To win Singapore’s Go1Den ticket, fans had to pre-order Take Me Home and sign up for a special account. Eight hundred fans qualified for a series of challenges at Bugis+ shopping mall on Friday, 9 November 2012. From the 800 only 50 names were called at random to take part in the first round. The 50 fans had to answer a question about 1D; if they got it wrong, they were disqualified and another fan was randomly picked to take their place.
After 50 fans had got the question right, they were split into five groups and each fan was given a pack of letters that spelt out the name of a member of One Direction. The four fastest at putting together the name in every group made it through to the next round.
The third round saw the last 20 fans given a jar of baby carrots and they had to guess how many carrots were in the jar. The five fans that got the closest made it through to the fourth round. For the final round, the fans had to choose between five bowls of Chinese bean curd dessert (‘tau huay’). Nadia picked the bowl which had the only golden chocolate coin hidden inside, which meant that she had won the Go1Den ticket and would be going to New York!
Kaiying is 17 and from Singapore. Her Twitter name is @1Domg and she has been a Directioner since 2011. She explains, ‘The boys have played a big part in my life and that’s the reason why I dedicated so much of time to organise the #1DSingaporeFlashmob, as we call it.
‘The 1D flash mob idea started on the Singapore Directioners Facebook page, which I created with my friends so that the Singaporean Directioners could “fangirl” together and keep in touch. I contacted Sony Music and also HOT FM 91.3 (radio DJ Boy Thunder, @Boythunder913), and we started planning. Even though nothing was confirmed yet, my friends and I created the track and the dance moves so we would be prepared. We took about two days to confirm everything and filmed tutorials, which we uploaded on the Facebook page so that fans could learn the moves.
‘We went through meetings with Sony Music and 91.3 and we managed to get Nando’s Singapore to support us. It was quite hard to coordinate everything but, finally, we confirmed the flash mob and chose to do it at three locations: Raffles City (a business district), Bugis Plaza (a mall) and Orchard Road (one of the busiest roads in Singapore). The flash mob was on 14 March 2012 (coincidentally, my birthday, haha!) :-). About 300 people took part, though the number fluctuated at the different locations. Nando’s Singapore even got their mascot (the chicken) to come down to every location to dance with us!
‘Our local newspaper, the New Paper, came down and interviewed me and some others regarding the flash mob and we were a two-page feature in the paper a few days later. When Boy Thunder (the radio DJ) went to Australia to interview 1D, they mentioned how they had watched the flash mob and said that they were impressed. I was so proud of what we had done when I heard this.’
If you want to see the flash mob, just search for ‘Official 1D Singapore Flashmob’ on YouTube. Kaiying is the girl in the white shirt and shorts in the front row. The video has been viewed over 140,000 times!
Kaiying has never met One Direction but she did win a radio competition to speak to Liam on the phone and ask him a few questions. She asked him to marry her and he agreed. She says, ‘I think Singaporean Directioners are extremely dedicated, especially those that have stayed by the boys for such a long time. It’s really difficult for Directioners like us to stay so dedicated, since we have never met and they don’t even have plans to have a World Tour over here till 2014. But still, we love the boys just as much as any other fan from any other country and we are proud to say that we are very, very dedicated.’