls made it worse by snickering and saying something like "eehan sign timing". I managed not to piss myself and got what I wanted, but I'm still not sure what I did wrong

Anyway, we acquired a new TLer (FuRong) to replace Kiett and went out to dinner again, this time a Korean BBQ: (just kidding Kiett, <3 you)





Now, RunningInSquares is also an SC2 fan, and after talking to him I found out that Thursday would be the GSL up/down group with Boxer in it. Guess I know what I'm doing on Thursday.

Day 3: (Thursday)

GSL time!







The GSL also has a pretty cool wall at their studio. The receptionist there was actually really nice and let us (me and some other random foreigners) take one picture each from the wall. I got a Boxer pic :D





Now, I'm not the biggest SC2 fan, and that day's matches were pretty long (~5 hours). We also had to wait an extra half an hour or so in the freezing lobby area while Boxer did his winner's interview. But then the moment came that made everything worth it:



Yeah. I met Slayers_Boxer and got his autograph. I can die happy now. As many fanboys do, though, I kind of made a fool of myself in front of the Emperor. There was a desk in between us that he was using for the signings, and I kinda tripped on it when I was moving around for the picture. Oh wellz.