Sophilicity: HISTORY

I don't really know where to begin with this... Honestly, there's so much to say and I don't know where to start it off.

As of the 14th of June 2016, I can finally say, it's been a year since I first started my blog. Thus making this my 1 year anniversary for my blog.

I believe, I've come a long way from when I first started this blog. The purpose of my blog was to share events around London because I loved travelling and with the addition of having a camera this helped me start my blog posts.

So let's rewind back in time?

My first blog was about MCM Expo 2015. Along with a friend I managed to go around the venue, enjoy snacks and food and even watch some League of Legends tournaments. Looking back at my photos, even then my photography skills were quite limited. Back then I wasn't even too sure what kind of audience I was aiming my blog posts for... Whether to be formal or not? Casual or not?

Following on from my first post, I proceeded to blog about my experiences and eventually I even began promoting events throughout London. Some include the Eat Asia Night Market, back in November 2015. The event gave me an opportunity to have my own giveaway for my blog readers as well as experience a variety of foods at the night market. Something I personally enjoyed as a foodie myself!

As 2016 began, I think one of the biggest opportunities I managed to get was the HISTORY concert in February. Alongside promoting the event with promoters from France and Korea, I was also able to attend the event as Arpeggios Entertainment's own photographer. This gave me the opportunity to take photos of the concert with special access (I totally got a great view at the front!), take photos for the Meet & Greet and even work with HISTORY backstage. Furthermore, the next day I was even showing HISTORY around London with a friend - I'm sure there were quite a few people who wished to be in my place, right there and then aha!

This opportunity probably gave me one of the biggest boosts for my blog. My posts about HISTORY reached a total of over 2000 views which honestly it's such an achievement for me. I'm happy to even hear from people that they've read my blog but to know that I've reached probably over 2000 viewers all at once, worldwide, I was ecstatic!

And having a chance to meet idols who you've followed since their debut, that has to be one of the dreams that every fan wants in a lifetime - It doesn't mean I didn't stay professional whilst doing so. You can be a fan, but don't forget they are human beings too - And they were all lovely!

But since it's been a year, what am I planning to do for the future?

Well I actually have a lot in store. It just so happens I'll be doing a bit of travelling this summer, and my final exam is actually tomorrow, funnily enough. So I'm trying to dedicate this summer to give my readers the opportunity to read more, hopefully posting 2 blog posts at least a week. I've also got a lot of blog posts to be catching up over these months as I've been so busy with studies I haven't had a chance to write them all up.

As you guys know, this blog was originally dedicated to events but as it has been a year since I started this blog, I want to begin to expand my blog to feature other topics from fashion, to music and more. I've already started to begin to expand my blog as you can see from my posts about food places I've visited, recommended and reviewed! And I've also got some exciting opportunities ahead, which I hope to tell you guys later on - Don't want to spoil the fun now, right?!

Before I move onto my special 1 year anniversary giveaway, I want to just thank everyone. To everyone who walks up to me, talking to me about my blog in person, to those who have supported me and continue to support me, to all those who recognise my blog and enlighten me with their compliments. I just want to thank you. I am so grateful to hear such wonderful comments,and honestly I could cry right now just to know how much my blog has been read by people of the world.

If you haven't had a chance to read the reasons behind starting my blog, you can check out my about section on my blog below. It gives you guys a further insight to how I went about starting it.

Introducing my blog

But enough of these feels, it's time for me to reward you guys with an opportunity to win some prizes. I managed to get some assistance with LoveJojo who will be helping me out with today's giveaway! Thank you, LoveJojo, you're the best!

I managed to sort out a giveaway for 2 different prizes, meaning one lucky winner will be able to win both of these prizes!

The prizes up for grabs include:
- Kracie Popin' Cookin' DIY Candy Kit Painting Gummy Land
- Alpacasso "Tsum Tsum" Phone Screen Cleaner Cube Charm (White)

These gifts which I've chosen were handpicked by myself. Each of which have been picked for certain reasons. The popin' cookin kit has been something I've always enjoyed watching on YouTube. I love miniature designs and I love food so this is totally something which I had to include in this giveaway. And if you don't know already, I love TsumTsums, I currently have a collection of 5-6 TsumTsums at the moment varying in different sizes!

Thanks for entering if you have, and I hope to announce the winner by the 15th of July, so make sure to check back at this space for the winner! The winner will be contacted on the day and if there is no response within 24 hours, the winner will be redrawn. The giveaway will end on the 14th of July at 23:59 (GMT).

Thank you for reading, and I will hoping to be posting more frequently soon!

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So I've been thinking carefully how I would structure this post. Should I be formal? Should I be professional? I decided I'm gonna try my best to be informative, try to be as professional as I can but I wanna be myself and include my own personal experiences through this post. I'm actually really behind with posts recently, but it has been a very busy month. February was only 29 days yet I did so much that I don't even know how I manage to recollect it all.

I feel like quite a few people know by now, but if you didn't, I was given the opportunity to work at the HISTORY concert. This includes working as a concert photographer as well as backstage with the members themselves. Here's an overview of the day working backstage, a personal exclusive from me to you!

So I started my day arriving at 1PM with my volunteer group, Charlotte and Tom, excluding Kat who was going to arrive later on. We had a bit of a struggle let's be honest... We didn't know how to open the door and we were told to enter the back door... Which was actually the stage door... But I won't go into too many details to be a complete drag. We were standing in the office watching the CCTV camera, when suddenly a large group of fangirls ran out of the queue and we knew there and then HISTORY had arrived.

Now what can we say about first impressions? Well to be honest, we were all a bit awkward at first since we didn't really know what to do or say, but who would when you were only a few metres away from Korean idols. Sihyoung made an interesting first impression as he asked in English whether there was a smoking room, yeah... I found out a lot of the members smoke which was interesting... But from what I've heard a lot of idols smoke so I shouldn't be too surprised.

Anyways, we went off to complete some errands from collecting lunch from a Korean restaurant which I had ordered from a couple of hours beforehand, but yet we still managed to have a miscommunication, but hey Bibigo I still appreciate your service, you managed to prepare all your food in 15 minutes and the members seemed to have demolished the food by the time we went off to buy drinks for them.

So who did we actually interact properly with out of the HISTORY members? Turns out Charlotte and I made our first encounter with Yijeong who happens to be the youngest member. You might be wondering, what did you even talk about? I can't exactly say it was much of a conversation due to the language barrier but it did start off with Korean greetings before Charlotte managed to work out Yijeong plays Heartstone - Shout out to all those Heartstone players aha! He managed to point and show us the game on his phone and he seemed rather happy about it aha!

Kat arrives meaning we have our whole team here so we begin sorting out the merchandise to sell for the concert, good teamwork guys. I think our Maths skills are on pointe! Can't forget the awkward encounter with the guy who we thought worked at Vue but actually he was working at the O2... Oops.

By this time our group had split once again, Kat and Charlotte going to get change for the merchandise, and Tom and I getting medication for the one of the members - Don't worry they were fine, just some minimal muscle pain and headaches, the usual. By the time us two had gotten back, Katy the interpreter had arrived - also another friend of mine aha! But, the Korean concert agent was offering drinks to us in Korean, but we politely declined. He responded, with the help of Katy saying "Why would you decline something that I offer to you?" and told Katy to pull a straight face whilst doing so, Tom replied smoothly saying "well we bought it for you guys to enjoy" - Well done Tom, you saved us aha!

Grabbing some lunch at Ed's Burgers before the concert was due to begin. I returned preparing my camera for the interviews. Let's say the interviews were incredibly eventful. We had a mix bunch of interviewers and I also got to learn a lot about the HISTORY members through the process of each interview.

I think the most memorable interview question from me, would have to be from the interviewers of BeatCraze. Why may you ask? Well, for one of the questions they asked about whether HISTORY knew about any British slang... The responses weren't what I was expecting and I couldn't stop laughing, and the follow up to the question made me emotional indeed. The HISTORY members mentioned phrases like "water" and "Harry Potter" in British accents, to what they deemed to be British slang. BeatCraze eventually taught them some British slang, and a phrase which they could possibly use for their fans (which HISTORY had asked about). They learnt "init" "bruv" and the phrase for their fans was "wassup, bruv".

You can check out the BeatCraze interview here below:

http://beatcraze.tumblr.com/post/139815979129/160221-history-interview-in-london

As well as another interview by KultScene with HISTORY:

http://kultscene.com/history-so-talented-come-to-nyc/

After the interviews, we had a short break before the concert began, the members started getting ready in their concert outfits and makeup with the help of their stylist and makeup artists. Kat and Charlotte were getting ready at the merchandise stall whilst Tom and I got ready to follow the members for the start of the concert.

As we followed the members out, the members entered through a separate door whilst Tom and I walked to the front of the stage, standing in between the barriers holding back the fans and the stage. One of the benefits of working as a photographer is probably having the best view of the stage.

I was really happy to have the opportunity the be able to listen to all the songs I really wanted to listen to, that included all their main songs as well as additional songs from their album and their latest Japanese single.

HISTORY Concert Song List

(from what I can recall and reference - in no particular order):

Dreamer
D-Day
Easy/Torn Apart
Tomorrow
Why Not
Because I Love You (Dokyun's Solo)
What Am I To You
Psycho
Lost
Beautiful, My Girl
Might Just Die
Goodbye Please Stop (Yijeong Solo)
Nobody Nowhere
The Manual (Dokyun x Jaeho) (Eddy Kim cover)
Baby Hello (Sihyoung x Kyungil x Yijeong)
Liar
Ghost
Tell Me Love

Do comment below if I've missed any in my list! It would be great to have the full list aha!

Honestly, I've really enjoyed listening to HISTORY and knew of them since debut, however I never actually became a massive fan but after listening to them live I can't fault them and I feel like it has opened my eyes to a lot of their songs. Especially their album songs, I think my new favourites include: D-Day, Easy and Baby Hello. Personally, I also loved Dokyun and Jaeho's cover of Eddy Kim's The Manual aha.

You can view a slideshow of the photos I collected during the concert below:

I actually took over 1000 photos in total, and narrowed it down to just over 200 photos which I considered the best, I had to pick "Might Just Die" as the slideshow soundtrack - I literally can't seem to get it out of my head at the moment since 2 weeks ago aha!

Can't forget the selfie that the group took with the London audience, credits to the HISTORY Facebook page:

You can find me sitting in the front on the right by Sihyoung's hand aha...

I think the HISTORY talks were also incredibly interesting, from the talk of ideal types with some very awesome fan service - the hug between Yijeong and Kyungil was so cute omg... And we can't forget Jaeho being called out for being a casanova back in Korea aha!

HISTORY's Ideal Types

(from the London concert):

Dokyun: A nice girl with a pretty smile
Yijeong: The leader is my ideal type (referring to Kyungil)
Kyungil: I like girls... I like someone who likes me
Jaeho: I think British girls are pretty...
Sihyoung: I like girls who look good in denim jeans

After the concert ended, the merchandise group were incredibly busy, they managed to make over £2000 selling the t-shirts and posters. Well done team! Meanwhile, I proceeded to preparing for the Meet & Greet shoot, as the VIPs were getting ready to in groups of 10 to have their photograph taken with the group.

From hugs, to holding hands and gift exchanges, the fans seemed to have a great experience having their group pictures. Although it was very busy and we were limited for the time, the girls including me, Katy, Kat and Charlotte managed to handle the Meet & Greet session whilst Tom covered merchandise. I think the moment which scared me the most was the possibility of my camera running out of battery... Although it was very close to running out I was incredibly fortunate as my camera just survived till the end of the Meet & Greet.

The volunteers excluding Tom, had an opportunity to also take a picture with the group. It was a great privilege as the manager took a picture of the group with me, Kat, Charlotte and Katy. Everyone more or less got to stand next to their favourite members whether it was by coincidence or it was organised I'm not too sure myself aha, but it turned out great.
Here's a picture of us 4 with HISTORY:

After the Meet & Greet we went back downstairs towards the dressing rooms as we began getting ready to leave. Before we left, we had a few laughs here and there, at one point Yijeong was laughing at Charlotte laughing hysterically... Oh my! Kyungil managed to catch on to me and Kat making stereotypical British accents towards Charlotte which resulted in him laughing as well. And of course, we can't forget Kat's joke about it being past Charlotte's bedtime, and Charlotte freaking out over the time that she had to awkwardly ask Kyungil for the time on his phone aha!

Overall it was a great experience, the volunteers even managed to get a selfie each with Kyungil excluding myself. I don't think I could be more grateful for the opportunity, especially as an individual I managed to gain so much experience and develop many skills through this opportunity. Thank you so much to the promoters and Arpeggios Entertainment!

Thank you for reading, but don't miss out on a second exclusive with HISTORY coming soon! I hope you enjoyed reading my eventful concert experience with my friends and I hope you check out HISTORY if you haven't already! Catch you guys again soon!

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