Hello and welcome to bonus episode number 179 of the Q-Lips English podcast.
Episode 179 and feeling fine, at least I am and I hope you are as well.
Guys, my name is Andrew.
I'll be your humble host and your English study buddy for today.
What I do here in our bonus episodes at QLips is I just casually talk with you and hang out with you.
It's like spending some time with your English speaking friend and I share some stories and some updates from my life.
To help you improve your English fluency.
Of course, I'm a Canadian, but I live abroad in Seoul, South Korea.
And there's also an interactive transcript and vocabulary glossary available for this episode for free.
Amazing study resources.
If I do say so myself, I check
The transcript myself, guys.
It's not an AI transcript.
I make sure that everything is perfect for you so you can trust it.
And I hope you will take advantage of that resource because it takes me forever to make it.
So...
Please check out the transcript and also the vocabulary glossary as well.
I think they'll really help you.
And if you're a Q-Lips member, then we're also going to give you a comprehension quiz so you can test and see how much you were able to understand after listening to my story.
If you're interested about Q-Lips membership, check out our website, Q-Lips.com, and you can learn all about it.
So today in this story, well, I have some good news for you.
I have a happy story this week.
The last story that I posted in bonus episode number 178, I heard the reaction of some listeners.
Who said, Andrew, it was such a sad story.
If you haven't heard that story yet, then probably you're going to want to stop here and go back and listen to bonus episode 178 first.
That will set the stage nicely for today's story.
If you did listen to that episode, then you're okay to continue.
In that last episode, I told the story of wanting to go see one of my favorite bands, My Bloody Valentine.
Play a music festival here in Seoul, but unfortunately, I was unsuccessful when buying the ticket, so I wasn't able to go.
However, I've got an update to that story, and that's what I'm going to share with you here today.
So to go back in time a little bit, I recorded that episode on a Thursday about how I wasn't able to buy the tickets for the music festival because the tickets had sold out.
So that was on a Thursday.
And the music festival was on that upcoming weekend, the Saturday and the Sunday.
So it was just like a couple of days before the concert.
However, after I recorded that episode, I thought,
Okay, let me check one more time to see if there are any tickets.
I had just spent the last 30 minutes telling you guys the story about failing to buy tickets.
So I thought, let me check one more time to see if any tickets had been released.
Korean listeners will know this, but often if there is something that's sold out, like transportation that's sold out, a bus or a train or something, if somebody cancels their bus ticket or their train ticket, then...
You can buy that ticket.
So I've done this in the past where I'm wanting to go away for the weekend or something and the bus is sold out or the train is sold out.
And I try at first and it's sold out.
But then a couple of days later, I try again.
And miraculously, there's a ticket available because somebody else had canceled their ticket.
So
That was in the back of my mind that I should keep trying to buy a ticket.
Don't just trust that because it says sold out the first day that it's gonna be sold out forever.
So I should keep trying.
And up until I recorded that episode, I had tried several times and it was always sold out.
But after recording the episode, you know, it was on my mind.
So I thought, OK, let's try it one more time.
So I opened my app, the ticketing app on the phone, and I tried it.
And miraculously, I was able to buy two tickets.
So I don't know what happened if they released more tickets or if somebody canceled and there were tickets available.
I don't know if it was just good timing, like maybe somebody had canceled and I was there at the right time in the right place.
I'm not sure exactly what happened.
However, I was able to secure two tickets, one for me, one for my wife to go to this music festival to see one of my favorite bands of all time, My Bloody Valentine.
Amazing.
As I mentioned in the last episode, the ticket price was only 50,000 won, which I should have looked up the currency conversion, but probably around like 30 to 35 American dollars.
Incredibly cheap for a music festival.
So I was so stoked.
And the cool thing was that usually when you get a ticket like this for a big event, you're counting down the days, right?
It's like months away and you're waiting and anticipating the concert.
However, because I got these tickets at the very last moment,
I only had to wait a day.
Like the next day was Friday and then it was festival day.
So yeah, I got tickets to go to the festival and I'm going to tell you the festival story here now.
We'll continue with my story in just a moment, but before we do, I wanna tell you about QLips membership.
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We have three to four speaking classes each week
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We really do appreciate it.
Okay.
And now let's get back to my story.
So QLips.
The festival was a two day festival.
I only bought tickets to the Saturday.
The first band started at noon, 12 noon.
And My Bloody Valentine, the band that I really wanted to see, they didn't take the stage until 8.45 p.m.,
Now, there were some acts that I was interested in seeing, some kind of smaller, lesser known Korean indie acts, some rappers and some electronic musicians, kind of like pretty underground stuff.
However...
You know, I'm 42 years old and to go to a music festival in the middle of a Korean summer from noon until almost 11 p.m. is just not happening.
It's not happening.
I don't have that kind of energy.
I didn't have the desire that strongly to go and see these smaller, more indie Korean bands play.
So I decided and my wife agreed as well that we'll go later in the day.
And just watch some of the headlining acts towards the end of the festival.
So I think that was a good call.
One thing that we were both concerned about was that this –
Festival took place right at the tail end of the Korean rainy season.
And up until that Saturday, it had been rainy that whole week, like just hot, humid, and super rainy.
And I won't talk too much about some of the summer weather that we've been having lately because...
My co-host Anna and I, we just recorded an episode about summer 2026 weather, and we'll share that one with you sometime this week, a little bit later this week.
So you can hear all of those stories, the summer stories that Anna and I have to share in that upcoming Chatterbox episode.
But july here can be pretty hot pretty humid and pretty rainy and a music festival is not a place where you want to be stuck in the rain so we were quite worried about that
However the weather was beautiful no rain at all just blue clear skies
So we had perfect weather
Of course very hot but
Since we went later in the day, it was okay.
Now the festival itself took place at like a hotel resorts compound thing.
That was very, very close to the international airports that services Seoul, but is actually outside of the Seoul city boundary.
It's called Incheon International Airport.
And so to get there, we had to just take the subway, just like we were going to the airport.
In fact, we went to the airport.
It takes a little while from our place.
We have to take a couple of subways to get there.
And it's probably between an hour and a half to two hours to get to the airport, depending on how long we have to wait for the transfers.
For the subway.
So that takes quite a while to get there.
Thankfully, we had seats the whole way.
I was worried that we'd have to stand on the subway and then stand for the concert.
But no, we were able to sit on the subway the whole way there.
So that was amazing.
I love going to the airport.
I don't know.
There's just a certain je ne sais quoi about the airport.
It's a special place, a unique place, a really multicultural place.
You see people from all corners of the world coming and going.
I love just going to airports.
I've seen reports on the news before.
I'm sure this happens in every country, but especially in Korea,
I think it almost became an issue in the past that there were a ton of older senior citizens going and just hanging out in the airport because it's kind of fun to see the people coming and going and there's like air conditioning and good food.
Like public washrooms available and stuff like this.
So there were a lot of people.
I don't know if that's still a trend that older senior citizens in Korea do is go to the airport and hang out or not.
But I thought I want to do that when I'm older.
Yeah.
When I retire, maybe I'll be one of those people that hangs out in the airport because I just love the vibe around an airport.
So I was happy to go to the airport and yeah, from the airport, we were able to take a shuttle bus to the festival itself.
By the time all was said and done and we arrived at the festival grounds, it was probably around 6 PM.
And yeah, because we were so late, like the festival had already been going on since lunchtime.
Because we were so late to arrive, there were no lines or anything.
We just went like right up to the ticket booth and got our wristbands.
They give you a wristband and then you have to get your bag searched.
But again, no lines.
So that took just like 30 seconds.
And then we were into the festival.
And by the time we arrived there, we were actually pretty hungry because, well, it was dinner time, first of all.
And second of all, we had just been on the subway and in the airport and on the shuttle bus for a couple of hours.
So we decided to go to the food truck section and get some food.
I guess one minus about showing up late like that is that a lot of the food was sold out already.
So there were some things that my wife wanted to eat.
She's like, oh, that looks good.
That looks good.
But they were all sold out.
The one thing that I actually wanted to eat was a hot dog.
Because for me growing up in Canada, I equate hot dogs with the summer.
A hot dog is a summer food.
Maybe you eat it while you're watching a sports game outside, like a baseball game or a summer barbecue or an event like that, like a music festival or some kind of
Camping or something like that that you do outside so i was like oh i hope they have hot dogs left
Turns out the only thing that they had left that wasn't sold out was hot dogs so there was a hot dog food truck
We went there and we had a hot dog my wife was like i
This is like the food that I don't want to eat.
But for me, I was perfectly happy.
So we had a couple of hot dogs and there was a band that was playing that we just weren't that interested in.
So it was kind of perfect.
Like this, this,
In my opinion, kind of bad band was playing while we just enjoyed our food and got settled in.
Now, this music festival had a pretty unique setup.
I think a lot of festivals these days are pretty
Big in scale, like the festivals that I see in Europe and in North America, they'll have huge lineups, like over a hundred different musical acts and they'll have many different stages.
And sometimes they have like indoor tents that you can go to as well.
And each stage maybe will have a different genre of music.
So like if you're into electronic music, maybe you could go to a smaller stage that's in a tent.
And if you're into rock music, maybe there's a bigger outside stage, something like that.
But this was a much smaller scale festival and they only had...
Well, I guess technically two stages, but the setup was very unique.
So they had one big grass field where the audience would stand, and then they had two stages side by side.
And while one act was performing, the crew for the next act would be setting up the stage, like setting up the instruments or whatever.
Whatever the DJ equipment, like whatever the acts needed to use, the crew would be setting that up while one act was performing.
So all the audience would be focused maybe on the left side of the stage where somebody was performing
And then on the right side of the stage, which was kind of divided in the middle by this big TV setup so people in the back could watch the action on the TV.
On the other side of the stage, the opposite side of the stage, the crew would be setting up.
And it seemed like actually a pretty good idea because they were able to go back and forth between acts with only like five minutes of break time.
So one act would finish and then there'd be five minutes of break time and then the
The audience would just kind of shift their attention to the other side of the stage and then the next act would begin.
So my strategy, because I wanted to see My Bloody Valentine as clearly as I could.
I told my wife, okay, we're going to get into the crowd.
We're going to finish up our hot dogs here.
We're going to get into the crowd, into the audience while the act before My Bloody Valentine is playing, which was a DJ, a DJ from Japan, Yosuke Yukimatsu.
And while he was performing, YY, maybe I could call him YY, easier for me to pronounce.
While YY was playing, I said to my wife, okay, everybody's going to be focused on this DJ.
He's like a popular hip guy.
DJ, right?
Everybody's going to be focused on him while they're focused on him.
Our job is to sneak over and get a great spot to watch my bloody Valentine.
So we finished up our hot dogs and that's what we did.
We snuck into the crowd and we went in the opposite direction.
You think most people would be going to watch the DJ, but we're like, no, no,
Not watch the DJ.
We're going to go get a good stage position.
And so that's what we did.
And in the end, that strategy was pretty good because we got
Pretty close to the stage, maybe like much closer than I was compared to when I was in Tokyo, for example, when I saw my Bloody Valentine back in February.
So I was happy with where we were.
And then we had to watch the DJ, this YY DJ play, Yosuke Yukimatsu.
But he ended up being awesome.
He really pumped me up for the show.
I thought he was really great and like great energy, great performance, great tune selection.
The songs that he was playing, I was really into.
He's playing like some old stuff that I
I remember like remixes of songs by groups like The Prodigy, which was a group from the UK that was really big when I was maybe in middle school, high school.
And so it was kind of sentimental to me.
And I thought, you know, I was one of the older people there.
So I thought...
Do these kids know this song?
This song's banging.
This is awesome.
So I really enjoyed his performance.
And of course, we couldn't see him very well from where we were standing because he was on the opposite stage.
But the festival was super well organized.
It's kind of funny because...
In the last episode, I said how I was reluctant to buy a ticket because I thought the festival was maybe not that well organized.
But boy, was I wrong because it was immaculately organized and run and like everything was smooth and functioning really, really well.
So...
I tip my hat to the organizers of the concert and the festival.
They did a great job.
And there were huge screens and TVs everywhere.
So although we couldn't see the DJ like super, super well, you could see him on the screen and it was just really cool.
I hadn't heard like super, super loud dance music like that with awesome lights and big TVs and high energy for a long time.
So I really enjoyed the performance.
My wife was like, eh.
It was so-so, but I thought it was great.
And yeah, I was really pumped up to see My Bloody Valentine.
As soon as the DJ finished, then there were only a couple of minutes of intermission before My Bloody Valentine took the stage and they started their concert.
The set list that they played, and the set list is the tracks, the songs that they played.
We call that the set list.
That was almost exactly the same as the Tokyo show that I had seen earlier.
Minus a couple of songs that they had removed
I guess maybe when they're playing their own headlining concert
Then i think they played for around two hours in tokyo but they only had an hour and 15 minute set time in seoul at this festival
So the
Setlist was shorter.
They removed some songs.
Unfortunately, they removed one of my favorite songs of theirs.
So I was a little bit disappointed about that.
But overall, I enjoyed the show.
I think a lot of the audience didn't enjoy the show.
I felt like I was one of the only people that was like really into it.
And I can understand why maybe the other audience members or the other viewers weren't so into it because the mixing wasn't that great, unfortunately.
The vocals were really, really low and hard to hear.
The guitars were super loud and the drums were really loud, but the bass and the vocals were sort of lost in the mix and they didn't come through super, super clearly.
Of course, because I'm a really big fan of their music.
I know what the melody is like.
I know what the words are.
I know what the bass is doing.
So I think me in my mind, I can kind of mentally put those elements in.
But almost immediately as soon as they started, there were other people in the audience yelling at the band like turn.
Turn up the volume.
Turn up the mics.
We can't hear you.
This kind of thing.
So that was a little bit unfortunate.
And after seeing My Bloody Valentine play two times now this year, I think I have to admit that they're a much better studio band than they are a live band.
The live experience is interesting.
It's cool to see some of your favorite songs performed live.
And in a way, it's cool to see some of my musical heroes on the stage to perform live like that.
That's great.
And as a mega fan, I get a lot of enjoyment out of that.
But if I'm being completely honest, the songs could maybe be performed a little bit better or mixed a little bit better.
And...
I get the concept like My Bloody Valentine is kind of an artsy fartsy band.
Like they're serious musicians.
They're kind of seriously making art, right?
They're almost like artists.
So they're playing that role on the stage.
And when the concert starts, the band comes out.
They don't say hello.
They don't wave to the audience at all.
They don't even allow themselves to be on the TV.
I think they have some kind of contract.
I was reading about this online.
They have some agreement in their contract that when they perform a concert, the concert venue is not allowed to perform
To display them on the TVs.
So they do have a bunch of TVs and screens and there's like artwork and visualizations going on and cool lights and stuff.
But you can't actually see the band very clearly unless you're close to the stage too.
So that's also interesting.
In my opinion, kind of a bummer.
If you're towards the back of the stage or the back of the concert area, then you can't really see what the band is doing too clearly if they don't display that on the TV.
So yeah, this concept of being like serious musicians, serious artists, making a statement, performing something cool, doing art, like I get it.
But at the same time,
The entertainment value of that is rather low.
And I don't know.
For me personally, maybe if they were young kids in their 20s doing that, I'd be like, that's cool.
I respect that.
But they're in their 60s.
And to me, it just sort of rubbed me the wrong way a little bit.
Like...
All of the audience members, we pay a lot of money and we give our time to go see them.
And then they come on the stage.
They don't say hello.
They don't say thanks for coming.
They don't even say anything.
I think one of the band members said annyeong at some point, which is like hi in Korean.
So they sort of mumbled into the mic, annyeong.
And then in between some of the songs.
And that was it.
Like, I don't know.
For me...
It just rubbed me the wrong way.
If it were me and I came all the way to Korea to play a show to Korean fans, I'd be like, oh, I'm so happy to be here.
I'm so excited to play.
Thank you for coming to listen to us.
I'm sure they feel that way themselves.
But the concept that they have going on with their performance just a little bit rubbed me the wrong way.
So...
Anyways, that was a little bit disappointing.
But I would say overall, I want to give the concert an 8 out of 10.
An 8 out of 10.
I really, I did enjoy it.
Despite some of the mixing problems, still to see some of those songs performed live was amazing.
And I really enjoyed every second of it.
Cool show
I'm happy I got the opportunity in the end to go
I had a great time with my wife and now getting back getting back after the festival was a bit of an adventure as well because for whatever reason
I don't know if anybody knows the answer to this.
Any of our Korean listeners who know the answer to this, let me know in the comments for this episode because I'm curious.
But the airport train that leaves Incheon Airport towards Seoul finishes at 10.30 at night.
And I don't know why that is.
That seems odd.
Unnecessarily early to me.
Like I think a lot of planes are still arriving at that time at night, but yeah, if you are past 10 30 at night, then you can't get into Seoul by the subway.
And the concert, My Bloody Valentine, was from 8.45 until 10 p.m., which only left us 30 minutes to get from the concert to the subway.
And that's not just getting to the airport, right?
You got to get through the airport down into the subway and all of that.
Rigmarole, all of those steps.
So we're like, there's no way unless we leave the concert in the middle of the concert, there's no way we're going to be able to catch that last train.
Like it's just not happening in that 30 minute time zone.
And we didn't want to get stuck in Incheon, so we decided to take the airport bus.
There are, of course, buses that go from the airport to all different corners of the country, really.
And they're a little bit more expensive.
I think it was 18,000 won, probably around 10 to 12 American dollars for a bus ticket.
But I thought, well, it's also going to be nice, like after the concert's finished and we've been standing for a long time.
Just to sit on the bus and the bus will take us almost all the way to our home
So we decided to buy a bus ticket which we bought in advance almost immediately after i got the concert tickets
I bought the bus ticket so that we could
We could do that thinking ahead
So, yeah, we we left the concert.
Here's another famous thing about My Bloody Valentine.
They're really famous for their loud guitars.
And the guitar player from the band, Kevin Shields, is known for his guitar.
Unique style of guitar playing.
It's called like a wall of noise.
He can make this wall of noise with his guitar and they finish all of their sets by making this wall of noise.
All of the musicians just play their instruments really loudly and it creates this huge wall of noise, which
Sounds terrible, but when you experience it live, it's actually incredible.
It's really, really cool.
And I experienced it in Tokyo.
They did this wall of noise for like 20 minutes.
It was crazy.
But I knew they were going to do that in Seoul as well.
So I told my wife, we don't have to stick around for the wall of noise, like just to hear them think.
Feedback with their guitars for 20 minutes why don't we experience it for one minute and then we'll take off early so we can get to the shuttle bus before the rest of the crowds so
Because their set list was exactly the same, minus a couple of songs as they played in Tokyo, I knew what to expect.
And so when they got into their wall of noise, we listened to it for a minute or two.
And then I said to my wife, okay, let's go.
Let's get on that shuttle bus.
So we had to...
Pretty much like rip back because we knew there were going to be so many people on the shuttle bus trying to get to the airport after the concert.
So we hurried up.
We were like speed walking all the way.
Through the festival grounds, through the exit, through the big hotel complex that they have there.
And we were one of the first in line to get on the shuttle bus.
We got on the shuttle bus and we were able to catch our airport bus, which took us almost all the way back to our home
Of course, that's still a pretty long journey.
It's over an hour, maybe an hour and 15 minutes on the bus.
My wife passed out.
She just slept the whole way.
But I was buzzing from the concert.
I was really stoked.
I was like, there's no way I could sleep.
I was still so excited from seeing the concert.
And when we arrived pretty close to where we live, it dropped us around a kilometer away from where we live.
We decided to get some food.
We were both pretty hungry.
So we ate some delicious Korean food called Gamjatang, which is this kind of pork bone soup.
Really delicious.
A little bit spicy.
If you ever get the opportunity to try it, I recommend it.
It's really good.
So we had some gamjatang and then we walked home and we walked home along the riverside path where I always go running.
And these days, because of the heat, I've been doing a lot of early morning running.
I usually never run early in the mornings, but it's unavoidable in this heat that I have to go out and run in the morning.
So it's interesting to see the different vibe, the different atmosphere of the Riverside Path at different times of the day.
Like when I go out in the morning to go running, it's mostly just other senior citizens that are out there, to be completely honest, just like grandmas and grandpas hanging out outside.
Along the river and then when i go at night to go running because i go running at night sometimes too after sunset um it's it's a lot of like people around my age and younger people mostly exercising a lot of like runners and cyclists and people walking their dogs
But if you go, we were around 1 a.m. by the time we were walking home after riding the bus and eating food and all of this.
And if you go at Saturday night at 1 a.m., then it's a totally different vibe.
We're near one of the big universities here in Seoul as well.
So there's always lots of university students around.
A lot of foreign exchange students around and i was shocked to see how many of them were just hanging out and enjoying the the riverside path and a lot of like young couples on romantic walks on a saturday night
So it was
It was cool to see the different vibe
And yeah, we walked home.
I got home.
I walked my dog.
Our poor dog was waiting for us that whole time.
She was a trooper and I took her for a walk as soon as we got home.
And then when all was said and done, probably by the time I was ready for bed, it was around 2 a.m.
So I hadn't been out that late in a long time.
That's like way past my bedtime for these days.
So yeah, that was quite a day.
But I had just a great time.
It was nice to relax.
I hadn't done anything like that in a while, like a music festival outside.
It's been years and years, in fact, but I really enjoyed it.
And I had kind of written off music festivals.
I was kind of like, you know, I think I'm done with this stage of my life going to festivals.
However, I really enjoyed myself.
I didn't feel out of place.
I didn't feel too old.
I didn't feel like it was too difficult.
So I'm going to keep an open mind about the festivals next year.
And if there are some artists that I like, then maybe I'll consider going back.
Definitely.
It was a good time.
I think that's the story that I wanted to tell you guys today.
I hope you enjoyed listening along.
Most importantly, I hope you found this useful and helpful for building your English fluency.
Don't forget to check out the transcript and the glossary that's available for this episode and if you're a member as well then there's also a comprehension quiz that you can get.
So guys, thank you so much for listening and please take care up ahead.
I'll be back soon with another brand new bonus episode to share with you in the near future.
But until then, take care and I'll catch you later.
Bye-bye.
