Oh my, it's actually been a week since I attended this meetup, yet it feels like it was just yesterday where everyone was jamming to Korean songs, freestyle and whatnot.
Where do I even start? To be honest, there's been quite a few events going on this month, so I've been contemplating which events to attend and which to give a miss. It doesn't help now that I technically have two jobs... Oh my... But anyways, I was deciding between two events for this day. One being the Ice Cream Festival located at Lumpy Hill Adventure Playground, and the other being the Inspire Me Korea Summer Meetup. In the end, I decided on the Inspire Me Korea Summer Meetup - And I definitely don't regret it!
So the day started off with some Korean BBQ. I went to grab some lunch at Super KBBQ with John (you might recognise him from FUSI8N).
A photo posted by Sophia Tang 🐼 (@sophilicity) on
As for us two, well whenever we meet (which is rarely) we end up always sharing our meals - Cheap Asian life... And what's better, because we were attending the Inspire Me Korea event, we managed to get a 20% off discount between 12-2PM for food. So we decided to order a Korean BBQ lunch. The BBQ lunch costs 14.50 for a choice of one type of meat, however if you want an additional choice then you can pay an extra £5 for another. We chose to get an additional type, picking the Samyeopsal (Pork Belly) and Beef Bulgogi. In total that costed us £19.50, and due to the 20% off discount, we only paid £7.80 each.
Personally, I didn't feel very full after the meal although the meat was good. They provide you with salad and a rice bowl with the meal, but I didn't think there was enough meat in comparison to other KBBQ places I've been to which offer more for the same price. It was interesting to be able to cook our meat though, everyone including us was very lost on how long we had to cook it so we didn't get food poisoning... Oh dear.. We survived though!
I wish I bought more to be honest, but I want to try other foods too if I have a chance to come again! The atmosphere is really good, and as the restaurant recently just opened in St Giles (located near Tottenham Court Road) the aesthetic was very modernised. You guys can check out the Lunch Menu here, as well as the rest of their website.
Moving onto the actual Inspire Me Korea Summer Meetup. We entered the basement where we collected our own Inspire Me Korea sticker, along with a raffle for later. I got the number "11" for my raffle ticket. We began to sit down, and I went to socialise with some old friends as well as some new ones just from discussing Karaoke songs. It was quite difficult to find songs without knowing any hangul, so we didn't get a chance to sing much - Everyone basically sang the English lyrics which came up during a K-Pop song aha... And I remember the GOT7 marathon of songs - Oh my...
We then proceeded to turn out attention to our hosts of the event, Diana (the founder of Inspire Me Korea) and her sister, Alice. We started off the afternoon with an ice breaker activity, where we were given a sheet with boxes on it, where you were required to talk to different people and put down their name if they did any of the things stated in the boxes. You weren't allowed to put the same name twice. I started off by talking to those around me before proceeding to get up and talk to others around me.
Unfortunately, I was missing a couple of boxes, before a winner was announced. The winner of the icebreaker shouting "Inspire Me Korea" first was Ramin. He began to list who he had put for each of the boxes. One of the boxes mentioned someone who is able to sing the chorus of a K-pop song, and for his sheet, he mentioned Nicole. This led to her being made to sing a chorus, in which she tried hard to avoid it but in the end did a great job in singing Taeyang's Eyes, Nose, Lips. Well done Nicole!
For winning the icebreaker, Ramin received a prize of an "Inspire Me Korea" subscription box. The first winner for the day. The following activity was a team activity where we split in groups of about 7-8 members (although additional members were added later, due to late attendees). We had a range of names, one group was called The Winners, ours was called GOT7 (aha we named it after the K-Pop group because there was 7 of us, later becoming 8 which didn't work out as well... oh well aha), another was called 9 Wonders etc.
The aim of the game is basically you are given a word (for us, the word was related to Korea) and the first person in the line, is to draw what they saw for the word, and the following person looks at their picture and draws it (whilst considering what the word may be). As each following person does the same thing, till at the end the person who stands last has to guess what the word may be based off the picture. You win a point for each word you get correct. Then the person at the front moves to the back and it continues. We got all our words correct despite our very interesting drawings...
There
was a draw between two teams. One of which was our team GOT7! Unfortunately
because of the draw, this lead to an intense game of rock paper scissors,
or in Korean, 가위 바위 보 (Gawi Bawi Bo). Our leader, Sarah (JB Leader-nim -
I joke) competed against YASSSS's leader, giving us the win! The girls won the "Dress Code" masks, ranging from black to blue to red to yellow to violet. I won myself a "Dress Code Blue" mask. Whilst the guys won themselves snacks.
We moved onto the next activity. This is where our personal talents were involved. For each of the different K-Pop albums to be won, ranging from PSY to Boyfriend to MBLAQ, we competed in singing/dancing for the prizes. The winner was the one with the most cheers after each round for each album.
For the first song, people competed for PSY's 7th Album. It was a dance competition for this round. The participants were Hung, Nathan, Nicole and Sarah. They competed in dance with the song "Gentleman". If you haven't heard of the song, or watched the MV before, check it out below:
It was a great laugh watching everyone compete for the album. Everyone seems to only know of the chorus - I mean I can't exactly dance very well to be saying anything, and I'd probably only know the chorus myself... But who do you think won?
... The winner of the round, was Nicole! She is also a dancer for the group, Ujjn. Check them out! She did a great job, and received the most cheers from the audience, winning PSY's 7th album.
For the next round, we had participants compete for the Boyfriend album. However... No one seemed to know any Boyfriend choreography or lyrics so Diana decided that people could choose a GOT7 song to compete for. We had a range of songs in which people competed for. One was GOT7's Just Right performed by Hung and Nichelle. Check out their performance below:
Followed by a performance by Stevie and Ramin. You may recognise Stevie as KpopSteve on YouTube. They performed GOT7' Girls Girls Girls. We also had another performance from John (of FUSI8N) who performed BTS' Fire. Originally he was planning to perform GOT7's Fly however due to the rights not being obtained for their new song, he resorted to BTS' Fire. As soon as the song started, many of the attendees ended up joining in with the dance which made a lot more entertaining. Check out their performance below:
For the final album to giveaway, we had an MBLAQ album. I decided to go for it since it was the last round, and was the first and only singing contestant for the activity... RIP. But before I performed, we had a few dance entrants. Jahliss and Nicole decided to perform Teen Top's Rocking - I think what is most difficult about this dance, is the tutting and quick step... Well for me anyways. But they both did it incredibly well, I highly praise them for it. Check out their performance below:
This was then followed by a performance of 4MINUTE's Hate. Here we had two members of Ujjn (Nicole and Lily) as well as Tosin, with Nathan on the side aha. Check out their performance below:
I performed last so I decided to perform what I knew best, which was G-Dragon's That XX - I realised there was explicit language in this, and I performed it uncensored... Oops. I missed the beginning of the song but managed to jump right in the song luckily... It was so embarrassing, haven't performed for a while aha. It was reassuring when I heard the cheers after my performance, and surprisingly, I actually won! Thanks to everyone for the support.
I actually have a video which Jahliss decided to film - I didn't tell her how to use my camera because I didn't want her to film so I'm not gonna show the video either mwahahaha... I think what surprised people the most was when I started the rap - It's quite interesting seeing people's reactions aha! I've got to say this will always be one of my favourite songs. You can check out the original MV below:
For our final activity. We went back to our teams for a pub quiz. The quiz incorporated different elements of Korea from TV shows, to naming Korean items, K-Pop and more. For those who had attended Korea, already had an upper hand of knowing some of the answers. We were relying on our leader, Shari for her fast reactions. When a team knew the answer to a question, the team leader had to put up their hand, and the one with their hands up first got a chance to answer the question.
We all looked towards the screen, attempting to answer the questions before we finally found a winner. The winners for the pub quiz were the 9 Wonders. Similarly to GOT7, the girls received face masks whilst the boys received snacks.
Before the day ended, Diana wanted to share with us a presentation about Inspire Me Korea. For some of you who don't know already. Inspire Me Korea is a subscription box service which provides goods "inspired by Korea". The incorporate beauty elements, K-Pop items, snacks and more into their boxes.
One thing is for sure, you definitely need to check out their promotion video, it's super cute and I love their little mascot for the promotion video. It has definitely made me want to subscribe - And hopefully I'll be subscribing soon when payday comes! Check out the promo video below:
Diana always thanked all the sponsors who helped her with the event. From SuperStar BBQ, to Devada, to H-Mart to Panda Eyes. They all contributed to prizes and more to the event. Before we finished for the day, we had the raffle. Everyone started to pull out their raffle tickets. You were also able to receive more raffle tickets through making purchases of K-Pop items available to the side.
The prizes for the raffle ranged from beauty bags from Devada, to face masks and more. I managed to win myself a beauty bag with my raffle. I think I was quite lucky that day aha! You can check out all the prizes I won last week below:
A photo posted by Sophia Tang 🐼 (@sophilicity) on
Once our hosts left, we ended up doing a bit of karaoke before the place got rather lively. From freestyle performances to sexy concepts, I can totally say it escalated to the extent where it felt like it was an 18+ event... Oh my... You can check out what we got up to in the playlist below:
I definitely had a lot of fun at the event. It was a great event to socialise with people, and with people with similar interests. I look forward to attending the next Inspire Me Korea meetup. For now, don't forget to check out Inspire Me Korea at all their links below:
Special thanks to Octavian Who who took the photos for the event and allowed me to use them for this blog post. You can check out his links below:
Thanks to everyone who helped me retrace my memory with this event despite being a week ago... I had some awkward memory gaps here and there but I remembered eventually. I hope you enjoyed reading this post, it is quite a long one, but I should have some interesting travel posts to update you soon! Thanks for reading!
