♥ Amber's back! ♥

Sorry that I haven't posted in a while. I've been a combination of busy, lazy and unable to connect to the internet. This last one is because my neighbour who also works at my school is getting married at the end of the month and so has moved out, taking her wireless with her. I now have that sorted however (an interesting afternoon of watching the SK Telecom man climb out of my balcony window and balance on the railing in his socks to reach the internet cable and then drill holes through my aluminium/fake wood plastic window frame to connect it).


But anyway, onto the K-pop! This is really just a short post functioning as a shout-out to my favourite female K-popper (and really the only female K-pop singer I actually like, rather than just liking the occasional song): Amber! Amber is the rapper in the SM Entertainment produced girl-group F(x), made famous through the song Nu ABO (뉴 예삐오) which is a great song in itself. Here's the music vid if you haven't seen it already (Amber is the one with the short hair).

Now before you judge me for going over to the dark side of girly 공주병 (princess syndrome), I should make a disclaimer. I like the SONG. And I love Amber - I'm not so keen on the other members of the band (Victoria, Sulli, Luna and Krystal). This is mainly because their girly Korean aegyo (애교 or affected cuteness) drives me up the wall, especially since Victoria isn't even Korean and Krystal grew up in America and Sulli always acts like the maknae (막내 or youngest member) and frankly like a baby even though Krystal is younger than her. Actually Krystal isn't too bad (probably b/c of the American thing and realising how freaking annoying aegyo is) but the others kind of make me grind my teeth if I see them on anything where they are being 'themselves'.

Anyway, back to the main and much less bitchy point; this is a great song, with a great beat and rhythym, and the group does have pretty consistently good choreography so I appreciate that the girls do work hard. But seriously, if it wasn't for Amber and her funky tomboy attitude, I wouldn't even bother looking up their new songs (rather than waiting until they become so mainstream you just learn them by osmosis). Now Amber is actually Chinese-American and like Krystal, probably realises the difference between 'cute' and 'sickeningly cute'. She does have her cutesy moments but these are pretty rare and nowhere near as intense as the others. She's also a really good dancer and rapper, and pretty much stands alone as the only successful female tomboy artist on the K-pop scene - she's known for her short hair cuts and I'm pretty sure she only ever wears pants (at least for anything publicised).

 Amber from F(x) vs Raina from Orange Caramel

In fact, looking her up on Google images, in a group picture of F(x) wearing hanbok or traditional Korean clothes, she's actually wearing a male hanbok (and looks like a boy). So yes, she's a bit butch, but there's virtually no such thing as lesbians in Korea (at least, not in public) so she makes the look work well without too many aspersions being cast on her sexuality. Oh and haha, yes, if you can't tell by now, she's totally my girl-crush^^

Anyway,  she has also been away for a while due to some sort of injury and is now back in time to be in their new song 피노키오(Danger) ["Pinocchio (Danger)"]. It's a pity that her injury prevented her being in F(x)'s short TV show 코알라  ("Koala") last year following them around their international tour (which was otherwise fairly boring) and also from not being featured more in last year's season of 우리결혼했어요 ("We Got Married") - a 'reality' show where two celebrities are paired together and have to pretend to be a married couple - with Victoria and Nikhun from 2pm. I'll have a whirl at translating the lyrics to some K-pop songs I like one of these days if anyone is interested, but then and again there's always Google :p Enjoy!^^