"It's Rainbow and free skin care!"

I actually wrote a blog entry about Hyung Joon's MBCGame show about a week ago but didn't get around to molding it into an actual post. And since I'm too lazy to refine it, I'm going to straight up cut and paste (with a little editing here and there).

Cut
Awesome choice by Hyung Jun to do the programer show.
I was reading some comments on the show on a StarCraft forum/website and although they weren't necessarily always positive comments, the fact remains that there were A TONNE of them. Which means that Hyung Jun is at least getting exposure, if for nothing other than being that "pretty boy singer" who's anticipated to fail.
It's amusing though because most of the people on the forum are relatively clueless about SS501 or K-Pop on a whole but on the flipside most of the people on a K-Pop forum are clueless about StarCraft. Same comments, different subject.

Ironically, I had the sudden desire to play StarCraft when I went back home over Christmas break, and this was even before I heard about Hyung Jun's new show. Watching the show itself brings back memories though and makes me want to play it again even more.
Paste

I watched the 3rd episode tonight and not only is it hilariously funny but I also really like how relaxed Hyung Jun is in this show, especially compared to his last few appearances on variety shows, etc when SS501 was promoting "Love Like This". Also, his hair looks MUCH better, thank you cordi nuna. 형준, 화이팅!

Listening to right now: F.T Island - Everything is possible

P.S. Translation credit (title) to Team Liquid Fansub team.

Gung hee fat choy!

Happy Chinese New Year!! ^^

Or Happy Valentine's Day, whichever you prefer. :P

Personally, I don't celebrate either so I didn't really have anything special planned. Instead, I'm wasting my life on Youtube, trying to fangirl C.N. Blue. I'm thinking maybe I should just wait until 5 years from now when they're ridiculously popular and anything related to them has already been subbed and uploaded. At least then it would be easier to find their variety show appearances online.

Listening to right now: C.N. Blue - Y, Why...

Also, another picture from Hershey Gardens:

I'm sorry, I hallucinated... what?!

Just got done with the 16th and final episode of 미남이시네요 [You're Beautiful] and I think it has officially topped my list of K-dramas thus far. Ironically, when I first read the synopsis for this drama last year I thought the storyline was silly and decided against watching it. But thanks to my brief fangirling of F.T Island and C.N. Blue, I have now jumped on the You're Beautiful bandwagon. I kind of wanted to see more of the real Go Mi Nam (even though he would have looked the same as fake Go Mi Nam -_-;) but I guess there wouldn't have been a point. Also, I usually find drama music to be... icky... but I actually like the music in this one.
Thanks Jang Geun Suk for giving us such excellent "wtf?" moments, Jung Yong Hwa for the "Shin Woo 오빠!!! *sad face*" moments, Lee Hong Ki for the "o_O" moments, and Park Shin Hye for all her loads of cuteness. It was fun. ^^

I happened across a profile pic on Facebook of some random person from back home and happened to see something about "TYFRUU" in one of comments. At first I thought "SS501? Nahhhhhhhh...." But lo and behold, someone in my home country actually knows K-pop? Not just any K-pop but SS501? Now I know that there are a lot of people in general who are into K-music and K-drama and so it's unrealistic that NO ONE back home is into them but still... I never found anyone who was even into Japanese music/drama (arguably more popular back home than Korean stuff). Where were these people when I was looking for friends?

Listening to right now: 이승기 (Lee Seung Gi) - 꼿처럼

Edit: Turns out I did have You're Beautiful bookmarked as a potential drama-to-watch. Guess I should look at my bookmarks once in a while, huh?

Hallelujah, chance!

In typical procrastination style, I finished watching the Japanese drama　プロポーズ大作戦 [Proposal Daisakusen] tonight instead of doing actual work. Although it had the obvious pitfalls that you would expect from any time-travelling-to-change-the-past-and-thus-the-future storyline, this drama was less about those technicalities and more about how hot Yamashita Tomohisa is the love story itself. Overall, I didn't think it was a fantastic drama and I found myself able to put it off for nights at a time rather than being completely obsessed like I was with other dramas. But it was still nice, and I especially liked the special that they made for it.

The next drama on my to-watch list is the Korean drama 미남이시네요 [You're Beautiful]. I've watched the first two episodes and I understand now why it was/is so ridiculously popular. I've seen Jang Geun Suk in a couple of movies prior to this and liked him but now whenever I see him my mind can't help but flashback to his highly disturbing memorable performance in drag at the 2007 MKMF. I really like Park Shin Hye in this drama because she's really adorable even as a boy! Though like I've said before, I bet it's the hairstyle.
I was a little surprised that her secret was exposed so early in the show but I guess I was unknowingly expecting something more along the lines of Coffee Prince? Also, actually being familiar with the guys who play the A.N.JELL members definitely adds to the experience. Lee Hong Ki's such a shorty compared to Jang Geun Suk and Jung Yong Hwa, hee hee.
Soooo many borderline disgusting scenes in the first two episodes alone though. I agree with Lee Hong Ki's character... I would have thrown her off the roof too. o_O She's lucky he fainted.

On an unrelated note, I searched for my first name on urbandictionary.com (as per other people's Facebook statuses) and it seems that people with my name are undisputedly AWESOME. Some excerpts:
- Slang for "most awesome girl ever"
- usually extremely beautiful. can surprise you at what she can do. very outgoing. can be emotional at times, but mostly just wants to party!
- Very hott girl that you won't seem to every forget about,amazing personality and great figure.
- amazing
- An amazing person, not likely to ever leave your thoughts, always to the be te only one on your mind . Incredibly beautiful, nice, smart, caring, and all-around great . Her eyes gleem with a radiance of a thousand stars, her lips draw you in, like magnets, her love is like life, without it, you surely cannot live.
- being of extreme beauty, class, and creativity. also happens to be pretty rad.
- An extremely intimidating person. Possibly may be small, but don't let it fool you.

I left out the ones with less-than-appealing definitions because you know... they're obviously wrong.

Listening to right now: F.T Island - 빙빙빙

Baby, it's now or never

It's a bit late (early?) for a full-length blog post but I thought I'd just write a little ditty on my latest foray into K-Music... C.N. Blue! A few days ago I wrote about newly discovering F.T Island and although I've been looping their Cross & Change album since then, C.N. Blue has really impressed me with their mini-album Bluetory. In all honesty, solely based on these two albums, I like C.N. Blue's music more than F.T Island's so far. But I haven't heard much from either band yet, so we'll see how it goes, especially since the styles are a bit different.

I've also been looking at some of their performances on Youtube, as well as their covers on radio shows. The lead singer, Jung Yong Hwa, is really talented and his English is pretty good (in fact, their first mini-album in Japan was all in English). I've heard him and the guitarist, Lee Jong Hyun, cover The Calling's "Wherever You Will Go", Incubus's "Drive", and Jason Mraz's "Geek in the Pink"; Lee Jong Hyun is pretty talented (he sings in addition to playing guitar), and Jung Yong Hwa's voice is surprisingly versatile.

The one thing I'm a little disappointed about (plagiarism issue aside, which isn't even their fault), and this goes for F.T Island too, is that they don't play their instruments live (specifically the Korean music shows). It would be nice to hear them play live more often because I don't doubt that they're hella talented. At least the singing (and apparently the drumming?) is live, and I have to say that Jung Yong Hwa's voice is great live.

C.N. Blue is still newly debuted (less than a year since their debut in Japan, less than a month since their debut in Korea) but I'm definitely looking forward to their future releases (faster faster faster!). Even if they're still a little green right now, I'm sure that they'll improve as both entertainers and musicians.

Also, I realised that F.T Island's Lee Hong Ki mostly looks like Super Junior's Kang-In (but skinnier). Not a bad thing, I think Kang-In's cute.

Haha, this turned out to be longer than I expected... goes to show how much I'm liking this band right now. ^^

Listening to now: C.N. Blue - Now or Never (Korean version)

Regrets?

I used to say that I never wanted to regret anything in my life (even though there are a lot of things that I do regret). I'm sure mostly everyone feels this way, and I kind of feel like it's just a cop-out half the time. "Oh well, what's done is done and things didn't go my way, I should tell myself not to regret it so that I don't feel like crap every time I think about it" sort of thing.
But I digress. I think one of the things that I regret the most is not being able to hold onto some friendships that I've had. Sometimes they died because of irreconcilable differences, and sometimes I did something stupid and killed them. I was looking back at some pictures on Facebook from when I went on a trip with a few friends whom I'm not as close to anymore, unfortunately. Anytime I look back at those pictures I feel really happy, and I can see that I was really happy too back then. But it's a bittersweet happiness because I regret not having that anymore. I don't know if things would have turned out differently had the situation been different, or if this would have been the inevitable conclusion since I believe it was due to "irreconcilable differences".

That bittersweet feeling might also be due to the fact that I looked hella cute back then compared to now (probably because my happiness level plummeted thereafter).
I know, I'm shallow.

Listening to right now: F.T. Island - Boy Meets Girl

No pain, no gain

I think it's somewhat sad that walking around in my new pair of boots hurts more than snowboarding. It's amazing what we humans do for the sake of fashion. On the bright side, the boots are hella cute and I look good in them.

I've been listening to a few songs by the Korean band F.T. Island. They're not bad but I haven't formed an overall opinion about them yet. I watched a few of their performances a couple of weeks ago and their lead singer (Lee Hong Ki) is really charismatic on stage; I really enjoy watching him. The other members looked a little awkward but I think those were the older performances... in the more recent ones they looked much more confident. I just started listening to their 4th album So Long, Au Revoir and apparently it's in Japanese? I wasn't expecting that... not an entirely bad surprise but I was hoping to hear more of their Korean songs.
What I especially like about them is that they're an actual band, i.e. they play their own instruments. Most of the Korean artists I've been listening to lately have been just singers, not bands. Plus, F.T. Island have a little more of a rock feel to their songs (though still definitely on the side of pop). And I like when the other dude (sorry, don't know his name ><) raps or whatever in the middle of the song instead of the lead singer carrying the whole song.

Lee Hong Ki also looks a bit like the actor Jang Geun Suk, at least in a couple of F.T. Island's live performances. Funnily enough, they both starred in a 2009 Korean drama, 미남이시네요 [You're Beautiful]. Sometimes he looks kind of a mish-mash (can I use mish-mash to refer to people? lol) of various people though, like Brian from Fly to the Sky and maybe G-Dragon from Big Bang? I bet it changes depending on the hair. I tell you, those hairstyles are like Clark Kent's glasses or something (I mean really, you can't tell it's Superman under those things?)

Listening to right now: F.T. Island - 바래 [I Hope]

Edit: He also looks a little like Solbi (pre-plastic surgery) when he cross-dresses. XD