White Day.

It's White Day today and it's a BIG DEAL here.

The city of Seoul has turned into a city of couples. (do you sense any bitterness here haha)

All the shops here have some sort of White Day discount/promotions, there's street busking (singing love songs), street events (like the free hug event mentioned in the post, 'Yisze's Mission') and the entire street - and probably everywhere else in Korea - is filled with couples. Holding bouquets of flowers or chocolates or balloons or urgh, everything sweet and lovely ahahah X) White day is Korea's version of Valentine's Day (contrary happens), where guys buy gifts/chocolates for girls or their girlfriends and really, the whole place comes alive with LOVE. I can almost see heart shapes and teddy bears floating around in the sky already lol! The air's turning pink! <3

Valentine's Day is typically observed by girls and women presenting chocolate gifts, usually to boys or men, as an expression of love, courtesy or social obligation. In South Korea, White Day is also observed as a day for men to give women sweets, as a sort of repayment for the gifts women gave on Valentine's Day (usually of the chocolate variety). It also symbolises boys or men reciprocating the feelings which girls or women have for them (and have expressed on Valentine's Day). In contrast to Japan, men in South Korea generally purchase lollipops or other hard candies for the holiday. (from Wikipedia)

That said, it's a great and lively atmosphere so I'm not complaining! It just reminds me of something that's less-than-happy and about who I would have given chocolates to if said person were here. Heh. It's a fleeting feeling so no worries!

Anyway, they have interesting and funny events like these:

 Paris Baguette White Day goodies

 Grown men wielding huge lollipops and talking to females on the streets (I think it was a street promotion)

 

 Couple bike competition/event outside the Uplex mall (it helps power up the LED lights on the building)

White Day chocolate bars that I got for my friends (:

One of them very kindly bought me this in return :D (made my day hehe)

and..
I spotted a Korean guy waiting outside the dormitory with a little pink box hidden behind his back. How sweet! :D

해피 화이트 데이 to all! ^^

That aside, I spent most of the day out on my own at Myeongdong (sobs, on White Day), eating and shopping haha! I was supposed to accompany a friend to Gangnam (with others) for his Lasik surgery but I overslept ): and by the time I left the Sinchon train station, I was informed me that one of the girls had to be back at dormitory at 1pm. It didn't make much sense for me to take the 45-min trip there, only to return to the same place after 10 or 20 minutes so I hopped off the train and started on a new journey! It was too early though - around 10.50am - and I was just wandering around because it was too late for breakfast but too early for lunch. I didn't want to go back to the dormitory either (no!) so I made a last-minute decision to go look for Cafe Jholic (JYJ's Kim Jaejoong's cafe) at Myeongdong. Since it was a last-minute thing, I didn't even have my camera with me.. orz.. and I ended up taking phone selfies there haha (this will be the subject of another post!). I spent a couple of hours there doing my readings (only managed to read 16 pages gah) and then, went out in search for lunch!

This is a really good fried rice (볶음밥) place called 유가네닭갈비. It can be found in many places in Korea but I just know the ones in Myeongdong and Sinchon! For some inexplicable reason, they have exceedingly bad reviews on Naver (Korea's Google) but I think it's really delicious though.
I ordered 콩닭 쳘판볶음밥 (chicken and bean sprout fried rice, yummyyyy)!

If you're interested in visiting, this is the shopfront at Myeongdong:

After that, I just roamed around Myeongdong for like, 5 hours haha and went home with a new pair of sports shoes (like finally!!) and 2 pairs of jeggings! :D  I'm a Nike fan so I went straight to the Nike section.. 

Considered these and..

 Ended up with this! It's quite pricey to get imported sports shoes (like Nike, Adidas) here though >< This isn't even the best pair of running shoes around but it already costs S$120+ (99,000W). The pair I would have liked to get looked sturdier and had a better design but it was about S$170! D: Too expensive for a pair of sports shoes. (Note: Koreans love their New Balance shoes though - one of the MOST popular brands around here)

Yupp, so after roaming around Myeongdong till 5pm, I decided to head back home and get much needed rest. I didn't get much of that because I reached home at 6pm and my friends wanted to get takeout at 6.30pm. (faints) haha so I had to drop off my shopping goodies and troop off into the kitchen after a measly 20 minute break... However, due to numerous technical difficulties, our pizza only arrived at 8pm.

They have very unique pizza flavours here - the one pictured in the foreground and in the second photo is the Potato Pizza. The one on the upper left corner is Bulgogi Pizza (beef). The last one at the upper right corner is called the Super Supreme - described to be a colourful pizza in their menu, it is a pizza filled with beef (again), pork, ham, onions, mushrooms, pineapples and random stuff. They even have stuff like Sweet Potato Pizza (I wanna try this!) and Sweet Pizzas! Pizza proportions here are quite small though (8 slices of the one pictured on the right for a Medium pizza, 24,000W) so we ended up having to go for dessert at Sinchon. We left the dorm at 9.15pm and only came back at 11.40pm... /(>.<)\ So much for getting enough rest and staying in for the night, as I originally intended. It was fun certainly, but I'm just crazily tiredddd.

Can't wait to try out my new shoes though :D

NEW NIKE KICKS!

(gotta go finish my Running Man episode and then, time for the dreaded readings meh)