[Adventure] #0: So far, yet so close!

Hello there!

Not quite sure what the writing format of this blog will be yet, but I’ll just go with the flow. How does that sound? Anyways, something super crazy happened to me yesterday and although I’m not in Korea quite yet, I felt this kind of momentous memory should be recorded somewhere. Alright let’s get to it.

If you know me well enough, you would know that I’m totally in love with DΞΔN (DEAN). He’s a super, super talented Korean musician who mixes R&B and other genres to create a cinematic experience. I will definitely be mentioning him multiple times on this blog. But back on topic. So I’m super in love and guess who else is? My roommate!

BTW this is my phone’s current lock screen.

So DEAN has been going on quite a few tours recently (New York, Texas, etc.) and we’re always super sad that he’s never in SF because that’s close to where we go to school. TBH it feels like no K-pop artists come to SF anymore and are now instead coming to cities like Chicago. Ironic since I left Chicago and came to SF for college partially because I thought I would be able to go more K-pop concerts. So I guess that kind of backfired.

When we heard that DEAN was coming to Canada, we were once again salty and prayed that he would come to SF sometime soon. It’s finals week right now so we were about to sit back to studying when we noticed there was a giveaway for DEAN’s concert in Vancouver sponsored by Koreaboo. All we had to do was retweet a post and follow certain Twitter pages. Easy enough right?

Now keep in mind that the concert is actually today (a Thursday) and the giveaway was announced last week. Pretty last minute. We ended up not winning. SAD FACE. Although we didn’t expect to win, we were still a little bummed out as we went back to studying. And that’s where the story ends. Pretty anticlimatic right? Well look at the title of the post. It’s titled “Adventure #0” because we didn’t go anywhere. How about “So close, yet so far!” you ask? Well DEAN is in Canada which is much closer to America than Canada but he’s still a 3 hour flight away.

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JK Y’ALL. There’s more to the story! What?! Yes there’s actually more to the story and this part is actually much more juicier. *mischievously does that villain move where one rapidly taps fingers together* Hehehehe.

So on Tuesday aka 2 days ago, I randomly stumbled on an Instagram post from DEAN’s manager saying that there was going to be another giveaway except this time, you have to record a video of yourself (possibly with a friend) singing a DEAN song. I told my roommate about this contest and we were like”Why not?” We sang a DEAN song together before at our dorm’s talent show and we wanted to go see the love of lives. Although we knew that we probably won’t be chosen, we had nothing to lose. It’s also perfect timing because that morning I had picked up the DEAN dress I recently bought. Check out our cute cover below!

https://www.instagram.com/p/BR7HxF-goGH/

We didn’t think about it too much and just recorded in our dorm’s computer cluster. You can see that I’m wearing my DEAN dress! I totally love it BTW. Totally my aesthetic. Anyways results would be announced 9pm the next day and since we still had finals to study for, we went back to studying. The next day, we spent the whole day studying for our last finals while also trying to suppress our squealing every time we thought about the contest we entered. To give y’all some context, when you looked up the contest hashtag there weren’t many other submissions and ours was the one with the most views. Reason to have hope right? Well we both ended up killing our finals. I still had a paper to write so I tried to stay motivated while awaiting to see if there were any updates from my roommate at 9pm.

Well at 9pm I got this message…

We’re talking to Dean’s manager BTW. WHAT THE HOLY HECK?!

WHAT?!?!?!?!?!?!? OMG OMG OMG. WE WON. WE FREAKIN’ WON. I’VE NEVER WON ANYTHING LIKE THIS BEFORE. ARE WE ABOUT TO GO SEE THE LOVE OF OUR LIVES. *sound of tires screeching* Back it up. This concert is tomorrow. In Vancouver. I still had a paper to write and I was coughing like crazy trying to get over a cold for the past week. Earlier in the day, I had joked that if we won this contest, 10 years down the road I would tell people “Hey y’all so before sprig break of my sophomore year in college, my roomie and I did something super crazy.” WHAT A STORY. I DIDN’T THINK THAT WE WOULD ACTUALLY WIN.

So as we frantically messaged back DEAN’s manager and looked up flight tickets, I bet y’all can guess that we were quite flustered. (BTW we asked his manager if we could get VIP tickets and say he would try, cool dude. I approve, DEAN.) We were quite conflicted because this was all so last minute and flights to Vancouver would have been around $600. Luckily, my roommate had a friend who interned with an airline so he was able to help us find some really great deals. As we planned this all out while we freaked out to friends, we couldn’t believe this was actually happening.

Now I’d like to end this post with a happy montage of us frolicking to Vancouver as we jammed out to Dean, but sadly that wasn’t the case. Because of some logistical problems, we end up not being able to go. SUPER HUGE SAD FACE.

Now THAT was quite an emotional roller coaster wasn’t it? Guess what it must’ve been like for us who went through all of that! I don’t want to end this post on a sad note, so despite not being able to go see DEAN we can at the very least say that we won a contest and that we got to talk to DEAN’s manager. Plus, we got some awesome friends who were super supportive and came in clutch when it came to our plans for a super crazy adventure.

I told my roommate that this time around our fate to meet with DEAN only reached 80% and that hopefully someday in the near future we would reach 100%. Here’s me hoping to encounter Dean during my summer in Korea! CROSSING FINGERS.

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