The Adventure of a Budget Fan

Sharing van from Changi Airport to Gallery Hotel -> $12
Sharing van from Zouk to Tanjong Pagar -> $15
Food/drinks while waiting at J8 -> $5
Meet BEG + Jea's autograph -> close to priceless

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Maybe we all know that TLO is a big kpop fan. Well, to be exact.. general one. And it just happens that last week Brown Eyed Girl comes to Singapore for (what was it again) Sundown event... So this budget fan (as TLO did not buy the concert tix and spent $20 for the autograph) decided to try his luck and contacted local fanclub. Here's the account.

I came down at 3pm on Thursday although it was stated that BEG would arrive at Singapore at 9pm and the fans would start gathering at 5pm. Committed to be a crazy-ass fan, I came down to Changi straight after my 0830-1400 CBLC duty shift. As expected, none of the fans is there, totally in contrast with Shinee.

Oh well, to cut story short, I met few members of BEG Intl Forum admins and heck, they are damn sucked at hospitality. For an hour they didnt talk to me. To be exact, they friggin ignored my existence (which I later learnt that they are just being *cold* to strangers). I made some eye contacts which was ignored by that girl who sat in front of me (apparently she was kunimelon/Doris) and my attempts of starting convo with people were met with one worded answers (coldest tone awards goes to 'smirk')

Hey dont get me wrong, I was stating history... They are nice fella!!
Griffie: we were seriously sorry for being unwelcoming at first
Smirk: i am really sorry to say that during the meeting i seriously didn't bond that much with any of you ...

So well, my first hour was hell. Thus, I was having enough and of course, time for some actions. I talked straight to their de facto leader (apparently was Alvin), trash it out a little (in controlled manner, I am old enough now, thanks) and 'taught' him a lesson on hospitality (by welcoming what I knew later as Sengkiat and Farhan) and yep, I guess they treated me slightly better. And now the fun part started!

Waiting for delayed artistes can be fun. I happened to have Gajah Mada with me so time passed quite fast. Of course the interactions with the people helped. I learned that SK is a huge fan of SNSD and he played SNSD songs repeatedly on his PSP. I was told also that there were Invincible Youth analogy in BEG fanclub, with Sunny being the member with golden hair (which I identified later as Eri). And as usual, it is always interesting meeting bunch of people. It is even more fun this time, as they were coming from a different background, from secondary school student (Alina aka fourasone) to those in polytechnics (Marcus).

The rest is just a history for me. The events are just sequence of happenings:
- the Initial D with the facebook group (I didnt know there was the unhealthy rivalry between them!!!)
- stay over at Alvin's house
- finding receipts at 5am, one of which was $20.01 (how imba was that)
- J8 queue (Jonathan from soshified was it? and Jason was nice to me!)
- fansigning (GaIn was seriously cold and irritating imho)
- that autograph from Jea in the Pasir Panjang restaurant
- point blank shoot with handphone camera at the side entrance of Zouk (including SK's pic with GaIn SK: who brought fun into the place^^ and like the photo taking of me and GaIn)
- handshake with Narsha, GaIn, Miryo
- the Semarang girl, Amanda
- code red thingy?
All those was just memory, pretty much insignificant to (what Ted, who joined me on the hunt as well) the new OG I got in form of BEG International Forum. And of course, it is not a surprise eh that I am now one of their DJs (DJ JoKer in da house yo)?

[I didnt get to follow them on Sunday and Monday, partially due to PL and 3232 midterms on Monday, damn...]

So here's a thing I learnt from becoming a fan:
To enjoy fandom to the fullest, you need two things, time and money.