AN05 - zee downlow
Like everyone else, I departed TO on Tuesday and did the 4hr trek home. It was a really nice and sunny day, plus there were no cops ^o^bb One hilarious thing I did see, however, was someone stuck a red ball to the [deer crossing] sign XD And once agian, forgetfullness strikes as I left my laptop at Jen's place ;___;'' Ah well, Vario will have fun using it then, I'm sure :P
Day 0 - Thursday, May 26
I spent the previous night into early morning colouring some uncovered lineart and sending it out for printing, to be picked up by latest on Friday (I was hoping). Spent most of the morning packing my stuff together, all the art and clothes stuff for the half week and then I was off to TO. Made it in before rush hour and crashed at Vario's place. I was planning to hit the AGO that evening with Vario to see the Massive Change exhibit, but he had sudden work committments and then I was too tired and hungry to care. After dinner I accompanied him, half-comatose, downtown to do an errand for his uncle and then he kindly carted me over to Jen's place for late night con-related futzing. And there was laid back futzing and general plannings for things to be done for the weekend.
Day 1 - Friday, May 27
I checked email almost obessively to see if my prints were done and ready for pick-up yet. Headed out to meet up with Jen, Isamu and Tubz for lunch (mmmm pizza) and getting some snacks from the Longo's. Hit up the copy shop to get our fresh delivery of tOFUs, and were key-trunk-locking incident free >:D Had a short breather at CasaCHAN and then we were off on our way to the con. Once in the AA we were setting ourselves up and then the lights went out for at least 5minutes! Apparantly there was a city-wide surge just then, but soon the lights came back on :) At this time I was able to hook up with Cath again and we chatted as we setup stuff... and I was too shy (and embarassed to admit, uh, "who are you?") to figure out everyone else under the tOFU umbrella XD;;;; The con staff gave us a 3minutes to openning warning, and not a minute later announced the openning! Jen and I had found a pin deal a couple months ago and ordered what we thought was a good to conservative (test?) amount to sell... and did they sell! I was, and am still, amazed at how POPULAR buttons are! :O!!! We sold out of a lot of our designs on Friday - so that's a huge indication of their popularity, and the size of the crowd this year at AN! Hezza showed up with her amazing amigurumi (crochet) art show entries of two Katamari princes, a Katamari ball and a stuffed Kon from BLEACH which she finished that night.
The AA closed early, because we were tied to the closing and locking of the Dealer's Room, and since we weren't hotelling it that night we set off back east for a late dinner. Some ppl were pooped, so it was just Jen, Isamu, ET, Ying and I for dinner - to be joined by Kiza, and even later Vario popped in. Had some really good eats at Congee Wong, like Singapore style lo bak goh. MMMMMMmmmmm. Then it was crash time with plans to meet up at Jen's for 9-10am. Before I went to sleep I printed out some mail order forms for the pins, just in case and at the urging of Vario - our psuedo marketing manager cricket XD (oh old school reference, can you catch it?)
Day 2 - Saturday, May 28
I missed Vario's alarm, and woke up later than I wanted to (it's not loud enough!!!) so I was late getting to Jen's place ^^;; But Vario was sweet enough to not only drop me off, but to do a back and forth rabbit run for me to pick up the prints that were finally done *___* So we organized ourselves at Jen's and waited for Vario to appear before heading back to the con, in which everyone else beat us in getting there ^^;;; Kiza was also nice enough to offer to get us lunch on his way in too! We quickly setup and my table looked decently displayed with my shiney new prints taking up space on one side, the pin display on the other. It's also a good policy to look busy while at the table, so I pulled out some photocopied lineart and started to colour it with the watercolours I brought down - as I feel more comforatble with them than markers, believe it or not :P Apparantly watercolours = hard core, as many alley passer-bys expressed awe and watched me mix paints and apply the first layer of colour. So most of the con passed as such, and I took down mail orders for the pins coming out to an amazing three pages of orders O___O! The Dealer's Room was once again closing early-ish, so we packed up to drop stuff off at the hotel and hit up the Chalet Swiss for dinner. Hezza, ET and Ying were nice enough to go ahead to grab us a table and we soon trundled in after they tried calling us a couple times unsuccessfully ^^;;;;
At dinner Hezza unveiled her amigurumi tofu cube and rolly polly sheep, which we all had fun playing with at the table. Orders were soon put in to the waitress, and poor Vario got carded by the waitress. She tried to recover, as we laughed at Vario getting carded, saying that she had to card anyone that didn't look "over 25" XD Vario is the oldest at the group, soon to be pushing the big three-oh, but it was hilarious :) No one else at the table got carded after that hehehehe XD It was good food, though Isamu complained that he should've gotten the chicken and ribs after seeing Kiza's whole rack of ribs. He even tried to get Vario to order more food so they could split the protein goodness. After dinner we relaxed in the room for a bit watching Isamu's horde of japanese media: Segata Sanshiro commercials, random japanese commercials, music videos (PVs) and music shows featuring HelloProject groups (Isamu, you have FAR TOO MANY of those files :P). The home bound ppl soon left for much needed Zs and we watched Battle Royale before turning in ourselves. Battle Royal was much less extreme than I thought it would be -[SPOILER WARNING] - I was expecting fighting goodness within a school setting, not survival on an island with a weapon lottery type "game". Though, one character was pretty ridiculous in that his surprising skills in first aide, cooking and then steering a boat were all because his father is a doctor, chef and then fisherman?! Man, that's the choice reason from now on LOL -[END SPOILER]-
Gotta say, though, that King bed was HUGE and the covers VERY warm and insulating. Jen and I took off the top cover and yet the blanket on top of the sheet was still very warm :O We even tried at a pillow fight, but the bed was so huge we barely reached each other XD Pretty hilarious :) I had one commission request that day, and finished it before the 1hr which I asked the person to come back at. We actually left before they showed up again, and I totally forgot about it thinking they'd have an all-weekend pass...
Day 3 - Sunday, May 29
Jen and I had set both our cell phone alarms, plus the room's clock radio alarm to go off at 8:30am. And they did, about a minute apart from each other lol! We got up, changed and went down for our continental breakfast and had to contend with a room full of Red Hat ladies - who teased Isamu for being XY and seemingly out of place XD;;; Made it back up to the room with our scant rations of toast and cereal, but Isamu was hungry enough to boil some water and use the ice container to cook some ramen... and then eat it with a knife XD;;; (got pics of that!) We packed up and tried waiting for the elevator - which was totally --- by the Red Hat ladies in PJs, so we dragged ourselves and our stuff down via the stairs to check out, pack the car, and go for some Timmies caffinated goodness. Still made it to the con late, but by only a half hour instead of the.. uh, two hours, that we were late yesterday XD Cath and the ConCom were nice enough to tell me that the commissioner from yesterday had been back, and got me their email and mailing address - so phew! I sold a couple prints and took down more pin orders (almost four full pages!) and did two smaller commissions of these cute girls that I had drawn the year before :) I was visited at my table by SK and was able to get him to mind my table space while I toured the Dealer's Room for the first time with Kiza. Saw Day manning the Beguiling booth and got myself a set of Copic liners and a copy of Giant Robot. As the AA time slot was winding down Jen and I decided we would sell off what was left of our pins as we packed up to head out for dinner. We managed to get everyone informed on the place for dinner and have all the cars and people head east to Sapporo Sushi, where there was much merriment and food consumed, sushi boat sails built, smoke salmon and avocado comments, soy hair brush painting, and many many pics taken XD Isamu almost killed himself on the food he ordered and actually WADDLED his way to the karaoke place XD I think there's a video of that too LOL!!!
We were given a room surprisingly fast at the karaoke place - and I assumed that maybe the guy knew Jen since she's been to the place many a time for singing fun. Ends up we swindled the room for the Marvin party, in which the guy tried to recover from by saying Jen looked like a Marvin... uh, yeah ^^; So it was good times had by all belting out tunes, for better or for worse. Most hilarious mangled song was Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star XD Worst and most perv video went to Yellow Submarine, of all songs! And the song that topped' everything was YMCA because OMG THOSE LYRICS WERE SO WRONG AND WE NEVER KNEW UNTIL THEN WTFBBQ!!!!! I think we wrapped up after midnight and then made plans to be at Jen's place for 11am to decide on lunch :)
Day 4 - Monday, May 30
Made it on time to Jen's place(!), and two minutes after Cath, DoctaJ and Artit were dropped off. After a little misplaced lens scare, Hezza and Tubz also joined us and we treked out in two cars to March for an awesome lunch. After lunch we hit up the PacMall for window shopping, which mostly centered around candy and toys. Cath and I totally wanted to get these mini japanese tea cups with tea dog designs on them, and decided to shop around a bit first. In meandering around we filled our bobocha quota as ET and Ying joined us, and shopped some more. We spent a lot of time in girly accessory stores looking for the perfect props for the evening's festivities too - and found it in a pink sparkley leopard print hair clip XD. We soon went upstairs to have awesome ice cream sandwhiches, which we each got different flavours so we could try all of them XD I think Jen got the best deal, as she chose durian flavour and not many were willing to try it. It almost killed Isamu LOL. After the snacky goodness we did a quick tour of the arcade and then bee-lined it (almost) back to the candy store to get the tea cups *___* Jen was tempted, but refrained, though the only people who resisted the consumerism were DoctaJ and Artit. Then, it was off to the amazing chinese supermarket of the future, T&T.
At T&T we scored some awesome cheap steaks ($3-4 each!), picked up some veggies, snackes, buns for sausages, and a black bean soy drink that we totally forgot about ^^;; (and they were 6 for $3!!) We were all amazed at the size of the lobsters in the fish section - they had two kinds, regular and large (aka JUMBO) they were HUGE. As DoctaJ said, they were FEMUR sized :O!!!!!!!! Hezza and Isamu were able to ninja some shots, but you really had to see the hugeness in person :O We then convoyed back to Jen's place through rush hour traffic, and once again took car shots of each other XD Ed then stopped by and we did a little liquour run and came back to awesome BBQ goodness. The food was so good, thanks Jen for the awesome BBQ! Alcohol was consumed, but everyone was just tasting all the different kinds - orange bacardi (orange creamsicle taste!), strawberry bacardi, green apple schmirnoff, malibu and captain morgan's parrot bay rum - which are both coconut flavoured :) We scurried inside as it got a little chilly and relaxed while waiting for it to get dark enough for Ed to show of his mad fire poi ball skillz. Herded over to the back of the nearby school's baseball diamond, we were all like little kids watching Ed spin the lit up pois around in some pretty awesome twirls and patterns.
Back at casaCHAN we relaxed some more and attempted to make a plan for sticker pics. But since we took a group shot, we canned that idea as the tOFU crew signed out copies to everyone :) Meanwhile, the drag-ification of Isamu began, and wow, you just have to see the pics to see the whole process LOL. After much giggling Isamu's transformation was done and we viewed the pics for more hilarity. Everyone soon took off for sleep, and Jen and I did a rough tally of our button sales - which were amazingly and disgusting good. I then packed myself up and trundled back to Vario's place where he was amazing enough to give me a foot rub *____* <333
Day 5 - Tuesday, May 31
Left TO around noonish after filling up the tank at a gross 83.3/L and made it home before rush hour :) Vegged for most of the night.
That's it! :D
Phew! Writing this only took 1hr 50min!!!
[EDIT]
Duh, I can't believe I forgot to write this: It was AWESOME seeing all of you at the con. To Okiayu and Loverspit, I'm sorry you guys couldn't join in on our shenannigans - maybe next time? And I'll try to be better at the shy thing and actually intro myself... or harass someone to do the intros XD Con time is always so crazy, so for us vets we know that it's just part of the con - not a shunning thing :) I had awesome fun with everyone and I can't wait til OTAKON! Hope to see some of you there too!!!
Day 0 - Thursday, May 26
I spent the previous night into early morning colouring some uncovered lineart and sending it out for printing, to be picked up by latest on Friday (I was hoping). Spent most of the morning packing my stuff together, all the art and clothes stuff for the half week and then I was off to TO. Made it in before rush hour and crashed at Vario's place. I was planning to hit the AGO that evening with Vario to see the Massive Change exhibit, but he had sudden work committments and then I was too tired and hungry to care. After dinner I accompanied him, half-comatose, downtown to do an errand for his uncle and then he kindly carted me over to Jen's place for late night con-related futzing. And there was laid back futzing and general plannings for things to be done for the weekend.
Day 1 - Friday, May 27
I checked email almost obessively to see if my prints were done and ready for pick-up yet. Headed out to meet up with Jen, Isamu and Tubz for lunch (mmmm pizza) and getting some snacks from the Longo's. Hit up the copy shop to get our fresh delivery of tOFUs, and were key-trunk-locking incident free >:D Had a short breather at CasaCHAN and then we were off on our way to the con. Once in the AA we were setting ourselves up and then the lights went out for at least 5minutes! Apparantly there was a city-wide surge just then, but soon the lights came back on :) At this time I was able to hook up with Cath again and we chatted as we setup stuff... and I was too shy (and embarassed to admit, uh, "who are you?") to figure out everyone else under the tOFU umbrella XD;;;; The con staff gave us a 3minutes to openning warning, and not a minute later announced the openning! Jen and I had found a pin deal a couple months ago and ordered what we thought was a good to conservative (test?) amount to sell... and did they sell! I was, and am still, amazed at how POPULAR buttons are! :O!!! We sold out of a lot of our designs on Friday - so that's a huge indication of their popularity, and the size of the crowd this year at AN! Hezza showed up with her amazing amigurumi (crochet) art show entries of two Katamari princes, a Katamari ball and a stuffed Kon from BLEACH which she finished that night.
The AA closed early, because we were tied to the closing and locking of the Dealer's Room, and since we weren't hotelling it that night we set off back east for a late dinner. Some ppl were pooped, so it was just Jen, Isamu, ET, Ying and I for dinner - to be joined by Kiza, and even later Vario popped in. Had some really good eats at Congee Wong, like Singapore style lo bak goh. MMMMMMmmmmm. Then it was crash time with plans to meet up at Jen's for 9-10am. Before I went to sleep I printed out some mail order forms for the pins, just in case and at the urging of Vario - our psuedo marketing manager cricket XD (oh old school reference, can you catch it?)
Day 2 - Saturday, May 28
I missed Vario's alarm, and woke up later than I wanted to (it's not loud enough!!!) so I was late getting to Jen's place ^^;; But Vario was sweet enough to not only drop me off, but to do a back and forth rabbit run for me to pick up the prints that were finally done *___* So we organized ourselves at Jen's and waited for Vario to appear before heading back to the con, in which everyone else beat us in getting there ^^;;; Kiza was also nice enough to offer to get us lunch on his way in too! We quickly setup and my table looked decently displayed with my shiney new prints taking up space on one side, the pin display on the other. It's also a good policy to look busy while at the table, so I pulled out some photocopied lineart and started to colour it with the watercolours I brought down - as I feel more comforatble with them than markers, believe it or not :P Apparantly watercolours = hard core, as many alley passer-bys expressed awe and watched me mix paints and apply the first layer of colour. So most of the con passed as such, and I took down mail orders for the pins coming out to an amazing three pages of orders O___O! The Dealer's Room was once again closing early-ish, so we packed up to drop stuff off at the hotel and hit up the Chalet Swiss for dinner. Hezza, ET and Ying were nice enough to go ahead to grab us a table and we soon trundled in after they tried calling us a couple times unsuccessfully ^^;;;;
At dinner Hezza unveiled her amigurumi tofu cube and rolly polly sheep, which we all had fun playing with at the table. Orders were soon put in to the waitress, and poor Vario got carded by the waitress. She tried to recover, as we laughed at Vario getting carded, saying that she had to card anyone that didn't look "over 25" XD Vario is the oldest at the group, soon to be pushing the big three-oh, but it was hilarious :) No one else at the table got carded after that hehehehe XD It was good food, though Isamu complained that he should've gotten the chicken and ribs after seeing Kiza's whole rack of ribs. He even tried to get Vario to order more food so they could split the protein goodness. After dinner we relaxed in the room for a bit watching Isamu's horde of japanese media: Segata Sanshiro commercials, random japanese commercials, music videos (PVs) and music shows featuring HelloProject groups (Isamu, you have FAR TOO MANY of those files :P). The home bound ppl soon left for much needed Zs and we watched Battle Royale before turning in ourselves. Battle Royal was much less extreme than I thought it would be -[SPOILER WARNING] - I was expecting fighting goodness within a school setting, not survival on an island with a weapon lottery type "game". Though, one character was pretty ridiculous in that his surprising skills in first aide, cooking and then steering a boat were all because his father is a doctor, chef and then fisherman?! Man, that's the choice reason from now on LOL -[END SPOILER]-
Gotta say, though, that King bed was HUGE and the covers VERY warm and insulating. Jen and I took off the top cover and yet the blanket on top of the sheet was still very warm :O We even tried at a pillow fight, but the bed was so huge we barely reached each other XD Pretty hilarious :) I had one commission request that day, and finished it before the 1hr which I asked the person to come back at. We actually left before they showed up again, and I totally forgot about it thinking they'd have an all-weekend pass...
Day 3 - Sunday, May 29
Jen and I had set both our cell phone alarms, plus the room's clock radio alarm to go off at 8:30am. And they did, about a minute apart from each other lol! We got up, changed and went down for our continental breakfast and had to contend with a room full of Red Hat ladies - who teased Isamu for being XY and seemingly out of place XD;;; Made it back up to the room with our scant rations of toast and cereal, but Isamu was hungry enough to boil some water and use the ice container to cook some ramen... and then eat it with a knife XD;;; (got pics of that!) We packed up and tried waiting for the elevator - which was totally --- by the Red Hat ladies in PJs, so we dragged ourselves and our stuff down via the stairs to check out, pack the car, and go for some Timmies caffinated goodness. Still made it to the con late, but by only a half hour instead of the.. uh, two hours, that we were late yesterday XD Cath and the ConCom were nice enough to tell me that the commissioner from yesterday had been back, and got me their email and mailing address - so phew! I sold a couple prints and took down more pin orders (almost four full pages!) and did two smaller commissions of these cute girls that I had drawn the year before :) I was visited at my table by SK and was able to get him to mind my table space while I toured the Dealer's Room for the first time with Kiza. Saw Day manning the Beguiling booth and got myself a set of Copic liners and a copy of Giant Robot. As the AA time slot was winding down Jen and I decided we would sell off what was left of our pins as we packed up to head out for dinner. We managed to get everyone informed on the place for dinner and have all the cars and people head east to Sapporo Sushi, where there was much merriment and food consumed, sushi boat sails built, smoke salmon and avocado comments, soy hair brush painting, and many many pics taken XD Isamu almost killed himself on the food he ordered and actually WADDLED his way to the karaoke place XD I think there's a video of that too LOL!!!
We were given a room surprisingly fast at the karaoke place - and I assumed that maybe the guy knew Jen since she's been to the place many a time for singing fun. Ends up we swindled the room for the Marvin party, in which the guy tried to recover from by saying Jen looked like a Marvin... uh, yeah ^^; So it was good times had by all belting out tunes, for better or for worse. Most hilarious mangled song was Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star XD Worst and most perv video went to Yellow Submarine, of all songs! And the song that topped' everything was YMCA because OMG THOSE LYRICS WERE SO WRONG AND WE NEVER KNEW UNTIL THEN WTFBBQ!!!!! I think we wrapped up after midnight and then made plans to be at Jen's place for 11am to decide on lunch :)
Day 4 - Monday, May 30
Made it on time to Jen's place(!), and two minutes after Cath, DoctaJ and Artit were dropped off. After a little misplaced lens scare, Hezza and Tubz also joined us and we treked out in two cars to March for an awesome lunch. After lunch we hit up the PacMall for window shopping, which mostly centered around candy and toys. Cath and I totally wanted to get these mini japanese tea cups with tea dog designs on them, and decided to shop around a bit first. In meandering around we filled our bobocha quota as ET and Ying joined us, and shopped some more. We spent a lot of time in girly accessory stores looking for the perfect props for the evening's festivities too - and found it in a pink sparkley leopard print hair clip XD. We soon went upstairs to have awesome ice cream sandwhiches, which we each got different flavours so we could try all of them XD I think Jen got the best deal, as she chose durian flavour and not many were willing to try it. It almost killed Isamu LOL. After the snacky goodness we did a quick tour of the arcade and then bee-lined it (almost) back to the candy store to get the tea cups *___* Jen was tempted, but refrained, though the only people who resisted the consumerism were DoctaJ and Artit. Then, it was off to the amazing chinese supermarket of the future, T&T.
At T&T we scored some awesome cheap steaks ($3-4 each!), picked up some veggies, snackes, buns for sausages, and a black bean soy drink that we totally forgot about ^^;; (and they were 6 for $3!!) We were all amazed at the size of the lobsters in the fish section - they had two kinds, regular and large (aka JUMBO) they were HUGE. As DoctaJ said, they were FEMUR sized :O!!!!!!!! Hezza and Isamu were able to ninja some shots, but you really had to see the hugeness in person :O We then convoyed back to Jen's place through rush hour traffic, and once again took car shots of each other XD Ed then stopped by and we did a little liquour run and came back to awesome BBQ goodness. The food was so good, thanks Jen for the awesome BBQ! Alcohol was consumed, but everyone was just tasting all the different kinds - orange bacardi (orange creamsicle taste!), strawberry bacardi, green apple schmirnoff, malibu and captain morgan's parrot bay rum - which are both coconut flavoured :) We scurried inside as it got a little chilly and relaxed while waiting for it to get dark enough for Ed to show of his mad fire poi ball skillz. Herded over to the back of the nearby school's baseball diamond, we were all like little kids watching Ed spin the lit up pois around in some pretty awesome twirls and patterns.
Back at casaCHAN we relaxed some more and attempted to make a plan for sticker pics. But since we took a group shot, we canned that idea as the tOFU crew signed out copies to everyone :) Meanwhile, the drag-ification of Isamu began, and wow, you just have to see the pics to see the whole process LOL. After much giggling Isamu's transformation was done and we viewed the pics for more hilarity. Everyone soon took off for sleep, and Jen and I did a rough tally of our button sales - which were amazingly and disgusting good. I then packed myself up and trundled back to Vario's place where he was amazing enough to give me a foot rub *____* <333
Day 5 - Tuesday, May 31
Left TO around noonish after filling up the tank at a gross 83.3/L and made it home before rush hour :) Vegged for most of the night.
That's it! :D
Phew! Writing this only took 1hr 50min!!!
[EDIT]
Duh, I can't believe I forgot to write this: It was AWESOME seeing all of you at the con. To Okiayu and Loverspit, I'm sorry you guys couldn't join in on our shenannigans - maybe next time? And I'll try to be better at the shy thing and actually intro myself... or harass someone to do the intros XD Con time is always so crazy, so for us vets we know that it's just part of the con - not a shunning thing :) I had awesome fun with everyone and I can't wait til OTAKON! Hope to see some of you there too!!!