The Backstreet Experience - Day Two
27 February 2008
Concert day! We woke up at 8am, had breakfast, then Jo & I headed to the hotel to wait for the boys.
Brian came down first, and he said "Good after..." *checks watch* "Good morning guys", complete with his trademark grin and a wave. AJ came down soon after, and he said hi too, with his really cute golf bag. Yes, those two were off to play golf again.
So after our usual hi and bye, since the boys were busy texting, we left to do some shopping at the HUGE mall, thinking that Nick & Howie would be too hung over to leave the hotel before noon.
We headed to our favourite Popular again, to get more markers for the banners, and because we ended up getting loads more stuff for the boys and our friends back home, I had to go back to the hotel to get the Popular card. And guess who I saw having lunch at our hotel restaurant? Howie & Nick! They had just walked in.
So I ran back to the room, got the card, walked to Popular, which was pretty darn far, paid and all of us rushed back. So obviously, not wanting to disturb the guys at lunch and seem like total stalker fans, we headed back to our rooms on the 3rd level, which coincidentally was just overlooking the restaurant, which meant we had a clear view of the boys eating. We got out our cameras, and totally took paparazzi pictures of them, then Tesh's flash went off, so all of us completely hid from the window, hoping the boys wouldn't notice, and they didn't. But the whole hiding bit was hilarious.
Anyways, since Tesh & Jamie hadn't gotten pictures with the boys, I followed them down, and we practically ran after them cos they had left the restaurant, we ended up with pictures with Howie, who is always THE sweetheart! Nick only took one picture with another fan cos Howie was taking pictures with us. We were all after Howie. lol. Yup, not exactly loving Nick much this tour, and I speak for all of us (maybe not the Nick gals, but yea).
After that, we went back up to the hotel to bathe, change, and do stuff, and went down to queue at around 1pm. I know, we're insane. And the crappy part was that they had VIP tickets at the last minute, like totally WTF, and we heard from Niki (who's the boys' manager) that the VIP tickets should have been up for sale much much earlier.
There was a showdown between Jo & the galaxy people while Jamie, Tesh & I were making the banners. Oh, and the other gals passed the band's goodie bag to Bryant and ok, go to Nat's LJ for the details!
So after we got chased off by the Galaxy people, Jo saw Howie walk out of the theme park, and she went, Van, I got to get something from the room, follow me. And I was like ok...what room? Because I obviously didn't notice Howie. Anyways, we kinda walked really slowly to the lift area so we could 'casually' bump into Howie. We went into the lift lobby and said hi to him, he said hi back, and continued chatting with the lady, and he was so nice & sweet to her. And we got to take the lift up WITH HIM! I know, major squee for Jo! haha.
Nick actually went to the theme park too, and he came out earlier than Howie, Q waved, and Nick mumbled something like cya later or something.
Not much happened after that, except for the very heavy rain that got all of us totally drenched. And obviously, being the very bad organisers that they are, Galaxy did nothing about it.
We got led to the hotel for the meet & greet around 6pm. Of course we had the satisfaction of seeing the Galaxy people go what? they're on the personal list? It happened at the hotel restaurant, so there weren't many people, max. 30 I think. And we were sitting at the center table *cough*personallist*cough*
The boys walked in a couple of minutes later and of course everyone was silent cos the organisers told us repeatedly that if we were to be really noisy, the M&G would be cancelled. And the boys must have been going, what's up with this bunch of fans? Cos they started waving at us and everyone finally cheered.
Akbar pulled out one of our banners, which had a poster of them from 1997 & said "Love Through The Ages", and Brian totally pulled a funny pose, while AJ & Howie smiled or laughed. Nick didn't notice we think.
Since Jo & I were at the front of the table (it was a long table) and we all agreed we should tell Brian "we're the damp ones now", since he said that to us last night, so I kinda got his attention and he was totally like oh, really, and then he touched my back *major squee* and he went, "oh my gosh, you're really wet!", we told him we were all caught in the storm just now, and he began what we now term as the "Brian dry-cleaning service", which consisted of fanning and hairdrying motions, on me. LOL.
So after that, came the time for pictures, and Howie was all "Hey again!", and the first four of us went to the boys with the gift bags, and since there were no Nick girls in that bunch, all of them except Nick got the bags =p. Oh, and Howie was totally amused when Tesh explained that he had to look at the banner to understand the Kevin fan.
There was a baby there, I guess one of the organiser's kids or something, and AJ & Howie were totally pulling funny faces at him. Now, everyone, go awwwwwww.
And of course, what's a meet & greet without another Galaxy screw-up? Turns out the lady was trying to get us all to leave, and the boys' bodyguards turned around, remember, middle table, so he was like stay! It was funny though. Oh, and did I mention the boys sang Helpless When She Smiles, acappella, near our table, and I mean NEAR, like if Jo or I had reached out, we could've touched them. And I guess they came that near cos we were non-threatening, I mean, waiting a couple of hours just to say hi & bye, because they look busy, yup, non-threatening alright. So it was practically like a performance only for us, and apparently the boys were only looking at our table, since they were in a semi-circle, it was either them looking at each other or us. So yay us!
Everything pretty much went crap after that. Let's just say Galaxy majorly sucks, maybe even more than LAME and that is saying a lot. The crowd was freakin' scary, and they totally didn't have any inkling about doing crowd control. I mean, 10,000 people squeezing into the lagoon area, and nevermind that, but thousands going down a single escalator, a construction site at the venue that a few of us nearly fell into. DISASTROUS is the word. So yup, I got seperated from the rest, since I was pushed all the way to the front. Pretty darn scary standing on my own in a whole crowd of people I didn't know, who were pushing non-stop during the concert and it was scary cos other people were falling down. It's like, if it was in Singapore, not much of a problem, because I know the place well, but KL? Gosh...it really sucked. The only upside was being pushed near to the front in the end, and taking pretty good videos of the *cough*entire*cough* concert. =p
And there was a lot of hip-trusting and crotch grabbing from AJ, and Brian paid a lot of attention to fans at the sides who probably can't see anything, except the boys heading offstage, so that was really sweet. Nick & Howie did some weird dance moves now and then. lol.
OH! And especially for the A-Rok fans, AJ sang "Brian, you take me by surprise, will you be the one I had in mind?"
About 2 and a half minutes into 'I Want It That Way', when they were doing the chorus, 'you are, you are...', Howie shouted 'This one's for Kevin!' Awwwwww...*silly grin* Kevin fan anyone? =p
After that, we met up again at the hotel lobby and we went up to bathe and change, before heading out to the boys' hotel. And we saw the Backstreet Band at the hotel lounge! Jo totally ran over when we told her they're there. Nevermind BSB now. lmao. Nah...we still love those boys, but darn, the Backstreet Band are freakin' awesome. Bryant came over to chat for a bit, he asked if we got to see the boys, cos soundcheck was cancelled, and we ask him about the gift bag and all and got more pictures. Is it any surprise that we're fangirling such awesome people? haha.
Dory was playing the guitar for the people on stage for a while =D, and Dory & Bryant just had to go play around with the piano for a while. lol.
Videos of the concert coming up in a while.