After I wrote this (on the plane), I felt it was kinda long, so I’m gonna publish part 2 later and have em link each other.

Link to my Korea photos, go to end of album: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10156719722985739.1073741874.566325738&type=1&l=8d9d18151a

Link to part 2: http://jerryshi734.tumblr.com/post/176517564898/an-afternoon-with-taeyeon-a-musing-on-fandom-part

So I just got back from S Korea, where I met Taeyeon thru winning an Omaze (https://www.omaze.com/) sweepstakes. How did I become a fan in the first place? Not terribly interesting, but I’ll do a post sometime if there’s popular demand ha. Of course part of it is the music. Here’s my piano cover of my favorite of her solo releases, I: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbVG_TUszO0

Anyways, the timeline that afternoon was approximately like this.

· ~2-3pm: James and I took taxi from hotel to SM Entertainment main office. There was a slight logistical snag because Omaze said M and A from SM would meet us there and give us a tour of the HQ, while they actually went to our hotel to give us a tour of SMTOWN at the Coex (http://www.smentertainment.com/LifeStyle/CoexArtium#), right next to where we were staying. So they came back to SM office, and it worked out. Taeyeon arrived ~2:40 I think. Of course I was starstruck at first, but I became natural quickly because she was so nice and relaxed, first asked us how we’re doing and what we did in Seoul so far. I forgot what else we talked about first while we drank some refreshments from SM café (https://www.kpopmap.com/made-in-korea-thursday-sm-entertainment-sum-cafe-seoul/).

· ~3-5: We drove to Legend Heroes arcade (https://www.habkorea.net/koreas-new-concept-screen-sports-theme-park-legend-heroes/) for the entertainment part. I was sad we couldn’t ride in her van with her because there were 4 of us, and she had 2 of Girls Generation’s managers with her, so we couldn’t all fit haha. Traffic was heavy cuz heat index was actually over 100 degrees F all our days there, so many people were driving rather than walking or biking I think. On a side note interacting with M and A was cool too. They’re both also Taeyeon’s age, and I’m 4 years younger. M is bilingual cuz she went to school in Canada for a while (like Red Velvet’s Wendy haha), and she was my translator. (My friend James is native Korean and fluent.) The arcade was so much fun. Taeyeon said it was her idea to go. She was good at all the games, we did archery, pitching baseball, bowling, curling, fruit ninja (https://www.instagram.com/p/Blo8Dc1Blo_/?taken-by=taeyeon_ss), shooting zombies, whack a mole. She beat me and James most of the time haha. She picked most of the games, while I picked Mario Kart with Wii wheel cuz Mario Kart Wii is my favorite video game. We were pleasantly surprised the other people playing there didn’t swarm her haha.

· ~5-7: We drove to SMT Seoul (http://www.smt-seoul.com/en/#) for the dinner part. It’s a fancy SM restaurant. We had a private room. There was really good Korean-style tapas like fried chicken, noodles, budaejigae stew, fancy dessert cake, and other stuff I don’t remember because I didn’t touch my food at all half the time. I’m not at the comfort or liberty to share all the stuff we talked about, but some of the stuff we talked about were like how she’s her recent Japan tour and other international activities especially in USA, how I became interested in Kpop and her and Girls Generation’s music, some of her and SM’s fan engagement and music making processes, what we all like to do in our free time, where her puppy Zero’s name came from (Nightmare Before Christmas haha). The most meaningful part for me was when I shared about how music and her music too helped get me through my dark times in 2016-2017, and she shared too about her recently hard times, and we got to encourage each other. At the end, we exchanged gifts and took final pics. James and I got SM gift bags including her Something New album, James gave her a University of Michigan (where we went to college) athletic shirt, I gave her a framed photo I took in Ann Arbor where I wrote a message on the back, mostly in English, a bit in Korean. (By the way, I’m Chinese-American. I’ve been self studying Korean for fun and cultural appreciation starting a year ago.)

· PS ~7-7:30: After Taeyeon had to leave to go to her training activities (which she told us was a secret, preparing for a comeback??), I finally ate most of the food as James and I chatted more with M and A, then we all took a taxi together, us back to our hotel, them back to their homes.

So how this happened, it started in January when I saw an Instagram ad for this campaign: https://www.omaze.com/experiences/taeyeon-dinner-red?ref=taeyeon.

(Here’s where I’d normally go on a stream of consciousness about how do we steward our resources? how do we decide where to spend our money + time? why do these issues like HIV or everything else still exist? why does science + other things seem to break through so slowly? what are the mechanics of how God is actually working in this? In my OCD these thoughts naturally just come, and they’re good to think about (in moderation?) but I’m not gonna talk about it here cuz it distracts from my actual points. End stream of consciousness.)

I looked up the company a bit, and they seemed legit, so I decided to donate, take a shot ha. In Feb, I found out I won, nice. Two employees from the company Facetime interviewed me and made an awkward video out of it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAqN0p_7UeQ. (Also, you should read the comments.) The next day, they made it official and sent me the legal forms.

I received my signed Taeyeon This Christmas cd in the mail on Thu 3/15/17. At that point…to be continued.