A misty early morning ferry trip from Hong Kong to Macau. The start of my unplanned adventure to “Girls’ Generation World Tour – Girls & Peace” in Macau that took place on February 15th, 2014.
The reason for this last-minute decision? You can never get enough of Girls’ Generation concerts! For me, my adventure all started with their second Japan arena tour in April, 2013. After fulfilling my wish of attending several of their concerts in various countries, I finally ended this exciting journey with Macau.
Upon arrival, I was greeted with the majestic hotel, The Venetian, in which the Cotai Arena is located. After many twists and turns inside The Venetian, I finally arrived in front of the concert hall, Cotai Arena. Plenty of SONEs were already waiting impatiently to enter. No matter what age, gender, or nationality, all were gathered to enjoy the music that only Girls’ Generation can bring.
Macau had the joy of having Tasty as the opening act. As usual, they heated the crowd up with their upbeat songs. Then, the moment of joy… the appearance of our nine goddesses in the center stage with the song, “Hoot”. The crowd went wild. Each and every time, it seems so ethereal, seeing them shine in the spotlights. Even though we were not in Korea, SONEs all fanchanted together as loudly as we could. A great start to a sore throat by the end of the concert!
Song after song was performed in perfection and with joy, just as we know the girls would do. During their first talk, Yuri broke the sad news that this was the last stop of their world tour. It’s unfortunate to hear that in the end, the world tour became another Asia tour. In my opinion, as long as the girls are still performing, there will still be a chance to have a Girls’ Generation solo concert in a Western country. So I’m not giving up hope just yet.
After this talk, the girls continued with the playful song, “Say Yes”, which was performed with lots of cute props and a lot of fooling around on stage. Then my favorite outfit of this tour: the fluorescent green-and-black outfit. It shows the cool and sexy side of Girls’ Generation perfectly. Seeing them perform “MR. TAXI”, “T.O.P.”, and “FLOWER POWER”, was utterly breathtaking.
Switching to the alluring, glittering one-piece red dresses, they continued, performing “PAPARAZZI”, “Run Devil Run”, and “Reflection”. After all this excitement, it was the moment to relax. Time to enjoy the meaningful ballad, “Promise”, performed under bright spotlights in stunning white dresses. As per usual, fan events were arranged by SONEs to show the girls our love and support. First one on the list was the paper event during “Baby Baby”. The message, “약속해 끝이없어” (“Let’s promise, there will be no ending”), was raised. The girls were very moved and answered by moving their pinky finger up, a sign they have made this promise to SONEs.
After these moving songs, the girls switched back to more upbeat tracks, like “I’m A Diamond”, “Express 999”, and the iconic “Genie”. Tiffany’s “Macau, put it back on!” elicited ear-deafening roars from SONEs in the concert hall. Afterwards came the entrancing “Great Escape”, followed by “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You”, where plenty of fan service was given by the girls.
Next up: “My J”. Weird enough at the start, Tiffany was wearing a jacket over her usual outfit. The girls around her were all laughing for some reason, and eventually she became the victim of “Way To Go”. During “Gee”, the girls were pointing at Tiffany again when singing the line “babo” (idiot). At that moment, my thoughts formed a giant question mark, wondering what had happened.
The second talk was more chaotic than the first one. Tiffany started with her reason why she was wearing the jacket. She apologized, saying she ate too much before and her clothes just went “bang”. As a “punishment”, Tiffany had to do a short solo performance for the fans, to which she responded with some hilarious weird moves. They requested fans to sing “Gee” with them, which is basically yelling, “GEE GEE GEE” at the top of your lungs (read: bye vocal chords).
At the beginning of the next song, “Forever”, Yoona started as usual by saying the line, “영원히 너와 꿈꾸고 싶다”. Hilariously, the translator didn’t realize this fact and translated this into Chinese. The girls were so surprised and burst out laughing. Graciously, Taeyeon thanked the translator in Chinese for her efforts.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdKTDlPQXSQ
As a special for this concert with the girls already being very hyperactive, they decided to sing a part of “Forever” while doing Crayon Pop’s “Bar Bar Bar” choreography. During this song, the second fan event was ready to go. This time it was a “Sooyoung-ah, Happy Belated Birthday” message, as her birthday had been in the previous week, February 10th to be exact. This fan event moved Sooyoung literally to tears while singing. It’s such a great feeling to know that we made her happy and touched with our small gesture.
Before the encore, we did the third and last fan event, which was singing “Promise” together. Although this started a bit chaotically, we managed to reorganize ourselves to sing the chorus in sync.
All of a sudden, the lights went dark and out came Girls’ Generation with an acappella version of “Into the New World”. This part has always been very touching to hear, because this was where they started their journey. Way too soon, it moved to “Oh!” and their third talk.
Sooyoung, without missing a beat, teased Tiffany by saying “pig” out loud, referring to her wardrobe malfunction awhile ago. Then she smoothly switched over to tease Taeyeon who was resting on the floor. Taeyeon, however, managed to wittily respond that it was a “shoe problem” (see Tiffany’s wardrobe malfunction). Seohyun then showed her excellent Mandarin skills by saying a difficult tongue-twister related to the famous “Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den” poem. To be able to do this, you have to know how to pronounce the four Mandarin accents perfectly. Seohyun once again showed how talented she is in learning languages. It completely got me and I’m sure many other SONEs were also awed.
They continued speaking of their upcoming Japanese tour and an Asia Tour for their new album “Mr.Mr.”. Sooyoung also mentioned Girls’ Generation will be back soon in Macau. For which event? I guess we will hear it when we hear it.
The very last song of this concert, “Twinkle”, was performed with much enthusiasm as always. And so we arrived at the end of the concert with the girls saying their final goodbye… for now.
It’s been a long year for the girls, with ten concerts in seven countries around Asia. As for me, this journey of a total of eight concerts (four Japan tour and four world tour) ends as well. It was a crazy ride, with occasional stress, but overall it has been an experience of a lifetime. It has been three years now since I became a SONE, and I haven’t regretted it at all. The girls have inspired me to pursue my own dreams, enabled me to meet amazing friends throughout the world, and have helped me change for the better.
With this, I want to say thank you to Girls’ Generation for your continuous hard work to show your best sides to us, inspiring us every day and bringing joy into our lives. Thank you too to the SONE family who never stopped caring and helped me throughout, whether it was with logistics, personal issues, and so on. Being a SONE and being part of this big family is the best! Totally, completely, absolutely amazing!
Girls’ Generation and SONE, I’m definitely not saying bye, but see you again soon. Let’s Go~ Mr.Mr.~!
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