While I'm waiting for Bui to call me when he's ready to go to CNE, here's what happened yesterday: After work, I headed straight for the CNanime convention. I didn't want to pre-order any tickets, so I decided to buy it at the door. Oh boy did I regret that decision. When I got to the convention, which was around 6:30PM, I discovered a huge line of people (or anime freaks) waiting to buy the tickets. The line was at least 200 meters long! It took me about 2 minutes to simply walking to the end of it to line up. On my way, I saw so many people dressed in those anime costums, trying to imitate their favourite anime characters ( can anyone say freaky? Otaku? Nerd? ). There was quite a few girls dressed in those skimpy outfits that we so often see on anime characters (hey, don't let you imagination run wild here, it's anime, not hentai). I had no choice but to wait in line for about one and half hours to get the tickets. Which I guess isn't all that bad considering the length of the line. Unfortunately, by the time I actually bought the ticket for 40 dollars (it's for three days), I was so tired and hungry that I had absolutely no desire to look around in the convention. All I wanted to do was to find a place and rest. However, having waited for so long and spent so much money, I forced myself to enjoy the convention, and started to look around to see if I can find anything that fascinated me. Predictebly, most of the animes and mangas there are the popular series that I loath so much. I guess I really can't expect much out of a North American anime/manga convention. I asked around for any works of Mitsuru Adachi or Urusawa Naoki, but barely anyone even know who they are. One store that sold mangas in Japanese knows about them, but they don't have their works in stock. It seems that I can order them from their store, so I'll check that out when I have the time/money. Most of the items there are way too expensive for my blood, a Do As Infinity CD is 40 dollars, s DVD movie is 40 dollars, a single manga is 10+ dollars (That's in Japanese, an English one is 20+). Geesh! I found Tuyet and Phong sitting behind their desk drawing pictures and selling them for 50cents a piece. Both of them were exhausted, and Tuyet claim that she haven't slept for 24 hours, and that she won't be going to Luke's party. Interesting note, there was a lot of people doing what they were doing. However, their drawings are better than most of the other people's, with the exception of true professionals. I saw so many people who sit there and try to sell their imitations of famous works (i.e Rorouni Kenshin, Dragon Ball Z...etc). Is it just me, or is that really sad? Although they have some talent, most of them will never see the light of the day since they are doing nothing but copying other's work. I finally started to act like a giggling little girl when I saw the sword stand. Upon closer inspeciton, I discovered that they sold nothing but fantasy swords, Bah! All the guys there were simply impressed how those swords "looks" really cool, nevermind none of them are authentic, or even sharp. I checked out a Chinese style sword shaped like the green destiny. I could swear the scabbard couldn't block any sword slach, it looked so flimsy. I checked the sword, the middle portion was warped, and the sword wasn't very straight. The whole blade was flimsy, and didn't feel very spring like. I finally checked the balance of the sword, and noticed it was all wrong. A real Chinese martial sword should have it's centre of gravity at one-third of the body length (that's from the tip of the blade to the bottom of the handle) from the handle. However, this sword's balance rests at about 1/4 the body length. I looked up, and saw the owner looking at me, suprised that I was doing all these routine checks on the sword. None of the others were even thinking about it, they were simply astoned by the fact that the swords look oriental. Ok, I know I shouldn't whine so much as the dismal state of the weapons, this is an Anime convention after all, not a martial-arts market. Still, paying 60+ dollars for these cheap rip-offs seems like a um...rip-off. I was so hungry by the end of the convention, so I decided to buy a Coffee-Chrisp from a vending machine. When I tried to grab the bar from the bottom of the machine after it dropped from the shelf, I discovered that the opening was blocked. WTF! The opening simply refused to open more than a merely 2 cm wide gap. I just wasted $1.25 on a Coffee-Chrisp which is now lying helplessly at the bottom of the machine for me to see. Arghhh! Eventually, the convention came to a close for the day, and the announcer kicked everyone out. I went straight to Luke's party, and bought a big bottle of Pepsi and a big bag of chips on the way there. Gopy, Eva, Jennifer, Sean, Tyler, Sean and others were there. I talked a lot with Gopy, since I haven't seen him since graduation. Gopy and Eva went home at around 11:30PM. I went home an hour later. Very long day. I definitly will go to the convention again, since I spent so much effort getting the tickets.