Kdrama Review: What's Wrong with Secretary Kim?

Drama: What's Wrong With Secretary Kim?
Genre: Romantic Comedy
Starring: Park Seo Joon, Park Min Young
Rating: ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤

Here's a fun drama about a very stuck up boss/ceo dude who has this secretary for nine years and treats her pretty crappy. I mean, like not mean, but he just doesn't seem to notice how totally awesome she is. And then one day she decides she wants to find her dream, or find herself, or something, and she decides she is sick to death of being his secretary and having no life and she tells him she is quitting.

Well of course he is all... ARE YOU KIDDING ME? You totally can't!!! And then he suddenly realizes, he pretty much can't live with out her and he is really wondering....

"What's wrong with Secretary Kim????"

And she tries to explain but in the process of all this both of them realize that dang... they kinda like each other!!

And so she gives him another month, and they hire her replacement which she is training and they continue on as normal. But not normal. Because they now know they like each other.

And then things get steamy! (Dang, but this is pretty much the steamiest kdrama I've seen yet! Which is to say, very tame still, but wow... if you are into kissing....)  And lots of nice romance.

And yet, there is this touch of strangeness that he still doesn't fully come around to "getting" it. True it's his personality to be arrogant and it's kinda funny in parts, but it does become annoying that he doesn't really ever submit to the fact that she is as equal as him.

It's hard to articulate, but it does rub one the wrong way a bit.

Still, I enjoyed this one. The banter. The characters. The romance. The kissing. Yes. And what's not to love about Park Seo Joon? Seriously. It also stars one of my favorite leading actresses (the girl from Healer for those of you that know that one.)  These guys have a great chemistry and it came out during the watching of this show that they are together in real life. And so I thought, wow, no wonder! And then Seo Joon ssi came out and said... um, no. We are just friends. CHILL OUT EVERYONE! (He was pretty snarky indeed and it made me laugh, but it also made me wonder... what's the real truth mister!!??)

So who knows?? But regardless, they have great chemistry!

This dorky smile is my favorite.

(This actress has been cast with three of my favorite actors: Park Seo Joon, Lee Min Ho and Ji Chang Wook... and I wondered who she enjoyed working with most. I have to say I'm guessing it's Park Seo Joon!!)

Oh and I didn't even say anything about the CRAZY back story! Because you know there is one and it's... CRAZY!

Well. anyway, here's a little trailer if you are interested:
(click on the cc to get the captions!)






And a song (featuring our boy Jinho from Pentagon! Dang I love his voice.)

KCON LA 2018 is a WRAP!

It's been awhile since I posted here in the poor neglected blog. Part of the reason is that since August started it's been non-stop kpopping around here and lots of fun stuff to edit for our vlogs on the YouTube channel.

Perhaps the biggest event we participated in is KCON held at the LA Convention Center (and concerts at the Staples Center next door). This is just like Comic Con for those of you familiar with that...three days of panels and stages and appearances and vendors and workshops.... only with all Korean pop culture stuff. And featuring two awesome concerts on two of the nights ( and a sort of club concert on the other night.) It's an awesome event for those of us who are in love with all things Korean pop culture.

A couple of years when I first got into this, I learned that this event existed and thought... dang that's cool. And I watched the live stream of the concerts online. It was so fun and I thought, I really would like to go!

The next year, I found myself there, right up next to the gate on the floor as close as one can get to the artists on stage. And I thought... dang how crazy is this?!

This year I found myself going again, but this time all expenses paid by the company in charge, as a special guest and being featured on two different panels! (It was supposed to be three but one got cancelled.)

Life is so weird!!! And sometimes so awesome that you can't ever predict anything!

Anyway, it was a fabulous time filled with close up brushes with some of our favorite (and new favorites) bands, hanging out behind the scenes with YouTubers a million times more famous than us, eating Korean street food, making new friends with those on the panels with us, getting to talk to fans that are parents and/or old fans like me, and then finally going to the concerts and seeing so many awesome performances. I can't even describe how much fun these concerts are!

So, if you are interested in what our life was like for those few days, or want to see what the panels were like, or who we fell in love with this time, or get a little taste of the concerts, or.. just see what KCON is all about, here are the vlogs and clips we put together:

Day One:

Day Two:

Day Three:

It's hard to believe it's over again for another year. Can't wait to see what next year brings!

Book Review: Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo

Book: Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo
Genre: YA Fantasy
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

I remember the buzz around this book awhile back. A long while back. Finally, I ended up with a copy of this book and decided to see what everyone was talking about!

Sadly, it still took me several chapters and many pages to get hooked. The world is quite different and the magic is pretty intense, but once I got that down and figured all the characters out, I was invested and flew through the rest of the book.

The story centers around six characters, and each one gets a moment to tell their POV (thus the bit of confusion at the beginning... lots of POV flipping!) but these characters are all so wonderful and interesting and engaging that I actually ended up loving hearing from each of them.

It's also important to have this POV shift because they are all in different places during the story and we want to know what's going with all of them, so it works well.

These six are part of a sort of gang lead by a dude named Kaz and they are hired to go and "rescue" a dude who has the power to create this substance that enhances the magic of the Grishna (those with magic in this world) but also destroys them. The bad guys have this dude and our guys are going to get him back. It's huge mastermind heist that they have pretty much no chance of doing.

All the six have very interesting back stories which we learn as we go along. They all have their agendas, their strengths and weaknesses, the hates and loves, and connections. Man, I fell in love with them all so fast! And then ah, that made it scary for what they had to go through! Nail biting!

Of course this book is just the first in a series (of just two!) and the ending left us hanging, which means I now have book 2 in hand ready to start!

In the end... I loved it and am sad I waited so long to join the ranks of those who love these books!