Decembering and Christmasing

Merry Christmas! A final post before the new year.

It's been a long time since I've had to work through the Christmas holiday. The last time was also in the retail business. Surprise surprise. :( Although I haven't had a lot of personal leisure time, December didn't disappoint with all sorts of stuff happening out of the norm.

There was another PZAG gathering mid-December where we hot potted indoors but for some reason had the front door open. I found out that Jicky also applied for JET this year and if we both get accepted, we're going to raid the host bars and spend all our money on seiyuu events. I very much like that idea so I hope it really does happen. ;>

The following weekend was Tofu's bday which involved eating, Tron, and ogling at maids. Crazy optimistic entrepreneuring discussing also happened. The Sunday was supposed to be dedicated to a shopping-filled day in the states but my bro finds out that his passport expired over half a year ago the night before. GJ.

Family celebrated Chinese Winter Thanksgiving at Fleuri in the Sutton Place hotel (yep, very Chinese I know). They had no bison and no chocolate buffet but the food was still excellent as usual. Later that night, I picked up my new baby - the SH-01C:


Merry Christmas to me!
The red is dead gorgeous in real life. Most of the awesomely extra features are tied with the service provider so I'm sadly locked out of them (e.g. i-mode, gps, i-concierge). The biggest upset is probably the change of ringtone format from mmf to mld. As there's no real good software support for the mld, my music customization's going to be limited. If only au KDDI phones were importable. Oh and I actually already dropped it once - fuck me.

Continuing on with the Christmas week... Christmas eve was spent at Sty's place where we had ham and this monstrosity:


Actual Christmas Day was dedicated to sleeping in and dinner at my aunt's place where we had giant turkey and experimental candied mashed yam. The experiment was a delicious success btw. As an added Christmas bonus, I got a tour around the Relic Entertainment office downtown after dinner. I would've stole some pictures if I could. Especially of the giant space marine out at the front. P:

Boxing Day: I'm glad I didn't work that day. They would've have paid me anyway. Later that night, our company dinner (+ boss' relatives) was held at the Chinese restaurant on the 2nd floor of Continental Centre where we hogged up 5 big tables to ourselves. Many beers were passed around and deliciously expensive shark's fin was served. The Caucasians stayed far away from the delicious delicacy which meant more for us! :V

I agreed to work the following stat holiday day just to relieve the load off the web-related stuff piled up on the weekend. The boss treated us to a nice and long dim sum lunch for those few of us who showed up. Yay to long breaks and free food.

The last of the major events was Mina's ahem, secret, civil wedding held at Gudrun. I took half the day off to attend the private event where we ate homemade food and had the papers lady come in to do the ceremony and documentation. Clearly just the food wasn't enough as we went out for bubble tea and snacks right after.

To top off the week, NYE tomorrow... er today. Stuff will happen.

It's depressing knowing that I haven't had the chance to vegetate this winter break. It's even more depressing realizing that I don't see a chance in the near future to take a break anytime either.

Anyway, cheers to 2011. Bring it on!

Play! A Video Game Symphony: In Vancouver

The other lesser known video game concert. After finally experiencing it firsthand, I think I can see why.

I arrived downtown about an hour before the start of the show and wandered about the stores on Granville while waiting for the rest of the people. On our way into the Orpheum, we were (illegally) handed flyers advertising VGL's return next year (again??). I must say, it's a pretty dirty but smart strategy though...

It started not too long after we got warmed up to our seats. 8pm rolled around and the conductor, Andy Brick, came out to play the first piece prior to his intro shpeel. PLAY! Fanfare was a piece specially composed by Uematsu for their concert, which sadly wasn't that amazing... but if anything, it definitely does make their event the more special and different from the others.

Of course, a video game concert isn't complete without a Mario medley which was the first video game to start. Good momentum yes? Bam! Came the WTF: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Really? REALLY? Award for best video game musical score or not, I don't think it's quite the right series to bring with you. I can understand that you want to dedicate a track to the composer in the audience, but really, how many of us have played the DS game? Even as HP fans, I'm not here to listen to HP thank you very much. Besides, there's plenty of other better known games to choose from his resume? Rant aside, I won't deny that it is a good piece by itself.

Back on track was Silent Hill, Theme of Laura was awesome with an orchestra and the old man ripping it on the guitar. Followed was Civ 5! I haven't even played it yet but it sounded good. The piece was a mashup of a variety of tracks and one part was clearly the theme for East Asia as the CG lady on the screen was some sort of Japanese/Chinese. The composers were also in the audience.

Hello, Kingdom Hearts! Interestingly enough, they actually had Kingdom Hearts CG playing on the screen (versus VGL only had Disney clips). I personally loved their rendition with both Hikari and Passion. Following with the awesome was an excellent arrange of Legend of Zelda.

The build up was interrupted by an intermission and the 2nd half started with, what... Sim City 4?! Really? REALLY? I don't mind Sim City at all but choose something just a tad more popular. Just saying you'd probably get more reaction from the audience that way.

The concert continues with Guild Wars. Seriously, enough music for the attending composers and more for the audience you're supposed to be catering to. I won't deny that it was still enjoyable for what it was.

The highlight of the concert was supposed to be the Chrono Cross/Trigger arrange BUT being the picky fangirl that I am, they didn't perform up to my expectations. The solo flute player and the solo first violinist failed to be on beat and not loud enough, respectively (for Time's Scar). Rantrantrantrant, but hey, I loved the Chrono Trigger ending theme!

And then we had Halo. This version didn't sound as epic as VGLs. The choir definitely wasn't loud enough. The next nice surprise was Sonic the Hedgehog. I remember the Green Hill Zone and it was played wonderfully!

Play!'s version of Castlevania was pretty mellow and definitely gave off the orchestrated symphony feel compared to VGL's all-out rock (which yeah, isn't very orchestraded now is it?).

Finally, to finish off, there was World of Warcraft. I'd probably be all over this piece if I were a WoWer. But I'm not so I wasn't.

Surprise, surprise there was an encore. And guess what it was? Fucking One Winged Angel. Been to three video game concerts ever, all with the same encore.

So in retrospect, I had a lot of complaints. Overall it was decent but the flaws were obvious. I hate to have to compare it with VGL since Play! clearly presents music completely differently than VGL does but I would definitely still question the choice of some tracks (mainly HP and Sim City really). Perhaps because VGL was able to squeeze that many more songs into their program (medleys featuring multiple series etc), it felt a lot more satisfying.

Seeing that this was a more traditional orchestrated concert, it was hard to cheer and make noises like Andy Brick said we could've; it was all the more awkward, really.

The videos that played on the screen wasn't as synced to the music as one would've wanted them to be. The visuals that were shown also got duplicated quite a bit in the same score and it didn't seem as well edited. It also didn't help that I sat beside a fangirl who was very vocal with her experience with the games featured. I've played this, I've played that. I remember this, I remember that. Good for you girl. It was also a bit funny that she wore a VGL t-shirt. It's like going to a True Blood meetup with a Twilight fan shirt on. Yeah.

I definitely give props for providing a thorough tribute to each game as multiple tracks were incorporated into one piece instead of just the theme songs. Seeing their score collection though, I would've wanted to hear Lost Odyssey, Actraiser, Shadow of the Colossus, Shenmue or Stella Deus... just the games that were a bit out of the norm. I did have high hopes on the selection, mainly something aside from the mainstream market but alas, I was disappointed. Although they did try with uhh... Harry Potter? I guess. :| I would've definitely liked to see them differentiate themselves from VGL, perhaps, with the niche market or lesser known but just as popular games route.

My friend brought up a good suggestion - Katamari Damacy. Imagine that with choir and orchestra. Just imagine... wow.

All 'n all, good try but they definitely need to differentiate themselves better from VGL rather than being the other "not so good as VGL" concert. They clearly want to offer a different experience but they don't seem to be doing it right somehow. They have potential and they should totally try and find some sort of exploit they can use to their advantage. If not, they'll always be seen as the second rate concert second to VGL forever.

T'was a good run, 902sh.

5 years and 6 months later, my Sharp 902sh has finally croaked. I've been meaning to get a new phone for the past *cough* year anyway and didn't get more serious about it until the past few months when the Nokia N8 was looking like an excellent candidate. Sadly my phone couldn't last a month or two more for me before I'm able to finalize my decision. Then again, I probably would've just held it off as long as I could.


Clearly the one that's looks like a phone is my phone.
Now I'm scrambling to get a new phone. I'm not particularly a fan of touchscreens but the features on the N8 were really delicious so I was already ready to try something new. I was almost dead set on it until I got word that it's being released here with Rogers. It's definitely great news that Canada's finally catching up with the latest mobile phones though. But as for me... I think my heart's still with my Japanese phones.

I think I've narrowed down my choices but it seems like the mobiles nowadays lean on the hypersim unlock rather than the software. I've been so used to software unlocking that I don't know what to feel about this whole hypersim thing and how it's going to be like. But! I'm all up and ready for an adventure so why not.

My mom lent me her old Sony Ericsson for the time being though. Every time I felt like getting it set up, I turn it on to be reminded that my mom's old data's still in there and then I don't feel like it anymore. Doesn't help that my phone data isn't compatible with my ancient sim card and it's been backed up into a file that the SE can't read. I might just have to get over that soon though since I won't be getting my new phone immediately. I so do prefer starting fresh. :(

*Rant: iPhone/iPod Touch shitty tap games have consumed my mom. :(

Busy November.

First snowfall this week. I tried so hard to delay (and even avoid) the purchase of winter tires but I gave in hearing all the snowfall warnings. I'm glad I did get a set though seeing it really DID fall and there's still plenty of crazy drivers out there... crazy as in still driving at insane speeds regardless of road conditions. Funny enough, the roads were a lot emptier once the snow stuck. The drive home was quite pleasant 'cept very cold. The snow did come and go now that the weather's slightly warmer, the rain's been pouring like mad. I imagine we'll be seeing more snow later next month though.

I've finally submitted my JET Application earlier this week. I decided against sending it too close to the application deadline date (Nov 30) just in-case of unforeseen problems. I went through about 4 draft overhauls, more than I've ever done on any academic paper. I definitely wouldn't of gotten to my final version without the support of my English proficient friends (yeah you know who you guys are). Now that it's over and done with, I can get on with my next task - my portfolio. I'll have to try and not think about it for another 2 months before the next dreadful hurdle called the interview. :|

Amazon.com is the evilest POS (hint: not point-of-sale). They had a vid game promo for a buy 2 get 1 free and I somehow splurged. A week later some those games go on sale for even cheaper. UGH. On its way up the border, customs got a hold of it and literally attacked my special Record of Agarest War limited edition. No, sorry to disappoint but there's no bombs in the shape of oppai mousepads in there.




My porn has been spoiled. :(
Work's been a bit hectic. We recently (two weeks ago) opened a new location in Coquitlam and then followed to get robbed the next day. We also got a new POS (point-of-sale) system which we launched in the same month as all these happenings which is also a great POS (not point-of-sale). Outdated, unintuitive, slow, unfriendly, unreliable (crashes)... everything you'd want in an efficient software of the 21st century.

And so November comes to a close in a few days.

PS: Monsters is such a shitty movie. Don't watch it, even if's free!

Mass Effect: The Second

Overdue half a year.


Aloha, beaver teeth!
STORY 4.5/5
The "continuation" of ME1... The Normandy gets attacked by an unknown ship on the way to finish off the geth leftovers. The crew are forced to evacuate but Shepard gets blown out of the ship and falls into a nearby atmosphere. Supposedly dead, Shepard wakes up back in one piece in a Cerberus lab under attack two years later and is told to join them in facing a new threat. You gather a fresh group of teammates, old and new, and get a new ship. Although this time around, ME2's ending prepares the setting for ME3.

The story this time around was definitely more character development driven as all the members of your crew had some significance in the main save-the-universe storyline.

CHARACTERS 4.5/5
Where to start? I think I liked everyone. It felt like the characters were definitely more alive in their fluid movements, facial expressions and just had more personality in general.

Miranda's front two beaver teeth drove me up the wall though (much like Sookie's front two teeth gap).. until I eventually got used to it. Jacob was cool, but I somehow kept unintentionally triggering the flirt dialogue lines. Grunt, the Wrex replacement, was cute but not as cool as Wrex. Loved Thane's story. Was indifferent with Jack but apparently she's a popular choice for romance. Samara - Justicars are cool. Mordin! They made him so awesomely hilarious. I would've totally tried to date him if the choice was there. ;)

[Partial spoiler?] Tali'Zorah returns. Meh. :b As for romance I was actually able to choose Garrus this time! The whole romancing thing with him was a bit of a disappointment, but hey, he's not exactly human so I let it slide. My wish from ME1 came true though. :D As for Alenko, WELL, I'm glad we broke up![/spoiler]

SOUND 4/5
The delicious epic music and voice acting has lived on in ME2.

GRAPHICS 4/5
Great improvements since the first game. I'm sure that I couldn't stop staring at Thane whenever I had a conversation with him. The details on his FACE were stare-worthy. The loading of textures and details were not noticeable like ME1 where objects would load by layers.

GAMEPLAY 4/5
There's no more weapon swapping, just only between the different types. e.g. sniper rife or bazooka. Ammo is no longer unlimited. The Mako's been changed into a planet probing mini game and it's even more time consuming than before. I must admit, I grinned when I probed Uranus though.

The morality feature had been revamped into a simple Paragon/Renegade system which is opened up by dialog/actions you take throughout the game. Certain Paragon/Renegade actions became available during dialog/cut scenes to alter the story a bit. I felt less worried picking a few Renegade choices here and there this time around. (ahem, beating a guy three times to get him to talk)

Traveling the universe now requires gas. SERIOUSLY. Thanks for reminding us that gas is indeed expensive, ME2. I was always poor because of fuel costs.

OVERALL 4.5/5
It was neat how my PC Dragon Age bonus armor for Mass Effect 2 was able to transfer over but it sucked how my helmet was always on. I didn't really get to see my actual face much until I finally gave up on wearing my awesome blood armor. :(

Having played the first one, ME2 definitely stood out with returning characters and the development of a universe I'm already well aware of. Even the little Cerberus news update that changes every day was a nice touch to the game. If you login every day, some stories actually related which was neat. :D

Again just like the first, you get to decide the fate of something universe changing at the end... which will be transferred elegantly into the 3rd game! More cameos, returning characters and then a bunch of new ones all over again! I'm ready for some more ass whoopin'!

Who needs candy anyway

It's unbelievable how it's already November. Geez, slow down 2010.

So Halloween which usually involves costumes didn't happen so much this year. Had a pumpkin carving party at Saboo's new place (or at least I hadn't been there yet) where a lot of everything happened but most importantly, the pumpkin carving was definitely the highlight. The first half involved eating when food was available (live chefs!) and I didn't actually start carving until 11pm (mainly due to the amount of people carving at the same time and waiting on people).


Yeah, I carved a fat(ter than the norm) wobbuffet. Ended up staying until 2am to finish up. Still waiting on the pumpkin group photo from Saboo though.

The followup was a visit to the Dunbar Haunted House with Saboo and Kyle (new friend!). Even though I do not particularly enjoy scary things, I wanted to check it out anyway since the lack of Halloweeny partying this year's underwhelming. The wait was about an hour or so and fortunately when it started to rain I had my trusty sword umbrella with me. So alright, it wasn't THAT scary but the costumes and props were amazingly good and I did get freaked out maybe twice or.. so. The amount of people forced us to move quickly so there wasn't any gawking time. The rest of that night involved fooding, Batman: The Dark Knight and Another Century's Episode, game courtesy of another new friend Marco (?!?).

Sunday, I decided to stay in since it was Monday the next day. Oh work, I hate you. Rant for another day though.

Still busy on JET application. Seriously, this thing is more stressful than all my schooling combined.

Oh yeah, double rainbow today.

Busy October.

Not because of FFXIV. Well, FFXIV is one of the culprits eating up the little precious time I have left per day work leaves me with.

I've also been hacking away at my JET application. The actual app isn't even out yet although it's usually out by late September so something has gotten strange this year... the closing application date probably won't change, meaning the window will be shortened significantly this year. Reasons unknown but everyone's getting anxious.

Parents are actually out of town this week enjoying the World Expo. My daily routine feels like baby sitting at times, with a 役に立たない brother around at home.

Recently got a new (and cheap~) computer to replace my dad's dying video card computer. It didn't make sense to replace only the video card seeing his computer (or at least his mobo) was 7 years old. I'd have no idea what to get anyway (if there's anything out there that's for such an ancient system), so lessen stress and start fresh. Hopefully it'll be a nice surprise for when he returns.

Side note: Ugh why are GPT drives so complicated. If anyone has an awesomely free and easy solution for accessing GPT partitioned drives, send them my way.

Little work rant: Having being in the company for a very short time and had very little to do with the hits on their website (I've only been keeping their sales up to date), I was somehow blamed for their drop in web profit. What. Really? You must be kidding, right? Nope. They didn't even bother putting any of the other probably more influential and obvious factors into their conclusion before pointing fingers. I had them check their sales history and there's was no real trend. So how am I to blame. :| Believe me, I was plenty pissed and still am when I think about it.

One rant a day: done.

Quick touch on food experiences this month:

• I tried out Q-Go ramen. Not bad. I'd go back if it wasn't so inconveniently located.
• I made ricotta mashed potatoes the other day at Sty's house for Thanksgiving. We had TURKEY! SO GOOD.
• Had a crazy housewarming party food feast at Vee's. Numnumnum.

BRB, fancy dancing.

{My Life} {Where is it?}

Okay so Final Fantasy XIV was released last week.

My life is so screwed.


Cute fluffy [dangerous] things!
Let's put my screwed life aside for a moment and talk about FFXIV.

So CE version retail pre-release (before the 'official' release tomorrow) is finally upon us. The pressure's been on the XIV team for years now so I'm not surprised this got pushed out so quickly with yet so many flaws, bugs, incompletenesses... So yes, FFXIV is incomplete but so was FFXI back in the day. The main difference is that XIV's system/world is so much more complicated thus the amount of negativity and things to complain about are bigger than that of XI by ten fold. Everyone just needs to rant about it (so do I). We'll still keep playing though, no worries there. We just gotta get it out of our system.

But you'd think that they learnt something from FFXI being in service for 8(?) years now. NOPE. WHY IS THAT? Stop trying to make it a completely different game by removing everything that was good! Not saying they should make it the same... but the fact that we see no solution or the feature is missing completely, doesn't make things any better.


Hello, greetings.. tis I. I am actually female this time. For serious.
Here's a list of rants I can think of right now (besides the obvious bugs and glitches)... with bonus profanity, caps, and anger:

• FIX THE CHAT - Give back our hotkeys. Make our lives easier please.
• MENUS - This is effing menu hell. I don't use a controller so STOP IT.
• LAG - Inevitable... but fix it somehow! There's more people coming so why aren't you prepared??
• TARGETING - what is this shit? THERE IS NO REAL TARGETING SYSTEM.
• TARGETING 2 - The targeting keys for mobs and parties system are absent. WHY. Make some soon please.
• CHAT LOG - the visible area is too small and with all this spam it's useless since I can't scroll up easily. where's the easily accessible full chat log reader?
• CHAT CHARACTER LIMIT PER LINE - what is this limit crap? this isn't fucking twitter.
• AH please or at least a retainer bazaar catalog system - none of this stand around in Batallia Downs but 10 floors of it bullshit.
• SEARCH - I swear I'm not a stalker but I would at least like to know where my friends are so I don't have to ask them every time. Also for party forming.
• DEGRADING ARMOUR - Fuck. Make it easier for us to find out which piece needs fixing at least.
• DELIVERY BOX - should be essential.

Of course not everything is bad but negatives always outweigh the positives huh. Positives!

• Multi linkshell conversations (although not even fully functional yet :b)
• We can see the accessories we wear now yay!
• Retainers are cool; they're like slaves. My slave's spankin' gorgeous.
• Instant job change transformation is wunderful~
• There's some voice acting. Not too-too bad.
• Crafting is actually kinda fun
• Guildleves are enjoyable, reoccurring quests that are party-able.. although the cooldown timer is still too long.
• Traveling from crystal to crystal to node is quick.
• Job trait/ability/action sharing across jobs is awesome.
• No penalty when you die?

The strange thing is that I've been playing since closed alpha and it feels the same... just more crowded. Although I didn't play it much back then, I feel more comfortable learning things now than before.

They must be really behind.

Oh well. Now that it's released, they have all the time in the world... until we get fed up and leave.

I will finish this post with a bug.

INVISIBLE SYNTHESIS!

Penny Arcade Expo 2010 Report: Part 2

PAX10 [Day 2]: Saturday - Shooting and Breaking Stuff
Joined the queue line around 9:30 which was already too late. My first stop was attempting at playing Portal 2, but by the time I got there, the line already wrapped around the booth one and a half times. Next door's line for Brink, however, was BEAUTIFUL AND SHORT.

• Brink - After a year and we only get a playable demo... not that I'm complaining. You got to play in a team of eight (but there was only 4 real people per team for the demo), each player picked one of the four jobs (the usual: infiltrator, engineer, medic, sniper.. whatever the actual names were) and you are given a mission (either offense or defense, in the multiplayer mode we were playing). I'm proud to say that I scored the most points out of the eight as a real human player, only to be beaten by the 4 NPCs of the opposing team. ETA Spring 2010.
• Infamous 2 - Played the game for my brother as he wanted the t-shirt. The guy was nice enough to give me a small too. ;>
• End of Nations - Tried it just because it was right beside Rift. I didn't really get it.
• Halo Reach - Never played a Halo before so I thought I'd check it out. Too late into the franchise to understand the hype. :|
• Dead Rising 2 - The shortest yet longest waiting line EVER. Funny thing was, all the three girls who were part of the same queue ended up choosing the three PS3s, me included. Kill over 200 zombies in ~15 minutes, get a bobble head = GET. (Killed around 280)
• Epic Mickey - Removing and/or putting back objects/structures to solve puzzles. Mickey's such a troublemaker. :|

Went to Weekend Confirmed (Hi! It's you again, Shane!), Totally Rad Show (disappointed.), and the Bonus Round where the live video recording was quite interesting and complicated. Insomniac's Behind the Scenes with their PS3 game was pretty neat though I didn't expect Ratchet and Clank at all.

First/Last meal of the day followed at Benihana for teppanyaki where we had a table of 13 people. Conversation was a bit difficult but even that size of a dinner's still pretty fun. We had a real(?) Japanese chef do the food dancing which was nicer than the not-so Japanese ones that did the other tables. Felt more authentic at least!


After satisfying the tummy, we visited the Console Freeplay for some SSBM but found out that they didn't have any GameCubes. :| We settled for the next best thing - Super Smash Brothers, the first. It was weird playing with a N64 controller again and trying to remember that all the yellow buttons did the same damn thing!

PAX10 [Day 3]: Sunday - The Last But Not Least Bit
Again, 9:30. Wasn't going to bother trying for Portal 2.

• Killzone 3 - I hovered around 3rd place... got shot down plenty by giant machines.
• Tera - Since the podcasters mentioned it, I thought I'd give it a try. Expected no less from the Koreans as the graphics were nothing but beautiful. The whole fighting direction and having to swing your camera around 360 with the mouse was rather frustrating though.
• Eve Online - Didn't really play it, but I got the lowdown on the game just so I have an idea of what it's all about.
• FireFall - Wasn't exactly playable but they did a live demo. While they were demoing, I couldn't help but listen in on the Dragon Age II talk that was happening next door. Side note: Hawke doesn't seem like a very fantasy last name.
• FFXIV - Yeaaaaaaaah, I wanted the FFXIV-branded USB stick. Fuck the girl who took 15 minutes to create her character. It's even more frustrating knowing they let her take her time and then gave her additional time on top of it just to play some of the story. Ended up not getting the USB stick as they ran out moments before. My time would've been better spent at the Gearbox panel or something.. which I should've gone to.

After that frustration, I settled down at the PC Freeplay to pass the time before ToFu decided to leave the BYOC room... and PAX for good.

The chalk artist was here again this year and drew this:


We had Dick's for an early dinner (well, first and last meal of the day) and chilled at Rift's place for the rest of the evening. Tried to force him to finish Ar Tonelico 2 - no good. We left his place around 10 for late night cheap bowling with PZAG at the Garage. So. Beer and bowling. It was 4v3, winner by team average and us 4 literally fell into the gutter the longer we played. By the end of three rounds and three pitchers, it was butt-ugly.

The drive back was me trying to sleep off the headache. Drunk shopping at Walmart was mightily strange too...

A look at some of my hard work:


I would've tried at the League of Legends tourny if it didn't take up 5 hours of the day. There was also the Tetris DS tourny but it was during Giant Bombcast. :( Somehow the schedule felt a lot more busier this year, not to mention the lines were longer, thus taking up more time. They also had us work for our swag by either playing the game (usually the case) or doing a survey. The untouchables were definitely Duke Nukem Forever, Portal 2, and Dragon Age II. Even Rock Band and Dance Central had to use a ticketing system.

So this year the venue "expanded" by extending the event to other buildings and the exhibitor's hall was able to take up a whole floor. Unfortunately, due to the amount of people at a sold out event though, things only got worse (crowd control! wait times! not enough swag to go around!). Not exactly sure how that would be remedied for the next year. Even so, I wasn't at all disappointed at PAX. It /does/ feel a lot more fancier with the new main theatre and extra large helping of big companies and games... I hope they're able to maintain this ratio of fans/community vs commercialism.

Anyway, final thoughts:

• Missed: King-Fu LIVE
• Forgot: Front Mission Evolved, Deathspank
• Favourite: Brink
• Would've been nice: Portal 2
• Wondered about: Medal of Honor, Sonic Colors
• Missing: EFFING DIABLO III. (BLIZZCON ANNOUNCEMENTS BETTER BE GOOD.)
• Still around?: Fallen Earth
• Tempted: MTGO
• Favourite Swag: Pens Garnier Shampoo Sample Torchlight 2 t-shirt
• Where art thou?: Bamco

Penny Arcade Expo 2010 Report: Part 1

I've returned... PAX flu free!

Pre-PAX: Thursday - The Journey Across the Border
Made my way across the border with PZAG right after work. Delays included taking our time, plenty of road construction, and a bit of border waiting... but besides those, it was pretty smooth sailing. I photoraped Paul, for the record.

Got to Jerry's place around 10pm, cooked and ate delicious Costco steak (yeah just steak) and drank Session. My real rock beat everyone's scissors and papers.


For the rest of the night, we watched Gamer (wut) and visited Jerry's workplace (yes, in the middle of the night) where all the floors were integers (Ground = -1, Basement = -2).

PAX10 [Day 1]: Friday - The Wanderer
Had Voula's Offshore Cafe for breakfast. Had us waiting for a good 45mins but it was DELICIOUS.


Due to the long breakfast wait, we ended up getting to the convention at 11pm. :|

Regardless, there was still a long day ahead of us!

• The Duke Nukem Forever line was loooooooong. Much like for Portal 2. Both were out of the question.
• Rift: Planes of Telara - Geez, played this game for well over an hour (and a half?)... not that it was that special either. It was an MMO that felt very WAR and made leveling up and logging out really dramatic. Did about the first dozen or so quests before realizing that too much time was spent on this one game. Managed to break the game a few times too.
• Torchlight 2 - Ended up breaking this game once too. I demoed the Railman and strayed off the main path to some cave. Found a boss and destroyed it with my spam of jump-smashes. The developer guy remembered me for it when I went back the next day to nab myself a t-shirt. :D
• Civ 5 - In 3D! Because it's a stupid idea. It was headachy so it didn't last very long.
• Bangai-O - It was cool so I thought I'd mention it. It's hard. :|
• Donkey Kong Wii - Oh, Wii. Co-op was neat but the waggling was not.
• Super Scribblenauts - Never actually played the first one so why now?... They had a game where you had to find other PAXers with the same matching badge as you to win stuff. Never actually managed to even find one. If you somehow found 10 people, then all 10 people would win a DSi. At least I got the cool ninja badge as a souviner.

• Plants vs Zombies - They had a special room on the panels floor for tattoos and face painting. Walk away with a pylon on your head and you had a chance to win an iPad. Yep, lots of pylon heads. The things people would do to get stuff. :3
• UT3 - Didn't exactly "demo" this game but I joined in on a spur of the moment tourny. For some reason most of the guys that were playing weren't that good. I ended up being in the top 3 but didn't win anything. A friend played TF2 and won something for being on the winning team. Playing FFA is obviously not beneficial.

• Square-Enix panel - First half was dedicated to FFXIV where they took us through Gridania. The NPC lady had RED LEG ARMOUR. Seriously, what? Didn't help that the Lalafell NPC's voice was painfully annoying. I must say though, the brigade of people at the end of the scene looked cool... especially the cute leader *wink*. The second half was Deux Ex which actually looked pretty impressive. It glitched out pretty badly at one point but the battle demo was cool enough to make up for it.

Played half a round of Settlers before heading to Giant Bombcast Live. The surprise guest panel was awesome. :3 Food followed after at Palomino where we had fries and 6 pizzas including the Giant Bombcast mentioned Incredible Pepperoni Pizza.

[insert incredible pepperoni pizza that wasn't as incredible as it says it is]

TBC... in Part 2

My Web Admin Skillz at Work

So, jobs. I've forgotten how much time they take up.

I've fallen into the work routine life and I can't say I'm disliking it... though it's not likable either. I'm now a Web Administrator which I think is my official title (and it's not like I'm not already an admin at home) administrating and marketing up the company's e-commerce site, forums, and everything else in and around computers and the internets. I'm mostly upgrading/improving/fixing/modding up their website at the moment and it'll be a while before I get that done. Besides that, I also maintain and keep their database up-to-date when they roll in new items and changes. Hopefully in a few months (?) I'll be more knowledgeable in cameras (did I mention we sell cameras?) and maybe get my hands on a DSLR and [pretend to] be pro. Yeah, I must admit, the job's actually kinda fun...

BUT by the time I get home and there's usually no time left to do anything before the day's already over (like now).

I still have a handful of things to do before the week's over...

Heat Interference

In came August, in came a sudden mix of thundershowers, meteor showers and heatwaves. Our city never ceases to amaze us and the past few weeks have just been a good handful amazement.

I managed to go to the final performance (of the four) for the Celebration of Lights fireworks night which was done by some Canadian group doing a tribute to China (why China?). It was a bit strange how they decided to move the event up a week earlier than usual this year so I only managed to go to the last Saturday one. Well, Saturday was a scorching beach day and I got there a bit after noon and met up with Sty and Tofu. Napped, played iPad touch tetris (fffffffffffffffuu - I got to level 13 at least), ate chips, then it rained and scared some people away. Yay for beach umbrellas. Saboo and Steph followed to join us later that night. The performance itself wasn't all that great as it was too stereotypically Chinesey. Finished off the night with the deliciousness of facecicles.

The following weekend was the weekend of weddings. Friday the 6th was my cousin Fan Mei's wedding. They hired a horrendous wedding singer duo that wouldn't stop their loud singing in bad Engrish. We all wanted to die. At least the dessert was pretty:


The day after, Saturday, was Vee+Chris' long awaited day. For some reason, having Lisa with me made me late for every occasion. She must be bad luck as we were late for both the ceremony and reception. Unfortunately it also decided to rain that day, which made communing that much more frustrating. Jess was there as an additional photographer and it was actually pretty neat to see her again since grad. We totally danced it out at the reception dance floor. :3 It was also interesting to experience my first buffet-style reception. The salad tricked me into filling my plate before getting to the meat. D:! Speaking of weddings though, I don't think I mentioned my cousin Jacky's wedding that happened in July as well. I've only had to go to three this year but my parents have gone to double what I have. Sigh, tis the summer of weddings~

So! As summer's winding down, my inner guilt had forced me to look a -little- harder for work. I did some more searching the following weekend, tried at a few postings and lo and behold, I got a call on the Monday for an interview Wednesday. The next thing you know, I was hired on the spot and I began work that upcoming Friday. Hello! I'm now a jack-of-all-trades web administrator! I'll get into that a bit more another day. Thank goodness for office a/c though.

Then... Anime Evolution happened on the following weekend. I coughed out a day's worth of pass money which I completely regret doing but for the sake of just meeting friends, it's worth it *sucks it up*. Thanks to LightningSabre, I got a pleasant a/c'd ride to UBC where we both began dying upon leaving the vehicle. Bumped into Nina+bf on my way to reg, bumped into Jenny on my way to somewhere-I-forget and joined her to the cosplay cafe. The lineup for it was insane so we just took a peek and then bumped into Tofu and his gang. We headed to the cosplay contest where there were some really questionable performances. It wasn't long before we ditched the place and wandered the artist alley.. er villa. I'm really disappointed at their "artist villa" layout as the artists upstairs obviously got the short end of the stick. I bumped into Nina again upstairs as she finished setting up her table. After wandering around aimlessly a bit more, we headed to the Little Tea House downstairs for some cold drinks before making our way to the Final Fantasy photoshoot. I left Jenny to her photo-taking frenzy as I headed inside to check out the Niconico panel. Stepped in, sat down for a minute, stepped out. It was DISGUSTING IN THERE. With the lack of a/c and the amount of people, it was unbearable. It didn't help that they were playing Japanese Ronarudo remixes. As I waited outside, I bumped into the Chen+Ran duo who were waiting around for the Touhou panel. I watched Chen get into her fake nails while the Niconico panel behind us started to do a live streaming feed. We had people sleeping on the sides, playing their psp, or just talking and didn't care for what was being streamed. Then there were the niconico keeners at the front doing their singing and dancing as they knew the lyrics to the medley and catchy meme'd-the-hell-out-of tracks.

Touhou panel was next. The room got even more packed, thus even more disgustingly hot and humid. The presentation was the same as Sakuracon (and probably last year's AE too). People started trickling out pretty fast when they noticed the presentation was just going to be a snore-fest. I'm glad I brought a fan or I would've died in there. There wasn't anything else good to do so I waited around and left soon after the photoshoot.

Me and LS followed to check out the Starcraft 2 tourny but spectator line was undesirably long so we went next door to the console gaming room instead to pass the time. We poked at Katamari and found that 2 player mode isn't available initially, Split/Second and rerealized that racing games only last so long, Call of Duty and just shot a lot and died a lot. After what we thought was enough time wasted, we went back to the tourny room and watched some matches. Sty and Steph soon showed up and joined us on the watching before it was -finally- Tofu's turn. We watched him get his butt kicked :( then we followed to figure out where to eat :b and finalized on 24hr pho. Called it a night after a stomach full of food.

This dreadful heatwave rendered my PC useless the last few days and scared me into thinking that my hdd might actually be dying. Fortunately it doesn't seem to be the case after I turned it back on when the weather started cooling down. Though I did end up corrupting some sectors on the hdd and that messed up the settings of some programs I had open at the time when my computer began hanging under the heatwave weather.

Regardless, I have an external on the way anyway.

Now that I have a job... I can think about that backlog of things I need to get/do.

herro, I'm a certified foreign language teacher

I didn't have a social life the past week of intense schooling but I have returned! Returned to be a NEET and back to the dreadful process of job hunting.

Yes, I've successfully completed my TEFL certification. It's quite amazing to think about just how much content was covered in the last week. It wasn't so much jargon (which there still was quite a few) but it was more about adjusting what we already know (as past students ourselves) and applying/adapting/changing it to a different role -- the teacher. I think our class finally got to know and warm up to each other just before it all ended. It was great how the teachers were all experienced in their field and brought in their stories from abroad which made it all the more relevant to us as aspiring ESL teachers. It felt like quite the bittersweet end.

I'm glad I took on the course though... or I'd be absolutely clueless as to what I was really getting myself into if I did get sent off overseas. The thought process and effort actually put into creating effective lesson plans and whatnot... you wouldn't really care as a student, but now that I've seen and done it from the teacher's perspective, it changes everything. Now that that door has opened, the option I've always been considering is there for me anytime.

Either way, I need to settle the present life stuff first... such as... OH, A JOB MAYBE. To pay off some, OH, BEELZ MAYBE.

Summer Lovin'

The weather looks like it has finally decided to stay and the heatwave has subsided. Yay for cool days~

While job hunting, I stumbled upon a TEFL scholarship provided by my school in conjunction with a language institution. I decided to give it a shot since I had nothing to lose, considering the job hunting scene was rather depressing anyway. I only just handed in my complete application last Sunday and got a response Monday, saying they received my application. Wednesday rolled around and surprisingly enough, I got it! I have no clue how many people actually try out for this since it's a monthly award but regardless, I was to start classes that upcoming Saturday. I then found out it's a 60 hour intensive course which spans across 9 days. I also had no idea that it was that intensive but again, nothing to lose, right?

My weekend was decided to the first two classes, 9 hours both days. It's a shockingly small class - 4 people, including myself. Another mind-blogging shock is that we have a particular classmate who already has experience in the teaching field overseas but is a /shit/ speller. How do people like him get in? Oh yeah, right... he's an excessive talker and persuader (and he's white! I'm not even being racist here; it's the truth... they got it easy). That's probably not the biggest shock, however. I already have to design and teach a lesson plan for tomorrow (which is being marked), after a mere two days of classes. I don't know wtf I'm doing.

What am I doing now? I needed to get away from all that unproductive thinking.

Onto other news, I also got picked from a random drawing (for mula!) of an official educational survey I took back in university. It's not much at all but it's godsend for a NEET... every penny counts! Yes, thank you, money goes towards bills here. BEELZ.

The fireworks are also starting this Wednesday. For some reason they're earlier by a week this year so I won't be able to make it to the first week due to my classes. Meh.

I can basically write-off the rest of this week as not existent. Alright, back to homework... see you in the future!

Renewing

I come back from LA, and bam - hellooo heatwave~

The unpleasant and motivation deteriorating heat aside though, summer's already half over and I've been hit with a number of reality checks. The biggest deciding factor is definitely the lack of income.

Job hunting is excruciating but currently in progress nonetheless!

I've given up on my Newtype subscription, which ended this month. Not sure how many years it has been but I've realized that I ran out of space to store them anyway.

However... The biggest sacrifice this year will be the release of my kidd.nu domain. The registrar has been ruthless since day 1: charging for dns changes, info changes, and the domain renewal prices are of the wrist-slitting level. It's been 9 wonderful years and it's my oldest existing domain. It hurts thinking about it but there's still a month left for me to enjoy it while I can... whatever that "enjoying" may be.

Anime Expo 2010 Report [Day 4, Final Thoughts & Loot]

Oh how the 4 (5) days went by like nothing.

Day 4 - July 4
The final day was dedicated to the exhibitor's hall. Eh, in retrospect, it was way too much free time. I should've lined up for more autographs at the open autograph session; it would've been a better use of my time. I basically walked the exhibitor's hall about 3 times to scope out the competition and prices and only one store had some I had interest in. At the end of the hour, the store didn't even drop any prices so it was a waste of time to camp for it. There were some pretty insane price drops though... nothing I really, really wanted to get unfortunately. I was even bored enough to line up for the Hi-Chew raffle for free candy but only managed to get a magnet which I gave to Tofu. I got one final autograph from Kuuchuu Yousai who signed the back of my mousepad info sheet to finish things up.

When the hall closed, we all met up outside and hung around, figuring out what to do next. We spotted Nakajima Megumi trying to camouflage in with the crowd, but we let her have her fun. We finally decided that we needed food before our flight back so we drove all around town (and the surrounding towns) to see what was open on July 4th. We finalized on The Islands for some good ol' burgers and fries.


So. Overall it was an insane AX year, compared to the other years so far. I'm proud (and a bit sad) to not purchase any figurines this time around, however my final autograph count made up for it as I basically got all the autographs I aimed to get, and then some.

• Horie Yui (seiyuu)
• Konishi Katsuyuki (seiyuu)
• Kitamuri Eri (seiyuu) x2
• Nakajima Megumi (seiyuu)
• Morita Masakazu (seiyuu)
• Minami Kuribayashi (musical artist/seiyuu)
• CooRie (musical artist)
• UR@N (musical artist)
• May'n (musical artist)
• MELL (musical artist)
• Kuuchuu Yousai (illustator)
• Katakura Shinji (mangaka, illustrator)
• Yamanaka Takahiro (director)
• REDALiCE (musical artist, DJ)
• DJ CHUCKY (musical artist, DJ)
• NO+CHIN (musical artist, DJ)
• m1dy (musical artist, DJ)
• GUHROOVY (musical artist, DJ)

AX needs to stop this insanity, or I'll be forced to go every damn year.

Hm, final thoughts:

• The lanyards were so cheap this year. Mine even still have the MADE IN CHINA sticker still on it.
• They're making us pay for our concerts now! D:
• They almost made us pay for shuttles! D:
• There could've been more frequent or just more shuttles.  The shuttle buses got full way too quickly and we'd either have to walk in the heat or travel to another hotel to get first dibs.
• Outside events were unpleasant with the gawddamn heat.
• If I didn't have past AX experience, my autograph getting would've been shit (I guess that wasn't bad for me).  They should've used the number system again like last year.
• They needed bigger signs for the autograph lines.
• Konishi was put in too small of a room.  They underestimated him!
• I wish I played the FUNimation scavenger hunt... I wanted Higashi no Eden stuff :(
• I was sad there wasn't a vendor that sold manga (Japanese) and some other figures I'm still looking forever for.
• Almost every event was delayed at least 30 mins.
• Those vuvuzelas were annoying.
• That distance between the West Hall Lobby and the Exhibit Hall still sucks.
• They should've put the autograph area in the unused West Hall.  Forcing us to run through people in the exhibitor's hall was an ass move.
• Needed more late night events later than 2am karaoke.
• Badge pickup on Day 0 was shit.
• I have come to love and appreciate shikishis.

I need to thank Tofu and Rift for allowing me to experience such insanity this year. Can my graduation get any better? Nah, I think that was the final sign for me to get my ass into gear.

Anime Expo 2010 Report [Day 2 & 3]

...and the report continues!


Day 2 - July 2
The day's first order of business was Kitamura Eri's panel at 12:30p. We ended up showing up an hour earlier accidentally thanks to my bad sense of time but that turned out to be a good thing. They featured Kitamura and one of Toradora!'s directors, Yamanaka Takahiro on the panel. Kitamura answered a series of questions picked from the open question box that was at the NIS America booth and they apparently liked and picked my question. I had to go up and ask my own question =_= but because of that, I got the Toradora! premium box set vol.1 as a prize plus her autograph as well. Since the panel was running late into the May'n and Nakajima Megumi's concert, I went to get my prize at a later time.

So, the CONCERT. WAS AMAZING. They sang through the Macross Frontier songs plus some from the MF Movie and their own personal tracks. I was disappointed that Nakajima wasn't as cute as I pictured her. May'n definitely takes the cake. Ahem.

The real amazing part was definitely the appearance of Kanno Yoko out of all people. For the secret guest, we were debating over Kanno Yoko, Sakamoto Maaya, or even Toyoguchi Megumi (Klan) to complete the girls... but wow, she showed up and danced to Seikan Hikou as Nakajima sang it. Then followed to play the piano for a few tracks like Aimo.

After the wicked concert, we came out and swung by check out what was left of the Touhou gathering. The concert ended late, so they had already disbanded by then.

Next stop was Horie Yui's panel. She apparently was behind on schedule so the panel forced us to watch the first episode of Toradora! With only a half n hour left, they answered some questions from the question box and called it a day. I went to pester the Toradora! guy for my goods and tried my luck to ask if he could snag me Horie's autograph as well. He shrugged and said he could do the best he can and asked me to follow him back to the booth to get Kitamura's part at least.

By then, the exhibitor's hall was closing up, so Tofu and I went to meet up with the Touhou group again where we hung out, munching on the genderswap Mokou's snacks while waiting for the rest of the group to show. 8pm rolled around, and HARDCORE SYNERGY was about to start so we skipped real food and went straight there.

For the next 6 hours, I tried not to overexert my energy so I wouldn't sweat to death and feel disgusting. Regardless of me trying to stay cool, there was more than once instance where a really sweaty guy would be jumping, dancing, fist pumping into me and yes, it was very unpleasant. Anyway, the lineup was much like: DJ AMAYA, NO+CHIN, GUHROOVY/DJ CHUCKY, M-Project, DJ Schwarzenegger, REDALiCE, DJ CHUCKY, m1dy, DJ DA/LE. The most strangest thing was probably the KISS wannabe guy who was apparently another host up on stage. He was out of place at a j-core dance, seriously.

Speaking of j-core and out of placeness, a guy asked me to dance. When he poked my shoulder and asked me, I first thought: "How [the hell] do you dance together to j-core?!? Headbanging? Fist pump together?! Jump in unison!?!" I recall pausing for the longest time, trying to figure out how to answer him while he tried to fill the void with "It's okay if you say no" and I finally was all like "(errrrraghhhh) uh I'm tired! sorry!" And then he disappeared forever. K I felt really bad but really, how! I heard I wasn't the only one to be asked that question either.


All us touhouers made our way to the front to cheer REDALiCE on. When he was done with his performance, I was done with mine and stepped out to _not_ dance to m1dy's speedcore. I like him and his music, but only from a distance and for my ears... nothing more.

When it finally ended at 2am, we went to the Marriott and waited around for other people (plus REDALiCE). It wasn't until way past 3, we finally headed to out for food. By then, I was THIS close to bailing, considering the time of day it was. We had dinner..? er breakfast?.. at the Original Pantry Cafe. Too bad we had it at like effing 4 in the morning though.



Day 3 - July 3
With only an hour of sleep, I started the day with MELL's panel at 10a but got there later that I should've. It sounded like the concert was awesome. :( But VS REDALiCE is a tough one. Anyway, after the panel, I mad dashed to the autograph line up and finished pretty quickly. I headed to the NIS America booth to check on the status of my signed goods but found that Horie's autograph signing was not successful so I hurried to join in on the lineup already forming. Since Kitamura Eri was there again, I had her and the director who was there sign the inside of the DVD book I got. Afterwards, I found Tofu and Kozu already lined up for Nakajima's signing and joined in. It went slower than expected and it delayed into the Konishi Katsuyuki's panel. When I got there, the room was full and all hope was lost. I stood around outside the room for 20 or so minutes figuring out what to do until they suddenly decided to let SIX people in and so I hurried and managed to be that 6th. Man, at least 80% of the fans there were diehard Hetalia fans. I should catch up and get on that bandwagon. P:

After the panel it was another mad dash to the autographs. The amount of people who wanted his autograph was so overwhelming, personalizations were prohibited and photos were limited. Either way, my Tales of Festival book was successfully autographed and I was happy.

With little time left for the exhibit hall, I went over to the MangaGamer booth and got Katakura Shinji to sign his Boukyaku no Senritsu manga. He was super happy to see his own manga from years ago :D Sadly, Kuuchuu Yousai was nowhere to be found (it was my 2nd attempt already then).

The exhibit hall closed up and I headed to the ESPN Zone to check out the Danny Choo meet up. It wasn't particularly packed by the time I got there, and everyone was scattered in their little own groups. It was strange... and I was confused. There was a line, so I lined up and found out that it was to get Danny's autograph/picture so sure, what the heck. When it got to my turn I just asked for a photo and proceeded on. I suppose mingling sorta happened and met with lightningsabre, Ben, Jennifer and her friends. It seems like most people there were waiting on the free stuff but it never happened.


After the rather anticlimactic meetup, I took a quick detour back to the hotel to drop off stuff and returned to the convention to meet up with Tofu and his two friends at the Gurren Lagann movie screening, followed by the cosplay contest. The contest was disappointing but Konishi ended up cosplaying as Kamina so it was all worth it at the end.


Food was in order by then so we drove to Little Tokyo for Daikokuya Ramen. We had to wait outside for [I think] at least an hour before we got a spot but it was awesomely worth it. For some reason, I had ramen three times on the trip and Daikokuya's was by far the best.


The food was great AND they played old school anime music - Digimon, Utena, Kenshin, Shaman King, FMA - which of course rocked super nostalgia socks.

When we got back to the hotel, it was already packing time. The flight back didn't allow for much additional packing, so I decided to put away the costume for the last day.

Next: Anime Expo 2010 - Day 4, Final Thoughts & Loot

Anime Expo 2010 Report [Day 0 & 1]

It's been 'tradition' to go to AX every other year and since I went last year, this year was supposed to be a break year. Somehow, things happened and now this year has become exempt to that tradition. In fact, the tradition's probably nulled now as the years go by (ugh.. age).


Anyway, Anime Expo 2010. Wow. What just happened in the last few days? It went by so much quicker than any other year. Breaks? Sleep? Food? What.

Day 0 - June 30
Me and Tofu's flight was scheduled for 6:30am, so we had to arrive at the airport around 4am. I attempted to sleep as many hours as possible, but only managed about 2 at most. The flight itself was uncomfortable and too cold for me to catch any additional shut eye time. Poked at my DS to pass the time.

We arrived on time and then went to the International Terminal to pass the time while we waited for another friend, Rift, to arrive from another flight coming from Seattle. I never knew/noticed all police officers walked around carrying AK-47s like it's nothing. It was scary.

When he arrived, we did even more waiting for Ray to come and pick us up from the airport which wasn't until well past noon. We had a late lunch in Little Tokyo (Little Tokyo Square) at Hanaichimonme for ramen. It was a disappointing meal but it was still food.


Ray had to return to work so we quickly finished up and had him drop us off at the Westin where Kozu was doing his "press" job, interviewing celebrities in their private suites. Since he was nowhere close to done, we went and checked in at the Sheraton where we were going to be staying for the next few days, followed by wandering the attached mall and the surrounding drug stores. Kozu ended up taking longer than expected, so we decided go to and lineup for our badges first. We got there at 5pm and didn't finish until past 7:30pm. After we walked back to the hotel and stopped by a grocers on the way. We bummed in the hotel for hours until Ray finally got off work around 9:30pm and we headed out to get some deep dish pizza.


Deep dish is deep.
Day 1 - July 1
Finally. The official first day started off with the Japanese DJ panel at 10:45 and met up with Kozu there. The attending DJs were DJ CHUCKY, m1dy, NO+CHIN, and - GASP - REDALiCE. The others were still jetlagged. The translators with them weren't that great as a chunk of questions were mistranslated/misheard. Then a panel group photo was taken at the end. No idea which DJ's page it's going to be on so I can't look up their twitter/blog to find it.

Right after was May'n's panel downstairs, so down we went and we joined Kozu's friends in the long line that was forming. That was followed by the long wait before May'n showed up from the entrance behind us - she was cute as ever!


After her panel it was time for autographs so we headed to the exhibitor's hall where it was held. Kozu made a mad dash there before us so we joined him. While waiting for my turn, I snuck out of the line quickly to catch the DJs who were bored at their autograph table. Sadly there was no sign of REDALiCE but GUHROOVY was there instead.

After the round of autographs, I was making my way to the next thing on my schedule until I bumped into wandering REDALiCE, attacked him for an autograph and picture before letting him go. Continuing on, I went to Morita Masakazu's "panel" (more like event) scheduled at the Nokia Plaza next. I was already worried when I read that it was located at the Nokia Plaza out of all places - an outside stage in the blazing sun. I thought I was late for it at first, but in fact it gets delayed and thus ended up standing around in the heat for the longest time. When they started, I finally knew what was going on - Morita was brought here by Shounen Jump to promote Bleach. The next hour was listening to Morita do a live voice over, then followed by choosing three rounds of random people from the audience to do voice acting. A Rukia cosplayer who was chosen to voice Rukia was so cute and she also gave us some free fan service panty shots thanks to the wind.


Next it was mad dash time to the autograph room which was different from the usual exhibitor's hall area. When I was done, it was already well past the 4pm Kuribayashi Minami mini-concert at the MangaGamer booth but when I was making my way back to the exhibitor's hall, she was still singing. I was able to catch the last two songs or so.


They announced autographs right after, so I joined in with the crowd and managed to get Kuribayashi Minami, CooRie, and UR@N by purchasing their CDs. I got free goodies to go with my purchases: a boobie pad, t-shirt, Dear Drops book and a pretty bag.

It was already nearing 6pm which was around the time the dealer's room closed, so I quickly sped to the artist's alley to avoid getting kicked out to meet up with Tofu, Rift and their artist friends. We headed back to the hotel so I can drop off my goods and change out of costume before heading to the Marriott to meet up with Kozu and his friend, Chris. He drives a hawwwt bmw. :3

We dropped off Tofu and Rift near the restaurant they were eating with their artist friends while Kozu, Chris and I wandered around from place to place to settle on a restaurant that wasn't too long a wait. We finalized on Orochon Ramen - the restaurant famous for their Special #2 eating challenge. Ah, we weren't that fearless but I had the #3 and even that was rather spicy.


We headed back to the convention around 10:30p, picking up Tofu and Rift on the way again and took a peek at the X Japan event that was happening at Club Nokia. At first we all thought it was a fundraiser concert, but it turned out to be a music video shooting. We ughed and decided to check out the dance at the Marriott instead. The dance was pretty much the same as what I saw at Sakuracon's rave, 'cept there was a furry and a ballet dancer. Yep.


It was too difficult to get into it with only 15% of the room full, 40% of the people there were standing around, and the music was just your typical clubbing music. We gave up on that and went back to the lobby where we watched Kozu and Chris play a few rounds of YuGiOh before we called it a night.

Next: AX2010 Report - Day 2 & 3