Manifest Day One

OMG Manifest is so damn awesome. This is my first time to a anime convention. It's a lot of fun! I'm wayyy too tired to post pictures (it's like 11 already!) so I'll just say what I did generally.

I should say what I did on Friday first. Well yeah, Friday of course was usual class. At 5 PM I went straight to Huntingdale Station to get to Manifest (day 00 in a way). There wasn't much going on since it hasn't officially started but it was still pretty interesting. There was the Fruits fashion show which was a costume competition for original designs, some panels and the fan traders merchandise (stuff made by fans). There were a couple of good cosplays, but I didn't get any pictures in the end. I came pretty late, but met up with Amanda, Bernie, Natalie, Max, Sharon and Jason. Chris and Raine was around also but I didn't really get a chance to talk to them (Chris was easy to find though... with his pink hair).

After whatever few events there were, everyone wanted dinner. Around the same time, Tsan and company were already at Lygon to celebrate Han Lin's birthday on Saturday (dinner then clubbing at Lavish). Me and Amanda was a bit lost around Lygon but we eventually found our way. We had a nice little dinner at Universal Pizza again (the place we were at the previous week after our St. Kilda outing). I spent most of the dinner, and a good amount of the night fussing over how and when I was gonna get back from the place at night. Since I wanted to sleep so I could get up for Manifest but at the same time I felt bad leaving early considering I should stay to celebrate Han Lin's bday. I didn't intend to stay over at Han Lin's cousin's place like everyone else, and didn't want to go clubbing just cause it would be late and I wanted sleep. I was, and am, one troublesome annoying person. Please forgive and bear with me people. My personality isn't gonna change anytime soon.

When we left the pizza place, V's car broke down and we sat a good amount of time waiting for people to help us get the car to start up. And we went off to Han Lin's cousin's place to chill out since it was too early for clubbing. Their house is so big and nice! Spent most of the time at the house fussing but got over it. In the end I went clubbing. V offered to drive me back but I felt pretty bad dragging him home early just for me. The city isn't exactly close to Clayton. Had to wait for an hour and a half or so to get into the club. Umm.. danced a bit, although I didn't really as much. Everyone drank except for me. I don't know jack about drinks but whatever they had must have been really strong. Everyone either was a bit drunk, saying random things or sick with headaches (almost instantly). I could generally remember. Mun Jone, Brian, Amanda and Han Lin were all a bit sick with headaches or whatever and generally stayed quiet because of that. Tsan and V were relatively hyper. And I won't even mention Winston, lol. Anyway, we left at like 3 AM, I gave up on going home since V was in no way safe to drive me that far home. So I stayed over at Han Lin's cousin's place. I was a bit sad it meant I had to not shower, brush my teeth and having to wear the same clothing for the second day to Manifest. But oh wells.

It was 5 AM by the time I could sleep. And I had to get up at like 9. I was in one of Han Lin's cousins' room with Tsan, Winston, Han Lin and his cousin (and also Amanda who didn't move to the room in the end). In the end I got this one huge bed to myself, I was supposed to share it with Tsan and Amanda but both of them wouldn't move to the bed from wherever they already were. Everyone was generally out cold, with the exception of V and one of Han Lin's cousins who directed everyone to make sure everyone had somewhere relatively comfy to sleep. Obviously I was perfectly fine, just tired.

I woke up suddenly at like 8 AM (yay for three hours of sleep). I'm pretty sure it was Han Lin that woke me up, since he either woke up really early or didn't sleep at all and was walking around doing stuff, making a bit of noise here and there in the room. Anyway, I sneaked out of the house at 8:45 (going against V's insistence that he would drop me off at Manifest on Saturday morning). I was a bit lost in the morning on where I could find a train to get to the city. But luckily I vaguely remember Han Lin's directions from the night before so I found it eventually.

And now for Manifest! Got off at Melbourne Central to meet the MCAC group. Or uhh.. Bernie's syndicate group anyway. So yeah, met up with Bernie, Sharon, Rachel, Vu, Owen, Jasmine, Casini and company. We went to Manifest and I spent the first part drooling at the greatness of the Traders hall! So much stuff I want... no where near enough money to buy it all. I eventually settled upon getting two big Mario pillows and 4 pins for my bag in the fan traders place. I wanted this One Piece flag but it was like ... $45.. and before I knew it, it was already sold. O.O

After this, it was already nearing lunch. I missed out on events already, oh well. I watched some AMVs from the competition and heard the requirements of the Iron Chef AMV comp. This is where contestants are given one day to complete an AMV from specifically chosen anime and must include a special ingredient or requirement. One of Chris's friends was a constestant and the special ingredient was hilarious! Their AMVs MUST contain Naruto scanlation manga! Ahahaha. How the hell can you put badly scanlated Naruto manga into AMVs of shows with such high quality art like 5 cm, The Girl that Leapt through time and Murder Princess. XD

After, I wanted to enter the hall where the cosplay competition was, but the line was like a mile long. I gave up on it and just went for the feed. After the AMV, I got seperated from Chris, Bernie and co. just disappeared and I spent some time wandering around the place with Drue (who I ran into out of nowhere). We bought some sandwiches for lunch at the food stall, but it was ridiculous. First the stall ran out of eggs, so their sandwich with eggs didn't have any eggs in it! Then, they ran out of bread. They gave me bread crusts instead for the sandwich. T_T

Oh right, we saw Damien today also but he didn't register yet and had to wait in that mile long line to get his pass. Yay for Bernie for getting our passes yeterday.

We eventually found Natalie, Max and her brother so we all went to the cosplay feed together. We were in the free video games playing room before that, so we were a bit late. Even the feed room was almost full so we had to sit separately (booo). The cosplay comp was okay. There were a lot of boring skits and questioning times that I would rather not listen to. And the feed sucked, it constantly had technical problems where the blue screen of death came up, and you couldn't get pictures from the quality of the screen. Me and Drue were bored to death half the time, as it went on I almost fell asleep. We wanted to leave but we were mainly sitting and waiting for Nazri to show up. We saw Ranna, who looked awesome and wayyyy hot in her costume. Just as I was about get sleepy, the most awesome Kingdom Hearts skit came up. Which turned out to be my favourite skit with a Sora cosplayer being my favourite cosplayer. She was just plain awesome. And she seemed nice when I later asked her outside for a picture. The skit was great. Instead of talking some cheesy crap like all the other skits, the cosplayers used songs for their words. It was just funny. I was laughing my head off when songs like Avril Lavigne's "Girlfriend" came on.

Other awesome cosplays I saw. Ouran's Hani-senpai. Then Hani's Usa-chan (how did someone make a bunny costume?!). A Yoshi! A Totoro! I want to know how these people make these huge fuzzy animal costumes. I mean normally when you're a human character it's just cloth to make clothing but... an animal costume...

And then Nazri came on in the cosplay competition. His costume was pretty good (sadly no bells) but his reply to the question the commentator asked him was hilarious. Instead of replying, he said he needed to put on his glasses since he can't see or hear without them (glasses and hearing..? LOL) Right after Nazri left we ran off since we couldn't take it anymore. It was pretty late already after the cosplay competition, since the event went over time by like one hour. There wasn't really much left to do. We thought about staying for Anime Idol, but it was delayed and instead we had this retarded game. Everyone got annoyed and left the room.

We got a group photo before heading off to dinner in the city. We ate at a Indonesian restaurant. I wasn't used to eating dinner with like 20 other people. After that we lost some people here and there, and the remainder of us went to Bubble Cup. Next to Bubble Cup is the shop with goth loli and lolita costumes, Raine went to try one of the outfits on. Sadly none of the other guys saw it, only just me and Nat because the shop assistants wouldn't let me snap a picture. Nat wanted one of those photo stickers with all of us earlier, but 20 people isn't gonna fit in a box. Anyway, we all went home after this.

In the end, it was just me and Raine arriving at Huntingdale Station (since Nazri went back earlier and Amanda didn't come today). I hated walking back to the Halls by myself. Scared me to death when groups of guys went by me. I'm tired, so time to sleep! Gotta make up for the past few days. I mean, I think I only slept for like 3 hours last night at Han Lin's cousins' place. Gotta wake up early tomorrow for dance practice also. Yeah, day one of Manifest was pretty fun! Looking forward to tomorrow.