After witnessing first hand the beauty and aura of Astro’s Cha Eun Woo by spotting him at KBS on 16 December 2016, I was even more desperate to try to catch Astro during their 고백 (Confession) campaign during my super short trip of about 4.5 days in Seoul (13 – 18 December 2016).

There wasn’t any pre-recording during the time I was in Seoul and I wasn’t able to make it for all the music live shows that Astro were appearing on so I was starting to despair as I only had 1 more full day in Seoul on 17 December 2016 before I flew back to Singapore on 18 December 2016.

Lady Luck must have felt pity for me because Fantagio announced that there would be a mini fan meeting before the pre-recording for Music Core on 17 December 2016!! And during the mini fan meeting, Astro would be distributing hot drinks and more!!

I screamed when I saw the announcement. You can ask @rainedictator about it. LOL.

My check-in time for the mini fan meeting was 7.30 am KST and since I had to wake up early the next day, I tried to sleep early. However, I could barely sleep that night. I woke up every 2 hours or so and by 5.00 am KST, I gave up and started to get ready to head over to Digital Media City for the mini fan meeting.

I arrived at Gaon Munhwa Park around 7.20 am KST and there were already hundreds of fans there. It was supposed to be warmer that day but it was still below 0ºC that morning. It was so damn cold it’s not funny at all. At times like this, I question my choices in life: why am I doing this?

At around 8.40 am KST, I finally got my number for entry into the Music Core pre-recording. This number was precious as it determined my position in the line to receive the hot drink from the Astro boys as well.

The coffee truck had arrived by then as well. This is all too exciting!! This would be my view for the mini fan meeting:

It wasn’t fantastic but I would be able to still see the boys just fine.

The kind staff at Fantagio had prepared heat packs for everyone. In fact, they insisted that every fan take one heat pack as we sat down to await the start of the mini fan meeting.

In the 15~20 minutes or so that I saw on the frozen floor, my butt and legs froze as well. I couldn’t feel my butt and my legs after a while and I asked myself again, “why am I doing this?”

Then, promptly at 9.00 am KST, I got my answer:

The boys of Astro arrived and within seconds, I totally forgot about the lower half of my body. All the cold and misery didn’t matter any more because the boys of Astro are extremely adorable and very funny and entertaining!!

I forgot to bring a proper camera on this trip to Seoul and I was kicking myself over all the awesome photos I could have taken to properly do justice to the Astro boys. Fortunately, @rainedictator reminded me that my video recorder was with her and she suggested that I use it coz it was better than nothing.

So yeah, here are the videos that I recorded of the mini fan meeting. It’s exactly my view and you can literally see how much I was shaking from the cold while filming parts of the mini fan meeting.

From this fan meeting, my bias ranking of Astro was solidified. The boys rank like this now:

1. Cha Eun Woo
2. Jinjin
3. MJ
4. Moon Bin
5. Yoon San Ha
6. Rocky

Hahaha. Before the mini fan meeting, the boys ranked like this:

1. Cha Eun Woo
2. Jinjin
3. Moon Bin
4. Rocky
5. MJ
6. Yoon San Ha

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that some of the ranking of the members went down because they left me a bad impression or anything like that. It’s more like after I met them, my impression of the members changed (in a good way) such that some of them they shot up my bias ranking list and therefore is the bias wrecker; ie MJ.

I don’t think I need to repeat how perfect Cha Eun Woo is. LOL. I should share a bit more about what the other members are like right after I got the hot drink and sweets from them.

In the order of how the boys were standing to meet the fans:

Moon Bin was the first member to greet the fans and he distributed the sweets and heat pack. He is incredibly cute and has a lot of natural aegyo. If you thought that Yoon San Ha was the cutest member, you are wrong. Moon Bin is the cute one.

Rocky is incredibly sweet, shy and normal. LOL. Normal as in like the boy next door. The other members are loud and noisy but Rocky is like a rock, the sensible, quiet and gentlemanly one. During the initial introductions, the first thing Rocky said was, “Have you guys eaten? What time did you guys arrive this morning?”

Jinjin is the real clown and MVP of the group. He is incredibly hilarious and witty. As the leader of the group, he was really doing a really fantastic job of running the entire show while controlling the other members and making sure the planned schedule/activities of the fan meeting was followed. Also, I didn’t realise how tiny Jinjin was until I saw Astro as a whole in person for the first time.

Yoon San Ha gave out the hot drinks and his sincerity while greeting the fans is highly commendable! He is also really sweet and kind as well despite being very competitive during the games. As the maknae, he was also picked on a lot by the older members. Hahaha.

Cha Eun Woo is just perfect and very sharp as well. He saw how I was walking strangely towards him and he looked at me with so much concern with his beautiful eyes. I died a little then. I remember shaking his warm hands as he said, “감사합니다. (Thank you for coming.)” In the “I’m so cold and not really thinking” state that I was in, I just said, “Thank you.” in English and Eun Woo then said, “Thank you.” again in English to me. His baritone voice is just lush.

MJ is a surprise. I thought he was the clown in Astro but he was surprisingly more mature than he appears to be in person. He was also the one who left me with the deepest impression when I shook his warm hands. By then, I wasn’t thinking and I don’t really know what I was doing (or was it the Cha Eun Woo effect? Hahaha). I can’t remember what happened but I remember how MJ did not let go of my hand. We had to keep moving but MJ kept holding on to my hand and staring into my eyes trying to tell me something. He must have realised that I am a foreigner and decided that looking deep into my eyes would be a more effective form of communication than saying something in Korean…? LOL. I don’t know.

Anyway, the mini fan meeting lasted for about 1.5 hours. I was really surprised by the duration of the event to be honest. I thought mini fan meeting is like 20~30 minutes or something like that; coz that’s about how long the Bigstar one lasted.

After the mini fan meeting ended at around 10.35 am KST, we had to go back to MBC to get ready to enter the studio for the Music Core pre-recording. Since I was #238, I didn’t get to stand in front of the stage and i was sitting at the back instead.

However, it wasn’t a bad thing because we went in a bit earlier and managed to watch the SF9 pre-recording as well. And just before SF9 started their actual recording, Yoon San Ha popped his head out and waved to us at the seats. Cha Eun Woo (I think, it was quite dark) popped his head out and waved as well. Those precious boys.

So SF9 and Astro just did one camera test and recorded the actual performance. You can watch the result of the performance in the video above. The boys were clearly tired but they sure did bring it with their energy level when the music started. It is always such a joy to watch them perform live.

Can’t wait to see the boys and watch them perform live again! At this point in writing, I’m still about 70% sure that I’m going to the Bangkok show on 12 February 2017 but I’m 100% going for the show in Singapore! I thought I might have to give Astro in Singapore a miss because I’m going to watch Adele in Melbourne but I don’t think I need to now…? Here’s hoping but regardless, save your ang bao money people!!