wafblog v3.0

I Should’ve Known Better


Animania Sydney March 2010

Animania Sydney March was on Saturday. It’s been a few years since I’ve been to a mini, and it’s definitely grown since then. In fact, it grew so much that this year the venue was changed to ATP (where the main con is held). The day was pretty hectic – I was surprised at how many people attended and the store was busy all day except for when the Cosplay Comp was on. That’s pretty normal as most people like to see the cosplay and it gives us a chance to have a rest and grab a bite to eat. All in all, I had fun as usual and it reminded me of why I keep coming back every year despite not watching anime anymore.

I scored three bits of “merchandise”. One was given to me for free by a friend who runs a stall – it’s a wrib that says “Caution: Idiot” in English and Japanese. Very amusing to me and a good addition to my collection of wribs. Also bought a little badge showing a game of Tetris and the demo CD for my friend’s band. It’s actually getting hard to find new badges for my bag and my cap. A lot of the badges I see at cons now are not very witty and I’m finding less that speak to me as a geek. I need to find a few more to fill up the blank spaces on my cap in particular, but I’m guessing it will take a little while now.

I was lucky enough to be walking past the entrance when *this* walked in:

robot

Too awesome!


Wow, time flies even if you’re not having fun.

I can’t believe it’s been so long since I last posted. Busy season hit like a tonne of bricks and now that it’s over, somehow I’m still busy? Yeah, go figure.

Hum, September was a total wash for me. My parents went on a month’s holiday to tour the Silk Road in China. This meant every week was filled with some sort of party/event/lack-of-sleep activity. I hosted Band Comp ’07, which was actually lots of fun. It’s amazing what we can achieve in just three days, and I’m sure if we (I) had more time, we could really achieve something great. To be honest though, I was pretty happy with the Animania performance. It took me a long time to wrap my head around some of parts, but I felt confident, and for possibly the first time in my life – I actually enjoyed performing. That was actually a pretty exhilarating experience.

I also hosted a LAN, which was pretty darn awesome. Not that we played as much as I would’ve liked – but it was fun to chill out, hang out and have some fun. I really don’t use my PS2 as much as I would like to (hum, recurring theme much?) and it’s kind of a waste of money if that’s the case huh?

Also had my first ‘away job’ in September. I had a client in Melbourne, so went down for the week to do our work. That was pretty fun! We stayed in these serviced apartments – I was quite surprised that they had one person living in this huuuuge apartment. I also managed to meet up with Frankie twice. I haven’t seen her since she moved there for work, and it was definitely great to catch up. It’s odd how much and how little people change over time. I rather like Melbourne, it’s quaint and ‘cultured’ and doesn’t seem to have the same rushed feeling that you sometimes get in Sydney.

Following that was what I like to call “Convention Season”. In span of a month, I went to like, three conventions? Animania, as usual, was lots of fun, ultra-tiring but ultimately rewarding. I decided to stay on one more year – it’d be nice to see how the new venue goes and next year is going to be huge, so I’m all for helping out. Also went to Supanova this year, because it’s the 30th anniversary of Star Wars. Unfortunately, there wasn’t really any Star Wars stuff – at least, no real commemorative collectables, so that was pretty disappointing. I did score a few things which made me happy, and have subsequently acquired a Force FX Lightsaber (Darth Vader’s, of course!). Still, I’m sure I shouldn’t have spent so much money :P Mike also talked me to into going to the Atomic Live convention, which is like a gaming/computer convention. It was actually rather disappointing, as they focused solely on PC games and computer hardware. And as much as gaming is huge for PCs, I think not having much on consoles really limited the show and what it could have been. Nevertheless, I scored a bunch of freebies (so awesome!) and that’s the point of these things isn’t it?

The Linkin Park concert was in October, and that was totally awesome. I’ll be posting photos up on my gallery sometime soon, although I’m thinking of making all the galleries private so I can post more personal pictures there. LP was definitely the best concert I’ve been to – they really connect with the crowd and seem to just love performing. It was quite amusing though, the Sydney crowd was really tame which was surprising given the videos I’ve seen of their shows overseas. I reckon everyone was too busy trying to video the show with their mobile phones to bother with moshing.

Other than that, I haven’t been up to much else. I can’t believe how quickly this year has gone by – it’s nearly the end of November already. I’ve been in my job for nearly a year now, though it feels like I just started yesterday. I’m looking to start CA next year, which will be a real test of discipline for me.  Currently it feels like a lot of people are re-assessing their jobs and their lives. Seems like they’re not happy with where they are and they’re looking for something different. From all the sutff I’ve read in the paper, this is indicative of our generation – we want everything but we expect a lot in return. If we’re not happy with our employer, we’ll walk. I wonder if our work force will become more and more mobile – more likely to switch in and out of jobs. Personally, I think I’d find it difficult to change jobs every 2 years – but by the same token, I don’t want to be doing the same thing for the rest of my life either. I just wonder how long is an appropriate time to stay.


Life, you suck.

What I hate about planning is that after doing lots of planning sometimes, you just have nothing to show for it. Like this Europe trip. I’ve been planning it for like a month or something now. It feels like anyways. And everytime I seem to be getting somewhere with it, something happens so I have to replan. Or refix or something. It’s becoming increasingly frustrating and I’m beginning to just give up. I should just take a month off, rock up to the airport and say, “mystery flight please”. Hah.

I get it, I really do. I’m lucky that all I need to think about for planning the trip is when I want to go. I can get time off work, or just quit my job if need be and I have saved the money so I could leave now if I wanted. And I get that that’s not the case for everyone. And it’s difficult to get parents to agree and it’s difficult to budget and it’s difficult to work it into your general life plan. That’s fine. But when you’re trying to plan, it’s a bloody headache.

So what does that mean? Well, I was going to travel alone. But mum said that going to Europe in late Oct/early Nov is not a good idea because it’s gets pretty cold. And I don’t like the cold. Plus it gets dark early so won’t have as much time to see stuff. That’s a valid argument really. Which means I should travel in September, before going to Hong Kong for my aunt’s thing. FINE. That’s fine. Except Animania is on the 30th Sept/1st Oct. o_O

Well, I pretty much got that choice taken away from me anyways. My parents were keen on going to Central Europe (Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, etc.) but they can only travel in September. So I can either, go in Oct, by myself for 24 days in freezing cold and darkness. Or I can go in Sept in ‘relative’ warmth and have some companions for at least half the trip. Cos they’re not interested in France, Germany or Italy. What kind of loser travels by themself? Me. That’s who. So it looks like I’ll be going on a 12 day tour of Western Europe by myself and then a 13 day tour of Central Europe with my parents before flying to HK for about 5 days. This is all fine and dandy except it means I miss Animania.

This was going to be my last Animania, as I’ll be working full-time next year and I really doubt I’ll have the time or the energy to do it again. Even more so, band is meant to be playing and I don’t really want to miss that opportunity. And this is why not doing what’s best for yourself gets you into trouble. If I was to go in Oct by myself I probably wouldn’t enjoy it so much. Fuck. I don’t know. Sometimes it’s better to have no choice. What’s really shitting me is that all this time spent planning and re-planning is really upsetting me and it’s distracting me from studying. Maybe I’ll just fail Comp Eng and not go anywhere at all.