Who is kangta164?

For some of you who have been reading this blog for more than half a decade, thank you so much for constantly spending a little bit of your time each day reading my entries. Looking at my archives, i've had this blog since 2005 (although i started this blog way before 2005 and ended up deleting it temporarily only to return after i got over the blog-hopping craze) and has been constantly trying to keep everyone updated with what's happening in my life. While majority of the readers are mostly my friends from all over the world, sometimes my entries also happen to attract strangers through google search from some of my old posts that i've written. I would think most of my friends from high school know the reason/story behind the name of this blog but probably majority of the people who stumble across this blog would have no clue who, what, why or how i even got the alias kangta164. I think this would be the perfect time (technically six years late) to share a little history of how i ended up with my online alias of kangta164.

If you're familiar with Korean music back in the 90's, then you would know who Kang Ta is. I was a huge fan of the group back in high school and among the other members of H.O.T, he was my favourite. So that started off my little 'fan boy' moment where i was devoted fan of anything H.O.T, Kang Ta and K-Pop. How i got into this whole K-Pop/Kang Ta thing was another memorable and funny moment that i fondly remember. I think it was late 2000 or early 2001 when i was hanging out with a bunch of friends over at a friend's place. One of them asked if we heard of the korean group H.O.T. He then said something about their music video being very sad and it's definitely a tear jerker. Of course none of us had any idea about this so he popped the vcd in to the computer and showed us this music video.




Whenever i watch this music video now, it'll always bring a flashback moment of us, a group of guys watching this in front of a computer. Sounds pretty homo actually but hey at least we were staying out of trouble. Lol! Try picturing a group of guys huddling around a computer to watch a Justin Bieber music video today. Hmmm. 

So anyway, after that video, everyone agreed that the video is sad and moved on with their lives while i on the other hand suddenly transformed into a fan boy and starting looking up about who the group is, why the heck are their hair all golden, are they all gay, how famous are they and all that stuff. That year also happened to be the start of the hallyu wave in Brunei so a lot of people started getting into Korean dramas. I believe the very first Korean drama that started it all was Autumn in My Heart (which H.O.T sang for one of the soundtrack) and then followed with the ever so famous Winter Sonata fever. I brought the craze pretty much every where i go. I started showing other friends the music video, started buying a crapload of K-Pop cds from stores and played it almost everyday, performed that song live for my high school talent show, admired the Korean culture, joined fan clubs, tried to look Korean, looked for Korean friends, speak Korean to myself and not knowing what i'm jabbering about and so on.

1/2 of my collection back home. This was taken back in '06.

The fan boy days. Being in a Kpop fanclub in KL. Haha!

I can say i literally breathe Kpop then and shunned myself away from American music where the growth of rap and hip hop songs were overwhelming. That itself made me stick more to Kpop cause i hated listening to those genres of music. Over time, friends started referring me as the Kpop freak or the crazy Kang Ta fan. Some even called me Kang Ta back in school which i thought was funny and flattering at the same time but nevertheless i was proud to be a fan. So the alias got stuck with me ever since. I gotta admit that it was rough as a male fan. There were times my friends said i'm kinda gay being a fan of a boy band but i stuck with it. I grew up adoring Michael Jackson when i was in primary school and i was teased too. I just couldn't understand why people were giving me a hard time admiring male group/artist when there are other guys admiring artists like Eminem or 50 Cents. So that was the story of how the kangta bit existed.

A very chubby fan boy meeting his idol. Lol! 

'164' is simply my date of birth. 16th of April. I've always stamped my online username ending with that simply because it was hard to get the name you want without putting numbers behind. I find it unacceptable whenever you sign up for the username you want and there's an error saying "I'm sorry but that name has been taken. But ronaldcheng_02 or ronaldcheng_03 is available. Would you like to use that?" Heck no. Nobody wanna come in the second or third place. Before i started implementing '164', I used to have the number '13' on my online nicknames just cause i thought it would be cool to have a number which everyone claims to be unlucky. During the years of mIRC, i was x-TrEmE 13 while in the gaming world when Half Life: Counter-Strike was the game to play, i was 3v0|uTiOn^13. Good times, good times. I only started using '164' when i signed up for my second email address after forgetting the password to my first hotmail account which was 'corrs_15'. Yes, it was named after the Irish band. I wasn't even a fan of The Corrs then but i somehow ended up with that nick simply because their music video was playing during the moment my friend was signing me up for my first hotmail account. And yes, you guessed it...13 wasn't available so i had to settle with 15 instead.

kangta164 only started when i was doing college in Malaysia. As i did not want to merge my account with both my Brunei and Malaysia friends, i started a separate account for my Malaysia friends. Sounds weird but that was my theory then. Brunei and Malaysia just can't be mixed. :P So that officially started the alias kangta164 and after using it repeatedly online for forums and other random stuffs, i decided to keep that alias for my identity in the cyber-world. Eventually, that also lead to the name of this blog and here it is six years later along with the existence of my gmail account, twitter, facebook and other websites. Having used this alias for so long in the cyber-world, i also realised there's a vast collection of my online activities history on the internet. Wanna know what else you can find when you google up kangta164?

So that's my story of kangta164. Am i still a fan of Kang Ta today? Yes but not as crazy as how i was back in the days. Haha. I still read up on K-Pop news daily to find out what's new and happening. Will i ever move on from this alias? Maybe.

How's bieberfever164 for a change? Pretty sure i might lose a lose a lot of readers. Lol! How about you guys? What's your story behind your online alias?