Aigogo...

So I'm just sitting here writing on my post. I miss writing. I really miss writing. I miss the days where I could stay all night and work on a story because I had inspiration in the middle of the night. The days where all my inner thoughts were recollected so that I could look back back on those days and mule over my childhood. I miss the days where my thoughts were my own, without judgement by other people. The days where my thoughts stayed inside my head, and not have my mother badgering me about my problem. I dislike it. I can't go one day on facebook mourning over my problem and then my mother telling me what's wrong.

And I miss my childhood. Hearing my friends right now speaking about nursery and game rhymes that they played as kids. I lost all of that while I was in England. I had forgotten quite a chunk of my childhood in Malaysia. I can't remember whether I was a quiet child, or a naughty one. I know now looking at myself I'm actually quite sarcastic, but I don't know much of my behavior back then. I know I shouldn't complain, but there were days I wished I had never went to England. I feel lost whenever they speak about something along local topics, because sometimes I don't understand it. Even when there's a topic I like, I rarely get a say in between because I'm quite spacey, and everyone else is talkative, or talking in between me, when I'm directly speaking to them. I have to repeat my jokes once or twice and after that I feel tired of mentioning the same joke again and again just because they couldn't hear me. I feel sad sometimes, because I have a lot to say, but I'm either tongue-tied or everyone else is speaking over me. It's ridiculous. They're still my friends, and I love them, but I hate it when that happens. Everytime that happens I get discouraged from speaking.

Aigoo, I should be more cheerful. I'm going to Asia Super Showcase 2012 tomorrow, but I'm not, not after reading about Gaza. I feel I should appreciate everything I'm given, but I don't know. I miss my old friends. I miss my life before England, and I miss my parents, my little brothers. I'm still trying to fight the demons in me.

AKB48: How I came to love them.

So I’ve finished watching the 4^th Senbatsu Election. And boy, what a rollercoaster of emotions I’ve felt watching that 4-hour-ish streaming event. I don’t think I’ve ever done this before. Going on tokyohive and comment like crazy on their page with the fans while anxiously waiting for the ranking to begin, complaining alongside them when a member did not get the ranking that they deserved, crying when the members were crying out of joy for the ranking they received, being amused when a member pulled a bitchface because they weren’t happy with what they got (I’m looking at you, Takajo) and clapping and crying again when Mariko made her epic speech about the senior passing their seed to their younger members.

Normally when I see a Senbatsu Election on tokyohive I ignored it (mostly because I wasn’t a fan of them), then finally decided to read it a few days after the actual election, nodded that Maeda grabbed the number one spot again and moved on with my life. But I’ve been moody these past few weeks, and seeing as I’ve followed the majority of the episodes and snippets of AKB enough to know half of the members (or at least their faces) during my semester break because I have nothing to do, I’ve succumbed to watching the streaming event of the election.

I never I could have this much emotional affection for a group that I could not cared less a few months, and I’m not usually one to hold so much emotional attachment for a group, especially not a J-Pop group as bubblegum pop and mainstream as AKB48. I guess my sudden love and respect for them stemmed from the fact that I’ve been going through emotional withdrawal, from my results, my doubts in regards to my studies and my overall life in university. I’ll get more to that later.

The first time I came across AKB48 was a random click on youtube, and then stumbling across one of their singles, Keibetsu Shiteita Aijou. It had subtitles, so I understood what the song was about. That song was instant love for me, because I was in high school at the time, and was bullied by a nasty girl and this song helped me through some tough times. Yet I could not get into them, because I didn’t understand their appeal despite the fact that I was also into Morning Musume at the time, and it was the time when I started listening to K-Pop. Even though both Morning Musume and AKB48 are idol groups and aimed towards wotas, Morning Musume (the old one with the 4^th gen à 9^th gen) still had half of the members who can actually sing and bring awesome stage performances and bring in fangirls like me. Arguably, AKB lip-sync half of their performances. I know the appeal of idol groups isn’t whether they can sing live or not, but it’s pretty obvious that only a couple of these members out of the 48++ can sing.

But that wasn’t the point. Idols are idols. They are made to be adored, talented or not. Aki-P created a girlgroup that wasn’t perfect, the exact imagery of what J-pop is about, ‘jack of all trades, master of none’, and that’s exactly where idols in the J-music industry have done right and K-pop still needs to understand, even though I’ve been a fan of it for years. Seeing AKBingo made me realize while they still keep everything behind closed doors in favour of ‘saving face’, there’s still plenty of rivalry and cattiness that goes on. Anyone who watches the game segment on AKBingo, where they played the game Shoujiki Shouji, would know what I’m talking about. As a girl, I find this much more relatable to watch as compared to seeing girlgroups in K-Pop on a variety, especially when it’s notorious for being scripted and idols In Korea always felt like they’re walking on thin ice because just one single unfavorable comment can be blown out of proportion.

It wasn’t this year that I realized my love for AKB had heightened, and to be exact during my semester break. You’d think that after watching Heavy Rotation I’d be turned off, but I didn’t. It wasn’t because all 48++ members were superbly talented, or these grand supermodels or the fact that their fanservice was turned up to eleven. It’s because these girls are everyday girls that you see on the street. When I followed them through their documentaries, their performances and their variety shows I came to realize that these girls work so hard to be where they are, yet some people do not give them a time of day. And in some ways, whenever I see these girls crying and pouring their hearts and souls into being an idol, I pictured myself striving so hard to be a journalist.

Not gonna lie, I’ve been feeling under the weather because of my struggles to public speaking, having a crappy partner for my project and recently my result. I'm already in my third year, and seeing as my CGPA dropped it was disheartening. All that amount of effort I put into studying seemed so wasted, because no matter how smart I think I am at this subject, how hard or how much I prayed for a perfect grade, I will never be satisfied because I always felt as though I could never reach the exact result that I wanted. And then when I heard that my friends also did not have the results that they wanted, I cried, because the guilt that I was being unsatisfied with my own result while my friends were held back was overwhelming. I couldn’t decided whether I was sad for myself or my friends. I wasn’t thankful, yet I was still sad because it still wasn’t the result that I wanted. There were so many emotions.

So when I saw the Senbatsu Election, and how much they cried when the members found out they were set back a few ranks, and then having Matsui Jurina beat out Rena when Rena had been steadily topping over Jurina. The whole experience of watching it live, hearing their thankful speeches and their woeful tears at not being able to rank higher, was absolutely moving to me, because it mirrored how I felt, or feel. Because the efforts that you put out will not match the results you wanted. Life just doesn’t work that way. And yet no matter what you should never give up. Because these are everyday girls, and spending amount of energy performing on theatres, going to lessons while still finding the time to go to school made me realize that I actually have a lot of growing up to do.

I know K-Pop idols work just as hard, becoming trainees for years and not even knowing when to debut. And when you finally debut you will have to face tons of antifans, eagle-eyed netizens who will constantly find even the littlest thing that’s wrong with you. Yet the one reason why I still find myself peeved when it comes to K-Pop is that they, the society itself strive so hard for perfection that certain things just comes off fake and manufactured. AKB might’ve been idols, and they certainly are not perfect, but that’s the exact reason why they seem so appealing to a lot of fans. I’ve reached a stage where I know not everyone in AKB48 are talented, but merely hard workers.

Anyways, I’m glad I took the time to learn a lot of things about AKB during my break. I’m not going to go ahead and say they saved my life or something, because that’s ridiculous. But I will go ahead and say that as a girl, they became sort of my inspiration. I'm sad that Maeda had to go, since she was my oshimen, but I supposed she wanted to move on. Here’s my all-time favourite song by them, Ponytail to Shushu.

My Intense Dislike at SM's Marketing Ploy

Writing this because I’m bored, as I usually am.

I am usually very SM bias because Shinee is practically my staple love of everything that is Kpop. And it’s also because SM Entertainment has already established themselves as a solid company that produces idol groups with the prettiest, most refined package. The ajusshies of SM knows what they’re doing since they have a long line history of famous idol groups. H.O.T, Shinwa, DBSK, SNSD, the list goes on.

But once they announced that they were about to release a new boy group, I was indifferent. Not because I didn’t think they won’t be just as good as their predecessor, but after the DBSK lawsuit, SM has been losing their touch lately. After a series of successful idol groups, there is bound to be a slump at one point. DBSK had suffered because of their loss of three members, so SM forced to revamp their entire image and choreography around two remaining members of the group. While they still managed to gain a Mutizen award, a huge chunk of their fanbase was lost and split into two. Shinee hadn’t been promoting in Korea for a while because of their Japanese promotions, and even then most of it was half-assed being translated from their Korean songs and then shooting the music videos and then calling it a Japanese single. The same was with SNSD, but then they got better with a full-fledged Japanese single Mr. Taxi, and then Time Machine. Super Junior’s Mr. Simple was atrocious. No. Don’t.

I know what people are going to say. SM hasn’t been losing their touch. Their artists are actively promoting left and right, with SNSD’s appearance on David Letterman and Regis Kelly, f(x)’s Mutizen award with both Pinocchio and Hot Summer. I meant that musically they have steadily declined.  I wish I could go back to the days where Shinee goes on full blast with their voices singing Love Like Oxygen and that soul RnB jibe in Noona you’re so Pretty instead of trying to struggle the last high note and then end up sounding like a dead cat on Lucifer. Or DBSK’s versatility in singing soft, baby-making ballads and rawesome masculine Mirotic. Not these overhyping ‘WTF are you wearing’ promotions that focused more on visual appeals than it is the artistic process of their albums. These sentiments are probably just me, but I realized I wasn’t quite as annoyed with their teasers to hype up to the fans as I thought I would until this new debut came out.

Or about to? Seriously just freakin’ debut already.

If I wasn’t so in love with EXO’s What is Love, I would’ve given up on this group and called it a day. Twelve frekin’ teasers and all we get is a prologue. Okay, what the hell is that? I don’t care what you call it, SM. If it has a video and a song, it’s a single. I’m calling it a single. Nevertheless this song had me hooked for weeks after its release, and I’m glad my insanity remained long enough for me to hear it.

But that’s just it. The song is gorgeous, but I seriously hate the way SM is trying to promote this group. I really do. Die-hard fans will probably like it no matter what, but for those who are into Kpop for the musical aspect, regardless of their looks, will not invest so much time as to wait for another so-called prologue to come out. They’ve already released eighteen tears for this group. Imagine another eighteen more to come and it won’t be good as this one. My friend has already expressed that she already halted her interest, which is a shame because if they continued releasing songs like What is Love and History (which I want to rant about later) I would be really happy.

In the end, I don’t know where this rant has gone to. Just to sum up my displeasure at SM’s lack of musical galore lately and their new overhyped group that has even yet to debut. Hopefully the content will actually stay on topic.