It's my first time purchasing a VIP equivalent ticket which happens to be a standing zone. I spent RM1,060 on a Soundcheck ticket (the most expensive ticket) during pre-sale and tbh, I wouldn't have chosen this ticket if it weren't for the venue.
2019 PENTAGON World Tour PRISM in Singapore
2 Nov 2019
6 pm
The Star Theatre
A fun blog post coming thru! This time will be about DIY... yes, time to get a lil crafty.
So, during the recent iKON CONTINUE Tour in KL I made a little "찬빈" (read: Chanbin) banner to support my ultimate ship in iKON a.k.a my biases - Hanbin and Chanwoo. Lowkey hoped I would get noticed hoho.
So if that was what you wanted too, you are in for a treat cos Imma show you exactly how to do so.
First up, basic supplies. For this DIY you would need;
1. A board
2. Battery-operated LED lights
3. Hole puncher
4. Pen
5. Paper
6. Paint & brushes
7. Hot glue gun
8. Tape
9. AA batteries
For the board, I personally just use a cardboard. Another option you could try is to find a foam board (that was my initial plan before I decided to be extra frugal). Basically find something that can easily poke through but also firm enough to hold the batteries that will later be attached to the board.
You can get the LED lights for around RM20 online (including shipping). I got mine from Shopee here. Placed an order on Friday and received it by Tuesday, so expect at least 3 working days if you are buying online. However, I later found out that Daiso is also selling it. They have white, yellow and colourful light that comes in sets of 10 LEDs.
The one I use:
- 50 LEDs to make up 6 characters
- white light
Be sure to get the BATTERY-OPERATED ones and not the plug!!
Moving on with the steps.
Step 1
Grab a piece of paper and draw out the characters. Hangeul was pretty easy as it didn't take up much space horizontally. Yours might differ based on your writing and the wording.
I write out free-handedly first and later traced it back with a ruler. You can even print out the wordings if you want to save time. Just be sure to do a proper size estimation to suit your need.
Step 2
Cut the board according to your liking. Check with the concert organiser on the size of banner that they allow to bring in. Mine was around A3 a.k.a the size of two A4 papers.
Step 3
Cut the characters and arrange them on the board.
Step 4
Place a marking for where the bulbs are gonna go. I suggest you roughly sketch it out first before buying the LEDs, so you would have a better idea when it comes to this step. Think of how many LEDs are exactly needed. Be sure that the LEDs form the letters, emphasis on edges rather than straight lines.
Step 5
Punch holes. I suggest punching hole in them before you actually glue the letters. I made a mistake of gluing them on the board first and tried poking them using a pen directly. I almost ruin the paper when I tried pushing through the LED.
Once you punched all the holes, you may poke the holes using a pen - preferably ball pen, to insert the LEDs.
Step 6
After poking through all the holes, push in all the LEDs through them one by one. It shall then look like this.
As you can see, the LEDs aren't really staying in place.
Step 7
So the next step is to use a hot glue gun to secure them into place. Hold the stems straight up while doing this to ensure they are not bended. Be careful when using a hot glue gun and make sure the glue is dry before moving on to the next bulb.
After doing this, you can group the wires and tape them together so they won't look so messy. You could later tape the battery box behind the board too.
Step 8
We are almost done! You obviously wouldn't want your banner to look so plain right? So the last step is to paint them. I painted my base black and the papers half red, half white. I needed to paint them as I didn't exactly erase the pencil traces. Not that anyone notices, but oh well.
As you can see, I also painted half of the LED with red paint to match with the paper. I used a mere watercolour and had to repaint them a couple of times. I also used a red sharpie, though it didn't help much. It would be better to get a red LED from the start but using a white light definitely gave me an option to do this and undo it. Notice the 'ㅂ' having some leftover paint due to my attempt on painting them red too, before realising it was better off white lol.
Result
Here is the result! I am very happy with how it turned out. It's very simple but it really stands out and definitely met my expectation. It was also really fun to make. Maybe bcos I was also very excited for the concert hehe.
Extra tips
It gets hot outside of the venue and I noticed the banner was practically burning from it. I suggest to keep it wrap with a towel or keep it inside a cooler bag. I literally saw someone making the banner out of a styrofoam box, which practically acted as an insulator during the hot day. What a genius! But do whatever is convenient for you. Mine literally was left burning with the battery already placed inside, and no harm was done. So be like me and take risk or be smarter and think of a way...
I hope this has been helpful for any of you who is also interested on making this for your upcoming concert. Truly hope you will get noticed too. Chanwoo noticed my banner and waved my way during the concert (might not be at me also though, but that was not the point) so hope you will have fun with it as much as it was for me. All the best!!
Dropping by,
Melynn.
It has been a week since iKON and WINNER set foot in Malaysia and I have been missing them since. It is technically my third K-pop concert and the second group I've witnessed with my own pupils. Yet I still cannot tell if I was witnessing them live or just me jamming to them through the screens on my phone. I have a hard time differentiating that. Maybe because concert big screen exists hmm.
So I went to TWO concerts last weekend - iKON and WINNER's. I bought the best seating zone and got rockzone respectively. Honestly, I couldn't afford both concert tix and I was an iKONIC more than I am an INCLE so I just had to pay and secure my tix for iKON's #priority.
But I couldn't ignore how much I love WINNER's music too. Though I didn't really watch much of their variety shows or music videos, I listened to their EVERYD4Y album A LOT. Sampai tak tengok lyric pon dah hafal and that's when I know I wanna see them live too. I had faith I'm gonna go for it.
Prior to the concert, Ka Mun and I have been trying our lucks for WINNER concert tix by joining most, if not all, giveaway contests organized by their sponsors. One thing I thanked the organiser - Macpiepro for is the courtesy for them to list down the sponsors for each concert for us. That made our contest search much more easier. TIPS: Follow the sponsors' social medias like FB and Instagram. They will usually post contests there few weeks before the concert!
All the contests that we joined are usually sharing posts but some do asked us to buy something. Like for OXY, they wanted us to purchase their product (no min value) and upload our receipts. Another one by epop Malay, they wanted us to get the entry form from their magazine. So those are basically the only ones I paid for. Others are like dining at Manhattan Fish Market a minimum of RM60 in a single receipt. Well, you get the idea.
Ka Mun won the OXY but she won only ONE blue zone tickets. FYI, blue zone is the cheapest zone. But since that was one of the contests which announced the winners early, we still had chance to try other latest contests. In the end we both won a pair from the media partner - Oh Hangat. There were like 20 winners listed and so Ka Mun and I expected either blue zone or green zone but to our surprise, they gave us TWO Inner Circle Zone (a.k.a the rockzone a.k.a the most expensive zone a.k.a the least expected one) each! We knew then... our lucks were the best for that week. They made the announcement on the day Ka Mun and I were at the event with BTOB's Sungjae pulak tu maigod.
About the event, let's just say we got lucky too. Tapi bad news for me, I accidentally deleted all of the pics and recordings that I took that day. Sob sob.
I ain't gonna say how the concert went, it was self-explanatory by looking at my posts on IG. But for the unpopular opinion, this concert is actually pretty well-organized. The security was okay. Quite fussy on the bag check procedure but it wasn't a major bummer. They almost took away my dad's binoculars that I brought with me, but thank God the chief security guy let me go. Almost had a verbal fight with one of them lol.
It didn't rain for both days when it's during the rainy seasons. Miracle or what?
I could enjoy the concert more because the place was small. They performed at Stadium Malawati, Shah Alam. I love small venues tbh. I could see the idols closer in real life. I got a lot of freebies for iKON since we came early. But for WINNER, we were late.
 |
| Red Zone view |
 |
| Inner Circle view |
The concert tickets had 50% off for Mcalls users so it was the only reason we could afford the best seating zone (after reselling our green zone tix). Glad we weren't tamak at first and get the more expensive zones because if not we would've had a harder time selling them off and getting our money worth.
One of my concerns when going to a K-pop concert is the fact that we will have communication barrier during the ments, but little did I know iKON and WINNER didn't even need to use a translator! They spoke English so fluently with each other and even made jokes in a language I COULD ACTUALLY UNDERSTAND. Love that!
iKON didn't talk much about Malaysian food or culture but they made it special by performing their latest songs! WINNER, on the other hand, talked about Malaysian food that they ordered on room service and both of them completes everything that I needed to hear.
I made an LED banner for "Chanbin" and pretty sure the boys saw it. I saw Chanwoo waving at my way and I had it recorded (the quality was bad though).
Last but not least, this all happened during my birthday weekend and everything became 100X more memorable. My close friends gave me presents and I got to celebrate it with my family after not being home for more than a month and had dinner at Seoul Garden. Ikha gave me a new purse and belanja me Big Bowl Ice (my first time!), Arep and Yumi gave me a drawing of me lol (#ilookedfat), Ka Mun gave me the official keychain merch of B.I (#merchareexpensive) and bought another B.I banner, Zarep gave me a Spongebob cap, Bad gave me a blue-striped socks and BTOB Sungjae gave me a BTOB album signed by him ON THE BIRTHDAY itself. Oh and Idris sang me a happy birthday song using Zarep's phone like they did for me last year... tak sempat rakam lagi sekali huhu.
Anyhow,
BEST. BIRTHDAY. CELEBRATION. EVER!!!
P.S. All concert fancams (including me singing) is up on my IGTV (@amelynnhisham)... too embarassing to be posting on Youtube lol.
Dropping by,
Melynn.
2016.
The year I went to my first KPop concert. And that happened about 2 years after stanning EXO. At that time, it was EXO'luXion.
Unfortunately, I didn't have many pics from that day. In fact, was there even any? I wasn't technically equipped and we were seated really far so even if I do have, they must've turned out real bad.
Back then, the only wishes I had were to;
1) buy myself a ROCKZONE ticket, so I don't have to look at the screen during the concert after paying them so much
2) a new phone which I can use to record the concert with. One with a better low light camera and better zooming
1) buy myself a ROCKZONE ticket, so I don't have to look at the screen during the concert after paying them so much
2) a new phone which I can use to record the concert with. One with a better low light camera and better zooming
2018.
The ElyXiOn.
Believe it or not, this has only been my second Kpop concert to date. I never got the chance to go to any other concert, until EXO decided to come again right when I have the money to afford ROCKZONE. Yeah, I didn't go to 2017's EXO'rDIUM and kinda glad because this time around, they have it in a much smaller venue.
YAY CLOSE-UPS!!
So, how did I manage to get my hands on the ticket?
In case you didn't know, here are the range of prices for The ElyXiOn in Malaysia:
ROCKZONE / CAT 1: RM748
Actually, the day they announced the ticket prices was the day I competed for my Bahasa Indonesia Storytelling Competition. Fortunately, I won 2nd place for that competition and got a RM1000 cash prize from it. You can read up about it HERE, if you're curious.
I'd say it really was a gift I managed to get for myself. Because to be honest, without that cash prize, I wouldn't be able to spare any money for this concert. Simply because I had nothing to convince my mum with to be able to spend such a big amount of money.
So that's how I got the budget.
When Ka Mun - who's obviously more experienced than me in these concert life - told me to choose between asking someone to buy on the sale day (bcos we obviously couldn't make it since I'll still be in Melaka) or to buy online the following day, we knew the first option was our only choice. Mainly because, EXO is a famous group and tickets will be sold out faster than we think. Which was so true because 70-80% of the tickets were said to be sold on the sale day itself.
Therefore, we ended up paying someone RM70 each to buy a ticket on top of the actual price. It's a lot, no matter how I see it, this is probably the craziest amount I've spent to date. At the same time RM70 was considered a good deal because Ka Mun also found buyers who'd charge RM100 and above for the same service.
From what I know, our buyer were sleeping overnight at the event place as early as Wednesday when the ticket sale is happening on a Saturday. So to think how crazy the situation is, I find it to be a pretty reasonable sacrifice considering I wouldn't have to go through all that trouble and drama she was in.
We initially wanted ROCKZONE Left, but we got the Middle 100Plus one. So Ka Mun looked around on Twitter and found someone who's willing to meet up and exchange tickets.
Ka Mun really is the hardworking one here hahaha.
Ka Mun really is the hardworking one here hahaha.
So end of the ticket story, moving on to the Concert Day!!
7th July.
We met up at around 7am in LRT Taman Paramount and reached Axiata Arena at around 8.20am. So, we spent some time walking around buying merch and getting freebies (we got so little btw) before sitting down.
I'm just gonna put it out there and say that THE MANAGEMENT FREAKING SUCKS. FYI, ROCKZONE is the only zone which is 'free standing' meaning you gotta be early because first come, first serve and you would definitely want the best and safest view (aka closest to the barricade).
But the thing is they could've made a proper queue in the first place. And the management should also be aware that we who didn't sleep overnight, would want to secure our places as well despite us coming later. They didn't provide a queue number and that itself is horrible enough because we would be so cautious with everything and people were already stressing before even entering the event hall. We were clueless on where to queue and to sit so we ended up being restless for no reason.
We had to 'queue' and stand up for 5 hours before they open the gate and it was really stressful. The sun isn't so bad. But the standing up and the constant worry is the worse considering we paid A LOT but the management didn't even properly organize us while we were outside. We were in a situation where body meets body and our legs couldn't budge. They did have some RELA people making sure we were less chaotic, BUT they could've made it simpler by providing something like a queue number or anything else of some sort to ease the chaos. Who wouldn't get mad when some people lied and cut lines but it is to be expected, so why be so OBLIVIOUS?!?
I really wished StarPlanet would improve more on this. Have a better system please. Look at the squashed plants in front of Axiata Arena and you'd realise how terrible the situation was.
It's so bad that some fans even mentioned how much they regret buying ROCKZONE if this were the case. We paid the same amount as CAT 1, the only difference was that CAT 1 had numbered seating and ROCKZONE didn't, so we were the only one pushing and being pushed despite us having the same entrance. Funny.
Our zone took the hardest effort to enter. The other CATs even laughed at us from the floor above because it was such a nightmare for us while they entered so free and calmly.
The security didn't even check our bags properly at the entrance. But then as soon as we entered, the signs were pretty clear so it was all good. Ka Mun and I didn't get to the barricade because the area we wanted were already filled up.
I managed to pray Asar like exactly 15 minutes before the concert starts at 5pm. My heart was so nervous when I prayed under the staircase right outside the hall whereas the fans screaming were truly a distraction lmao. I don't think they have a surau in the event place itself or not that I am aware of so thank God I brought telekung with me. Making my way out was easy, making my way in was... the death of me. Literally got a death stare while trying to reach Ka Mun who were standing among the crowd.
The saddest part was, I am just too short for ROCKZONE. Imma be honest, I couldn't see the main stage in the beginning. I was holding my phone up and was watching them through my recording.
Well, that wasn't the experience I imagined.
Later on, my arms got hurt after holding my phone up for so long. My neck hurts for having to look up at the high stage and my feet hurts damn bad for tip toeing. I realised then and there that it's hard not to put down your phone, because you literally can't see without it. It really wasn't only for keepsake but rather works as your eyes in this situation.
The best part, on the other hand, is when they performed right in front of you so you got to record an up close plus also seeing them live even if it was just a glimpse. That moment did happen and I'm truly grateful for it. I got to see Chanyeol and D.O then Sehun and Suho. But mostly I see Kai whom I've been wanting to see. Him dancing is the true highlight and I got his fluid ass on tape I'M SO HAPPY FOR THAT.
I didn't get to see Ka-Ching and Call Me Baby live through my own pupils because they performed on the main stage and I was no where near, so that was unfortunate because I really wanted to see those performances live. On the bright side, they performed Don't Go RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME!! I loved that song so much and was one of the song I already know by heart but didn't get a proper experience during EXO'luXion, so the fact that they still perform it after all these years made me really happy and glad that I could see it for myself. Sadly, Yixing who made me love the song's choreo in the first place wasn't there to perform.
Overall, ROCKZONE is great for once in a lifetime experience. However, not something I would wanna go through anytime soon. From what I see, CAT 1 was also really near and could see the stage just as good in my opinion. For small hall like Axiata Arena, I'd recommend CAT 1 if the ROCKZONE is a 'free standing' because you'd save yourself the stress and pain (only get it if it's a seating one maybe). I probably would have more fun if I were to be in CAT 1 but I did enjoy the concert nevertheless.
I'm glad I'm able to be there anyway. Next concert would probably be iKON's Continue Tour in KL, maybe? Hahaha tengok la rezeki and date dulu. But I REALLY wanna go see iKON live too so there's a high chance that I'm going if nothing forbids.
P.S: Why is SM so kedekut? They should've let those pay most go for soundcheck or get some extra stuff or smtg of some sort like for Twiceland. Haiiih /sweat
Now, I shall leave you with my concert 'vlog'. Enjoy:
Dropping by,
Melynn.
Thank you Kai for being right in front of my eyes for a countless amount of time. Thank you KaiSoo for always appearing close together. Thank you Chanyeol for the never ending fan service. Thank you EXO for not excluding Malaysia in your tour! But maybe next time let us in for soundcheck too pleaaasee...
Now, I shall leave you with my concert 'vlog'. Enjoy:
Dropping by,
Melynn.
