After resigning from work.. the last two weeks were.. LONG and tedious. First I had to deal with my retarded manger who was strangely hyper and trying to hard to look happy when I was around. But upon looking at the schedule she had put up for after my leave, it looked like hell. Oh well, not my problem anymore. On my last day of work, she treated me to pizza (more like she wanted pizza and ordered a size too big). Noooo not her food again! LUCKILY, I felt fine this time. (Did I mention she poisoned me the day I gave her my resignation letter?) Then there was this tattle-tale security guard I had to work with the last few days of my work. When our manager was around, he would often come by and discuss serious (-sounding) "work"-related issues with her which made it seem like he was a very diligent worker and knew what he was doing and all that shit. Well, when our manager's gone for the day, he'd be sitting on his ass out in the open right in front of us or watching our tv in the weight room. Keh, we told on him obviously because there's no use for a security guard who doesn't do his job. In return, he tattle-tailed on us saying that WE were lazy. Our retarded manager obviously took his side too... bastid. Now, when I was leaving for the night, he escorted me to my car. My car's old so I warm it up some and sit around in the car for a bit. He got into his car and aimed his headlights at me to rush me to LEAVE. Agh, fucking asshole.
Anyways, after 7 straight days of work... my work days at the bloody spa were over and off to Seattle I went right after.
-Sakura Con 2006 Report-
Yes, I did some lovely last minute packing. My luggage bag was strangely empty too... it was hard to get used to, but then again it was only 4 days right... Then I had to wake up and arrive at Shi^2's place at 730am. When I got there, she was still only half awake so it took us a while to get ready. When we DID get ready, and was on our way, we all forgot our passports/ID's. Ha-ha-hahahaha... We're funny. So we drove back to my place to grab my passport and then back to Shi^2's place for her ID, also picking up her mom too for work. It was past 8 by then and though we aimed to get to the station for 830, I think we were only late by a few minutes. We met up with David at the station and then we had McDix for breakfast when we found out the bus hasn't even arrived yet. We quickly scarfed and went on the bus. I only lasted through 1 1/2 radio programs I had on my mp3 player before I started dozing off. The bus ride wasn't too long... we left at 9 and arrived around 12:30. When we got there, we figured we could use the exercise, so we walked to our hotel. We spent the next few hours wandering around the nearby malls before it was time to pick up our pre-regged badges. Shi^2 was once again attracted by the theatres they had there... especially the Cinplex Odeon that actually said Cinplex Odeon. I picked up Suikoden V with the pre-order bonus from EB along the way. The badge pick-up was pretty quick. I was handed one of the ugly 'goodie' bags (which didn't have any goodies actually...) that advertised for MADAGASCAR (wtf!) so I asked for another bag (so I got the GitS bag) but then I saw a Gun X Sword bag so I asked for another one again. Eheheh.. :X We had Subway for dinner that night... disgusting. They just.. don't know how to make it or something... Then we started freaking out when we began hearing cosplayers coming from the distance, spewing out random Japanese words. Imagine that magnified ten fold with Dolby Digital surround sound... We shivered at the thought. Oh, the next few days will be interesting... yes.
We slept early... actually, we've been only sleeping early throughout the whole trip.. which was kinda weird. The first night we crawled into bed at 11?! The night after, with some effort, 1am. The first panel we wanted to go to didn't start until 2PM and the Exhibitor's Hall didn't open until 12PM so yes, technically, we didn't need all those hours of sleep. But for some odd reason we forced ourselves to sleep... [Nothing else to do? :b] We ate and then did our Exhibitor's Hall shopping first. "Hm, it looks like there's a convention going on, lets paint the floor today!" said the painters as they decided to paint the Exhibitor's Hall waiting room floors and then place two small signs that said Wet Paint very far away so the eye could not see. Hurhur, true story. :b
I picked up too much shit on the first day. The Itou Noiji Artbook was only on display at AX last year, so I was glad I found that. There weren't that many Gun X Sword stuff on sale there, which was kind of disappointing. I was hoping to get the second drama CD but they pretty much didn't have ANY drama CD goodies there at all. No Drama CD listeners eh... :/ Kinokuniya didn't have much manga there at their booth, which was surprising... Instead, I found myself shopping for manga from Sasuga which I didn't exactly prefer but had no choice. There WAS only one Japanese comic book seller in the whole hall... BUT the good thing was they had a good variety of titles.. I now finally own my own collection of Chrno Crusade and Erementar Gerad, very happeh~ I couldn't wait for my online shipment to come so I picked up the Air Gear Pinky:St as well. The Mai-HiME figurine set was pure concidence I swear. I thought there'd be absolutely NO chance for me to find such a rare set ANYWHERE except online which was BLOODY EXPENSIVE. Then there's my new lover -- RABI! I was talking with David and all of a sudden I noticed this random guy with a giant Rabite in his arms and I'm like OMG STOP WAIT WHERE'D YOU GET THAT! What were my chances of getting a Rabi there as well? I dunno, I didn't expect it actually. But I'm glad I did >:333
2 o'clock came around, so we rushed to get seats at the Gun X Sword Q&A Panel. Huumm... the room was small... the audience was pretty small too. Not many people know of the series but still... I actually didn't have any questions for the Q&A Panel, I just wanted to attend [and see all the famous people! -- Taniguchi Goro, Takahiro Kimura, Hideyuki Kurata and Hoshino Takanori]. There were a bunch of annoying people that kept going off topic... asking about Scryed, R.O.D., Gundam... -_-; *FIST* Since the audience was a bit lacking.. the questions were kind of slow too... After the Q&A, I asked to get my picture taken with Van's Seiyuu, Hoshino Takanori! Wheee~ Very cool stuff! Afterwards, we lined up for the Autograph session. I had Shi^2 and David help me sign the one too many things I brought for the autograph session, not knowing what to give them. Almost soon after, we headed to the AMV Contest [which ended up to be a big waste of time]. It didn't seem like they tried to narrow down all of the entries and just allowed everyone to enter. The contest went on for hoursss and at the end they had a bunch of stop-motion videos all made by the same guy played... Uhh, a contest against himself? After that nightmare was over, we relieved ourselves from our heavy loot at the hotel and headed out for some food. Everything was either closed or packed so I think we ended up going to some very far away McDonalds. We didn't get to try their Cheesecake Factory. :[
Saturday morning, we couldn't or.. more like we didn't feel like waking up for the Penny Arcade panel... we originally hoped to go to try our chance on some free stuff. I had soup in a [sour!] bread bowl for lunch. After food, we visited the Exhibitor's Hall again. This time, I touched nothing! I eyed a few things for the last day for when negotiating and price droppages are in effect. We fled home again and bummed for a bit before we decided to set out for some mall shopping. We had nothing planned until the Super Smash Bros Melee tournament that got postponed for later in the day. We ate at the food court again that night and returned to the convention centre. We checked out the 'arcade' area [which had nothing but 3-4 crappy machines.. grr, I was hoping to play Guilty Gear Isuka again or GuitarMania......] and I found an online friend but he was busy with his DDR Tournament. We headed off to drop off David at his SSBM tournament and hung around upstairs where the dance was apparently starting. I went back to the arcade area to see if he was free and we talked a bit before he had to go. Hmm, just as I imagined 'cept shorter than expected! XP! He thought I was shorter than he expected too, nihehehe... I returned to Shi^2 and met up with David after his game. It was already 12 then so we headed back.
The next morning... Oh, Sunday already. Food court again. Gee, food is expensive there. We did more mall shopping... Shi^2 raided Victoria's Secret the whole time. With 2 hours remaining in the Exhibitor's Hall [closed at 4], we rushed back for our last minute buys. Both Shi^2 and I picked up the Evangelion Pinky:St set and the Evangelion Sachiel-XX Angel. Yay, I'm 1/5th into the set of what's out so far. And with the remaining of my cash, I spent it on getting my own set of Kami-chama Karin. Remaining USD: 3 1 dollar bills. We met up with an SGer, Blake, as he brought us to somewhere with better food. He then saw us off at the Greyhound station at 6. The place was flooding with people... thank goodness the Vancouverites got first priority. The bus trip was long though... it made a lot of stops before arriving at Vancouver. I was so glad to be home! Apparently, I am allergic to
Overall this con wasn't too bad [not as bad as AE at least.. :X], the exhibitor's hall was MORE than just Naruto, Inu Yasha and Gundam Seed... their guests could've used some more work [C'mon, where's someone like Ohtani Ikue and angela!]... the panels were really.. really REALLY lame... Convention DATING Panel? WTF? That's just sad. From the way things are going... LA'll be next year. This 'trip' is my vacation for this year. AE's looking pretty good so far. Let's hope their vendors smarten up.
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