This was a shorter day. I spent most of the time on an airplane, and I lost 7 hours because the earth is a globe. But I’ll write a little about what happened today.

The Flight

The flight to Seoul was okay. In total, it took ~12 hours, but because the flight departed at 22:00, it sort of felt like a “sleeping train.”

Before the plane took off, I helped the flight attendant put some luggage away, which scored me some literal brownie points I got to use later in the flight. As soon as the plane took off, the person in front of me put his seat down as far as possible (bad flying etiquette).

I slept for a few hours and played Silksong on my Steam Deck. I bought the game on release day but waited until today to start it, and boy is it a blast to play.

Arrival

When I landed, it was 17:00 in Seoul (10:00 in the Netherlands). I felt some jet lag, but because I didn’t sleep too much, I hope I can reset my schedule in one or two days. After I had collected my baggage and got my medication checked, I made it to Arrival Hall 2 in Incheon.

It still feels a bit unreal to be back here after three years. I keep hitting these milestones of “Okay, now it actually started,” like when I closed the door of my apartment yesterday, when I got on the plane, when the plane took off, and when the plane landed. I guess I’ll keep having these thoughts for the first week.

There was one thing I really wanted to do as soon as I landed, and that was to buy some convenience store kimbap. Last time I was here, I devoured like three of these a day—they are so good! I’ll keep track of how many I eat during my time here.

TWICE Tickets

So TWICE will have a fan meeting (sort of like a concert, but smaller-scale and more informal) for their tenth anniversary. The announced venue had a capacity of 6,000 people (mind you, they sold out 100k tickets in Taiwan within 5 minutes). I really wanted to go, but I expected my chances of nabbing a ticket to be pretty low.

The sale started at 20:00. I was done with my post-landing checklist (get cash, get a SIM card, get a public transit card) at 19:00. But it would take me around 1.5 hours to get to my hotel. This meant I would miss out on the tickets. Still, I had to give it a try.

So I got a small meal at Lotteria (Korean McDonald’s) to get internet and a table, and I waited. Slowly, I saw the clock ticking down. I had a slim chance of actually getting the tickets, but I couldn’t pass on this opportunity. Then the clock hit 20:00—I was in the queue! 2,000 people were in front of me, not too bad! But when the number reached 0, the website crashed, and I had to reload (queue war flashbacks to me scoring tickets for Taiwan). This time I was number 3,000. I thought it was over, lost again to the whims of the ticketing algorithm. But this time the countdown went way faster, probably due to duplicate accounts from people queueing with multiple devices. Thirty seconds later I was back in, and there were still tickets left! I clicked on the first one I could see and rushed through the payment procedure. Order completed successfully! I had to contain myself from screaming—I actually did it, in the jankiest setup possible!

To the hotel

Now it was time to go to my hotel and check in. Get some rest, and then get up early tomorrow to take another plane to Macau to see TWICE live in concert (if my second-hand ticket works).

I am writing this now on the airport train to Seoul Station. I’ll add some more pictures of my room in tomorrow’s post.