#were gonna at this new korean place and go cafe hopping and we even planned our outfits 😭

[primdaisy]

slumber party / highschool routine

teen: admired icon aspiration

sell 5 outfits on Trendi ✓

win gold at a party ✓

have 250 followers on Social Bunny ✓

they stood outside the gate to listen to her horror story thx girls

[cbseung]

cobblestones: modern prince hyunjin - final part

[masterlist]

[pt 1] [pt 2] [pt 3] [pt 4] [pt 5] [pt 6] [pt 7] [pt 8] [pt 9] [pt 10] [final]

wow! final part! i can’t believe it! thanks for joining me on this wild ride, and i hope that you continue to read whatever i write next! 

(ps. the next imagine series planned is a bang chan imagine based on the movie hotarubi no mori e!! that’s gonna be a ROLLERCOASTER ride i guarantee that)

pairing: hwang hyunjin x reader

wc: 2,000 

description: the finale, the conclusion, the end. what’s prince hyunjin going to do now?

hyunjin watches as your figure retreats farther and farther

he wanted nothing more than to chase after you and explain to you what was actually going on 

but how could he??

his mom explicitly told him

“hyunjin,, if you don’t follow through with this marriage we’ll have to disown you. then what would you do?”

like w0w! harsh mom 

hyunjin really really likes you

this isn’t new information

but he’s not ready to give up everything he’s ever known for you

so he really has no other choice than to marry mirai right?

right?

so what if he has to marry someone he doesn’t love?

his parents have been controlling every single thing he does

all the more reason you shouldn’t follow through with this marriage!!!! hyunjin thinks

but-

“hey! your parents want us to announce the engagement” mirai says as she breaks hyunjin’s train of thought

“right now?”

“right now.”

“can’t they like.. wait a sec?”

“nope! you know how they are”

hyunjin looks exhausted

he HEAVILY sighs and tries racking his brain for ANY excuse he can think of

cause he’s just not ready

and he’s just not sure if he can announce his engagement RIGHT NOW

and it’s not like he can just CANCEL the engagement

cause the last thing he needs is the press to EAT that up

you know and ruin the reputation of the royal family

so if he cancels the engagement now when no one knows about it

then all the better

hyunjin just

needs more time to decide that he’s making the right choice

but his time is literally running out

“hey..” he hears mirai say, “you’re not sure about getting married to me huh”

“ah.. am i that obvious?”

“you look panicked and deep in thought, wanna tell me what’s up?”

“do we have the time?” hyunjin laughs

“eh what are they gonna do? announce our engagement without us?”

“you never know what those crazy royals do”

mirai walks over to hyunjin and sits down next to him

“it’s just..” hyunjin sighs, “i’m not sure about this engagement..”

“is it because of that girl? y/n?”

“i mean, it’s true, i do really really like y/n, and i wish we gave us a shot before this whole thing happened. and i can’t call off the engagement without being disowned by my parents BUT I’M JUST so sick of being controlled by them!”

“hyunjin.. i can’t make this decision for you, but i think you know what you have to do”

truth is

hyunjin has always known what he wanted to do

he just needed a friend to talk to

him and mirai talk for a little longer

and then hyunjin smiles

“ready?” hyunjin asks mirai

“ready!” mirai exclaims

and they both walk out together

»»————-　♔　————-««

meanwhile

after you left hyunjin in the garden

you go back into the ballroom

and find yeji and felix

“hey.. y/n” felix says

“hey felix, yeji..”

the fact that you’re visibly exhausted raises a couple flags for the both of them

with preparations for the ball and trying to figure out your feelings and getting the most out of your vacation in europe

it’s 

a lot

“are.. are you okay?” felix asks

“well,, to be honest, no. but! it’s okay, we’re leaving tomorrow night so i’ll be okay”

very vague but they both believe you

“yeji,,, can we,, rent a room tonight? i don’t really feel like staying at the palace anymore...”

“of course we can, we can leave right now since it’s over anyway and it’ll take a long time for us to get ready”

then you turn to felix and say

“felix!! come with us and sleepover!!! i don’t want to leave you just yet” you pout

you’re lucky you’re cute and felix loves you

“of course y/n!”

so the three of you sneak out of the ball 

and plan to spend the night trying to forget about a certain handsome but engaged prince (◕︿◕✿)(◕︿◕✿)

»»————-　♔　————-««

“hello! my name is mirai, but you may know me better as the princess of japan! i would first like to thank the King and Queen of England and Korea for throwing such a wonderful ball! i know most of you were expecting an engagement announcement, but as you can see, prince hyunjin is not here with me. however, we both came to the conclusion that it is in our best interests that we do not follow through with this engagement. thank you, and there will be no further comment on the situation.”

»»————-　♔　————-««

do you know how long it takes to run around the Buckingham Palace?

i don’t

but hyunjin does

after he’s been running in CIRCLES trying to find you

he needs to tell you something 

and it’s prettttty important

and you should probably know before you leave for home and never see him again 

you know?

ah but too bad you’re miles from the palace huh

at this point hyunjin gives up cause he covered every inch of the palace

(which is a feat within itself because that place is: huge)

so hopefully he finds you tomorrow before you leave for your flight

or else ‧º·(˚ ˃̣̣̥⌓˂̣̣̥ )‧º·˚‧º·(˚ ˃̣̣̥⌓˂̣̣̥ )‧º·˚‧º·(˚ ˃̣̣̥⌓˂̣̣̥ )‧º·˚

»»————-　♔　————-««

four hours before you have to hop on a plane and kiss europe goodbye

so of course

where would you be?

drinking coffee on cobblestone streets of course

you more or less

look back at the trip you took

to be fair,

you don’t regret taking the trip

you don’t regret meeting hyunjin

you don’t regret falling for him

if anything

you regret not telling him sooner

but what’s done is done

you get up with your empty coffee in your hand, your phone in the other because you were supposed to text yeji when you were ready to head to the airport

when all of a sudden

you walk smack dab into someone

you MENTALLY CALL YOURSELF OUT

because really y/n??? AGAIN??

“oh my god you’ve GOT to be kidding me”

“hey uh you should watch were you’re going”

wait

waaaait a sec 

you’d know that voice anywhere

literally

anywhere

you look up and 

lo and behold

a handsome boy who goes by the name of prince hyunjin

and wow he still looks as pretty as you remember (╯︵╰,) even IF you saw him just the day prior

“uh hello? anyone home? look i know americans are dumb but i didn’t know they were this dumb” hyunjin says smiling

AH THAT INFAMOUS LINE

you glare at him

but then crack a smile

“hi..”

“y/n! thank god! i’ve been looking everywhere for you!!”

are you flattered?

you’re kinda flattered

a little confused

“wait hyunjin! how did the engagement announcement go?”

part of you is hoping he says it went horrible and no one’s gonna follow through with it

“oh you didn’t see? it’s not happening, i talked to mirai right before we were supposed to announce it”

oh

oh

OH

“wait what? haha funny joke!!”

listen this is your way of coping with it because there’s no way hyunjin cancelled his engagement right

right

“nope not a joke but listen i owe you an explanation”

yOU JUST

DECIDED YOU WERE GONNA MOVE ON FROM HYUNJIN

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN

you both sit at the cafe you were just at

and he starts with an

“i’m sorry”

which is 

something you didn’t know you needed? but nonetheless

he laughs

(it’s a great sound if i do say myself)

“where do i even begin? i’m sorry for not taking you out on that date i promised, i’m sorry for not being in contact with you that week, i’m sorry if i made you feel like you were annoying or clingy or anything bad because you’re not. i’m not gonna make excuses for myself because you’ve never been nice to me,, actually well, the first time we met you weren’t the nicest to me”

“hey you called me dumb the first time we met!”

“... anyways,, i-”

“wait, sorry, why’d you end the engagement in the first place”

“truth is, my parents were threatening to disown me if i didn’t follow through with it”

now you’re in full panic mode

because

he really did just drop everything

“wait WHAT”

“yeah,, but i decided i was sick and tired of them controlling everything i did so i kinda just.. left?”

“HYUNJIN YOU CAN’T JUST LEAVE”

“well why not”

“i mean, does felix know? do you even have a place to stay? oh my god where are you gonna live how are gonna eat you can’t just-”

“hey, hey, relax it’s okay, i got it covered, i have connections too you know, the many perks of being a prince, er- well, ex prince now that my parents will probably disown me” 

“but hyunjin-”

“hey it’s okay, i may not know what i’m doing but at least i’m free to make my own decisions, like taking you on that date i promised you” hyunjin says smiling

okay fine

you decide to drop it for now

and give hyunjin the benefit of the doubt

and besides he has yeji and felix and now you 

so he’s not completely alone

hyunjin intertwines his hands in yours and starts leading you to god knows where when you remember

you kinda leave europe in like three hours

“WAIT” you say 

“WHAT now”

you roll your eyes at him and say, “i need to meet yeji! we’re going home in three hours!”

“oh, OH, wow thank god i found you before you left huh”

“yeah that would’ve been,, pretty bad, so what now?”

“what now?”

“i mean, i have to go home, you have to deal with your parents and the whole british/korean media..”

“ah you’re right,,,,but still, let’s do it

“huh?”

“i’ve been thinking, i think i’m gonna pursue dancing.. i’ve got a little pocket money maybe i’ll go to school, or audition for a company, who knows? the ends are limitless, but all i know is that i want to give us a shot ”

you’re not fond of the whole long distance thing

but you’re not fond of not exploring whatever is going on with you and hyunjin

and i don’t think your feelings are going away anytime soon

so you might as well give it a try

“okay.”

“okay?”

“yeah let’s do it! who knows what’ll happen, but all i know is that i wanna explore whatever is happening here”

hyunjin pulls you in for a hug and mutters

“you won’t regret this, princess”

cue the blush

you and hyunjin walk together until you meet up with yeji and felix

yeji sees your hands intertwined and gives you the ‘bro what the heck’ look and you give the ‘i’ll explain everything on the plane ride home’ look

“jin, i have to go, they’re waiting for me” you pout

“ah right,, let’s exchange numbers”

“we don’t have each other’s numbers? and we’ve known each other for a month now? we’re so lame”

we’ll be lame together”

“oh god ssh”

“you better get used to this!!” hyunjin teases

“ah whatever,, bye hyunjin, i’ll see you soon okay?”

“don’t miss me too much, y/n!”

“ah too late!”

five years later

“yeji!!”

“Y/N WHAT IT’S THREE AM WHY’D YOU CALL”

“HE’S COMING TODAY”

“NO WAY TODAY TODAY? IT’S NOT LIKE YOU’VE BEEN CALLING FOR THE PAST WEEK WITH A COUNTDOWN TO HOW MANY DAYS UNTIL HYUNJIN FINALLY MOVES IN WITH YOU”

“SHHHHHH LET ME BE EXCITED”

“YOU CAN BE EXCITED 7 HOURS FROM NOW”

after five years

you and hyunjin are finally moving in together

five years of texting ‘good morning’ and ‘good night’ to each other

five years of flights to and from seoul where hyunjin’s dance university was

five years of facetime calls

and they were all finally coming to an end

hyunjin’s parents understood where he was coming from and decided to support him and his dance career

and he still got to keep his prince title

(lucky him am i right)

but most importantly

according to hyunjin

the most important thing to him 

wasn’t his title

wasn’t even his dancing

nope! the most important thing to prince hwang hyunjin

was you

the end. 

»»————-　♔　————-««

a/n: wow wow wow i’m done FINALLY DONE!! 

i hope you enjoyed the series!! to be honest, i wanted the story to go a TOTALLY DIFFERENT direction but i’m kinda happy how this turned out

this is the first time i did something this big of a series, so i’m sorry if it wasn’t the greatest! i’m always up to hear some constructive criticism! 

thank you for being so patient with me and this series, and please look forward to more stuff i write! 

good night!

[takemetohelena]

022617: Weekend Escapade

We planned our weekend during the weekdays.

Friday : Students Jam at UL 

Saturday : Sunflower Maze, Tayug 

Sunday : "WHO YOU" day 

SATURDAY. 

It was settled. We were going with the plan until... we got into the van heading to Tayug. Charm's sister messaged Ali to tell Charm that the whole fam is going to Baguio that day and they're gonna stay overnight. 

 Naisip namin, sumama nalang kaya kami? Charm asked kung okay lang and they said okay! Okay. Kalma. Excited na meeeeeeeee!!!!! Hahahaha actually, we were a little hesitant because  

Hel: I really want to see the sunflower maze saka I had a deal with Roselyn na kapag sumama ako sa Students Jam, pupunta kami sa sunflower maze sa Saturday +++ i have plates to do!! +++ i have no clothes! And i can't go home because di na ako makakaalis hahaha. 

Ali: she has to review for her unit test on monday daw and her mami doesn't know hahaha.   

Rose: she has a practice tomorrow for choric speech. 

Pine: he has some lappie stuffs to do. 

At the same time, the thought of spending overnight in Baguio thrilled us (YAS OVERNIGHT!) because 

 1. Malamig sa baguio and I'm tortured by the Pang. weather since forever. 

 2. Sleepover in Benguet!! I've never been to benguet even though I lived in baguio for two years and it's a little far from the city meaning: fresher air, few houses and vehicles andd nice and welcoming people. Baryo > City. 

3.CRASH. We're all(almost) off the teenage phase and adulting is eating us kaya we should make the most out of every opportunity to bond and enjoy lifee! +++ we agreed of a motto for that escapade, "ENJOY NOW, CRY LATER" Hahahaha. 

Ayun na nga. Umalis kami sa van going to tayug, the driver was calling us saying, "aalis na to malapit ng mapuno!" "Wag na kayong pabebe" hahaha. No kuya, we are going North hahaha. 

Pine and Charm lend me shirts and jogging pants because I decided not to go home while Alison borrowed clothes from Roselyn. We had lunch at Roselyn's house and waited for Charm there tapos we went to the bus station going to Baguio na. 

When we arrived, Roselyn was making yaya to the skates at Burnham but we were all hungry. I wanted to make them try the sisig at Laxamana (my fave sisig when i was still in slu) so pinilit ko sila. We rode a jeep to the place, medyo kabado pa ako because baka may makita akong kakilala ko hahahaha. Ayun we ate there, Roselyn had 1.5 extra rice tapos sabi nya "hindi naman masarap" hahahaha. 

After Laxamana, niyaya ko sila sa Circle, a cute school supplies store near the the sisig and they were all like: 

 "OOOOOOH" 

"OOOOOOOOOOOH" 

"OOOOOOOOOOOOOOH"

Hahahahaha, pero pretty talaga yung mga notebooks dun pramis! So hipstery and tumblry. Ang ending, they all chose something, inadvance nilang lahat yung birthday gift nila kay Alison and have the notebook as the gift from her hahaha. RIP Alison's wallet hahahaha. I tried to negotiate with her na iaadvance ko na din yung birthday gift ko sa 2018 pero good for 2017 lang daw yung promo nya. Hahaha. 

After Circle, we went to the grocery store just beside it for a mini grocery twaym. Biglaan kasi ang lahat kaya wala kaming shampoo, girl echos and toothbrush(i lost my toothbrush at roselyn's house kasi huhu). While we were at the baggage counter, may tinuro akong korean kay alison and she said, "OPPA" pacute voice HAHAHA. I dont know if the oppa heard pero natatawa ako hahaha. Grocery grocery, we thought of buying chips and wine but no one wants to do the honor kaya di kami bumili hahaha. Nung nasa counter na kami, I panicked because hindi ko mahanap yung number namin sa baggage counter, nakikipag usap nako dun kay kuya na nawala ko nung nilabas ni Charm (bwisit sya hahaha). 

Nung paakyat na kami, may nadaanan kaming alcohol free taste, mukha syang empirador pero feeling ko wine lang. I was the one who drink last tapos inistraight ko, *insert dirgursting shet!* ang pait! Hahahaha, inopen ko yung gummy gummy ko agad, ang init sa throat huhu. 

Skates, Burnham. 

We payed 50 each for 30minutes of skating and I spent 20 minutes trying to stand! Andun lang ako sa gilid nakakapit sa poste, nakakakapit na nga ako napapasplit pa'ko. I heard them fall and fall and fall pero I was too focused of not getting my head bagok kaya di ko sila matawanan full blast hahahahaha. After awhile, nakakaskates na din si Ali at Charm kahit na nanginginig nginig yung mga paa nila hahahaha they wanted to help me pero ayaw kong bumitaw sa poste kasi pag nadulas ako mahirap tumayo af! Hahahaha. Roselyn was good at it kaya paikot ikot na sya sa area and Pine knows how to skate too. While Roselyn was in the middle with her monopod, a foreigner guy in skates bumped into her pero hindi sila natumba. I dont know what exactly happened, I just heard the sound of her phone flying and falling hahahaha. She went on my side (the poste and me) to check her phone tapos lumapit yung nakabangga sakanya asking if it's okay, Roselyn was inis with him, siguro she wants to ratatat him na pero he's a foreigner and di sya nakapagprepare ng english ratatat, ang nasabi nya lang dun sa foreigner, "You're bad!" HAHAHAHAHA.

After telling myself na hindi ko ikamamatay tong skates, I agreed to let go of my beloved poste and get help from Roselyn, kabado me because I know na pag matutumba ako di naman nya ako massave, mahihila ko pa sya hahahaha. Fortunately nakaabot naman ako sa kabilang side, with the railings as my new 'poste'. While I was skating while nakakapit sa railing, nadulas ako pabaliktad! And di ko binitawan yung railing kasya napwersa yung braso ko huhu until now masakit pa din. I crei. Ayun na. Struggle nanaman tumayo. Jusqlord. Habang nagsstruggle ako tumayo I see them magkakahawak kamay silang apat habang nagsskate hahahaha, I took a vid of them I just dont know if I can post it here hahaha. Inggit af me pero feeling ko pag kasama ako dun matutumba kaming lahat hahahahaha. Just when I was kinda learning how to do it, 4minutes nalang yung time huhu. Nagskate ako back to my poste, yung konting distance nalang makakakapit na'ko dun nadulas nanaman ako ugh hahaha. Sabi ko sa isip ko 'fuck this shit pagod na me' so dun ko na tinanggal yung skating shoes kung saan ako nadulas hahaha. 

All in all, my first skating experience was an epic fail pero it was fun. I want to tell in detailed how they fell and fell pero di ko masyado nakita, basta naririnig ko nalang yung pag "BOG!" ng sahig followed by "animal!" "animal ka!" and laughters hahahaha. 

Ps. Alison fell three times *coughs*. Roselyn fell two times pero both sobrang hurt hurt *coughs coughs* HAHAHA. While Charm, minor falls lang and hindi masakit kasi manhid sya haha. Si Pine, di sya nagsshare kung ilang beses syang nafall! Sa skates. Hahaha  

4:11am, I haven't had any sleep yet and I'm on a phone break from my plates. Where were we? Ayun. We went to SM to meet Charm's pemily, halos gumapang na'ko from Burnham to SM because paakyat and nagmamadali kami kasi kanina pa daw sila naghihintay tapos mag exclamation point na yung messages nila hahahaha. Nung nakita namin sila, they said we're gonna walk back to Burnham and we're looking at each other like 'fail! Hahahaha', the walk back was easier because pababa, we even saw jollibee on the way haha, I had a selfie with it (we looked bagay haha). I lost count kung ilang beses kaming nagkahiwahiwalay hahaha basta nagkakawalaan kami. Meron yung nahiwalay kami nina Pine and Ali ata sakanila because we were distracted dun sa public viewing na nagtotorrid kiss hahaha. 

Around 8pm siguro, We rode a jeep going to La Trinidad then bumababa kami somewhere I dont know to wait for a taxi. Alison and Pine rushed to the nearest tindahan to buy chips tapos we drank buko juice while waiting. Idk it doesn't seem to fit, yung buko juice tapos cold weather hahaha. Aaand may dumating ng taxi, we saw the city lights from there ang ganda! 

Longlong, La Trinidad. We were welcomed by the cold breeze in Longlong. When I say cold, I mean nilalamig ako di ko alam kung nilalamig din sila hahaha. I was wearing denim SHORTS +++ no jacket kaya malamig talaga hahahaha. Kasi naman, biglaan yung Baguio akala ko magpapakasummer feels ako sa Tayug hahaha. 

We gathered in a small cozy living room, kanya kanyang upo na hahaha. Charm's family was catching up with each other tapos nakikinig lang kami. Tapos kumain ako ng baby corn, nakatatlo ata ako! Hahahaha. Suddenly, I missed Quezon, parang ganun yung vibe dun eh huhu. May isa sa amin na nagyaya sa labas so we went. Alison was kind enough to lend me her jacket pangtulog pero masikip! Hahaha. Paglabas namin tumambay kami sa across the street while eating chips. 

And there I thought, 'I like this.' I mean I like us going cafe hops, singing at the top of our lungs in ktvs, watching movies, getting drunk at sleepovers, riding wild rides and taking lot of pictures but I like this better, just sitting outside in the cold watching few cars pass by. Maybe it's because of benguet's temperature hahaha basta something about the mood. It's tumblry hahaha. 

Few minutes later we were called to go back inside for dinner, Charm's ate took a pic of us there but it's malabo pero keri. After eating and a little kwentuhan ulit Charm's tita(ata) told us that we will walk for another one hour para pumunta dun sa tutulugan namin. Honestly, naexcite ako! Hahaha but unfortunately joke lang daw yun haha, naglakad lang kami ng konti tapos we went inside a house tapos nakamazed kami sa malaking tv tapos sa mini bar haha. Inayos namin yung mga sleeping place namin tapos kwentuhan na ulit. We planned to take a bath na that night kasi feeling namin di namin kaya maligo sa umaga because BRR tapos sira daw heater. Peroooo.. di din nami kaya haha. Half bath only, si pine kinaya nya. 

SUNDAY

I woke up around 5am, masakit na masakit yung ulo ko and i feel like throwing up. NagCR ako and naglabas ng hinanakit haha. After that I went back to our higaan and tried to sleep again pero masakit talaga and I wanna puke ulit kaya bumalik ako ng CR then *bwaaak* nireplay ko sa utak ko yung mga ginawa ko that caused this kalbaryo the *TING!* may hangover ako!! Dun sa freetaste na parang emperador! HAHAHAHA fuuu ang lakas naman nun? Hahahaha. Bumalik ako ulit sa higaan then I gently tapik tapik Alison, nung gumalaw sya i whispered "tic tac" yung candy na tic tac! Hahaha, she reached for her bag tapos binigay nya sakin yung tic tac tas tulog sya ulit haha. Ako palang gising that time and my headache is killing me huhu bwisit na hangover di na ako magffree taste (WOW HAHA). When nagising na sila Charm's ate gave me gamot pangsakit ng ulo, ininom ko then few minutes later nasusuka nanaman ako kaya naglabas ako  ng sama ng loob sa cr ulit basta feeling ko mamamatay nako! Hahaha. 

We ate breakfast and went up sa kalsada, tapos sabi ni Charm may small mountain dun na makikita mo yung roads sa baba. We went there, mini hiiike!! Parang less than 10minutes hike lang sya tapos ang ganda dunn and malamig pa, we took lots of pictures and videos. Basta maganda dun, my kind of chill place. We went down na, tapos may pick up dun na red. They wanted us to sit inside pero pinush namin sa labas haha, It’s so fun and malamig. Idk kung san kami pupunta pero dun pala sa bahay ng isang tito ni Charm, we went sa balcony and maganda rin yung view, we took pictuures. After dun, aalis na daw kami. Nung nasa labas na kami, biglang tumakbo si Charm and Ali tapos narealize namin ni Roselyn kung bat sila tumakbo, nakikipag unahan sila sa pick up para sila yung tatayo. Edi sila na nakatayo hahaha. 

Strawberry faaarm. First time ko pumunta dun, pagbaba namin there’s a kuya na nagtitinda ng strawberry icecream sabi nya puuure strawberry daw yun so we tried it masaaraaap. Thanks umma alison hahaha. Ang ganda nung farm. Nahulog si Roselyn sa idk what to call it basta yung putikan haha white pa naman shoes nya. Tapos we went to the small flower farm inside the strawberry farm, we paid 5pesos sa entrance and took pictures, kahit papano nawala yung sunflower thirst ko kasi madami rin sunflower dun hahaha. After Strawberry farm bumalik na kami sa pick up, pupunta na kami sa city yay.

While we were on the road, biglang umambon, lalo malamig wee. Tapos palakas ng palakas basang basa na kamii. Charm’s tito parked the car sa Jollibee, we all went inside and nilibre nila kami yaay hahaha. Nagcharge na din kami ng phone. Nung hindi na umuulan bumalik na kami tapos to city naaa.

They dropped us at Pines Garage because uuwi na kami hahaha. Tapos yun we said goodbye to them, kaming apat nalang magkakasama; me, pine, rose, ali.

Rose and Ali wanted to go to burnham park kasi bibili daw sila ng pasalubong so we went. They bought bracelets ako i bought a strawberry keychain na nilagay ko sa payong ko because wala lang it’s cute. Sabi ko may manghuhula there tapos gusto nilang dalawa magpahula, ako din gusto ko pero ijajudge ko muna kung makatotohanan yung manghuhula hahaha. Hinanap namin yun tapos 50each daw hula. Nauna si Alison, the way I saw it peke yung manghuhula hahaha. Masyadong play safe yung mga sagot nya like.. Alison asked.. “Magkakatuluyan po ba kami” or something like that tapos the manghuhula said, “Kung walang haharang sa inyo at malalagpasan nyo ang mga pagsubok magkakatuluyan kayo” pinipigilan kong tumawa like loool hahahha. Si Roselyn pinush nya pa rin. I forgot the convos na basta face palm hahahaha. 

After manghuhula, we bought footlongs and sweet mais tapos pines garage na then off we uwi.

I should’ve wrote this nung fresh pa ang mga pangyayari, ngayon I can’t recall the feels na, nung feb pa kasi to hahaha. I could’ve narrate the mini hike part better pero nakalimutan ko na huhu that was my fave part pa naman, tapos yung pick up rides. Pero finally nagawa ko din to hahaha. The experience was very nice tapos happy talaga me. The End.

[kidsviral-blog]

How Miss Info Became Hip-Hop's Ultimate Insider

New Post has been published on https://kidsviral.info/how-miss-info-became-hip-hops-ultimate-insider/

How Miss Info Became Hip-Hop's Ultimate Insider

Today, Minya Oh is the linchpin of Hot 97, rap’s most influential radio station. Getting there only took 20 years.

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Macey J. Foronda / BuzzFeed

On a winter-cold evening in late March at a comedy club near the Chelsea Hotel in Manhattan, a DJ and aspiring comedian named Cipha Sounds takes the stage for a short set before a screening of the first episodes of a VH1 show called This Is Hot 97. In the audience, music insiders and fashion bloggers mix with television suits. Ebro Darden, Angie Martinez, Funkmaster Flex, Peter Rosenberg, Laura Stylez, and Miss Info — radio personalities from the iconic New York hip-hop station Hot 97 who, together with Cipha Sounds, comprise the show’s cast — sit at front-row cocktail tables.

“All the black folks in the house, make some noise!” Cipha Sounds says, to applause from the crowd. “All the white people, make some noise! All the Latino people, make some noise! Other?” he asks. The room falls silent. “Anyone else in the house? Miss Info?” he says. This draws a handful of laughs.

At Hot 97, where she’s worked for 10 years and is now the news director, the Korean-American Miss Info is used to being the only Asian person in the room. She started her career in hip-hop as an outsider — a young Asian-American woman new to New York — but since she’s become one of the most respected and unlikely voices not only in New York radio, but in hip-hop.

Since 1994, Miss Info, whose full name is Minya Oh, has flouted prevailing notions about what sort of background a hip-hop expert should have. She’s helped reshape the content and tone of hip-hop journalism, with her own brand of meticulously researched celebrity gossip, emotionally revealing artist interviews, and explorations into tech and style. Starring in a VH1 show isn’t exactly like writing album reviews, but Info has gamely evolved over the years, working in magazines, television, radio, and on the internet. She’s now seen by fans and peers as an all-around spokesperson for hip-hop, but for all her success, Oh seems to still feed off a deep inner well of curiosity. No matter what she knows, or is able to uncover, she’s eager to learn more.

Then the episodes play — there is a sketch in which Martinez and Flex bicker about who’s better on Twitter, and a Macklemore cameo. Miss Info gets in a good line, calling on-air partners Rosenberg and Cipha Sounds the “rap Teletubbies.” Afterward, Info sits with her colleagues onstage, taking questions from the moscato-fueled crowd, whose members wonder why would Hot 97 would want to make a goofy, “unscripted” office comedy.

Since it became one of the country’s first hip-hop stations in 1993, Hot 97 has become as legendary as the artists it’s promoted. This is the place where Biggie debuted records, the proving ground where a freestyle could make you a king or burn your career, and where hip-hop lived. So what’s with all of the jokes? Ebro Darden, the station program director turned full-time on-air talent, responds with a gentle scold: Hip-hop people work and have families too, he says, not for the first time. At his side, Oh tenses her face, seemingly trying to avoid rolling her eyes. To her, this is a tired question with a simple answer: Hip-hop adapts to survive.

Twenty years deep in the game, Info knows this better than most. But as Darden answers the fan, she doesn’t jump in to support him. Straight-faced, she blinks and nods; she’s not shy, but quiet. Some radio personalities get off on confrontation, but Info is not one of them. She’s a scalpel, not a bulldozer. In the overlapping, loudmouth worlds of hip-hop and media, her success is strange, and hard-won.

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Minya Oh in the ’90s. Minya Oh

Minya Oh didn’t start from the absolute bottom, but she had to fight a lot on her journey to the top. She grew up in Chicago, where she says she was “a nightmare” for her immigrant parents — even though she went to a “hardcore academic school” and played “competitive piano” on weekends. Still, she was straddling two worlds: She skipped class to listen to Too Short and do “wildly” unsafe things like “partying, driving under the influence”; her prom night was a disaster because her “mid-level gang member” boyfriend got sent to jail.

“I don’t remember why he got picked up,” she says in March over salad at the Butcher’s Daughter, a yuppie-hippie East Village cafe. When she speaks, she tends to pause, carefully choosing her words. “I think I was kept out of the mix — which is why I was planning prom dresses and limo reservations, as if I was dating a regular high school student.” She took the SAT prep classes her parents insisted upon and got into Columbia.

Oh arrived in New York around “‘93 or so,” during what’s now considered a golden era for the city’s rap scene. “It was the best time to be a hip-hop fan. It was archaic, stone age. Imagine how hard the caveman worked for one meal? That’s how you felt as a hip-hop fan: ‘I walked 8 miles in the snow and and killed my own prey, just to find this one Ron G mixtape!’”

Even as a kid, Oh preferred to become consumed with something rather than casually enjoy it. Back in Chicago, she was obsessed with horses. So she “found a stable, took a bus, and rode horses” whenever she could. In college, she got into motorcycles, located a cheap bike on Long Island, and then, without any real prior experience, rode it back to her apartment in Harlem.

Her passion for hip-hop was just as encompassing, and while she was still in college, she wrote letters to the editors at The Source, and eventually convinced them to let her work as an unpaid intern. “Instead of staying up all night working on the sociology paper that I was supposed to be working on, I’d rather go downtown to the The Source and sit up all night listening to mixtapes and writing about why Outkast is so important.”

Oh transcribed interviews and made copies, and started to pick up assignments from Source editors Jon Shecter, Reginald C. Dennis, and James Bernard. “All of the people that really believed in me and mentored me were men,” Oh says. “A guy is just like, ‘I need this. This person is gonna get it done for me.’” Her bosses saw her as an industry outsider capable of writing impartial, accurate album reviews. In 1994, with their blessing, she famously awarded Nas’ debut Illmatic five mics, The Source’s super-rare, highest award.

Her review closes with this line: “If you can’t at least appreciate the value of Nas’ poetical realism, then you best get yourself up out of hip-hop.” This year, celebrating the album’s 20th anniversary, she suggested that statement wasn’t an attempt to neatly define hip-hop’s borders, but rather, a cry for hip-hop to acknowledge its own diversity — and her.

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Minya Oh in the ’90s. instagram.com

At The Source she was an “alien,” and unpopular with her female co-workers. “It was that classic I see you in my rear-view mirror and I don’t like it, and I might swerve a little to try and drive you off the road,” she says. “When you’re the only Asian-American girl in an office, you don’t have the luxury to say, ‘You have to listen to me because I’m different.’ You have to get in where you fit in. You have to show that you’re not just in it for the glamour, or ‘cause you wanna party, or ‘cause you love black guys.” To prove her mettle, she tasked herself to research twice as hard as her peers. “I don’t think it is anymore, but hip-hop was then a black music genre. And if you don’t have respect, or a desire, to learn more about black culture overall, people are gonna see right through you. You have to learn context.”

After graduating from college and The Source, Oh started working at Vibe in the summer of 1998. This was hip-hop’s “shiny-suit” era, when major label budgets were fat and black rap and R&B artists dominated the charts. Oh would later describe this period as a sort of puberty for rap: “The roots of the music are very ‘street,’” she said in 2005, observing the decline of The Source. “But that has to get along with its newer role, which is very big business.”

At Vibe she profiled Mase and wrote an ethnography of popular New York club The Tunnel, but didn’t do a lot of formal album criticism. Instead, she kept a column about new tracks that now reads like a proto-Pitchfork, and focused on seemingly peripheral stories that showed how rap culture influenced the mainstream. She talked to Diddy about being jealous of Jimmy Iovine’s home theater in 1999, 15 years before Apple’s acquisition of Iovine’s Beats Music made Diddy’s venture into cable television, REVOLT, look slight.

Oh made the leap from print to radio after a stint at MTV, where she produced segments and wrote copy for the news department. “Our hip-hop coverage was fucking groundbreaking,” says Sway Calloway, a California native who hosted one of the first rap-centric radio shows, on San Francisco’s KMEL, as a teenager, and later worked with Oh at MTV. There, the two collaborated on a personality-driven feature series called All Eyes On (early subjects: Beyoncé, Kanye West) and a newsmagazine series called My Block, which introduced mainstream audiences to underground regional talent like the Neptunes, Paul Wall, and Mac Dre.

In 2003, Hot 97’s popular morning show host Star stormed out, and the station called Sway to fill in. “It was supposed to be a week,” Sway says. “I said, ‘Do you have a team?’ There was nobody there. ‘Do you have a budget?’ No budget. I was like all right, shit, well, let me have fun with it. Let me get somebody who I know knows hip-hop that I think could add a different angle to radio in New York City, let me stir up the pot. Minya, that’s a funny-ass person. She’s very sarcastic, and she’s like an egghead. She would come with her notes and we would show her how to make news sound proper for radio.” It was Sway who gave Oh the name Miss Information: an admiring nod to her reporting skills, but also pegging her to the stereotypically Asian role of bookworm. Eventually, she shortened it down to Miss Info, for clarity and cool.

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Minya Oh in the ’90s. instagram.com

Sway says that while West Coast audiences were familiar with the idea of an Asian-American hip-hop expert, in 2003 New York, putting Oh on air still felt like a risk. “After she started, I would always try to get her to come out. But it took her a second before she was ready to show the world, ‘This is who I am, this is what I look like.’ ‘Cause mentally there was maybe a small concern that people might react because she was Asian.”

Those early years on the mic were awkward. “I was hysterical. My voice is like a dog whistle, it’s so high-pitched, and my entire body was clenched,” she says, speaking with a picked-up-from-the-air New York accent. “At one point, when I was doing the morning show, I developed nodes on my vocal chords from talking so much. I was used to typing, my body just rejected it, like, ‘Shut up!’”

Oh eventually loosened up, but her reservedness and atypical entry into radio were not always welcomed by her Hot 97 colleagues. In January 2005, a parody of “We Are the World” aired on the morning show. Called “The Tsunami Song,” it mocked victims of December 2004’s massive Indian Ocean tsunami with lyrics like: “So now you’re screwed / It’s the tsunami / You’d better run, or kiss your ass away / Go find your mommy, I just saw her float by / A tree went right through her head / And now your children will be sold into child slavery.” Oh, then a morning show host, publicly denounced the song. After doing so, she fought on air with co-host Miss Jones, who admonished Oh for not being a team player. “You feel superior, probably because you’re Asian,” she said. “Why do you always have to make it known that you’re separate? … But I forget, you’re a journalist, right?”

Occurring just a few years before the era of quick-spreading Twitter outrage, the incident generated critical calls and emails from listeners. Hot 97 parent company Emmis Communications suspended, then fired, Miss Jones, and gave over $1 million in apologetic donations to tsunami relief.

“That moment was only the culmination of a long history of tiny terrorism,” Oh says. “Lots of little comments: You should be so thankful that we allow you to be in hip-hop because we all know the only reason why you really wanna be here is to sleep with rappers. You think you’re better than us. I almost felt like it was a test: Let’s see whether we can push Miss Info to do what she knows is not right.”

Following the controversy, Oh was temporarily “put on a sort of probation, or a leave of absence, because the program director [John Dimick] felt I was in the wrong.” So she hired an attorney and waited. She eventually returned, and was reassigned to Funkmaster Flex’s afternoon drive-time show. In 2007, she took on a second, solo show on Saturday afternoons and launched a blog, Missinfo.tv. There, with the chance to directly address the audience who’d come to her defense after “The Tsunami Song,” she stretched her legs.

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Left: Cam’ron, Oh, and Jim Jones in 2014. Right: Oh with DJ Khaled, Wale, and record executives. instagram.com

At the time, the internet was becoming a music scene of its own, incubating would-be outsider rappers like Soulja Boy and Wale, and pushing them from obscurity to the center. Oh dove into internet culture, aggregating viral dance YouTubes and writing about a new Juelz Santana track and the coffee her sister sent her from Portland in the same sentence. “Early on, I was live-streaming from my living room while watching Lost and eating bok choy. There would be 30 other people, and we’re all just sitting there, reacting,” she says. Other hip-hop bloggers of the day — like then-college student Andrew Nosnitsky, muckraker Byron Crawford, and Atlanta’s snarky Freshalina — wrote about rap in a personal, entertaining way, but no one on the web combined approachability with access in the way Oh did.

Hot 97 didn’t interfere with Oh’s web venture; the station barely even noticed. “At that time, there was such a disconnect between traditional and ‘new’ media that blogging was seen as an unnecessary but fun diversion,” she says. “For a time, there was a policy against shouting out your MySpace handle on the air.” But some of Oh’s scoops were better suited for the internet than for radio. “I reported a scoop on my Saturday afternoon Hot 97 show, about Jim Jones blasting his Dipset co-founder, Cam’ron. That was the first time anyone publicly acknowledged tension within the group. But our talk breaks on air were less than two minutes at the time, so I could only touch on it, and then say, ‘I’m posting more of the details on my blog.’”

Seven years after its launch, the site employs three round-the-clock writers, and with around 250,000 unique visitors in the past month, it’s more popular than MP3 feeds like Rap Radar and Nah Right. It still uses its original blog roll format, and has a header banner with a dead Myspace profile URL. (Oh says the site’s so outdated that it’s got an air of “normcore” cool, but that a redesign is coming soon.)

Missinfo.tv doesn’t compete with more robust music and culture sites like Complex or Pitchfork, but it’s a well-trusted news source for those hubs, who regularly borrow videos her team captures or news they aggregate faster than anyone else. And true to its roots too, Missinfo.tv is bigger than hip-hop, covering EDM and R&B, sports news, and tech rumors. “There’s a lot of people who’ll full-on spazz out on an indie-rock song or a Waka Flocka song,” Oh says. “I’m just happy that this day in age, we have lots of people that will understand us.”

For this lucrative market — the twentysomethings who read her blog, go on rave cruises, and can find something poetic about both Nas and Chief Keef — Oh is in a unique position to become a figurehead. Recently, she’s been tapped by VitaminWater, Uniqlo, Red Bull, and Hennessy to host genre-blending events and pose for campaigns. This year, she brought on TMWRK, the management team that handles Diplo, to help her expand her profile.

The new opportunities can feel daunting. “It’s all about fighting that voice inside who says, ‘What the fuck do you have to talk about? No one wants to hear you.’ You’ve got to itemize the reasons why your inner Debbie Downer is full of shit, and know when you should ignore them, and when they might have a valid point.”

After all, even for Jay Z, it’s tough to get old in hip-hop — and for women in the industry, it seems especially fraught. The people who championed the genre in its first generation now struggle to define what rap is, or how they should participate in it at middle age. So it’s remarkable that Oh has remained at the center of that conversation as long as she has, and outlasted lots of the names that once appeared alongside hers on print mastheads. (There are a handful of others who’ve managed this kind of longevity — former Vibe writer Eliott Wilson founded the rap news site Rapradar.com and hosts a popular live interview series; Sway still hosts on satellite radio and MTV.)

“The fact that her relevance has only increased as time has passed really makes her an aberration and quite a big deal,” says Noah Callahan-Bever, a longtime friend of Oh’s who’s now the editor-in-chief of Complex. “Writers who were killing it in ‘93 and ‘94, those guys pop up at parties, and I’m sure that they’ve moved on to other interesting pursuits, but they are no longer voices within hip-hop culture that matter to 16-, 17-, 18-year-olds.” For the young journalists who walk through Complex’s doors, Callahan-Bever says, “Minya is absolutely a point of aspiration.”

Maybe that’s because she acts more like a young writer than a vet. (Oh declined to disclose her age for this article, though a back count suggests she’s 40, give or take a year or two.) “Everybody’s older than they say,” she says. “But women, if you’re young, you kind of have to downplay it, ‘cause you feel like people aren’t gonna take you serious. If you’re older, you have to downplay it cause people start wondering why you aren’t locked down. I’m 85 years old in many ways and 14 in others.”

When Oh got her start in media, hip-hop fans largely considered themselves a united front, standing up for a shared set of values. But a generation later, the people who identify as rap fans are a fractured bunch, without common tastes. Peter Rosenberg, for example, promotes local acts with mixtapes and makes silly internet videos, but accurately or not, he’s best known as a shit-slinging purist. In summer 2012 on a side stage of Summer Jam, the station’s annual marquee concert, he insulted Nicki Minaj’s pop-leaning single “Starships,” prompting her to hastily cancel her headlining performance. The two made up on air a year later, but Rosenberg stands by his positions that rap benefits from clear-cut bounds. “Nicki was supposed to be one of ours,” he told the New Yorker in April. “I didn’t want young kids looking at this dance-pop song, going, ‘This is what rappers do.’”

By contrast, Oh is less interested in defining what rappers should do than she is in forecasting what they might do next, and why. Her hip-hop world has room for rappers who are in bands, rappers who wish they were born in the ‘90s, and rappers who design capes — each of them fair game for loving, sarcastic critique. “She’s kind, and that’s different from nice,” says Mary H.K. Choi, a producer of the TV newsmagazine Take Part Live, who previously worked as an editor at Missbehave, XXL, and Complex. “But the loyalty she inspires is crazy. So many different people trust her with high-level, FBI rap-files shit.”

For Choi, Oh is a model of success not only because she’s earned so many people’s confidence, but because she’s been able to do so without compromising her happiness. “Her existing made me feel better about my decisions,” Choi says. “I moved to New York at 22 and took this back-breaking job. And then met someone who was Korean but also super cool with all the credibility. And she didn’t throw me any of that ‘Oh, here you are, this other Korean lady’ shade. And not only was she really hot and all the guys sweated her, but [they did] from afar, because they respected her. There’s just that unique quality that successful people in New York have where they can stay hungry. Not greedy, but really intellectually curious. The work didn’t destroy her. She didn’t shortchange every other aspect of her life.”

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The cast of This Is Hot 97: Laura Stylez, Miss Info, Peter Rosenberg, Ebro Darden, Angie Martinez, Funkmaster Flex, and Cipha Sounds. VH1 + Hot 97 / Via hot97.com

Today’s Hot 97, where hosts talk about going to therapy on podcasts and Lorde has entered heavy rotation, would be unfamiliar to early listeners. Angie Martinez, Hot 97’s anchoring “voice of New York,” was thrown on the air when she was 18. The station switched formats in 1993, becoming one of the first stations devoted exclusively to hip-hop, and she was the most hip-hop-seeming person in the building. Now, she’s pragmatic about how the tastes of Hot 97’s listeners have changed. “Everybody wants to be like, ‘This is real hip-hop,’” she says, “but at some point the younger generation coming up, the way their world is set up on the internet, there’s not those types of hard lines between genres. People don’t want that shit.”

Since 2003, Hot 97 has been steered by Ebro Darden, who’s tried to mature the station to welcome a more diverse audience (and high ratings) while honoring its roots in traditional rap — stuff with complex lyrics and kick drums. Via Sway, Darden brought in Oh, and he hired a female music director — Karla Stenius, who goes by Karlie Hustle in the industry — to take his place when he was promoted.

“There really are not a ton of female music directors in radio,” Stenius says. “Particularly in hip-hop. I’ve gone to many conferences and ultimately, it is a boys club. I don’t appreciate being the only woman in a room of male decision-makers.”

If women in boys club industries are sometimes masters of pretense — holding desires close to their chests, pushing toward advancement while working not to seem “pushy” — radio is a male-dominated environment that explicitly does not reward pretending. At Hot 97, success is given to agitators who shout what they really think. (Or, at least, people with the savvy to calibrate their personas to appear honest and uncompromising.)

“You can’t be a soft little prissy girl working here,” Martinez explains. “You can have emotions, yes. But you can’t be sensitive. People talk loud here. People are aggressive here. We all want to get shit done.”

In this only-the-strong-survive atmosphere, Oh is something of an exception. “Ebro can be pretty rough on the team, but he’s not that rough on me,” she says. “I think he can read that I’m always gonna be my biggest critic. If he plants a seed, I’m gonna water it and cultivate this huge tree of blame and then I’m gonna try and work on it. The very demanding and disciplinarian way I was raised still lends itself to who I am now.”

Oh has distinguished herself not by having the loudest voice, but by asking, and answering, questions others overlook.“I’m not built for shouting matches, and contests on who’s gonna be the most ignorant. I’ll lose that every time,” she says. Around Hot 97, she’s known as a super-smart, sourced-up veteran who’s still in touch with what kids are talking about.

“She would do the typical radio stuff [on her solo weekend show] for awhile,” Cipha Sounds recalls, “but it just never really fit. Ebro put her on as the news director, and she’s on top of every rumor, anything going on. Every time you talk to her, she tries to juice you for information.” Peter Rosenberg suggests she’s become, for her peers, a figurehead of thoughtfulness. “Her role is the serious voice of hip-hop news. There are not a lot of people like that, who report on it in a serious way. She’s arguably the main person like that in all of hip-hop.”

On This Is Hot 97, Oh plays a blown-out version of herself: Miss Info, the smartass with a gold tooth and huge rolodex. But, off-air, she can be unreasonably self-effacing. While making the press rounds for the show, Rosenberg called himself “the Jewish Johnny Carson” in the New Yorker. Meanwhile, taking stock of her own 20-year media career, Oh gave herself no such title. “I feel weary at times, and I also feel wildly immature,” she says. “I need to get my shit together.”

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instagram.com

A couple years ago, Oh moved from her adopted neighborhood of Harlem to quieter Fort Greene, in Brooklyn. Outside the office, she hangs out with a family of friends — some writers, some industry bigwigs, some “regular people” — goes to art fairs, and posts meals at hip restaurants on Instagram. She keeps her romantic life private. “I’m the secret dater,” she explains. People have wondered if she once dated Cam’ron, the Harlem rapper, a misunderstanding that arose after she dated one of his friends. “One of Cam’s mentors was a guy that I was in a serious relationship with. So my friendship with Cam instantly had a brother-sister bond. In over 15 years of friendship, Cam has never made the slightest innuendo toward me, nor tolerated anyone else making me feel uncomfortable or objectified. He’s always had my back.”

On a January episode of Juan Epstein, a podcast by Hot 97’s Peter Rosenberg and Cipha Sounds, Oh tells the story of a nightmarish drive through Nicaragua with an unnamed beau, whom she called a “cool guy.” “In a world where everyone is screaming how they’re the greatest,” Callahan-Bever says, “she wants the work and the reputation to precede her.”

At the moment, though, neither she nor Hot 97 can really afford the luxury of aloofness. Oh previously declined an offer to appear on another reality series, Gossip Game, but she said yes to This Is Hot 97 because she, like her co-workers, wants people to turn on the radio. Hot 97 is no longer the city’s indisputably top-ranked rap station. Ratings from Nielsen SoundScan show Hot 97 falling just short of rival urban contemporary station Power 105.1 in cumulative listeners since 2011, then ekeing out a narrow lead in 2014. Meanwhile, Nielsen still ranks Power 105.1 as having a 3.2% average share of the New York radio market to Hot 97’s 3% share.

“Does it suck to lose? Yeah,” says music director Stenius. “Does it suck to be neck and neck with someone that you think you’re better than? Yeah, that’s the worst.” But in Hot 97’s new underdog role, Oh’s nerdiness and journalistic chops aren’t attacked as attempts to make herself “separate.” It’s not that her manner or interests have come to blend in with the rest of hip-hop’s, but now that’s seen as an asset, not a threat.

“People are becoming more open-minded about people who look different than them, act different, like different things,” Oh says, waving two hands forward as her voice rises an octave for emphasis. “We’ve all grown into really well-rounded people. Married, or having side projects. It wouldn’t have been the same before. We would have all individually been a little more antagonistic. But that’s also hip-hop. It’s just great when you have people fighting with you, instead of against you.”

Read more: http://www.buzzfeed.com/naomizeichner/miss-info