I wanted to make a montage of the concert, but I couldn't get a decent free video editing software. (I was shocked that Windows Movie Maker is not free anymore) So I have decided to just upload all the clips I took of the concert. If you want to check out my view, you can see my videos at the playlist linked HERE.

For anyone that's waiting for this, I'm sorry? Anyways, I'm here now to give my *honest* opinions about the concert. I contemplated a long time about whether or not I should post this, but I am thinking to myself... I can't be the only one thinking what I'm thinking about the concert. Just putting this out there first though... anyone who went to the concert and loved it...pls be minded that I'm going to bring up some negative points below. If you're the kind of person that cannot accept any critical views about the concert, please click away now. But if you want a bit of entertainment and giggles, or if you want to check out what happened to me during my journey, and you want to read about my honest opinions about the concert, keep reading.

Alright. Let's start from the beginning. I started my journey with my brother from Johor that morning. Because my brother was with me, we decided to make it sort of like a pseudo roadtrip rather than just rushing to the concert. I don't know if it was because I was alone, and I don't follow ELFs on social media much, or maybe I was just too tired from rushing assignments and work, but I didn't really feel too hyped on the journey? Anyway, we made several detours for breakfast and lunch (which would have led to my downfall as I will explain later). We went to Yong Peng (a district in Johor) for breakfast at this famous fishcake noodles place. Then, it was a looooong stretch of journey to Kuala Lumpur. I think we spent like 3 hours in the car. Then, we reached Kuala Lumpur and my brother suggested we go to Sunway. It was around 12pm at this point. Anyway, we went to Sunway Pyramid (shopping mall) to spend time, although neither of us had anything worthwhile to do there. And we didn't even eat lunch there! I just bought some Subway on the go. Then around 3.30pm, my brother suggested we leave, because he said it takes around half an hour to get to Shah Alam (where the concert hall is). Reminder: the concert starts at 4.30pm. With that in mind, supposedly we can get there on time right? 

'Supposedly'       -_____-

Let me give you a blow by blow of what happened when we reached Shah Alam. If you were there at the concert, you would have known that there is an Aeon shopping mall RIGHT OPPOSITE of the stadium right? Well, when we arrived there, it was almost 4pm. And my freaking brother told me he needed to go...to the toilet. He had been holding it since we were at Sunway. Why he didn't go when we were there is a puzzle to me until this day. (My brother is a special snowflake) So he said, 'lets go to Aeon', and we went. Then, he also said he needed to borrow some money from me. Money which I didn't have in cash since I spent most of my cash on breakfast and lunch. Therefore I had no option but to go to Aeon instead of telling him to just go to the toilet at the stadium. While he was in the toilet getting rid of his breakfast, I went to look for an ATM machine so I could get some cash. And as you probably already guessed, I got lost. Me and shopping malls, we don't get along ok? (Also worth noting that we had already spent like 15 minutes looking for a parking spot at this point so it was like 4.10pm) Anyway, we eventually sorted ourselves out and left Aeon around 4.20pm. Which was like REALLY late. But I really thought I was fine, because you know Malaysian culture, we are never on time, so I thought the concert couldn't possibly start on time at 4.30pm.

But it did. 

Getting to the concert hall was a bit confusing because GPS was not giving us the right directions, and there was construction work around the stadium, which made it hard to see where it was. But we managed to get there, and guys, when I was getting my bag checked, Eunhae was like halfway through their first song. Eventually, I crawled my way in there and found my seat, I assume, before they finished their first song. (I had no idea if it was the first or second song, it was a song I didn't recognise. Yeah, I'm bad.) Anyway, I don't really remember much about what exactly happened to me at the specific points of the concert, so I won't go into details about how I felt during each song. Instead, let me just give you a rundown of what I felt were the most memorable performances (heavily biased).

1. Growing Pains - This song is my all time favourite song from Eunhae, so it is quite obvious that no matter what, I would love it. What would have been better was if they performed the choreography. Again, its my favourite song, so I kinda wanted to see it in its best form.

2. Rum Dee Dee - This song is a jewel for live concerts. It was also one of my favourite songs, so I was so hyped for it.

3. Jungle - When this song came out, I actually didn't like it much. (Actually I didn't really like the Danger album) but this is definitely one of the songs that shines on stage. (Biased) I think I'll go as far as to that that I like this song more than Danger, but I love the choreography for Danger more.

4. Lost - I love the duo version that features Hyukjae. But! I keep feeling that it would be better if it was the acoustic guitar version that Donghae did in SS7S. Imagine Donghae + Hyukjae with Donghae on the guitar... (Why do I get 'The Star is Born' vibes thinking about it) But I can understand that they want to save acoustic Lost for SS7S only.

5. Bout You - This performance was so fun, and you already know I'm laughing like crap at the 'Hyukjae' parts of the song. This was just hilarious. 

6. I Wanna Love You - Another song that is memorable to me purely because I just love the song so much. This was my favourite Eunhae song before Growing Pains came out, so you can bet I love this performance. I really enjoy the sultry take on the song, with the updated choreo. Really good.

Just to put this out there. I did enjoy the performances even if I didn't list them out on top. I'll admit that I didn't have time to do much research prior to the concert, so I didn't know some of the songs they performed, but I really liked all of them. Hey, I'm an Eunhae fan thorough and thorough, so no matter what they put out, you can bet that I'm gonna be on the hype train. 

But!

Yes, the 'but' is out now. 

Click away now. 

You have been warned.

I'm going to get flamed so hard for saying this, but my concert experience hasn't been the best. Excluding my own faults (not sleeping well the night before and arriving late), I feel like there's just something lacking about this concert. If you asked me to grade this concert, I'd say its about 80%, not 100%. I know I have no right to complain (because you know I went there by being sponsored), and I'm not complaining. There's a difference between being salty and being critical. And if you have been following my work, you know that I'm always critical, its how I continue to improve. (And I've been teaching for 6 years now, so it's an occupational disease)

I'm not going to say anything about Eunhae's performance or their back up performers. In that sense, I think they all performed to my expectations. I think Donghae was a bit shaky at times, but overall, he was good. (I mean, you don't expect Eunhae to sing like Ryeowook or Kyuhyun, that's just wrong) I'm also not going to comment too much about the concert direction. Flow of performances was ok. If it was up to me, I would rearrange the sequence of some songs, although I don't think its a huge problem. The performances were good. There was a lot of thought put into the setting. I think my favourite set was Bout You + I Love It. I also like 1+1=Love.

I am mainly going to critique on three things: the stage design, the audio quality and my viewer's experience. First of all, my biggest problem...the stage design. (Disclaimer: I do not know if the stage design is meant to be this way because of the concert direction or if the organiser is just ing cheap.) From the perspective of a person watching this concert in particular, the stage design is dog. I'm going to assume that those reading this were at the concert or have seen pictures or videos. I don't understand the theory of the tapered end of the extended stage. Let me just tell you why its a bad idea. Let's use 2 examples, Motorcycle and Dancing Out. Both songs had interaction with the audience, but the tapered end meant that when Eunhae went down from the stage to make their way around, people sitting around my area can't see at all. (You can watch my video on Motorcycle and Dancing Out to get a idea what I'm saying) For that reason alone, getting the VIP sitting ticket was basically worthless (for people who are looking to get bank for their buck, not people who are just there to support Eunhae, which to be fair, is most of us). I was seated at VIP CAT 4, don't remember which row, but it was around the 8th to 10th row, but if even I can't see , what about people behind me? I think basically only the 1st or 2nd row could see what happened. I just don't understand why they can't extend the stage until the end and create a loop around the rock pit so that when they were making their way around, people seated at my area can also see. Doing the stage design like this is unfair to everyone sitting facing the stage, because they couldn't see what was happening down there. I mean, if I really cared about my viewing experience, I would be pissed to be paying over 500 bucks to see other people's heads as they all stood up to try and see what the was going on down there. Actually, no lie, I am pissed. But wouldn't you? For the majority of time, what you're seeing are figures as small as ants, and then, when they finally come closer, guess what? YOU STILL CAN'T SEE.

Ok, I sound like I'm pissed. Let me cool down a bit. And let's move on to the second part of the problem. The sound system. I wanted to give the organiser the benefit of the doubt. I wanted to give the management of the stadium the benefit of the doubt. But I can't give a legitimate reason why the sound system was so bad. I'll admit that this is only my second Kpop concert, but I have attended concerts and singing competitions held at university and school level. Heck, I've participated in the organisation of a festival (with freaking solo performances, group performances and even an orchestra) at my university for a hall and audience that was about the size of D&E's concert. So I know that it doesn't cost an arm and a leg to book a good sound system, and I'm ashamed to admit that I've heard better audio than what I heard during D&E's concert. I was actually telling my brother that five rows of VIP tickets can pay for a reasonable sound system. I don't know what or where went wrong, or if I'm just overreacting, but neither Donghae nor Hyukjae sound reasonably like their normal self. (If you watch the videos, its not so bad, but it was very bad hearing it live) I don't know how true it is, but I heard that the speakers at Stadium Malawati are built in, and I heard from my friend, who attended Wanna One's concert at another stadium called Arena Axiata, that Stadium Malawati is compared to Arena Axiata. Again, I can't vouch for that. Plus, anyone remember Hyuk's mic breaking down like in the middle of the concert? Please. It was a 2-man performance. Do you not have 2 decent mics?

Lastly, the viewer's experience. Firstly, I think this is me being oversensitive, but throughout the entire concert, my seat was vibrating. I don't know why. Maybe it's just an unavoidable effect of the booming sounds from the speakers. At the end of the concert, my whole body was numb from all the vibration. Another thing is the stage lights. There were a few performances where there were beams of light just flashing right into my face, and it was hard to see the screen. (Remember I mentioned just now that I couldn't see what they were doing on stage? Now I can't see the screen too, hooray) Thankfully, I took videos of most of the performances, so what I couldn't see live, I could see it later in the video. Honestly, (I'm gonna get punked for saying this) watching the concert in my room from the videos I took was better than actually watching it live.

Alright, so those are all the uglies that I wanted to say about the concert itself. I actually do have another tiny critique about Donghae. I think he legitimately thinks that Malaysians = Chinese, because he kept speaking in Mandarin. I don't blame him, because I think that a lot of people who went to the concert were from China, Taiwan and Hong Kong, but there were also a lot of Malay fans, and fans from Indonesia, Thailand and Philippines (that I know of because I saw them) who did not understand Mandarin. Plus, I think the translator they used was Korean, so she did not translate the Mandarin part of his speech. I especially felt sorry for the girls sitting beside me, when Donghae was speaking they were basically like "lol what is he saying I don't understand". I wanted to translate for them, but I didn't want to be a busybody. I know that no one will blame Donghae because he's a sweetheart, but someone should definitely tell him to speak in English next time, or just speak in Korean, or get a translator to translate both Korean and Mandarin.

Another thing I wanted to say was I loved the unitedness of everyone to support the concert. I heard a lot of ELFs saying thank you to each other and things like "it was tough, but it was worth it". I know that a lot of C-ELFs and T-ELFs flew in to support after the initial news that the ticket sales were low, so it was really all thanks to them that in the end, the concert attendence rate (from my own observation) was around 75-80%. Plus, a lot of people brought their friends and family. I saw someone bringing both parents. And you guys know that girl called out by Eunhae for walking out during the concert? I heard she was not a fan, her ELF friend brought her and she just wanted to step out to buy some food outside because she was hungry. That was hilarious. All in all, even though it was not a sold out concert, I'm glad that it was not like half empty or anything. And it was all because of everyone doing what they could that it became possible.

Ok, I think I'm almost done.

Let's end this video on a positive note with some of my favourite moments. Firstly, after so many years, I'm still blown away by how hot Donghae actually is. Practically every time he smiled, it became my new favourite moment. Oh, and one of the male backup dancers was extremely good-looking... you and I know which one (and I'm hopefully not the only one who noticed that he looked a bit like Sehun). I actually saw him after the concert when he was leaving in the van. He's really hot up close too, and he waved to all of us standing by the roadside. I also liked that moment when Donghae made us sing One More Chance. There's just something about that that is so special. And of course, the ever so popular 'Hyukjae' during Bout You, I need not say more about that. Seriously cute. But I think the cutest Eunhae interaction was during Lost, where Donghae was standing beside the stage and when Hyukjae came out, he got shocked by him. That was priceless. I don't think I remember any other notable moments. If you guys have any, you can share below.

Anyways, that's all I have to say about the concert. After the concert, I waited for my brother to come pick me up and we immediately left for Johor as I had an assignment due next day. It was a gruesome journey, because other than stopping for some snacks and go to the toilet for 10 minutes, we (or rather, my brother) drove all the way home in one stretch. Even though in the previous paragraphs, I sounded like I was flaming my brother hard, but I am actually really grateful that he went with me. I honestly don't think I would have survived 10+ hours driving by myself. I think on the way home, he was actually really tired, but he listened to me ramble about the dog stage and sound system for like 2 hours (I was fuming at that time) so he's a champ, really. Thankfully, he will never see this post so he won't see me praising him :P That's not how our relationship works hahaha.

I'd like to end this post by saying thank you once again to all the people who donated to me and enabled me to attend the concert. Although I sound like I am whining a lot, the reason for that is just because I feel unfortunate about the shortcomings that prevented me from enjoying the concert 100%. All in all, its a great concert, and I'm happy to have the chance to see Eunhae live, and to do everything in my power to help make the concert successful. The concert has ended a long time ago, but I still have to work to do. I will work on fulfilling all the prompts that I have received to keep my promise to all the people who supported me. I have already started working on two of the prompts, so updates will come not too long in the future as my semester holidays will start next week.

That's all for now. Thanks and I'll see you later.