kpop fans will be familiar with the term fansign - it's an event during a kpop group's song promotion where they meet and talk to fans. back in 2019 when i was in Korea, my sister attended Noir's fansign (Doom Doom era) and i went to OnlyOneOf's fansign (Savanna era) like, six hours before my flight back to Singapore. it was my first fansign experience and i was so awkward because my Korean was bad and also maybe because i was slightly worried that i might miss my flight back, but the members were really really really nice and friendly so i was relieved.

because of covid-19, face-to-face fansign activities were halted and some have moved online, allowing overseas fans to participate as well. having the event online has its advantages and disadvantages such as... poor connection issues. while some groups are having both face-to-face and video call fansigns, the number of participants for the video call fansigns have decreased, which makes it more competitive for fans to participate. 

i was lucky to have had the chance to join a couple of video call fansigns with my favourite groups - onlyoneof, e'last, ntx and d-crunch. for the members whom i wrote letters to on the fancafe, they remembered and mentioned it which made me speechless even though i prepared a script!! for me, i could never be fully prepared for video call fansign because even though i would have a script with me, sometimes they reply something that just.... throws me off, and this really tests my korean and reaction skills not gonna lie. but they were pleasant experiences to me, to be able to meet them despite the circumstance and convey what i wanted to tell them before. 

having had the chance to meet onlyoneof in person prior to the video call fansign, and making ourselves known to them as the crazy loud fans with our hand-made boards, some of the members recognised me even though it had been more than year. i think writing to them almost on the daily on fancafe helped a little bit too. my time with jisung was the funniest - i asked him to sing the adlib of timeleap and also showed him a picture of my favourite meme expression of his. he was also one of the easiest member to talk to imo. sungho, taeyeob and kyubin were also easy to communicate with! wa now i miss onlyoneof so much. 

when i say the members say something that throw you off, i mean it with the members of e'last. prior to meeting them, i had been actively writing letters to rano, baekgyeul and seungyeop. the connection for my first call with rano was sooOoOOoO bad i could almost cry because he was my favourite member... but he said that he read the fancafe letters and even though the connection sucked, his p.s. was related to what i told him. :'-) i did not expect baekgyeul to remember anything about me to be honest, because i did not write as many letters to him as i did for rano and seungyeop. so i was about to talk to him about something from my script and then he asked me, "is your fancafe name XXX?" i was in a state of shock afterwards and i didn't know what to say so i obviously clowned myself in front of him. as for seungyeop, he had commented on one of my comments on fancafe a few days before the event, and when i introduced myself, he was like "댓글" and i was like how do you even remember (i obviously did not tell him that) but i took some time to calm myself down and told him what i wanted to tell him. for my second meeting with them, i did not expect them to remember me even though it was a week apart, because it was my chinese name in the name list... except seungyeop called my english name after i greeted him so i was like ????? but nonetheless, the members were really really friendly! yejun asked if i was going to join the fansign for the next day, i embarrassed myself in front of wonhyuk singing because of you,, yes that happened.

before meeting ntx, they read one of my fancafe letters on vlive before, the one where i made a board for one of the concerts they had. i was really lucky then, because they were receiving more than 50 letters a day because of an event, and the fact that they saw mine!!! so when i met them for the first time, i had the board with me and the members who did the vlive recognised it! some even started off the conversation talking about the board so that's how we started talking. shout out to hyeongjin because he is super easy to talk to, and he even knows that i tuned in to broadcasts while i was at my part time job.. (yikes). yunhyeok was also one of the members who was easy to talk to, even though i was kinda shocked because of his strong satoori and the way he spoke in informal language!!! the second time i met them, some of them got me confused with my sister, who had an earlier number than me, so she had to explain to them that previously it was me and this is her first time, as some of the members recognised the board again, even though the date between the two fansigns were almost a month apart. it was a good time with the kids, jiseong and jaemin talked a lot more compared to the first time so :'-) the second time too, we showed some of them a short dance cover and can i just say seongwon!!! i don't know how he joined the dots but even before i could say hi to him, he talked about the choco ice cream dance cover that my sister showed him like 30 minutes ago, with more than 10 people in between us, ok????? 

d-crunch really had my heart this comeback with my name, a song different from their normal hip hop vibe and all, but i loved it. we saw their are you ready stages at music shows back in 2019, but they were really famous then, so we were like okay we'll see how this goes. my name brought me into their fancafe and frequent letters to some members, and a short dance cover to sangchan the day before the fansign. but the thing is,, hyun oh was the one who told me that he saw a video and i was like video and he was like "you dancing my name" so i was in total shock (my sister too) because this meant that what i planned to do was ruined. kidding. the members were really nice to talk too, even though there were some connection problems and they couldn't hear me well. but can we just say that when i told wook and hyunho that we are the same age, we immediately became friends. :'-) 

meeting xiwoo! since november 2020, my sister had been constantly meeting xiwoo and i would most of the times be beside her (helping her with the translations, prompting her etc). there was once that i had dance practice and xiwoo asked her where was i! xiwoo has such a nice soul and personality, he is so easy to talk to and i am actually really thankful for that because it was my first time. at least we could talk in english so things went quite ok! when i said hi nice to meet you, he was like, i actually know who you are and you look so alike. we had a great conversation going because i was just talking about dance with him! xiwoo,, is so famous my sister does not know when she will be able to meet him again. 

with 사랑했다 and 밤샜다, i wanted to meet bae173 and ghost9 as well but,, i guess 지금 시간이 안 맞을 것 같아. 다음에 만날 수 있으면 좋겠어! 

this is a really short and brief and messy experience of me meeting a few of my favourite groups and i can't believe i'm saying this but i thank covid-19 for this experience.