Birthday 2.0

This is my second birthday post, I've been pretty lucky over the past couple of weeks and recieved three more birthday packages/presents.

First of all from Joseph - some Hello Kitty sicking plasters and a CD of my favourite Korean band "Go Go Star".

Next my friend Jess from Wellington sent me a big package of red things for my birthday (red is my favourite colour). Here's my favourite red things - red accessories! A set of flower earrings, a chunky heart shaped necklace and a cute lady bug bracelet that Jess made for me (handmade gifts are my favourite).
She also bought me a sarong from her trip to Rarotonga - which is going to be perfect for my trip to Halong Bay (near Hanoi).
Finally a package from London from Conor and Sue - they sent me so many great things but here's a few of my favourites. A skull CD case, cute pens and cutie cutie panda key covers.
They also sent three - that's right! three! t-shirts. One for Rich and two for me. This is my favourite one - don't call me girly!!

Football World Cup madness!

The whole world seems to be in the grips of world cup madness right now! I'm obviously not at home in New Zealand but I imagine Wellington would have been crazy a couple of nights ago when we drew 1-1 with Slovenia. Things were certainly a little crazy in our little studio apartment and it's only the two of us.

According to my American friends, this means New Zealand won, I'm willing to accept this logic. Especially seen as it was out first world cup goal - ever!

But I'm sure no matter how crazy New Zealand is with football fever it's no match for South Korea. It seems here that people really love their football - Rich and I watched the first South Korea world cup match in a park in Gyeonju last weekend, South Korea won 2-0 to Greece and the crowd went wild. Every goal was followed by wild chants of "Dae Han Min Guk" and dancing.My kids have all gone totally football mad too, well, I should say more football mad than usual. Most of the journal entries I recieve at the moment read like this one.
Finally, there are so many K-pop football themed songs out at the moment, like this one called Kara. K-pop is horrible at the best of times and the World Cup has not provided enough inspiration to create a decent song.
Finally is this little video, it's sponsored by SK Telecom and meant to inspire Korean's to "Dream Again" - I think it's pretty awesome.

Green Plugged Music Festival

Last Friday it was Budda's Birthday and our friend Joseph suggested that we all go along to the Green Plugged music festival in Seoul, we didn't really know many of the bands but hadn't been to a music festival in a long time so figured we should go and check it out.

The music festival was held in Seoul in a big park that used to be a golf course.

When we first arrived at the festival, we came across the TV stall and Val, Rich and I all fell in love with the festival t-shirts. So we all bought one!
Here's a photo of our posse for the day (well actually Joseph and Val's friend Dana joined us later in the day so there were five of us).
Here's a few photo's from earlier in the day, the first band is called Eloise, we have seen them before in Hongdae and they remind me of a Korean version of The Strokes. The second band is called "Cheesy Stereo" (I think).

In the photo's you can see a bunny on a stick - I kept seeing the girl with the bunny on the stick all day. I think the bunny was used to ensure that a group of friends didn't lose each other, or maybe it was actually a tour group. Who knows but nobody rocks like bunny on a stick!

There was also an information area, which had all sorts of tents with interesting things. For a while we considered zorbing, but the zorbing meant being pushed around some rather flat ground rather than being pushed down a big hill like in Rotorua so we decided against it. It just seemed kind of lame.

Just for fun, here's one of the many Konglish t-shirts of the day, we actually seen this couple again later and they both had this t-shirt on - couple set!After lunch, we went to check out a band called "GoGo Star" at Joseph's suggestion. The band had the most amazing show! The lead singer came out wearing black angel wings and part way through the song he was able to make the whole crowd sit down and then jump back up again on his command. The keyboard player also had an amazing KISS inspired look going on. It was the best show I've seen in forever.


Here's one of their songs "Angry Puppet Show" - I'm hoping we will make it to one of their shows in Hongdae this weekend.


I nearly forgot to say, for lunch we had burrito's (which was kind of unexpected). Here's a view of Seoul taken near where we had lunch and a cocktail robot just for fun.

Later on Rich and I decided to have a look at some of the stalls, the festival had an environmental message so there was some art work made from recycled items. I really liked the squid coke and beer can creation. There was also a merchandise stand, I really wish I bought a GoGo Star t-shirt.



Also, here's a random couple photo taken at some point in the day! Another great show we saw was W&Whale, Joseph really loves this band (he even got Whale's autograph during the festival). The show was really great and I'd really like to see these guys again They also did covers of Beyonce's "All the single ladies" and the Ting Ting's "Shut up and let me go". It was awesome. Bunny on a stick was at their show as well, nobody rocks like bunny on a stick!





Here's one of the W&Whale song's I really like, it's called R.P.G (rock and pop generation). Whale (the female lead singer) is pretty cool, but I have no idea why she chose Whale for her stage name!

Our final band of the night was Cuba, I couldn't find any video's of them online. I'm not sure if I like the lead singer in this band much but the lead guitarist is amazing!