Happy Birthday to Jung Yong Hwa and Lee Min Ho!

Selcas of CNBlue's Leader Jung Yong Hwa and Actor Lee Min Ho

Fans take in a deep breath...and now scream "Yong Hwa-sshi wa Min Ho-sshi saengil chukka habnida!" Do you think they heard it??

Yong Hwa and Min Ho Taking the Mic

Both of these cuties celebrate their birthday on June 22nd. Actor Lee Min Ho is older at 26 and CNBlue's Jung Yong Hwa is slightly younger at 24.

Yong Hwa celebrated his birthday a little earlier with Boice's in the Philippines.

If you see them online, drop them a line to wish them happy birthday! You can find them on Twitter at @CNBlue4 and @ActorLeeMinHo.

Peacoat Styles

Source: Drama Fever

Total Respect for Production Crews

In my line of work, I've been privy to behind the scenes looks of documentaries and commercials.

Today was an especially grueling day on set. Working with multiple talent (actors and actresses), many combinations of wardrobe and props under intense summer heat, I have found a greater respect for production crews.

Stylists, prop artists and production assistants constantly rush back and forth the whole day getting a prop for an actor, fixing hair, wardrobe and make-up, making sure outsiders (everyday people) are kept off the set and quiet and basically making sure everything is moving along smoothly. It is rough! On top of that, the director, sound and lighting crews make sure everything is sticking to script and lighting is ok. It's especially rough when you shoot outdoors, like we were today. We were constantly having to wait for the sun to come out behind clouds. Sometimes we would have a couple of minutes and sometimes it was only a few seconds to get precious takes. It is a heck of a lot of waiting!

Craft service crew members (the ones that provide the food, the good part of being on set) fill and refill snacks and food, making sure no one goes hungry or thirsty. Staying hydrated today was a problem since it was so hot.

There is so much work that goes into putting together a piece that goes on TV. And I didn't really understand why people would lose sleep or weight. Now, I get it. Perhaps I didn't stay for long enough on sets before, or perhaps it just didn't click when I read actors lose sleep and weight during weeks of shooting. (Google pics of different actors like Jang Geun Suk, Kim Hyun Joong, and Lee Min Ho pre, during and post production on their dramas. You'll see what I mean) With call times in the early morning and wrap up times late at night, it's no wonder!

It's so cool and glamorous on the outside. A friend of mine on Facebook thought it was so cool that I work on sets. And yeah, it is. You meet people and you get a first look at everything. But it is tiring work. I wouldn't recommend it for just anyone.

I definitely have total respect for production crews on TV shows and movies. Especially the ones on Korean dramas. I hear they run their crews ragged to get the perfect takes on shoot constantly, day after long day. Whew!

Tomorrow, I pull double duty. I'll be part of the production crew and I'll also be acting again. We'll see how it goes. Hope I wake up on time, it's another early morning call and a full shoot day.

Blog about it later! Happy weekend! Hwaiting!

Netflix vs Hulu Plus for K-Dramas

I am going to go out on a limb here and just assume others have been in my situation.

I am currently debating whether or not I want to reinstate my Netflix membership or not. Why? I simply am not happy with the selection on Netflix. Especially when it comes to Korean dramas.

I think it's been especially, pardon my expression, "sucky" the past year as they moved away from blockbuster movies to TV and drama series. Granted it's been because they lost their partnership with Starz (I believe) but I have my doubts on whether or not this was a good move.

But, I digress...I can go onto a totally different tangent on just their movie selection alone. I want them to have more K-Dramas! And not just the older titles, but current titles as well.

Netflix has been a bit of a thorn in my side when it comes to K-Dramas. They have well-known dramas, but some dramas do not have all of the episodes. For instance, I was thrilled to see that they had Lee Min Ho's drama "City Hunter" and Song Seung Hun's drama "My Princess". But when I went to watch them, there was only half of the episodes listed. Now, they have the full list of episodes ready to watch. But my pet peeve was when I wanted to watch them, they weren't available. And this was after the dramas had been complete for some time. Netflix also has hiccups in their service where it takes quite a while to stream movies or dramas. My experience has been that Netflix would stream for 12 seconds then stop, then stream for 5 seconds and then stop again. Very, very difficult to watch. I have never experienced this with anyone else like YouTube or Hulu.

Speaking of Hulu, I am currently exploring Hulu Plus. I just started my trial the other day. I have to say that I am impressed so far. Not only do they have the older K-Drama titles, but they have newer ones like "My Name Is Kim Sam Soon" as well such as "Time Slip Dr. Jin" and "Baker King Kim Tak Gu". I will note that "Dr. Jin" has not finished airing yet, or may have just finished, but all of the episodes up until this point have been posted on Hulu ready to be streamed. They stream from Drama Fever and have pretty much everything that Drama Fever has, and just within the last year alone, I know that they have grown quite a lot in their selection.

However, I have a slight annoyance with Hulu. I am not sure if this will go away once I have membership, but every program, TV series or movie I have tried to watch has what they call "limited commercials". This is something that I never experienced with Netflix. I hate it. I hate it that YouTube does it, and I hate it that Hulu does it. I hope there is a plan that let's me remove commercials, for a good price of course.

So, the jury is still out on both of these services. But frankly, without the good movie service and the fact that I would use either service to watch K-Dramas, I am leaning more towards.....Hulu Plus.


By the way, can anyone who reads my post tell me if they can read any of my current posts? I usually post daily, and I think there may be something wrong with my site. Please help me?

Idols- to tweet or not tweet to?

Ok, something has been bugging me for quite a while.

I'm pretty new to the Twitterverse, so my hash tagging and my quotes are sometimes weird. I also live in a part of the world that's one of the last places to get news because of our time zone. When idols tweet at night, I don't see them in my feed until I wake up the next day. Hours later.

I follow a good part of the South Korean idols, actors, etc. that I like. And more of course. It's cool and exciting to see what they're up to. And the selcas (self camera shots) are funny sometimes, too.

My questions are: when is it ok to tweet to an idol? Like an "out of the blue when you feel like it" tweet? Do you only follow them and reply to their tweets? Is it ok to tweet stars like Lee Hong Ki, Lee Min Ho, CNBlue, Wonder Girls and more questions like "how are you?" or "what have you been up to?" as long as it's not too personal? And when is it too late to reply to a tweet? I feel embarrassed replying to anything more than a couple of hours old. It feels like I'm replying to no one because everyone else has said their peace and moved on.

I wouldn't want to go crazy like sasaengs, wanting to know everything about stars...But is it too much to do that? Social media sites like Facebook and Twitter open up communication. But is there some sort of unstated protocol?

Wildly curious...

And I definitely wouldn't want to offend...