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Wednesday, December 24

Merry Christmas!


Of late there's been nothing much going on worth blogging about. My Figma reviews are still in drafting. The homework haunt from the past is catching up to me now, that's taking a lot of time off the computer too. That and I spend too much computer time on IRC (come join us at the #teamblue channel at Rizon!).

So I just thought I'd update a bit by wishing all my viewers, whoever you are, whether you just happened to drop in from a search engine, otaku.fm or dannychoo.com, or if you're a blogging comrade, or a devoted reader (I have low hopes that these guys exist though), here's wishing a merry Christmas, and all the best for 2009. 2008's been a mostly okay year, with plenty of ups and downs; economic recessions, a new US president, situations in China, Vietnam and Thailand, and many new initiatives I have taken up myself. Let's see how next year turns out.

Saturday, December 13

EOY 2008!

Yes, yes, I apologize for not updating for so long. There really wasn't much going on in my life in between, I can hardly find anything interesting to write on except for moar TF2, moar sailing, moar suntanning, moar of the usual life. And this blog is not meant for usual life chronicling any more.

So, here's a post on the End of Year Cosplay Event that took place this afternoon at the Singapore Expo. I didn't take as many pictures as usual due to the sheer number of cosplayers out there, the immense amount of photos I took that came out blurry, and the little battery life my camera had.


Of course, I would not have gone if not for Gordon's behest, and since he was suiting up in armour, I felt it my duty to help do a little minding too.

Honestly, I was initially quite taken aback when I first entered the venue. It was absolutely chock full of cosplayers, more so than photographers and plainclothes peeps. It has been a very long time since I had seen so much cosplayers at a single venue. Way more than AFA, more than last year's Cosfest (didn't attend this year's), about the same as the Cosplay Event at Civic Plaza two years ago. The quality is also a lot better too. I think my twelve dollars was worth it. Now I just regret not signing up for a media pass. Gotta get this site's popularity up first. It's uphill all the way from here.

Enough of the chatter. Here are some of the better ones. I really can't explain it, but it seems like my photography skills I severely off today.














OH SHI- ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED.


Tragic Comedy up on stage. Haha.


Hoihoi-chan makes a reappearance.

As usual, the rest can be found in my Photobucket. I may have a few blur ones up there. Don't mind them, I forgot to sort and delete and just bulk-uploaded everything. My bad.

Never stuck around much for the performances, so no coverage on that. Meh.

Also, a shoutout to double, TJHan, Gordon, Panther and the rest of the Team Blue guys, CI, Windbell, Alafista and Stifler, all of whom I got to meet today.


This is me, being an ass.

Side note:



Lonely lunch outside the exhibition hall, consisting of Burger King and my newest Figma. Just got her yesterday from Latendo at Kallang Leisure Centre, and very proud of it. Many thanks to Gai for his help obtaining her. Now I have someone new to sit atop my camera.


Simply adorable. Review of her (and Tsuruya) in future. I just remembered.

Also, with only a single month of holidays left, the time has come to set my focus on holiday homework. Have not done a single thing since the beginning of vacation. I'm pretty much screwed.

Tuesday, December 2

AFA08 Survey

So I just got sent an e-mail (apparently retrieved from pre-registration) from the AFA committee to do a survey, and win myself a Gundam figurine. Naturally, I enjoy doing surveys and would do them without need for a reward or something in return. But that they have to resort to cheap tricks (it was never specified what kind of Gundam model they were offering. I have a feeling it'll be some awful keychain) to attempt to nab respondent participation is just a show of desperation. They sure seem to be adversely affected by the whole May'N fiasco. As the organizer of such a large event, this committee sure haven't performed up to standards and expectations.

But, whatever. I'll still do the survey. For all those who also received the mail, do tell me how you did. For those who don't, I'll post the questions here, and you can comment your answers just for kicks. Who cares if you had to put a 'no' for the first question, just smoke something through. :P

1. Did you attend the Anime Festival Asia 2008 (AFA '08)?

Yes

2. How likely would you be to recommend the Anime Festival Asia next year to a friend?

4 out of 10

3. What did you like most about AFA'08?

Most - Character appearances/cosplayers
Artiste performances and live stage shows
Bandai Showcase
Exclusive premieres of animes and mangas (for cripes' sake, the plural form of anime and manga is anime and manga. Goddamn weeaboos.)
Least - Industry seminars

4. If you were in charge, what would you do to make the next Anime Festival Asia better? (HOLY SHIT YES! BTW, questions 3 and 4 allow you to enter your own options. I can guarantee you, there's an idea for question 4 not listed that I would like to enter in, and I'm sure a lot of you out there will know and agree what it is.)

First priority - You all know
More efficient selling of tickets (quite obviously)
Wider range of anime products
More booths
More highlights
More guest speakers

5. Did you purchase anything at the AFA'08?

Hell yeah

6. What did you buy at the AFA '08?

Collectible figurines, Others (shirt)

How much did you spend in total?

$60 - $100

7. Do you have a StarHub Cable TV - Animax channel subscription?

Have you heard of Animax's original animation production, LaMB?

It was just then when I truly realized that *facepalm* is the best solution when words simply cannot express feelings. Hell, you don't need to have an Animax subscription to have heard of LaMB. It's all over the Animax booth at AFA '08, it's on Channel AXN, it's on the commercials in almost every Starhub channel I have.

Yes and yes.

8. What do you remember most about Animax's original animation production, LaMB?

...

Most - The art work
Celebrity collaborations
The story
Least - The creative team (oh the lulz. I'm betting a good percentage of respondents out there agree with me.)

9. How likely are you to watch LaMB when it premieres on Animax?

0 out of 10

How do you feel about animation/anime that is made locally in Singapore?

0 out of 10

How likely would you be to recommend LaMB to a friend?

0 out of 10

(Just me being a bastard.)

10. Demographics

Yay, now I have to claim my gundam figurine at Liang Court on the 4th of December. I'll tell you what it is once I get it.

Monday, December 1

Danny Choo in the Straits Times, Deconstructed

*Picture BALEETED on Danny Choo's request.*
Few weeks back during the Animax Blogger talk session, Danny attended some press interview with The Straits Times, Singapore's local and as of yet broadest newspaper brand. I had assumed he would appear in the Digital Life (IT stuff and whatnot) or Life! (lifestyle), so I closely followed both.

Over the past few days I found nothing. That is, until two days ago, when Danny mentioned about the flaming article that was written of him. A search on that day's Life! section yielded nothing, and Digital Life was a weekly publication that did not publish that day.

Fast forward to today. I just got back home and was relaxing for a bit. There was a thin newspaper beside me, apparently a section of the Straits Times. It turned out to be Urban, the other weekly publication, all about fashion. It was dated 28th November.

No way...

There was only one place in Urban he could be. THEBAGPAGE. A last-page featurette of famous celebrities or sub-celebrities, whoever TST can get their hands on that week, and what they stow in their bags.

without further ado. Deconstruction.

The Bag Page, Stephanie Gwee.

Danny Choo

ask celebrity blogger Danny Choo anything about the over 300 anime figurines that he has amassed over the last 20 years, and the 36-year-old perks up.
"They are so cute. Look at their faces, how can you not love something as cute as that?" he enthuses.


well, hell. That's a pretty awesome way to put it. She makes it sound like

1. He's obsessed (highlighting the number of figures and the number of years he's been collecting, and his diction). I doubt Danny ever put it that way. Now I know what Danny means by 'putting words into my mouth'.

2. He's being childish (noting his age, and again his diction).

Ask about his famous father, malaysian shoemaker Jimmy Choo, or his childhood days in a stately home in London, however, and he loses the grin.
All he would say is that he worked as a designer for his father when he was 16, handling tasks like making toe-caps and cutting out the shape of the leather.
He had little interest in following his father's footsteps as he hated the smell of glue, says the London-born Choo...


Being a fashion publication, it was obviously inevitable that Jimmy Choo would be brought up. Guess the Urban people only view Danny as 'Jimmy Choo's Son' after all. Can't blame them, but I feel this to be very undeserving to Danny. But really, I don't understand why the hell he must be put in Urban and not anywhere else I feel more fitting. Could it be because of all the wonderful things in his bag that they just wanna check out?

But, I digress.

I feel that the 'loses his grin' part is a bit exacerbated. For all those of you who know about it, there's a perfectly good reason why Danny Choo would suddenly get so serious at the mention of London (for those who don't, good luck finding it out). The uninitiated however, upon reading this, would get the impression that Danny holds the fashion industry in disdain. To later find out that it was all exclusively because of the smell of glue would lead them to establish their impression of him as being simple-minded. There was no mention of his other pursuits that time which would have led him away from shoemaking, too. In short, a very biased viewpoint from a fashion enthusiast.

On the otaku or Japanese pop culture of manga...
"I was naturally attracted to the Japanese mangazines with cute girls on the cover," says Choo...
So much so that he spent three years earning a degree in Japanese and Korean studies from the University of London.


Being an aspiring writer/journalist myself, I can't help but notice how the writer can record an interview, then report it in such a way that the whole essence and meaning had turned into something different. All you need to do is capture a line that sounds ambiguous, then affirm the wrong meaning through additional yet subtle texting.

SO MUCH SO.

To explain with words just how much these 3 words can effectively insert a very strong vibe (of disapproval) into the paragraph would be insufficient. You have to read and understand it for yourself.

SPENT THREE YEARS. DEGREE. UNIVERSITY OF LONDON.

AK: Oh yes, I'm sure they're trying to show appreciation to just how much Danny has devoted himself to pursuing what he enjoys. Yes, a degree's very nice and all, and UoL's a pretty prestigious college. It's all good, all very commendable.

Uninitiated casual reader: Huh? Just so he can watch Japanese anime, read Japanese manga, play Japanese games, he blew off three years studying for a degree? He's just wasting time for the renowned UoL professors! Why can't he be a normal Weeaboo like everybody else? Why must he put so much effort into it?

You get what I'm trying to say, right?

... Blog gets two million hits a month...

LOL. They don't even know what the technical term of a 'hit' means. In conclusion, I do agree quite strongly that this article has been done unfairly, but you can't blame Urban for trying to do a write up on somebody who is better associated with technology. As said before, the only thing that connects between both sides is Jimmy Choo, and on that part Danny has distanced himself quite far away, leaving the interviewers with a rather awkward report on otaku-ism for the most part, something they are not very familiar with, hence resulting in a few unintended (I'd like to believe it to be unintended. ST is a renowned newspaper; they have a reputation to uphold) meanings here and there.

By the way, the stuff they listed out in his Bundeshauptstadt Berlin bag was:

1. Kagamin Figma (naturally)

2. Macbook Pro (very widely known to us)

3. Animax Notebook

4. Namecard holder

5. Casio Win phone

6. Xacti 6-megapixel video camera (Danny, and Gai to some extent, has persuaded me to go for Xacti for the first videocam I buy in future)

7. Anime clock (from KKnM, featuring Sakagami Tomoyo from Clannad. WIN)

8. Wallet

Which reminds me, I owe you guys a review on my Figma Tsuruya. Will do that up soon. Along with the string of LaMB-related posts in line with this blogging competition Animax is holding. I haven't given up on AFA08 day 2 (drafting in progress), so watch this space.

AK out.