For those who read my blog and wondered, why on earth I suddenly posted tons of things related to Sharon Corr and The Corrs? Well here is the answer. On 24th of September 2013, Yovie Widianto held the Irreplaceable Concert to celebrate his 30th year dedicates himself in music industry. One of the international guests who were performed in his concert was Sharon Corr!! To welcome Sharon Corr in Indonesia, Amanda and I initiated this 30 Days #IRREPLACEABLESHARON Challenge started from 26th August 2013 to 24th September 2013. Why did we really want to welcome her? It had been 12 years since her last visit to Indonesia with her siblings. As big fans of The Corrs and Sharon Corr, it was such a long awaited moment for us to finally have her in our country again. I even bought the ticket right afer Amanda gave me the information about the concert.

It was not easy to promote the challenge itself. In the beginning, there were only 3 people joined us in #IRREPLACEABLESHARON Challenge; they were Ardiles, Natasjja, and Novi. Since it was only 5 of us, we called ourselves #IRREPLACEABLESHARON Team. This team was such a very consistent and dedicated team. We posted photos on instagram, or twitter, or any other social media that we have, but basically it was all had to be connected to twitter where Sharon Corr would be able to see it.

Days went away and Sharon’s arrival was getting closer and suddenly, on the 24th day, out of nowhere this girl named Toshiko (later on I call her Tobiko the flying fish roe LOL) joined the challenge. The team got a new member, a new hyperactive yet weird member. But I like her anyway. She’s so cooperative and helpful.

One day before Sharon Corr’s arrival, Amanda and I tried to contact the whole team to discuss about picking up Sharon at the airport. But only Tobiko and Ardilles responded. Unfortunately, Ardilles lives in Bandung, a city 3 hours away from Jakarta, in addition he also got to do his job as a violinist in someone’s wedding, he would not be able to come welcoming Sharon Corr. So, it was only 3 of us who are going to welcome her at the airport: Amanda, Toshiko, and I. So, we had this exciting euphoria to calculate at what time would she arrive at the airport. We checked the flight schedule from Dublin to Jakarta and resulted to five ETAs: 5 A.M., 8 A.M., 10 A.M., 3 P.M., 5 P.M.

I made an appointment with Amanda to meet at the airport at 6 o’clock. Okay, I was late and just arrived at the airport at 10. I was so sorry, Ka Mando. I looked for Amanda right away and found out that Toshiko was already at the airport as well. Toshiko also brought her friend, Ella to the airport. Then, we waited, and waited, and waited. We didn’t see any Sharon’s appearance. Questions started to be raised. Did we miss the plane? Did we wait at the wrong gate? Should we just go home? Or should we wait for the next flight at 3 pm? We hardly decided, so we decided to have a meal in airport. Toshiko supposedly left early because she had a consultation with her lecturer but later, she decided not to go to campus and preferred to wait at the airport with us. We finished our meal, we moved to another gate because the next flight was not in the same gate, and we sat in a coffee shop while we were waiting.

My watch was ticking telling me the time went on, and I couldn’t stop hoping that I at least would be able to see her in person, as close as I can. People started to go out from the gate. It was pretty shocking that the majority of the passengers were Indonesian. I barely see any foreigner except for one or two East-Asian-Looked people walking among Indonesians. Were we waiting at the wrong gate? We started to get more nervous and unsure when suddenly we saw 2 western foreigners walked out from the gate, a big guy and a woman. They looked so flashy compared to any other Indonesian who just landed in the same gate. We started asking to each other.

“Is that her?”

“I’m not sure. She might be just an ordinary foreigner.”

“Are you sure that’s not her?”

“Is there any clue that can assure us about this???”

The foreigners kept walking and when Ella looked at the woman’s back, she saw a clue: A Violin. Ella yelled out lout, “VIOLIN!!! VIOLIN!!!” And we had this same reflect reacting to her yell: We ran. Most of us even left our belongings in the coffee shop! But for sure, we brought our smartphone and #IRREPLACEABLESHARON banner with us. We started to scream out her name, “Sharon!!!! Sharon Corr!!! Sharon!!!!” in a split second, we were the center of attention; we even got more attention than Shaz herself. But the good thing was, we also got Shaz’ attention. We ran until we were in front of her. We made this line with Amanda in the middle, held the banner. We kept screaming her name. She looked at us, didn’t even wave her hand, but she came toward us, and our screams turned to silence. We were shaking, Amanda couldn’t even stand up. Amanda was there, sitting on the floor but kept holding the banner. Shaz stopped right in front of us and greeted with her lovely smile, “Hi guys!”

The silence remained. We melted. We did nothing but having great tremor because of massive nervousness at that time. We even forgot how to speak English. And the silly moments started to happen.

We are her fans, we supposedly asked her to sign the banner. But since we couldn’t say anything, Shaz started the conversation, “Do you want me to sign this?” by pointing at the banner held by Amanda. All of us answered by nodding and saying “yes” repeatedly. Then she asked us again, “Do you guys have pen?” None of us answered her question. We just looked at each other as if Shaz’ question was the hardest question we had ever heard. Then the big guy who walked with Shaz (later on we would know that his name is Andrew and he is Shaz’ manager) opened his bag, gave a black marker to Shaz, then Shaz signed the banner.

Finally, Toshiko was able to say something. She successfully said, “Can I get a hug?” She smiled, stretched her hand and gave Toshiko a hug. Ella and Amanda also got a hug. Me? I only looked at them with jealousy stare because I still couldn’t say a word, and then Shaz looked at me and said, “Do you want me to hug you?” I nodded fast and she hugged me. It felt so comfortable because she really held me tight as if we were old friends who had been apart for years, and I believe she also did the same thing to the rest of us. After getting a hug from her, Toshiko asked Shaz to take a picture with her. Ella automatically unlocked Toshiko’s smartphone and opened camera app. Ella’s turn came next. After Ella took a picture with Shaz, I pushed myself to tell her that I also wanted to take a photograph with her. But my tounge was numb and my brain couldn’t compromise with nervousness. Instead of saying, “Can I take a picture with you?” my sentence sounded more like a set of clues for Shaz, “Sharon. Can I? You know? Picture. Together. You and I? Can?” I damned myself for being such a total dull in front of my idol. But she kept smiling and answered, “Sure.” Then I gave my smartphone to Amanda asked her to take a picture of me with Shaz. Amanda’s turn was after me. After having this ‘photo session’, Shaz asked us again, “Are you guys going to go to the concert?” Like a group of children competing in an interactive quiz, we raced to answer her question repeatedly. Sure! Yes! Definitely! Absolutely! And we mentioned any word that have the same meaning as “Yes”. Our English vocabulary suddenly possessed back in us again. Then she had to go and said, “See you at the concert then.” Still smiling, waved her hand, and turned her back. And those words we held along the silent time before burst out uncontrollably.

“See you at the concert!”

“You’re so gorgeos!

“Oh My God! I can’t believe this!”

“Oh God!!! She’s the real Sharon Corr”

We ran around, without any pattern and aim, kept bursting the mixture of English and Indonesian like possessed by two different nationality ghost at once. While Sharon just walked away. I know, we must’ve seen like a bunch of freaky groupies at that time. But we don’t care!!! Hello! It’s Sharon Corr we’re talking about!!!! And yes! For the very first time in my life, it won’t bother me if someone labeled me as “groupies”.

Anyway, this was not the first and the last time I spent my day with Sharon. I still have 3 more days to tell. But this post is too long already. I’m gonna post the other days later. See you on the next post!

PS. Oh, God. The way I wrote this post as if my blog have readers. LOL. Never mind. If you’re there, readers, thanks for reading this.