Continued from THE COOL, QUIET “RAPPER” GIRL SITTING AT A CORNER…
Some background story before I go into talking about how I actually made an effort to know Taenggu deeper inside and completely changed my false first impressions of her. Back then, I used to like reading the entertainment section in the newspapers and there were a few times I saw some comments saying that Singapore audience were slow in warming up during concerts as compared to audiences from other countries. Meaning we were less enthusiastic? I felt a sense of indignity as well as disappointment with the artistes and the Singapore audience when I saw these comments in the articles. Was that really the case? Were we too reserved, too proud? Or could it be that we just expressed ourselves differently in a special way? How about my idols? Had they been to Singapore already? What did they think of the Singapore audience/fans?
I think it was in early 2011. By then, I was already very fond of SNSD and you could say, I sorta “jumped ship” from being a SuperJunior fan to becoming a SNSD fan. Out of curiosity, I did a search on YouTube for SNSD in Singapore and I realised they had visited Singapore for the first time in October 2010 to perform at a Korean Pop Night concert. It was a pity for me that I didn’t know about the concert because I wasn’t a fan yet at that time. So how did they find their Singapore fans? Were we really that bad? Were they receiving lots of love from us? With these questions in mind, I watched the fancams of their performances in that concert, trying to get some clues from their faces. Out of all the fancams that I had watched, the following two videos were the best, which captured everything perfectly from the sound, the performances, the artistes’ faces, everything that was going on onstage and even offstage (the audience’s cheers).
These two videos were actually the very first original videos that had gotten me fallen in love with the Singapore audience fans’ singing voices. I could even watch these videos over and over again every single day just to listen and admire these voices with my earphones. You might say, I was weird, but I just couldn’t help getting addicted to these voices because I could see how magical it was to SNSD when they were performing onstage too at that time. I actually published my detailed analysis of these performances in a post 2 years ago. You can read the rest of it here. I even went on to observe several performances from other artistes just to compare between Singapore audience’s voices and other countries’, which eventually inspired me to do audience-singing by end of 2011 and mind-singing (Or actually should I call it spiritual singing? That was when I was affected by schizophrenia) by 2013.
But anyway, my main point for this post today is more about Taenggu. Back then, I tried to observe and read each of SNSD members’ faces because I really wanted to understand why they looked so overwhelmed or stunned by us and enjoyed our singing so much. I wanted to know the secrets behind our magical singing voices so much. But as I read each of their faces, I found something particularly odd about Taenggu’s facial expressions. Even though all of them looked overwhelmed by our warm response, I seemed to find Taenggu looking particularly touched/teary to me throughout the performances. She looked kind of troubled, as if she had something she was keeping inside of her that she wanted to say to the fans. Then, it made me relate to what happened when she came to Singapore on a private holiday trip with her family just a few months ago (related post: MY NOT-SO-GOOD FIRST IMPRESSION OF TAENGGU). Especially between 8:26-8:29 in the first video, it was so clear to me from her expressions that she wanted to say that it wasn’t actually her first time to Singapore but she seemed awakward and she didn’t say it. I was actually a little disappointed about it at first too. Why she looked like she wanted to say something, but yet she didn’t say??
I thought about it carefully for a long time. Something at the back of my head seemed to tell me Taenggu wasn’t really how she looked on the surface to me. After analysing her situation rationally and logically, I felt that she might have wanted to say sorry, it was actually just a misunderstanding and asked fans not to worry about what happened. But at the same time, the MCs also didn’t mention about it too so I guessed she wasn’t in a position to talk about it too.
Then, I realised Taenggu was someone who had a similar personality with me too. She might have looked kind of expressionless and cold on the outside, which might easily give people the wrong first impressions, but she was really warm and soft-hearted inside, just like me. She actually didn’t have to feel so sorry towards the fans, but she still remembered it and kept it in her heart even a few months later. Suddenly, I began to see her in a different perspective. Even towards the end of 2011, I saw more proofs to me that she wasn’t that arrogant idol I thought she was, but she was really the opposite. She was just a 바보 (Pabo) fan of SONEs.
To be continued…