Monday, May 26, 2014

140524-25 Amara Resort

so over the weekends, we got to stay at amara resort due to the 30th anniversay of my dad's company. i had a check up in the morning so i ate brunch there. love free food with check ups!

then i headed to amk to meet my sis. we bought xmen tickets for sunday before going down sentosa together.

and here we are!


we took some releaxed drinks at the pub downstairs since everything was freeflow





free flow kacang puteh too!

ordered some german sausages and cocktails to start with.

and guess what there were like 4 peacocks running wild here.

never knew they could fly till one flapped up to the roof in front of us. whoa!

here's a selfie of us~


we went back to rest for a while before dinner starts. it started with a 10 yr prize giving, then buffet dinner.

black pepper prawns were the food of the day. they were all the peeled version! so i had to take some more.
 

they had the 20yr prize presentation also. my father worked for over 25 years and got awarded with a tag-heuer watch.

unfortunately he was forced to sing later on. lololol and it was the first time we heard our dad sing. and my bro realised where he got his ahem, voice, from. hahahahahahahhahahahaha

the event ended with a cake cutting and we ate the chocolate slices. it was 10+ by the time it ended as there were so many singing in between. went back hotel, bathed and slept till tomorrow.

and buffet breakfast at Shutter to start the day! whee! i love breakfast!


it's actually 38per person if you don't get the rooms. whoa. but quite worth it.

after breakfast we rested for an hour or so then got ready to check out. sis and bro were watching xmen at 2pm, so i went home first, slacked till 3+ then got out to watch xmen with maria around 420pm.

my conclusion of xmen - magneto is awesome! and guess what, there's a korean version of him too. lol.

weheheheheheh.


Tuesday, May 20, 2014

140520 end of ACM

oh let's see, it's been such a hectic start of the year that i had no time to update whatsoever.
now that everything's over, i can start to do slow updates... had a short rest, it wasn't enough but here i am letting it all out first.

so acm is finally over. there were lots of ups and downs in the process - we get into quarrels and disagreements, and we get over it. some of the plus and minus of the whole process:

the plus
- meeting everyone from all over the world. we have really crazy strong contestants who brought tons of luggage over (see philippines!). we all gel together so well, it's amazing. when you call for a selfie, everyone just jumps over! it was really fun.
- buffet dinner on sat was good, but we only had less than an hour to gobble down everything and couldn't enjoy ourselves properly. the dinner on sunday was not so bad, but it started off badly, so the mood was all messed up after that.

the minus
- the stage was horrible, comparable to the one at star vista. the one at cosfest was so much better. it was kind of disappointing to perform on such a lousy stage.
- the award is miserable. the first year was 10k, then it became 3k and now it is 2k. it is supposed to be sponsored by a bank, but the amount given is just a joke. to top it off, there's only 1 prize. i wouldn't actually have thought much about it, but when we attended the prize giving ceremony and you see the dragon boaters getting over 20k for their first prize (and there was probably like more than 30prizes given), you can't help but wonder if the bank was just being too mean to the cosplayers.
- the whole place was small, tiny and non-airconditioned. even star vista was air-conditioned. the fans given were too few and far and it was really cramp. can you imagine all the big props we have to carry, and the thick costumes some of the contestants have to wear. we were all melting like crazy, but hey, who cares about the cosplayers right?
- the walking distance from the changing place to the stage area. it's not far, but it's not sheltered either. when it started to pour on sunday, it really created a huge mess. imagine you got changed at one building, and you have to brace across to the stage area. i wasn't in armour, so i can't complain much, but they should definitely have built a changing area just next to the stage for us.
- the area where the contestants stayed at was at least 45mins away. don't you think it's like traveling from singapore to malaysia everyday? what's the point of singapore being small, and having a bank as a sponsor, when we can't even place the world's best contestants at an area nearby? the time wasted traveling is really not factored in properly.
- the media interviews. i only like them when we have time to do it, not when we're sweating, in the middle of practice and really rushing for time.
- being pulled to do 'part-time' jobs. cosplayers love taking photos, but we don't like it when we have to ask someone to take a picture with us, and we get rejected. seriously? why do we have to do that? we're not clowns who have to entertain people. we're in costumes, we have a competition, we're tired, and we have to do this? not to mention there wasn't even time given to us to properly eat the things. (i didn't even have a single bite)
- doing this entertainment show and made to look like clowns on the day before the competition. sure, it was funny (so funny to look at us do nonsense things), but it was also draggy and long and repetitive and there weren't even that many people watching. it was kind of like self-entertainment. we didn't even have a proper place to change and have to squeeze into public toilets and do make-up and change in front of the public. some kind of 'guests' are we.
- not handling the situation better. as said, sunday dinner got off to a bad start, because our team 'self-invited' a helper and our helper was told to 'get out' of the private event. given that there are 35 invited cosplayers watching, perhaps it could have been better to just be more flexible and easy going about such things - let it be and give us a warning so we won't do it next time, than cause a ruckus. we're all mature adults, we don't have to listen to raised voices to understand a point. it's already frustrating enough that we're not being listened to or considered from our point of view, and everything was just about you, you and you. we're tired and hungry, it's close to midnight, you're angry and sure, let's just chase the person who came down all the way to help us. no biggie, the one who got shamed was us anyway.

conclusion
considering we almost ran the risk of being disqualified, i have to say that i should have pretty much taken up that path. we struggled against time, against people, against our work. the end results wasn't pretty - i do feel i made a lot of terrible mistakes, and i regretted a lot of things. one thing i'm sure is that i don't regret meeting everyone, and i really hope that was the right choice.

after complaining, i guess i will now take some time to post proper happy moments.

oh yeah. we appeared The New Paper and Lian He Zao Bao. i like that the article put in all the important points we mentioned. but i REALLY HATE THE PICTURE. i mean i look horrible. really. and the way the journalist ended off the article wasn't very encouraging too.



i didn't expect them to use the same GODAWFUL picture. should've complained when it got out on New Paper, since the CN one was only released 2 days later. GOSHHHHHHHHH @&)@&#* jeez.at least i'm not that identifiable. zzz







Sunday, May 18, 2014

140518 ACM Group

so it's finally the day of the competition! it rained super heavily till about 2+pm and a flood occurred at the event area. i actually hoped that everything will get cancelled because the whole weather and the performance area just made it awful to even perform.

my costume actually took much longer to get changed into because of the boob area. argh. also i had to test my wig changing. so thank goodness for the stormy weather!

while the event got delayed, it did not get cancelled. we still moved from the changing area to the performance area, just an hour later. there were people who sheltered us all the way over using gigantic umbrellas. bridges were also built for ease of traveling above the muddy grass patches.

it started with a super long introduction of the wcs contestants, then a catwalk, and then the introduction of the acm contestants (which i skipped, since i looked horrendous). all to stall for time i supposed. which wasn't bad, since we missed out a prop and had to send sebastian to get it.

so here's some videos to watch! again, you can watch everything here.

i like malaysia's set up


team phillipines did a cool and humorous act. they're the winners of the day!


 thailand did a great job with their funny jojo act! all that 2D background!


and finally our group. the butterflies that built up really affected me quite a lot. we really have too much stage props and the prepartion time took a bit of time. and many things failed. i guess we were too fast/confusing as well? oh well. it was a disappointment but maria was still fantastic.


after competition, we were once again dragged to the VIP area to do free photos. really. we're all tired and we have to do this. sometimes it's just frustrating. at least they never asked people to take with us this time. anyway here's our team!



oh, and vic, jovelle, alvin and ligen came over. i saw daniel too but didn't have a chance to talk to him T_T nice to have a few more familiar faces!!


i have to tompang people's camera since my hp wasn't working. here's fishii's alice costume. shiny!

the prize presentation area was in front of the river and it took forever.


congrats to philippines!!! their props, performances and costumes were crazy. really well done!! you deserve it!!!

just a bit of griping on my side. more than an hour was spent giving prizes to the dragon boar races and the first prize went over 20k. but cosplay was just that 1 prize at 2k. kind of stingy for a bank organiser. and it just shows how much they view cosplay. we're there as free labour for phototaking, they give us a small miserable stage and a tiny prize for putting up 3 performances. well done.

when everything was over it was time to pack and leave. we took some final group photos, then went back to changing area to morph into human. please forgive my chui face because i was supposed to put on my shades so my make up remained kouichi.



 

after that we came back to the stage area to clear our props. a lot of the teams threw their stuff away so being the singaporeans, we picked up all the pipes and whatever we could carry back. thankfully nik was there to help, if not me and maria may have to dump all our things as well!


 fishii thought i was throwing my wings. photo with twin!

then it was off to dinner. but more human form selfies before that. hurhur



we had dinner at xin wang cafe at marina square. started off pretty badly as there were some more quarrels with the organiser. sighs.wish they could have thought more from our PoV instead of only thinking from their end only sometimes.

so anyway, some photos before we end the night...

there's a funny signing footage on xiao zhou's shirt by kaname you should see here!!

then it was farewell everyone!!!


nik sent me and maria home and help lugged all our props till 2am. really major thanks and much apologies to you. you're the man of the day!


Saturday, May 17, 2014

140517 ACM Solo/Double

we changed up in the great air-conditioned area of DBS, but had to walk over to the performance area. as it rained earlier on, the weather was slightly better, but still hot.

You can watch all the videos from here. the guy has a really good positioning of the video where not many people/objects are blocking.

i'm just gonna plonk some of the solo performances video here:

Fishii from Malaysia (she can really act! *_*)

Abraham from Philippines (the armour is awesome!! and that thing he stood on..!)



and me from Singapore (ok, i must say i forgot a lot of steps but oh well.)



ahbu our local photog took a really awesome picture of me on stage. can't even remember when i made this pose but i really like the whole feel.


after my solo, i thought we could take a rest at the VIP area but i had to help Maria with her doubles first. it turns out that going to the VIP area wasn't all that fun. sure there's air con and food, but we were MADE to take pictures with everybody. the 'guide' bringing us around was almost pleading for people to take pictures with us. it was terrible and embarrassing. and we weren't even given time to eat. really horrible treatment. she still told us there's a second round. thank goodness another batch was coming so we made our escape. didn't even get to eat anything at all...

managed to come back so see more doubles competition. maria's diablo always make such a presence!! it was scary even when i looked from the side. a very wcs-worthy performance!!



and then i'm gonna spam photos~~ starting with me and mariaaaaaaaaaaaa the 2 evil queens! hoho. we're so color-coordinated.


thanks jes for coming over! she's like the only one i know who was there. T_T

with the all too cute xiao zhou! and my future memphis! don't break your promise!!! gogogo!

the china team~


 and judge from china, who was with the wcs contestants as organiser during our year


team malaysia but er mixed in with taiwan and china so i don't know what to call it anymore. lol



how can we forget kaname the guest of the event!


and i found a photo that jonathan helped take with team philippines~ all the awesome armours!


and when everything's over.. we had a super massive selfie in the resting area. hoho!


everyone just ran over when we called for selfies. it was really great harmony!! love you guys!! and tonight was buffet dinner at merchant court. wheee~~~