Thursday 16 October 2014

Personal Story, Part 2: The Final Pleasantly Surprised Fan Meet 「喜歡.一個人」最終回見面會

Welcome to part two of my Pleasantly Surprised fan meet re-cap! Part 1 was getting ultra lengthy, so I decided to break it up into another chapter. You can read Part 1 here. I left off where the actors and their audience team mates where doing PK competitions against other actors, namely their on-screen couplings. So it made sense that Puff and Jasper were against each other in the dance-off PK.


They were super animated and it was entertaining to watch because they were their usual competitive selves, from their 'Rock, paper, scissors' match to decide who would go first, to the actual dancing. I love the look on Puff's face as she competed against Jasper and won. Jasper just waved his arm at Puff when losing, while Puff rubbed her victory in his face fully!




The rest of the PK competition was fun. As Mason was so small, they only started him on the competition in the second round against Ba Yu. Hahaha, Jian-An said it wasn't fair that Mason was playing Ba Yu as she was a pro and he told Ba Yu to go easy on Mason...but Ba Yu still won in the end....so they let Mason play a second-second round with Jolin. If he lost this round, he'd really lose. Mason did such cute little dance moves...but it was Jolin who took out the round! The other second round competitions included Verna and Deyn and Puff and Lene. Or as Jian-An said, Sous Chef v. Second chef. Puff lost out to Lene so she went into the losing corner to pretend cry...Look at Jasper's amused expression as he looked at her...





I want to highlight the interactions between Puff and Jasper after they both lost the game. They were both fairly far away from the action, and seemed content talking to each other. I was happy to see that they were close in real life too...They only stopped talking after the winners were announced...



Lene and her team mate had won beating out Jolin in he semi-finals and Verna in the finals! Her lucky team mate not all scored a 'Figaro spoon' (like all the other participants), but also recieved an SPOP Pleasantly Surprised bag signed by all the stars of the show, as well as a Pleasantly Surprised poster signed by Puff and Jasper! While I was admiring the winner's prize, I also happened to take this shot of Puff and Jasper...probably my favourite shot of them talking casually. It looked cute and playful due to the way they were standing...you know what they say about body language, right? Anyway, again, they stopped to take a photo with the winner and her signed poster.



At this point, the crew took photos with all the participants of the competition before taking a media-photo break. By this, I mean that they paused the fan meet to get official group photos with the audience in the background (this was for the Taiwanese newspapers, magazines, TV channels...as well as for their instagrams). It was a bit of a wait as they had to work out how to gather themselves...(They needed to have their backs to the audience to include us in the background). But it was cute to see them all talking to each other and figuring out how to best include Mason in the shot. In the end, Deyn offered to lift him up onto his shoulder, being the slightly taller one. Jasper and Vic helped Mason up and watched over him as he settled himself down. So much cuteness from the boys!

At this point they turned off the slideshow and changed the lighting, so photos may have a different lighting for the next couple of shots.


In terms of the photos, I was in the front row, so I'm not very visible as an audience member in the fan meet photos, but I have found myself just above Stanley Mei's shoulder in a couple of shots taken with more of the audience on the left-side in the frame.

After the media photos was the best (and most nerve-wrecking) part of the night...The Hi-5 meet! So the special part of this meet was that we'd be able to go physically Hi-5 all the actors from Pleasantly Surprised! I was super nervous because I was actually going to go touch Jasper. And Puff. And Jolin. And everyone. It was crazy and once again surreal because I always thought of them being so far away and beautiful and totally removed from me and my life...but now I'd actually be interacting with them, even if it was for a brief moment in time.

Before the actual Hi-5ing took place, they had to set up the tables (to keep a safe distance between actors and audience) and give us instructions to manage the event smoothly....The Hi-5ing would start with the back rows first and move its way to the front...While all the explaining was taking place, I witnessed a playful Puff-Jasper interaction through my camera. I have to say, this makes me feel a bit like a Paparazzi...but I'll also go to say, I post these photos not to spread rumours, but because I like to see my favourite actors getting along...a bit of proof that their whole friendship isn't just for show! I thought they looked flushered from joking around around too!

Anyway, Puff was talking to Jolin when jasper tapped her on the arm to tell her something. Obviously something funny/ silly because she whacked him and they both laughed. Ah, such a cute moment :) I also thought Yorke and Ba Yu almost looked like their characters too as they were talking about the lighting...such cute expressions....I really love how much fun this cast has had in real life!





In terms of the actual Hi-5 process, it took awhile for everyone to get up there as there were about 300-600 people at the fan meet. While we'd been instructed that we could only Hi-5, and not clasp onto their fingers or anything like that, I was suprised that a lot of people were very quick and brief with their greetings with the actors. I mean some people were really excited and did double Hi-5's and some raced through quickly and loudly Hi-5ing the stars (though they got told off by Jian-An lightly because I think they were a little worried that people would get too excited and lean over the table to get wayyy too close to the stars, or worse assult them. Also Jian-An was worried that people would accidentally hurt Mason!) But there were people that also looked super quiet and shy....

But as I was going up I realised that it wasn't that they had wanted to be brief - they had probably been as nervous as I was! I wanted to say something other than just 'Hi!' But my Chinese isn't the greatest under pressure and what could I say that would be quick and relevant?! Here's the funny part of the story... Travelling alone and staying at a hostel, I'd taken my passport with me in my backpack because I didn't want to have it stolen or lost. But going up for the Hi-5's, I didn't want to drag my heavy backpack with me...but I also didn't want to leave my passport in my bag when I wasn't in my seat. I also didn't have pockets. So I just took about my passport and held it in my hand as I my row approached the handshake table. We had to hand in our numbers (the little numbers we'd waited several hours to recieve to come into the fan meet)...and then shuffle forward in single file to where the guys were standing behind the tables.

My heart was pounding really quickly as Puff was the first person and Jasper was second. I remember noticing how fair and tall she was. She was also super smiley and bright as she said 'Hi!' In my nerves and partly because I'd been staring at my passport before I'd looked up at her, I said quickly, in Chinese, "I came from Australia to meet you guys. Thanks for meeting your fans!" Probably due to a combination of my nervousness (making my voice quiet), my rusty Chinese, the volume of the excited fans in the room and the long-ish sentence I'd stupidly chosen to say...

Puff looked confused. She smiled at me and was like, "Eh?" Feeling nervous to repeat what I'd just said, but too coward to back out, I held up my passport and said the same thing even more quickly if possible. Puff laughed and was like, "Oh my!" putting her hands to her mouth, but it was really Jasper, who must have been listening in, who responded to me by saying, "謝謝, 辛苦了!" which translates roughly to "Thanks for making the effort to come/ It must have been difficult for you"...You may have noticed that he sometimes writes it when he posts an instagram photo with fans who have waited the whole day on set to take a photo with him...Jasper then leaned forward and Hi-5'ed me gently. I was in shock because I hadn't really been thinking he'd been listening. Imagine my surprise when Jolin, who'd be listening in too, said the same thing, straight after Jasper.

What did their hands feel like? Soft! But other than that I can't really say much else because I was in too much shock to fully remember. I also think they were gently Hi-5ing because it was tiring for them given there were still at least 50 people after me! After that, I went down the queue of course. Lene was very quiet...I think she would be a nice person, but I'm often intimidated by such stunning girls when they're not really talkative. Sean was really friendly and postively beamed his radiant smile at my direction which put me at ease straight away! Stanley was nodding and smiling as he Hi-5'ed me and Linda was tiny compared to everyone, but probably still taller than me. Deyn was also really friendly and Vic was surprisingly shy and smiley! As for Yorke, Ba Yu, Mason and Verna, I remember only shyly saying hi to them and lightly tapping their hands. It was all a fantastic blur! I wish I remembered more, I wish I'd defied the no-photos rule and taken some polaroids with them, I wish I'd also told Jasper how much I liked Morning Call...but I suppose all in all, it was an unforgettable experience!

To be continued in Part 3 blog entry... 

2 comments:

  1. So envious of you, you lucky, lucky girl! Sounds like you had an absolutely amazing experience! I just finished watching the last episode and wept buckets over HaoWei :P I'd love to read more of what happened afterwards! :D

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    1. Thanks for reading my post ^^ It was an awesome experience! I only just watched the last episode today and I felt bittersweet pain for Hao Wei. He's the best second dude ever! So selfless and wise! I'll be posting more photos and fan meet content over the next couple of days,so keep your eyes peeled :)

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