Korvia Summer Barbecue

Hello from your friendly neighbourhood BBQ assistants~

Another incredibly late pre-summer catchup, this time it's the Korvia BBQ!

For anyone that doesn't know, the wonderful Korvia is the company that helped myself, Nick, and hundreds of other people from around the world make the move to South Korea.

The barbecues and parties that Korvia throw for their recruits are there to let people meet the people that helped them share the bureaucratic deadweight that is trying to get work abroad, as well as other native English speakers that might also be in or near your placement area. It's a great idea to help you feel a little bit less of a tiny fish in a huge ocean, and is actually one of the things that really drew me to Korvia over other recruitment agencies when I first started my research.

I actually met a lot of my really good friends over here via last year's (and our first) barbecue. My idea was that if I volunteered to man the grill, I'd HAVE to crawl out of my comfort zone and actually talk to new people. And hey, it worked! Since then, it's always been fun to help out with setting up the venues, because it's basically an easy excuse to doss about with my friends before everyone else arrives. ;p

One of our main tasks was to set up the photo wall in the picture at the top, which was surprisingly difficult considering there were so many people trying to set it up. (And it all ended in disaster, RIP photo wall. I say that, I think we fixed it, but it DID fall on me, and I valiantly tried to leap out of the way like an action hero. Expectations vs Reality, I probably looked more like a kid faceplanting than Indy with the giant rock, but don't crush my dreams, okay?)

Ignore my sweaty mess and focus on Kiegan's dazzlingly adorable smile.

Our other task was to set up the food tables ready for the masses, and get the coals burning and ready for meat, glorious meat. Also: ASPARAGUS!!

Danny Elfman's Music From the Films of Tim Burton

Hello, hello, long time no see etc etc I'm bad at blogging, as usual.
A long time ago (maybe July?), in a city far, far away (from England) Nick and I went to a concert in Seoul.

It was a celebration of Danny Elfman's music from all of Tim Burton's films, played live by an orchestra! A little bit different from our usual musical fare.

As far as I can remember, I'd never been to an orchestral concert, so this was quite exciting. We weren't sat particularly close to the stage, so although the usual ban on photos didn't seem to be present, there wasn't really anything to photograph, so excuse the lack of images. But I suppose you don't go to something like this to take pictures, so what were we expecting?

I'm not totally sure if there was any particular order to the movies that they played, but each section would begin with the movie title displayed on the projector screens. The orchestra would begin playing, and the screens would play some appropriate footage, occasionally broken up with concept art images.

It was really great to see and hear all of the music live, and in particular Danny Elfman himself came out for The Nightmare Before Christmas to perform some of Jack's songs.

I'm a little confused as to why it wasn't in one of Seoul's actual concert halls, as the sound wasn't as great as I was expecting. The orchestra were obviously performing very well, you could hear that. But I wanted to feel the musical vibrations in my chest and have the sound really all around me, rather than just amplified through speakers somewhere in front of me.

Having said that, I still had a great time and it was very cute seeing people leaving afterwards, humming their favourite songs. I'd definitely go to see another concert like this...but maybe not at this venue.