This third part was long due and this time I won’t give you any bad excuse except that I’ve been very lazy hehe. Since my cat is now healthy I guess I can get back at writing!!
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Life went back to normal and all I could look forward was to watch the show on TV. I had planned a trip to Sokcho, which is a coastal city on the east shore of Korea, with Vivian and Janelle, another Singapore friend. We decided that we would watch the show from the motel room in Sokcho. We woke up on the Saturday morning of chuseok and set the TV to KBS2. For the first time, I watched myself on TV for a whole hour. It was quite embarrassing. First of all, you could totally tell that I was nervous and that my Korean sucked. My friend Vivian was quite disappointed to see that all of her lines, except her presentation had been cut. We knew so little of show business we didn’t know what to expect. Still, we just laughed it off and told ourselves that probably very few people watched the show (oh dear…). It wasn’t THAT bad, but when you see yourself on camera or record your voice, aren’t you always the worst critic?
A screen shot from the first show – Dancing backstage
After the show, I didn’t hear much about it. Of course no one would recognize me after only one show and I wasn’t expecting it either. I still wished for similar opportunities to come by though. Then, about 10 days later, I got another call from the writers of the show, basically saying “The show attracted a lot of attention, so much that we decided to make it a weekly show. Would you like to be part of it?” Of course I said yes right away and became very ecstatic. Not only would it mean that I would get to be in the studio every week, but it would also provide me with some financial support!
A few days later, we met up for some reunions and interviews. I don’t remember exactly how the preparation for the first show went on, but it did take a while; the first show wouldn’t air until the end of November 2006. We had to go through a photo shooting for the opening of the show and it’s promotion. If I had known that these pictures would haunt us for years to come…I would have tried to pose better. Still, I didn’t have the power over my outfit so…
Love the smell of amateur posing
For months every time an article about me or the other girls would come out, they would use pictures from this photo shoot…Eva and I became very scared that they would use these pictures and when the writers would do it in the future, we could only start laughing. I bitch a lot about the pictures, but when I look at them I think it’s nice to see us so innocent, no idea about television fame, just really happy to be part of something bigger than us.
We shot the first show sometime in November, on a Saturday. The show was to be aired every Sunday morning around 11AM, if I remember correctly. Somehow, I have very few memories of the shooting of the first show. I know I preferred my clothes, but I think the fact that my Korean still wasn’t very fluent I had a hard time following, hence I can’t remember well what has been said and done. Plus, it’s been 5 years!! I remember that I said some lines that fell flat and for the first time I experienced the awful feeling of getting no reaction from the public. It’s very embarrassing but with time I learned to not take it personally and to just leave it behind and move on to another subject. Or just say things differently to get people’s attention. Storytelling skills really need to be learned through experience. Especially in a foreign language, you can’t tell a story the same way you do in your native language. It took me a while, but I know that my listening and my perseverance are what made me stay in the show for so long, because I could capture people’s attention with what I said, certainly not because I was the pretty one. Other girls had that role ; )
But I’m digressing. On that day, someone I really wanted to meet was in the panel.
I almost fell down the stairs before this picture so he had to catch me before I fell. It WASN’T on purpose!!
Yes, it is 김종민 Kim Jong Min from the group Koyote. I had watched him in variety shows online while I was in Canada and just loved his crazy personality. I was glad to meet him, but then realized that he is a stranger, just another human being, he doesn’t know me and even though I watched him on shows…I don’t have much to tell him. There’s no way to make a meeting with a celebrity NOT awkward. You either act too cool and look like a pretentious person who doesn’t care or you’re shy and laugh awkwardly. I think it’s because there is no socially established way to deal with these meetings. I took a lot of pictures with singers and actors during the first two years of the show and after a while we mostly all stopped doing it, unless it’s someone we REALLY wanted to meet. The novelty just wore off. I won’t post all the pictures I took with celebrities unless I have something interesting about it. I don’t want to write this blog about celebrity meetings teehee ^^
More importantly, I think the people I met behind the camera are what made this experience so memorable. I met awesome girls from all around the world and some very kind staff.
One of the writers with whom I became close
Of course, there were some people from the staff with whom I could never create a close bound, but that is the case with anyone in whatever social situation.
When the first show was a wrap, we already got prepared for the second show, but then things got complicated for me. Later that week I received a call telling me that I couldn’t take part in the show because of visa issues…I was very very very disappointed…
To be continued
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