Welcome again to the June 2012 edition of Soshified Spotlight. Just a reminder:

Just like every other month, we’re once again highlighting a regular member in Part 1, and a Soshified staff member in Part 2.

You have presumably read about chill4387, or Intan, in Part 1. In Part 2, we are featuring Riin, a super moderator here at Soshified. Riin keeps a very hectic schedule. In addition to her regular moderating duties at Soshified, she helps out with Soshi Subs, she is an avid gamer, and she has a full-time job working for an international media company. A member of Soshified almost since the beginning, she has seen a lot of changes that have happened both on the site and with the girls, and she shares some of that below.

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What is your first name?

One of the secrets I will never tell~

How did you find out about Soshified and why did you decide to join?

It’s a long story actually. It all started on my journey of wanting to learn Korean back in mid 2007. Prior to 2007, The only exposure I had with anything remotely Korean was through Youtube, Soompi and D-addicts. Back then there were only a couple of korean shows uploaded with English subs. Most of the subbed variety shows that I came across were X-man and cuts of idol groups related shows and Korean dramas. I was a huge fan of Korean dramas before I started watching variety shows and soon I ran out of things to watch. And since there were cuts of unsubbed shows online, why wait for subs when you can try to learn some Korean to understand them better, right?

So I decided to learn Korean by watching dramas and the limited subbed variety shows online to pick up words and phrases- which was a bad way to learn cause I later found out that the translations were from Chinese subs and some terms and meanings could be lost in translations when you translate from Korean to Chinese to English. But hey, it’s a start :|

From variety shows I was exposed to another side to the Korean entertainment- idol groups. I favoured Wonder Girls more. I think everyone did back then. I wouldn’t call myself a big Wonderful but I enjoyed their music until that fateful day where I stumbled on some cuts of Girls Go to School. I was hooked and wanted to know more about them. I fell in love with the group not because of the songs they sang or their concepts but because of their individual personalities.

Wanting to watch more of the show from the start till the end and download a copy, I googled and came to know of Ambition. I wasn’t active much, was just there to download vidoes to watch and pictures to look at. It wasn’t really later on that I heard of Soshified in late February of 2008. It was a fairly new website. I actually frequent the shoutbox (you don’t have to log in to use the shoutbox back then) on Soshified before I decided to officially join as a member.

How did you come up with your screen name?

It’s actually another way to spell a small part of my real name.

Where are you originally from, and where do you currently reside (city and country for both)?

Born and have been living on a tiny dot of an island all my life.

If we were visiting you where you live for one day, where would you take us? Why are these places so significant?

Take you guys around to eat? Or go shopping? LOL i don’t know. What else is there to do here that have not been mentioned in previous spotlights for cedge and doe. We live on the same sunny island D:

Tell us a little about your life. What do you do full time and in your free time?

I’m fortunate to have a job that I enjoy doing as it is related to one of my many interests in life. I work for an international media company that owns, manages and distributes TV and media rights for prestigious sports events around the world. Free time and weekends are for Soshified and family. If you see me glued to my cellphone or my ipad, I’m either trying to catch up on tweets, reading news article online, getting up to date with things posted in the SSF staff section or anything SNSD related (articles, tumblr, youtube cuts you name it).

Besides that, you can say that I’m a huge gamer. At last count, I own about 50 games for the xbox 360 console. Some of the games I’m currently playing on PC are CoH, Dota2, Left 4 dead and Dead Island and Shogun 2. Sometimes I still play classic games like Diablo 1 and 2, Fallout 1 and 2 and titles under the Command and Conquer franchise. I also like listening to music, I can’t go without my itouch and always have to turn on the music when I’m doing anything. Also I like reading, non fictions mostly, currently reading ‘Escape from Camp 14’ by Blaine Harden. So if any of you got a good book to recommend me, just drop me a comment or tweet me for those that have me on twitter!

You say your job relates to one of your many interests. I assume this means you like media and/or sports? Have you been able to attend any awesome events or gotten any cool experiences through your job?

Yes, I like both of them. I’ve always wanted to make a career in the media & entertainment industry even though I graduted with something unrelated to media. And I also enjoy sports, more specifically soccer. So it’s great that this job is a mix of the two.

Awesome events? Unfortunately no :( Unlike the sales people going off to some other country every few days, meeting interesting people, I’m more of a support staff and I do paperwork… lots of it. Nothing cool about it besides knowing about the various sporting events that certain countries have.

You have a lot of hobbies that can be time-consuming, especially with Soshified and gaming. How do you stay on top of these, especially with your hectic work life?

Time management and multi-tasking plays a huge part. I don’t game on weekdays because gaming can be pretty intense and rather than relaxing myself, I could end up frustrated. So I try to keep away from gaming as much as possible during the weekdays plus I get home late so there really isn’t much time for me to play a game. So I usually spend my nights catching up with my family and just relaxing myself by watching shows or just snuggling up in bed with my ipad reading up on stuff. Sometimes I try to do some work on Soshified too.

For people who are first meeting you (like most of us), how would you describe yourself?

It’s hard for me to warm up to people that I’ve just met but after a while when you get to know me, like really know me and I feel really comfortable with you, that’s when you see me open up and I get really weird and crazy and I troll on people. I’m loud too. Other than that I’m usually as cool as a cucumber and very quiet.

What are your interests outside of Girls’ Generation?

Besides SNSD, I enjoy listening to the likes of 4men, Davichi and Korean indie bands like Lucid Fall, Standing egg, 10cm and Vodka Rain to name a few.

Other interests would be gaming, sports, reading, movies, shopping, eating and sleeping.

Who is your favorite member and why?

Good question. I used to question myself that a lot. It wasn’t until recently after really thinking about it, that I have to admit Jessica is my favourite member judging from how much I troll on her. Rather than have a bias list, I have this list called ‘Members that I love to troll on the most’ where Yuri and Taeyeon would both be in second place. Maknae would be placed the last cause she’s the cutest maknae ever and I can’t find anything wrong with her.

What is your favorite Girls’ Generation song and MV and why?

My favourite song have got to be Complete. I don’t really have a favourite MV but Genie and Run Devil Run would be somewhat close to what you would call a favourite?

What is your favorite Girls’ Generation moment and why?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijI7nO4wV0E&feature=youtu.be&t=3m6s (i think this is everyone’s favourite) and http://youtu.be/ijI7nO4wV0E?t=4m10s

So much to say and so little words to describe why I love these 2 moments.

How has Girls’ Generation impacted your life, in specific areas or even as a whole?

You know sometimes when you’re stuck in a rut and you don’t know what else to do to solve it? Yeah, when that happens, I ask myself, “What would SNSD do?” that kind.

So when you are in a rut and ask yourself, “What would SNSD do?”, what answers do you come up with? What kinds of ruts cause you to ask yourself this question?

Like in situations where I’m unsure on what to do and I feel like taking the easy way out. Where I’ll go, “What would SNSD do? Would they give up easily and take the easy way out or give their best in whatever they do?” Like a motivational self pep talk kind of thing.

What do you like most about Soshified, and why? Any section in particular you’re attracted to?

Having been with the site from almost the beginning, I can’t think of anything not to love about Soshified D:

I love every part of it (well except for the spams of course). A section that I usually frequent after the staff sections would be the fanfic section. I like reading and it felt like a natural transgression to pick up fanfic too, you know. There’s actually some really good writers over in our fanfic section that I follow. I’m really amazed at how big our fanfic section has grown. We used to only have less than 10 pages of fanfics, now there are tons of it.

Why do you think the fanfic section has grown so much over the years?

Well… looking at the many pages and the amount of fics? And also the quality of fics. Although there are lots of fics with generic plots, if you look hard enough, you’ll find really good fics amongst them.

Why did you decide to join the Soshified staff, and why the particular job you have now?

I thought it would be fun to help out around the forum. No regrets and it still is fun. When I just joined, it was a small forum, still in its infancy period where everybody knew each other. And I guess it helped that I was friends with a few people that set the foundation for Soshified, the ones that were the pioneer group of staff. Originally I wanted to apply to be a subber but when I was offered a spot for a moderator, I took up the offer. Fast forward to the present day, who would have thought that Soshified would grow this big? I sure didn’t. We have had a good run so far and the past 4 years of being a staff member have been insanely fun. We’ve lost staff members but we have also gained really good ones along the way that made a difference and it has been a good experience so far and I’m looking forward to more years with the team of people I work with everyday.

How did you get recruited as a moderator?

Not much to say. I was approached and offered the position after I expressed my interest in wanting to help out with the forum in any way.

What exactly do you do? Do you enjoy this position? What do you like about it?

I’m a Super moderator. Besides the usual pming of members about rule violations, creating and closing of threads, I do display names and log in names changes and deducting posts etc. I’m also in charge of hiring of new moderators and recently I’ve started an ongoing recruitment for a group of volunteers to help the moderators out in keeping the forums clean.

We have a couple of new addition to the moderator team (Kendelle, musicmint, pilona and WobBLeR) and a new group of volunteers that will be helping us out (KSarangHaeT, MasterAdept and Mawelli). Please welcome them and we seek your co-operation to help them do their job in keeping the forums clean and making sure that everyone’s stay on Soshified is an enjoyable experience. Thank you -bows-

Besides that, I do help out a fair bit with subbing as a timer too. I’ve worked on Invincible Youth Season 1 and some episodes for Season 2. Working on We Got Married right now and a couple of other shows that I can’t really remember the names. The reason why I branch out into subbing partly have to do with my wish to be one of the first few people to watch the latest show with pink subs and like I mentioned earlier of wanting to become a subber, so that’s another reason why I got into subbing too. But the bad part of the deal was that I always end up spazzing alone T_T *sadface*.

I used to do a lot more but due to having a hectic working life, I couldn’t continue being as active on Soshified like I was when I was a student :(

What is your favorite project that you’ve ever been involved in?

Favourite project, for moderators, we once had this treasure hunt game thingy where members had to look around the forum to find Bicky the Lobster. That was fun!

Subbing wise, I definitely have to say working on Invincible Youth Season 1 was the most memorable and one of my favourite project that I’ve been involved in. A show that I grew attached to from the very first episode and cried buckets while working on the last episode. Not even joking. *sigh* I ship Subyung because of that show :’)

Outside of subbing and moderating, I was in the organising team for the fan events for the 2011 December concert that took place in Singapore. Super duper stressful period of time and I got really sick in the middle of the planning process but it was fun. If I had to do it again, I don’t mind doing it because event planning have always been an interest that I want to explore further.

Any interesting experiences when interacting with members?

Too many to mention. I had lots of fun when I actually met up with fellow SSF members that I talk to online. It’s interesting to know a group of awesome people, some that are actually living halfway across the world, that shares the same interest as you and it’s great that we are able to keep in contact with each other through Soshified, Skype, Twitter and Whatsapp.

Thanks to Soshified, I’ve worked and grew close with some really weird but funny, smart and friendly people- grandma deer, Young Buck, hid, pubsquash, Holly, FrozenArctic, Icarus, Maltesers’ Minion, Ganookie, doe, cedge, Alvin & GPTX (my fellow troll chingus!) and Roythelamp to name a few.

I also met some really nice people because of the December concert- Melinda, Ade, Eugene, Greg, Shyan, Kaini, Sarah, Nigel, Billy, leddy and bbzidane (thanks for treating us!). And all the others that I didn’t mention… I forgot your names but I remember your faces sorry~~ >_<" Hi there! and thanks for making the December concert fun and for helping out with the collections and stuff. And also through Soshified, I've gotten to know another group of members that shares another interest of mine. Gaming! Fatal Four heyy y'all~~ Mako, Pammie and Vi! and I would like to say hey to all the other people that I usually play a round of l4d versus with- Tommy, Dongie, Alena, Butt, Darien, Darren and Sicalegs! I'm sorry for making some of you buy games so we can play together on steam T__T I SORRY. BUT IT'S FUN NO?? ---------- Huge thanks goes out to Riin for participating in Soshified Spotlight this month. As usual, you can submit nominations for future Soshified Spotlights if you'd like to participate or if you'd like to get to know a fellow member better. Instructions on how to do so can be viewed at the Soshified Spotlight Solicitation announcement.

You can also read past Soshified Spotlights by clicking on the “Soshified Spotlight” tag below.

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Graphic by: [email protected]

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