another world

So, the Project Global Cooling concert. How was it? It was pretty good, actually. The bands came, the audience cheered, we all sang along and jumped to the music, we made a lot of money to donate to an environmental organization, etc. Honestly, we didn’t have anything close to this in mind just a few weeks ago. We had a few bands listed, but none of them were confirmed, we had a little bit of money from our budget, but we didn’t make any from fund raising, we had problems with the date of the concert and the time, we didn’t even have a location. But somehow, by some miracle and a lot of work, we made it happen.

There was one quite large mistake, though. DIRECTIONS. We handed out maps to everybody at school last week, hoping it would help them find the club location. It said, at Hongik University Station, go out of exit #6 and find Artbox. First of all, there was no exit #6; there were exit #’s 1-5, but no 6. Funny, huh? Secondly, there were two Artbox stores. One was right next to the station #5 exit, so everybody assumed it was that one that we had written in the map. Everything ended up being extremely chaotic, with us, members not even being able to find the location for a while. Once we found the way, a few of us had to stay behind in front of the station #5 exit, holding signs that said PGC CONCERT, so that we could guide the guests in the right direction. It wasn’t the best job in the world; strangers would come up to us and ask us what the PGC Concert is, and others would just whisper, “What do you think that’s about? What does PGC mean?” to each other. We seriously felt like we were limo drivers holding signs at the airport.

As students and teachers came out of the subway exit, we walked them up to the SPOT club door, and then ran back down to meet another group. Some of us, like Patrick and Joon, had to this several times.

Although our job was physically hard, although we encountered a drunk man laying on the ground, and although we missed the first half hour of the concert, I have to say that the experience overall was pretty fun.

HOWEVER, the one thing that we were missing was the true meaning of the concert. I admit that it was partially our fault – our club members were the ones who came up with the idea of asking the teachers to offer extra credit to the students who attend the concert. Our original intent was for the extra credit offer to encourage the students to go, which it surely did, but instead of maintaining the real message of this whole event, it created the feeling of, “Oh, I have to go because I need the extra credit” among many, if not all of the students.

If we had done something during the concert to promote the idea of saving our Earth, if we had at least put on a short Youtube clip about global warming or said a few words at the end of the night, maybe it would have been okay. The only thing that was there to remind us that the event was supposed to raise global warming awareness was the “PGC Concert 2008″ banner hung on the back wall of the stage, 95% hidden by the drum set.

BUT, that’s enough woulda-coulda-shoulda’s.

THANK YOU Mr. Burell, Lauren, Patrick, Daniel, Iljee, Shinhee, Joon, Jessica, and everybody else for all of the time and effort you put into making this a successful event!

Cameraman [photo#1] Joon Lee