So how was your day?

[Luna Pixu]

Soooo... I was supposed to post this yesterday but... I was too tired to do so. So, I may as well post this on the day that I thought I was supposed to return on.
As you all know from the thread of absence I made, I went to Amecon (or Amechibi) in Nottingham for the weekend. From Friday Morning to Sunday Evening, I was in Nottingham attending a small but long-running regional convention dedicated solely to anime and the sort.

I can talk endlessly about the events and mishaps at the con and in Nottingham but it'd be too much for me to type. But let's just say that the con was worth it. Needed some work with the whole smaller con formula but overall a great experience. Makes me wanna attend it next year and go to other regional/national anime cons (Comic Con is great and all but it's harder to find like-minded individuals there compared to Amecon).

I saw a whole bunch of cosplayers and attended a fair share panels there. In regards to cosplayers, the list of ones I saw included (but were not limited to):

• Mami Tomoe, Madoka, and Homura.
• The obligatory Goku and a Super Saiyan Goku (none of the other characters though. Seriously, no Vegeta? Krillin? Trunks? Cell? Freiza? The Androids? The f*ck?!)
• The Scout from TF2
• Klonoa (yes, Klonoa was there!)
• Lucy, Natsu, and Erza from Fairy Tail
• Little Sisters from Bioshock
• Flareon, Vapereon, Pikachu, Ash, and several others from Pokémon
• Yang from RWBY (But no Ruby... )
• Gene Simmons of KISS
• Panty from Panty and Stocking
• And many others...

No con experience is without photos but, unfortunately, I didn't take many. This was to adhere to the wishes of cosplayers who did not wish to have a photo taken and for the respect of private property. Despite it being a con, the venue is a more reserved and posh one. And I didn't want to get into too much trouble over taking photos of the place. Same deal with my hotel room too.

But photos are still photos. And thou shalt receive photos from my sh*tty iPhone camera!

Spoiler: Pics! With a large resolution but sh*tty quality!

My con badge. There were several kinds of these. One for con attendees, one for staff, one for senior staff, and then some odd ones like a Podcaster badge. And there was even a badge that a senior staff member wore which had an image of Amu on it with gold text printed on it.
The badge you see is, of course, the regular one that has an image of the Amecon mascot, Ame-chan, and her younger sister who is this year's mascot. Very adorable, if you ask me.


This was the first photo and only one of the two photos I took in Nottingham. This was a photo of me in my hotel room telling you all that... I did not cosplay! (Leon, you guessed wrong! -1 point to you.) But, speaking of cosplay, there was one cosplay that I did snap a photo of. With her permission of course.


Yes, I managed to find an Amu at the con on Saturday. When I saw her, I was so shocked to see her next to me. Rarely do I expect any hint of SC (Shugo Chara) at cons like these. But, the last few cons have been VERY fruitful. And this year's had to be the biggest. While she was a bit rushed in her cosplay, her's was a neat one nonetheless. She may have not had the appropriate leggings nor the hairpiece but that was quickly made up for the fact that she possessed a WORKING Humpty Lock and Ran, Miki, and Su (no Dia though... ). Oh, and those eggs? They are more than just show. They do actually open up and also work with the Lock.
Amu was really nice to me, and she and I had quite the discussions together. Unfortunately though, fate had other plans for the two of us and I did not see her again after the Saturday Evening's cosplay showcase. Nor did I even catch her real name or any contact details.

Now, onto LOOT! I didn't get a large quantity of loot this time but it was still quite substantial nonetheless. First up, the most mundane piece of loot. Manga!

I got an omnibus that contains the first 3 volumes of Genshiken. A manga about an otaku who wishes to find like-minded people by joining a club and a girl whose boyfriend is an overly dedicated otaku. The boyfriend, too, wants to join a club and the girl gets roped into it all. I have yet to read it, considering my backlog of anime and manga is already very large, but I'm interested in reading it nonetheless.

Next up is the Humpty Lock.

In honour of the Amu cosplayer from Saturday and one of my favourite shows ever, I decided to buy my own replica of the Lock. Inside the box contains both the Lock and the Key. While the Lock is quite different from the real Lock in several ways, it is quite true to size and tries to replicate the real thing while adding its own twist to the mix (The Lock is a bit smaller than the real thing, imo, but it's hard to actually tell 'cause Amu looks like a 14-16 or so year old and proportions are kinda messed up).

The Key is something quite similar to the Lock. Unfortunately, the Key is less accurate than the Lock because of the fact that it is even smaller compared to its real counterpart. And, yes, the Key can actually be used to open the Lock. And now you know.
Oh, and before you ask, I am actually wearing the Lock. Right now, while I'm typing, as a matter of fact. The thing is really kinda awesome to wear. Really is.


Last up is... the one, the only, the quite large and inconvenient Sealing Wand from Cardcaptor Sakura!

Yes, and when I thought I had already outdone myself in acquiring anime merchandise as of late, I buy this thing. A near 1:1 scale officially made Sealing Wand that is battery operated and ready to use. Here's the thing in my hands:

Pretty freaking big. In some ways, I have no regrets in buying it. I love Cardcaptor Sakura and I wanna express that love through buying merch. But in other ways, it is embarrassingly cumbersome and was a pain in the ass to lug around. Also doesn't help that this is one of the more expensive pieces of my merch collection at a substantial £70 (or just over $100)! For people who don't know, I also own a deck of Clow Cards (currently located in my apartment) so, now, I can perform magic!

Overall, had a lot of fun and had a great time. Got a lot to talk about but few people to talk about it with. I was intending on discussing it the Sunday Evening I got back but everyone was either busy, uninterested, or more interesting in talking to me about Nintendo, of all things, than the con.

[Nuclearblt]

Whelp, my weekend wasn't as exciting as TR's but whatever. On Saturday, I drove up north to Sacramento to compete in a jazz competition. It was pretty good, got second place cuz I messed up on the solo for James Bond

[Yumemi Okazaki]

Tests. State tests. So hard.
Hard to be patient and wait for 60 minutes to pass already.
I switched my normal teachers and my schedule is insane.
plz halp


Umm Nuke, I think your IRL name is visible. You might want to censor that.

[Luna Pixu]

@Turtle
Nuclear's real name is quite well-known around here. He's disclosed his name several times before and I don't think he'd care all that much about a name slip. Unlike me who wishes to keep their real name secret and as less known as possible.

[99465]

Finally, after rehearsing from around 15:00 to right now (23:30), I have FINALLY returned home once more...
We were preparing for tomorrow, when we get to take complete control of the school!
This time we're taking the theme of pirates, so I be practising my pirate speak, so Aye do not sound like one of ye landlubbers!
But yeah, tomorrow's gonna be awesome.
As a little treat, here's me in my pirate costume:

Spoiler: It be me, matey

Aye lass, that be one of yer Shingeki no Kyojin (Attack on Titan) swords that I be holding, so don't go screamin' bout it, ye filthy landlubbers!

[Nuclearblt]

@Leon
Are you going to make anyone walk the plank?

@Turtle
I've used my real name for many things, put it accidental posts, my sister yelling at me while I'm on mumble, the nintendo network thingy, etc


Well, besides that, everyone in the band pitched and we ordered a Steinway and Sons Model D grand piano.
realllllyy expensive

[99465]

@Leon
Are you going to make anyone walk the plank?

Yargh, We be making weak sailors walk teh plank in yon school play.
Ye shall get more info once I get back to me trusty ship (home), but ye can know that out of the 21 people in the play, only 8 people stay on the ship.
Aye, even I, mr v/d Ven, shall be forced to walk the plank, for being wrongly accused of being a landlubber... (that's not the reason, but I get thrown off nonetheless).

[Yumemi Okazaki]

@nuke
Yeah I may or may have not overreacted to that lol. A lot of people want to stay hidden, a lot of people don't give a shit. Either way, good job on getting second place.

@leon
You.. are freaking doing a pirate play? I gl to that. My school is doing a play on Sound of Music, I dunno if I'll see it, I do know that people always fangirl whenever the lights are off in the gym during dismissal. Hell to my ears >_<

[99465]

Yar, this shall be me last post about me pirate talk, so ye best enjoy the show, landlubbers!
I had to be at school at 7:30, to prepare the final stuff & get dressed.
Before everything started, I took a pic of the entrance, cuz it looked cool:

Spoiler: Entrance

This was me at the start, when we painted on the students, made them do pushups and/or silly dances and sprayed their arses off with water pistols:

Spoiler: Pirate me

Well, we couldn't actually spray their arses off, cuz school set a few rules. One of them was: "If the students enter the school building while soaking wet, we won't refund your €1000." (Yes, that much!)
After that, everyone that was part of the show had to get changed, so I changed into my mr. v/d Ven costume:

Spoiler: Léon v/d Ven

No, Léon v/d Ven is not my real name, idiots... Léon is my first name and v/d Ven is the last name of the person I had to play.

We had to do the whole play three times, once for 1st and most of 2nd grade of our middle school, once for the rest of 2nd grade and 3rd grade and once for 4th and 5th grade.
After that, we had to clean crap up, which took around 1 hour, I think...

With all that behind our backs, we went to one of our classmate's house and had a big BBQ party. (I actually went home for an hour first, to chat with people on YC).
I was still wearing my pirate outfit, so I was freezing my arse off, but the party itself was great.
There was loud music, lots of drinks (and booze of course) and a BBQ!
Once people started leaving, it got a bit boring though... Also, some old 'friends' of mine, who arrived late (22:50) at the party, for some reason decided they'd spend their time by helping me get a girl... Nothing interesting happened, really. I still do not have a girl near me (within this country) that could be counted as a girlfriend. So heheh... ladies~ *wink wink, nudge nudge* EDIT: No... just no...
Now, classes will no longer be a thing for me!
But now it's time to get ready for my exams..... Help plz...

[Kristia]

Yesterday was a good day for me, I learned that my final project won´t sink me if it fails, which I´m deeply glad since the class is made up of slackers and indifferent people. To make it even better, the teacher accepted the fact that the class in general would fail or barely pass.

I even talked with him through mail about my project of tree registration and community talks about actually checking their trees, from my team of 6, 1 simply has done nothing, 2 are just followers (who haven´t done anything yet) and the other 2 have tried to act, but I havent heard anything from them. In short, my team is about to drown.

At least I got my part done since I was the one talking to the city hall and registering 50 trees in the span of 1-2 hours yesterday, we may fail the collective score, but the individual one will be ok on my end. Or everything can go down if the teacher gets all "teamwork is best, you can´t do it alone"

12 points won´t kill me, so yeah

Spoiler:

http://www.quickmeme.com/img/84/8409e8e5687f10feed5338264495efff214dd058bc3c5f72d2 d34f991106e63b.jpg

[MyHatismyFriend]

dreamt that my gf got NTRed by some disgusting smoking hippy thing

feels bad man

[Cucoo5]

As the semester is winding down, I'm seeing how things are lining up for all my classes. and today is the day I can split my classes in two halves:

[99465]

Today (actually, yesterday) marks the beginning of the 2nd week of finals, with on our schedule being Physics on monday, Greek on tuesday, Biology on wednesday and English on thursday.
So far the tests seem to be gong well (you can see the correction sheet online after you get home, cuz it gets uploaded at 14:00 everyday (you're kicked out of the exam room if you're not at school by then)). I think I got around 86% with Dutch, 95% with Math and 89% with Physics.
Besides that, life's been... well, all things considered.
Welp, my next exam, Greek, starts in 37.5 minutes, so I'm going to go get dressed for school. Bye~

[99465]

Argh... Sorry for double posting, but I got some stuff I wanted to get off my back (and since my last post here was almost a full MONTH ago, I'm guessing this will be ok, since it's adding content to the thread. If it's not, please notify me and I'll merge it with the previous one, though I'd rather not do that, or take matters in your own hands and merge it yourself. It's up to u, staff, in case I'm in the wrong here.).
So we finished our exams 2 weeks ago (last test, chemistry, was on the 27th of May), we went partying in Albufeira, Portugal for just over a week (29-5 'till 5-6) and we returned home.
After that, we stayed at our respective homes, staring at our phones.
Thursday 11-6, the dreaded day. This was the day we'd get to hear if we passed our exams and with it, middle school.
I was sitting downstairs with my dad (He was having a 'sick day'. He totally didn't just stay at home to see if I failed or not.) with my phone on the table.
At 13:09 Dutch time, my phone rang and the instant I saw who was calling, my mind said: "F*ck...".
We were told that if you passed, you'd be called by your personal teacher and if you failed, you'd be called by the principal.
I have my personal teacher's phone number saved on my phone with the correct name added, so when I saw a phone number that wasn't listed as someone I knew, I knew it was the principal with some bad news.
Playing it cool, I kept a smile up as I slowly walked upstairs (away from dad).
The principal told me that I had failed one of the exams (Dutch: 3,8 out of 10), which caused me to fail this year (you can only have a 5,44 or lower for 2 classes and Dutch would be my third).
So I went to school after that, where I was told I could retry the Dutch exam next tuesday (on 16-6 from 13:30 'till 16:30 + 30 minutes cuz I'm special).
So I now have to study all of these 4 days so I can at least get a 4,9 on my next attempt, but if that fails, I'll have to redo this entire school year...
It gets worse... Chemistry is using a new teaching system, so I'd have to relearn everything; Physics gets 10 extra chapters to learn next year and dad... don't get me started on dad... He'll be taking away all my games & online stuff, so I can fully focus on school...

Now, I'll be on almost 0% of the time, as far as dad knows, cuz of studying... Wish me luck guys... I may need it. =(

[Nuclearblt]

@Leon
Good luck with Dutch finals! Go kill it!

Today, I was able to finish up my application forms, just got to turn them in. Also, we got to play a jazz version of Cinderella cage cuz bugging friends works.