Mayday, Visas, and One Ok Rock!

            Calling this week a rollercoaster would be an understatement. There was a lot of chaos and some genuinely horrible moments sprinkled throughout, but there was also a lot of moments that I don't think I will forget anytime soon. But, as always, let's look at this chronologically, starting with last Sunday night where, as I mentioned in the last post, I went to a Mayday (五月天) concert with my friend Henry.
            Mayday is a Taiwanese band that has been around for as long as I've been alive, and are often believed to be the frontrunner of Chinese rock in general. Henry is a big, big fan of them, and he told me that he has probably seen them in concert twenty times. I actually knew one or two of their songs before Henry had told me about them over a year ago. After hearing Henry go on about them and how often he goes to their concerts, I told him to take me to one when I arrived in Macau, which he remembered, and took me up on. To be honest, I wasn't especially hyped up for it or anything. From what I heard on their artist radio on Spotify, most of their songs seemed to be slow love songs, which are nice and everything, but not what I like the most. But I was still excited since this would be my first concert with a foreign band.
            The concert was in the Venetian and once Henry and I entered the arena, I was a bit

taken by surprise. All around I saw the bright blue light sticks of hundreds of fans who were just infectiously radiating with excitement. I then realized that our seats were right next to the stage, about 6 rows away. At this moment, I knew that my initial impression of what this concert was going to be like was very wrong. We sat down in our awesome seats and once the concert started, I was, again, blown away. This is because the big screen began showing this Avengers style superhero battle sequence with the band members as the main characters. It might sound a little silly, but it was so cool! It was even better because it had English

This is how they start off a concert!

subtitles, thank god 😄. Every now and then another video segment would be played, and while I actually didn't really understand what the story was about, it was still a very fun way to break up the concert.

This was arguably one of my
favorite parts of the entire show.

            Now let's talk about the concert itself. I must say that I feel a bit guilty for ever assuming that it would be boring songs. Some of them were so catchy and with epic guitar solos that I found myself singing along despite the fact that I haven't heard them before and that I'm not familiar with the Mandarin lyrics very well. Luckily they had the lyrics on the side screens, albeit in traditional characters, but I was able to read some and sing along too. Unfortunately what didn't have subtitles were the parts where the band was talking to each other and with the audience. The audience would often cheer and laugh and I wanted to know what they were saying so badly! Henry did his best to translate for me, but of course that was a little difficult to do all the time, so I just went with it.

Here's my Snap Story! The videos are
a little shaky though, too much
excitement happening!

            Overall, the concert was incredible, especially since I had such low expectations going into it. I kinda get why Henry is so crazy about them now, and I will probably be keeping an eye out for when they come to New York, since they often tour around the US. I will put my Snap Story here too, since I recorded a lot more of the concert on there. I have everything, plus extra photos, in this album too.

            After this show, I was all hyped up for the second concert of the week! Yes, you read that right. Last semester, I heard that the Japanese rock band, One Ok Rock, were going on an Asia Tour, and that they'd be performing in Hong Kong at the end of January. This information made me go crazy! A little known fact about me is that I'm actually a HUGE fan of Japanese rock (I know it's a bit weird and random), and One Ok Rock is one of my favorite bands of all time. My friend Kara is also a major fan, probably even more than I am, and I felt that I owed it to her to do my absolute best to go to this concert since she wouldn't be able to.

            So I messaged Henry last semester, (yes, the same Henry) since he also really likes the band, and we made a plan to buy a couple tickets and head to Hong Kong on January 31st! After a bit of difficulty (they are REALLY popular in Asia), we bought our tickets! Flash forward to January 30th, and my world starts to crumble. Henry tells me that he can't go anymore because he originally was supposed to fly out to Shanghai on February 1st for a course, but it was cancelled. He had to fly out on the 31st, or fail the course, and now had no choice but to give up his ticket. I was freaking out.

            Not only was I really looking forward to going with Henry, since he had been waiting go to their concert for two years, but now we had to find someone to come to a Japanese concert on a Wednesday night in Hong Kong, the day before. And to make it worse, I now had no one to rely on to get me to and from the concert, in a foreign city I've never really been to apart from the airport! So Henry gave me a crash course on every part of the journey, but I really did believe at some points that I wouldn't be able to do it. I took as many notes as possible, and ran through the plan with multiple people, but I eventually felt a bit more confident. I finally got someone to come with me too, another exchange student from Brazil, Flavio, and despite him never hearing about the band before I told him, he seemed to be excited to see what it was all about after I shared some of their songs.

            Now it's the big day! And now is where it got even crazier for me. I planned to go with Vanessa, one of my friends here, to the Chinese embassy in Macau to apply for my visa for my big trip to Beijing in mid-February. I knew that this wasn't the most practical plan, but it was one of the only days we could do it, and it had to be done soon. As long as Flavio and I got on the ferry by 4:30, we would have plenty of time to get to the arena, and the ferry is relatively nearby the embassy. Vanessa and I go in (thank god she was there or else I would have no idea where to go or what to do) and overall it goes smoothly. I get my receipt and I'm told to come by next week to pick it up. Great. I will have to pay $150 for it later. Less great. I was really annoyed by that, but there's nothing I can do about it. We leave. Go to the ferry. Pay for my ticket ($25). Flavio goes through passport check. I don't have my passport.

            My passport is at the embassy, and I'm not supposed to get it back until next week. I'm beginning to think that the world does not want me to go to this concert after everything that's happened so far. I dashed out of the terminal and Vanessa eventually got me back to the embassy where I was able to get my passport back, but not the application or any of the documents I spent so long to get. I'll have to do it all over again some other day. I got so depressed and very anxious, because now I not only have to do the visa process again, but now I am late and Flavio is already in Hong Kong.

            To make matters worse, there were no more economy seats left on the next ferry, so I had to get an upgraded ticket, which is $50. Aaaand now I'm crushed beyond belief, I did not think I could feel any worse at that point. Unfortunately, all of this really did sour the excitement of me finally seeing One Ok Rock, but I got on my overpriced ferry ride, met up with Flavio, and took the subway to the Asia World-Expo, which ended up being a lot less stressful than I thought. I was getting a little nervous that we would end up missing the beginning of the concert, but we got there just on time! But this did mean that I missed out on getting a souvenir, which I REALLY wanted 😞. Well, after so much unpleasantness, I was ready to actually have fun.

I apologize for my screaming 😂

            The concert started with a lot of anticipation, and once the band came on stage, thousands of people went absolutely crazy, including myself 😆. At the beginning, each of the band members tried to say something in Cantonese, and while I have no idea what they could have said, I don't think it was that accurate! So after that they continued in English 🙌  . The lights and visuals on the screens were pretty awesome and the band played a lot of the songs from their last album and most of their big hits. My god does the lead singer have lungs of steel! Singing just a few of the songs blew out my voice for most of the concert! Or maybe I was just singing too loudly. 

            On another note, I was already prepared to see this during their concert, especially since One Ok Rock is kind of infamous for them, but the standing people were having a mosh. Well, it wasn't all of them, there were more like mosh "pockets" than a full blown mosh pit. If you don't know what I'm talking about, picture this: a bunch of drunk people running and jumping around in a circle like psychopaths, and later, at the prompting of the lead singer, a very large group splitting into two and then charging at full speed into each other (appropriately named "the Wall of Death"). I'm glad we didn't get standing tickets or it would have been... not so good. I could have sworn I got video of it, but I can't find it anywhere, so you'll just have to use your imaginations.  Actually our seats were pretty far away and the people next to us just could not keep their hands down, so my videos and pictures are not very good overall. But I have more, including my Snap Story in the album here.

            It was a great concert! I only wished it was longer! It took us about 3 hours to travel to the arena and even longer to get back home, and it was only 2-2 1/2 hours long. I would totally do it again though, and hopefully I will get another chance to in the future. So while the day really sucked, it was a great experience too see the band, and actually my unfortunate visa situation may actually turn out for the better! I just recently found out that American citizens can get a Chinese visa for 10 years for the same $150 price that the single entry would have been! So now that's the plan for when I go back to the embassy on Monday. I still have plenty more exciting things coming up! My trip to Beijing will be filled to the brim with new experiences, a lot of adventures, and hundreds of pictures! So look forward to that, and I'll talk to you later,

再见！

TL:DR: The Mayday concert was a pleasant (and epic) surprise, the result of my Chinese visa was an unfortunate (and horrible) surprise, and the One Ok Rock concert was just as incredible as I expected it to be!