2nd Last Weekend of August

The weekend failed to disappoint, or at least, it was quite eventful.

It started off Saturday... I woke up early as the rest of the house was still asleep. I drove and dropped my car off at Oakridge and headed down to UBC via bus for convenience. However, the RIGHT bus didn't come for the whole 45 mins I was there. This other guy who was also there for the same bus waited longer than me. A dozen of other buses arrive until ours came, but I was already late for Gar's panel. So a friend in the gaming industry held a mini panel there educating keeners as to how to break into his industry and become something maybe as good as him.

I finally arrive at the site, all the normal university students "Whoa!" out loud in the bus upon seeing a giant row of strange people in rainbow costumes and wigs (who were lining up for the dealers room apparently) - tis AE. I went straight to the info booth to ask for where Sty's table was. She had a table there, promoting her theatres about the upcoming showing of the live action Death Note there. The info booth people were garbage.

I figured the artists alley would be the best bet, so I did that and it took me a while to figure out there was a "more artist tables this way!" letter-sized paper hanging on a doorway. Good signage! (y) I finally find her booth, I steal a badge (I'm not paying $45 bucks for a one day pass and to enter ONE panel) and ran to Gar's panel, entering 10 mins before it ended. As a group (Gar Saboo Nina), we headed back to Sty's panel and they unloaded, then went to the dealer's room. The line up was still as massive as I first saw it from the bus stop. The sun also came out of nowhere, and began cooking us like eggs. I had my trusty umbrella and shaded us, honger style. Apparently, me and Gar could've been able to enter the dealer's room without lining up cuz we were "VIPs" (aka. PRESS and PANELIST respectively).. but we only found that out when we got closer to the door. The dealer's room was a lot more spacious than the multiple room combination at SFU as it was in the gym this time. However, more than half of the stuff there's still fake. Just thinking about that makes me angry. I even posted to rant about it on their forums, hoping they'll do something about it. And I'm not even the type of person who would voice my opinion on these things... I'm a lurker for goodness' sake. I even posted about this before a few years back and yet the problem still persists. They don't learn do they.

However, I did not leave completely empty handed this year. I fancy decorating my car as you may or may not know, so I decided to get a mini Domo plush to hang on my window. Aww he's so cute. Gar and Nina went off to their Phoenix Wright/Apollo 13 Justice cosplay meet, so I stayed with Saboo as she went through the room a few times to find something to get just to get her $45 pass' money's worth (by spending more money, haha). My feet were becoming painful to stand in, so we fled back to Sty's table to rest. Saboo Gar and Nina eventually went off to eat together while I stayed to accompany Sty. 6:30ish rolls around, and I headed back. I missed the bus so I had to wait another 20 mins, sigh. Man, the bus ride back was noisy.

Got back to Oakridge and then dropped by Matt Hon's BBQ on invite. Had a sausage or two, met up with some super old friends/classmates from way back when and did the good ol' catching up talk. There was also another half of people I did not know, nor will I ever know. Actually... to be honest, I didn't know the people there all too well. I'm not even close with the actual host who invited me.

Sunday was full of rain and cloudy periods. May invited me and Mo2 to try out this new church's sunday service in Richmond, so we woke up and went. Eric came by to pick us up and found that the place was actually located in an elementary school. I really like their branding... it's very unchurch-like (out of the box!) and felt much like a "friendly corporate". It'll require me to get a bit more used to it however. Did I mention I love their business card? They used this really expensive coating, which made it all nice feeling and everything!

Ahem, pretty paper aside, the actual service was not bad. I didn't know a few songs and the pastor was an interesting speaker. I think it was only me, but I didn't quite understand his sermon. His example didn't quite connect to the actual scripture especially well, but I think I still got something out of it. Man, after listening to his sermon makes me miss listening to Dr. Stephen Ng over at the old church... he's my favourite speaker. Too bad the people there SUCK so I'm not going back. :(

After service, we were invited to eat someone's homemade chocolate muffin (I called it a brownie... I guess I don't know the difference) and old school Rubien (sp? - lay bun lap) juice. The snack totally filled me but we still went for lunch at Alleluia with Pastor Kay and his family. The restaurant made us wait for soo long, at the end, finding that they claim they called us, but we were sitting right beside the reception so it made no sense. I introduced them to their awesome 3-selection combo meal and they all hopped to it. I had no appetite so I shared a rice with Mo2. Throughout the meal, I got mad calls from MINI from the ccsbb asking me when I'd arrive where they were waiting. Not MY fault they left a message stating WHEN on facebook which I do not check late the night before.

I was dropped off at home where I sped to my car and made haste to Metro. I arrive 2 hours later than they originally posted. I found them (Markster, Sahara, MINI) bumming (literally) in front of the Disney store and I knew it was them without having to call. They were craving the munchies so we headed to the food court and shared some New York Fries. We talked for a bit before MINI had to go, then I was left to entertain.

I suck at thinking of things to do but I started with going to Crystal Mall next door, just to give them a taste of a Chinese mall. I also introduced them to the famous butt moving chair. Then we headed to Richmond and went to Aberdeen but the featured petting zoo event was already GONE! I bumped into Mo2, Braman and friend there who also JUST missed the petting zoo too. Agh - so we went to Daiso, showed them the power of a toony. While we anxiously waited for Shi2 to get off her AE volunteer work, we went to e-spot for some good ol arcade. We saw SFIV. I had them try out the sticker picture machine wakakakaka... the screens were moving so fast so we didn't know what we were doing, but we made some pretty interesting shots. We then spent a good half n hour, at least, drawing on our pictures. Finally I get a call from Shi2 saying she was on her way and I find her outside since she didn't know the place. When we attempted to print our pictures, we get a flashing ERROR message. We were devastated! Luckily the mechanic was able to retrieve and reprint our pictures AND we got our money back for the inconvenience.

Time was beginning to run out so we went straight to the night market instead of having hot pot as I originally planned. I was willing to pay for parking just for convenience sake but I got lucky and found street parking. When we got there, we headed to the food section and ate and ate and ate until it was time to go. Well, more like we didn't have the time to walk the actual night market due to time constraints and we were busy trying food.

To end off the day, we drove them to where they were staying that night (near Victoria Dr and Marine, which was close) and got stuck on the Knight bridge for a while. It was a rather short visit unfortunately, though I told them to come back in 2010. They better. Everyone better.