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Sunday, 26 June 2016

제일 좋아하는 케이펍그룹: 방탄소년단 (my favourite Kpop group)

Wow! New post so soon? What happened?

I have some time right now and since I shifted my focus to research instead of medical, I've been breathing a little easier, not because it's going to be a simple feat to get into any of the research-oriented colleges but because it feels like a load off my chest to finally have made the decision to drop medical... :)
So now I allow myself to spend a bit more time on things other than studying.
It's not like when I still wanted to do medical I didn't do other things at all, but then, it was a sad, guilt-ridden affair. Now, if I say "Okay, I'm gonna listen to some music and write a blog post for the next hour" then I do without thinking too much about the studies I could be completing in that time.

YES I remember the sneak preview I gave last time of this time's post.
So without any further ado....

방탄소년단 항상 사랑한다!!

Yep. I love BTS.
They are by far my favorite kpop group for many reasons:-

1. They are so close! They are more like a family than anything else and have always had each other's back, right from their trainee days. I love the amount of respect the 막내 (younger) line has for their 형 (older) line and at the same time they're not afraid to express their feelings.

2. They are so talented! I'll talk about this individually for each member as well but as a team, they are SO talented.

3. Their song lyrics are incredible! Many of their songs are extremely relevant to the youth, have really beautiful lyrics and are super catchy. Other songs are just fun to jam to and the choruses are fun to sing. (because the raps are too damn fast haha)

4. Their personalities are so diverse and they're all crazy in their own way which I love. They have their quirks, strange talents and catchphrases (infires ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ) and once you know more about them, you somewhat feel a lot closer to them, as if you are in on their inside jokes.

5. They love their fans. They are always thinking about how to make a good performance, involve the audience, make it entertaining; and last but definitely not least, they practice SO MUCH. They work really hard on their choreography and are always pledging to work harder. While one may say, "obviously they have to love their fans... Without the fans, they wouldn't be so famous!" Yes, but it's a common occurrence for idols to become famous and get airs about it. BTS have remained ever so humble about their fame.

6. They're all so pretty ahhhhhh

Okay I could go on for a while but I'll talk about the members individually now... :)
Let's go age wise shall we? (oldest to youngest)

1. 김석진 (Jin)
 
Jin, is truly the mom of the group. This however is not a derogatory profiling. He is caring and always takes care of the younger members. (I love 엄마 진 and 정국이 's relationship... Especially in the new Eat Jin which was both hilarious and awkward at the same time ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ) His love of food is unbeatably adorable and makes me happy because eating is one my favorite things to do haha :p He is the visual of the group (not wrongly so) and is so cute and fluffy :p
A lot of people brush over this, but Jin has an amazing voice! In my opinion, his voice is more suited to softer melodies and ballads. If you listen to the live version of I Need You (I'm not sure where it was... It was some radio broadcast that BTS did) and his cover of 난 너를 사랑해 and 엄마, it's obvious that Jin has a soft voice that's brimming with emotion.
I also love his awkwardness ^^
2. 민윤기 (Suga)



















Suga is the coolest and I absolutely love how he is 900% done with everybody, 900% of the time :D
I love the weird things he says, how he can literally sleep anytime, anywhere and his devotion to the Army. He is ridiculously hard-working. He spends a lot of his time composing songs, writing lyrics, thinking of melodies and working with Rapmon. He helps produce many of their songs and that is actually quite unique because many groups have other people write their songs for them don't participate in production at all. He's very creative and actually wants to get through to people with his lyrics.

3. 정호석 (J-Hope)

















Hobiieeee ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ He is an actual ray of sunshine :D He is the hyper, funny and loud member or BTS who's not afraid to express himself. Of course, he's not carefree all the time and can be serious and sincere too. I love that side of him too because it clearly reflects that he is older and loves what he does. He is so passionate about dance and is freaking FANTASTIC at dance. All his solos ever and practice sessions are SO good. Even though he was not originally a rapper, he kills that role too<3  I am completely in love with his rap part in Save Me. His voice is so deep and there is so much fluidity in how he raps. I also love how excited he (and Suga) was in Satoori Rap. Go J-Hoooooorse

4. 김남준 (Rapmon)



















Where do I start with this dude's talent? Let's start by saying that he fulfills his role as leader very very efficiently. He is tactful, chill (about his crazy younger members) and good at representing them overall. He, like Suga, spends a lot of time writing raps and trying to get a message out through his lyrics (which are great). He is SO hardworking AGH. He managed to learn english for god's sake and is now almost fluent! Initially, in his trainee days, he was not a dancer. He didn't like dancing much and was not good at it all. But after (obviously) hours and hours of practice he freaking ROCKS the difficult choreos. Apart from all this, he is really smart (becomes obvious even you watch half an episode of Problematic Men tbh haha), raps like an actual god and can sing too (listen to 알아요 by him and kookie). I also love his pervert moments 변태 변태 ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ

5. 박지민 (Jimin)



















"Jimin, you go not jams"
Ahem I beg differ dear sir, but Jimin has ALL THE JAMS :p He is such a fantastic dancer. His high notes while singing are on point and his inability to do aegyo is so endearing. His personality is like that of the mischievous cousin who will come over to your house and hide your socks. He loves to fool around and bug the older members and it's really cute. I also love how he relentlessly tries to cheer up kookie whenever he feels down. I love his little monologues in Busan Satoori and uncontrollable laughter agh drool. He practices like a maniac so that he doesn't make mistakes in performances. He seriously slays all their choreos :O I also love his and Hobi's Yaja time dialogues and how in the end, he will always apologize and respect his hyung:)
 100% 잼들이 다 있습니다 ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ

6. 김태형 (V)



















Our V from the star planet. (Btw I know that he doesn't like that, but he ain't gonna read this)
Before saying anything else, let me just mention that this guy has the MOST SOULFUL VOICE EVER. His voice has some absolutely insane kind of magic in it. It's deep and  fulfilling and makes me want to lie on the floor and contemplate my existence. When he sang 아나줘 with Hobi, I nearly did that tbh :p Even though he is not a part of the 'dance line' he is pretty fabulous at random dance and he should totally be counted as a part of it. He's so good at Japanese wow. Also his love of 노래방 (karaoke) is so cute. He can rap too wtf. He adores kids and dogs and does weird awkward things ahhh I can't. I love how all the members are totally cool with him being weird (like blowing out the candle too early in the recent Eat Jin hahaha). Lastly, his effin bromance with kookie!!!!! *dies* my little gay heart can't deal with it you understand ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ

7. 전정국 (Jungkook)


















He is the craziest, most multi-talented 막내 (youngest) ever. He slays dancing, singing, rapping, drawing, acting, sports (holy eff is he strong and so freaking fast) and being weird. People joke about how he sucks at math and english and stuff, but in my opinion, if he was actually focused on academics, he would perform well. He just has that competitive, conquer-all attitude. (Btw I'm not saying it's necessary for everyone to excel in academics, I'm just defending this child's abilities okay haha). He's that quiet kid that is actually really weird (in a good way). I love his song covers and karaoke sessions so much, ugh his voice is a gift to humanity. There's so much one can say about this boy; from him teasing his hyungs but ultimately always being respectful and caring to being scared of girls ㅋㅋㅋㅋ. He's so caring! I have a ridiculous amount of affection built up for this dude.

And that's it!
Man that took a lot of time.
I had to use a Korean web-keyboard and copy paste my sentences :)
I hope this fangirling was accurate :p
I really liked doing this though! :) I've never written such a long post entirely devoted to a band, group etc. It was fun scouring my mind for ways to express how much I admire this group :)

Crap it's so late! I gotta go eat lunch...

Alvida,
안녕,
Squish.





Friday, 17 June 2016

of new interests and plans

It's kind of worrying that the last time I wrote a blog post, it was christmas. last year.
It's not christmas 2015 anymore.
In fact it's not 2015 anymore either.
So happy new year?

I'm sorry *inserts slo-mo gif of me being crushed by the burden of studying and the Indian education system so that you forgive my complete absence*  

Anyway, so I want to jump in and a give a quick update, before I go into other things:

So you know how I was very passionate about becoming a surgeon? I was completely set on the idea of going to medical college. However, recently, this entire idea kind of changed.
I am still very interested in biology and find human health and diseases fascinating. But not fascinating enough to make it my profession. I feel like treating real people and having a 24 hr job is not really my cup of chai (tea). And the medical field, barring the occasional excitement, doesn't altogether sound that exciting anymore? I don't know why this change took place in me, but now I am focusing on research more than medicine. I don't know what kind of research, but most probably in some field of biology. I love knowing one particular thing in a great deal of  detail and knowing everything there is to know about a particular thing, so research is right up my lane.

I love the idea of becoming an experimental researcher and working in a lab. I know that life is not going to be some sort of dream with new things to discover and insane scientific breakthroughs everyday, but I feel that it will probably be more suited to how I like to live and my interests. By that I mean that I'll get a lot more time to do the things I like, outside of science, like music, dance, language studies, reading, writing, art blah blah blah

Okay! So that's that haha

Now other cooler things.................. ;)

I got a lot more into kpop!
Before, I was a lowkey fan, listening to some songs here and there, not really caring that much about the band members and more focused on just exploring a different type of  music.
But I began watching a few interviews around mid last year, and next thing you know, I'm a HIGH KEY FAN. Okay no haha not saesang or anything :D
But I really like certain groups about whom I'll gush later :p

I had always liked how the Korean language sounded. I liked the speed of speech (sometimes a bit overwhelmingly fast) and I liked the few Korean words I knew at the time. I had also read that the Korean language was one of the most well-structured languages with a completely phonetic script (which I also liked the look of :p)
So I decided to give learning a bit. Just some basic conversational stuff and some other kpop-related words to start with.
I started off learning how to read Korean and believe it or not, I managed to pick it up in 2 days.
DISCLAIMER: This is not me boasting about my fantastic skills at language, but in fact marveling at the logical and beautifully crafted Korean script. It seriously so much fun

Obviously, at the start I was reading very slowly and sounding out words like a one-year-old. But as time passed I learned more words and grammar points and became a lot faster at reading with practice.
Now I don't know how but I managed to pick up quite a lot of Korean and now can understand quite a bit! I sometimes even turn the subtitles off on some interview videos and stuff and listen hard and often understand the context of what they're saying!  It's so exciting! I love learning this language so much it makes me want to explode :D

I wish I could devote more time to it (I can only give a bit of time per week because of all the study pressure) because I feel like with more time, I could get a hang of it!
And when it comes to pronunciation and speaking, it's actually not that hard for me because  I already speak two Indian languages (Hindi and Bengali) and am used to a lot of the consonant and vowel sounds in Korean (and with correct enunciation, "reul" will come eventually too hehe). Knowing Hindi is especially helpful as it has a very wide range of sounds and has a similar grammatical sentence structure to Korean. So when I try forming correct sentences in Korean, sometimes I think of it in Hindi first :D

It would be very wrong of me to not credit the people who are helping me study Korean and that's Talk To Me In Korean.com !! (I love them so much)
They post videos on YouTube and have a site with pdfs and so many other helpful things. They also have a store where one can purchase text books but unfortunately, I haven't been able to buy anything as of now... Maybe some day :)

I know that actually being fluent in a language while learning from the internet is virtually impossible, but I believe that by listening and practicing a lot, I can get faster at it and improve my vocabulary.

I'm really proud of the progress that I've made in the short time I've been learning and I hope that when I go to Korea on vacation (after entrance exam season next year, I am going FOR SURE), I will be a lot better at conversation and comprehension.
I'm super excited about my language journey and once I'm out of this competitive-exam whirlpool, I'll definitely spend a lot of time on language-learning.

Oh heck I've babbled a lot today... :)
Okay, I have to go now

But before I go I'll give a picture-hint of the topic of next time's blog post....






Alvida,
Annyeong,

Squish.