Anime North 2010のこと。 - PART 1, Thursday.

After Anime North and school, I feel I should just lay back and talk about what's been happening for the past week or so.

A lot of things have happened during the weekend or so. Many were just downright stressful, many beautiful moments were had. Another year of AN is gone and it leaves me depressed because in the view of a staff member, many months worth of preparation for me just ended in a matter of days. It just passes by that quick. Oh well, I guess that only leaves us for next year's AN, ね?

Thursday, May 27th, 2010 - DAY ZERO
The only reason this is called Day Zero is because day 1 of AN is technically tomorrow and it's the day where most people go to the Doubletree Hotel to get their preregistration badges.

It's 12:00pm and Mike has arrived to Toronto from Sarnia. He dropped by at my house for a while to wait until Alex dropped by. The original plan was that Alex would come by with his van to pick up my broken DDR pad (which broke during the time of the ACG party a little over a month ago) and to go to TK's house and pick his broken DDR pad up too.

Alex did arrive about half an hour later, except it turns out that Alex's dad would be driving instead with Joseph and Alex in the car with him. We got the pad in the back of the van but there was no room for anyone to sit in (another reason is because no one expected Mike to carpool with us and it was a last minute thing), and Joseph volunteered to sit where the DDR pads were, leaving me, Mike, and Alex and his dad with a seat.

I'll say one thing though: On the way to TK's house, the carpool was a fucking nightmare. Alex's dad kept braking on purpose in an attempt to make Joseph literally fly to the front of the van (because he was lying on the pads so he had no restraining support like a seat belt).

The conversation between Joseph and Alex's dad went something like this.

-[after the brakes were hit]
-Joseph: Thank god I have my backpack in front for support.
-Alex's dad: You think that fucking backpack is going to help you, smart guy?
-Joseph: Yeah, try me.
-Alex's dad: You sure? I'm giving you 5 seconds to back out of it.
-Joseph: 1....2...3....4....5.
-[Alex's dad pulls on the breaks really hard, Joseph's backpack flies to the front of the van]
-Alex's dad: Yeah, that's right. Don't fucking test me. I even gave you 5 seconds to take it back, you fucking retard.

Along the way, I sorta forgot where TK's house is so I called him up on the phone to ask him the directions to his house. Alex's dad overheard me and muttered this towards me.

-Alex's dad: Look at this fucking idiot asking his friend for directions. YEAH, GREAT SENSE OF DIRECTION, GENIUS. DOESN'T EVEN KNOW WHERE HIS OWN FRIEND FUCKING LIVES.

Needless to say, I was pretty damn discouraged. Thanks to that moment, I now remember the directions to TK's house very fluently. We did manage to get to his house though, except when TK was standing in the middle of the road waving at us, Alex's dad floored it to try to run him down. On purpose. Thank god TK jumped out of the way though.

After we got TK's pad in Alex's van, Alex, his dad, and Joseph part ways with us, and instead, it was just me, TK, and Mike. We ended up eating all-you-can-eat sushi for lunch at this awesome place called Hockey Sushi.

Eventually after lunch, TK, Mike, and I all went to get our badges. I had to get my staff badge and then my panelist badge, and Mike had to get his prereg and his panelist badge.

Of course, that all went well except TK had some trouble getting his badge. Why? It just so happens he used an alias to register himself as staff and when he found out it didn't match his ID, the execs wouldn't issue him his badge. Of course, that's his fault for using his alias as a registered name and he can't really prove that his alias belongs to him and the only person to be able to back him up would be our boss, RCE. Of course, we didn't know if he was around the vicinity to help us out but one of the staff reported that he was around but in the other hotel (Sheraton Hotel), which isn't surprising since he's the head of gaming and that hotel holds all of AN's gaming events.

We eventually did make it to the Sheraton Hotel, met up with RCE, and told him the situation with TK and his staff badge. There was pretty much passion in the air when RCE gave TK a huge hug and said he'll get it taken care of. About an hour later, he got off the phone with the guy that denied TK the badge and said to come back to Doubletree to pick up the staff badge. We all pretty much went home after that. It was 9:30pm at the time, so we stayed within the area for a pretty fucking long time.

That pretty much concludes Thursday (Day 0).