Summer Vacation Day 49: Anime Convention and IKEA

Hello, Tim!

I’ve always thought that the expression T.G.I.F. is a celebration to rejoice in the notion of a relaxing and carefree weekend.

Workless Saturday?

My apologies, Sir. It just doesn’t ring a bell.

8/18, Saturday

I bounced up from my bed the second the alarm set off, flounced my hands frantically trying to locate the ringing phone to switch the alarm off.

What kind of events did I sign myself up to have to wake up at 7:30 in the early morning?

On about Tuesday or Wednesday, Cathy told me that there would be a Japanese animation convention starting this Friday and asked me if I wanted to go along with her and her brother.

Sure thing, I thought. Everything deserves a first time, right?

I don’t talk about this a lot, but I do watch a lot of anime. The ones I came across on accident, the ones that were shared by either Cathy or Allison and the ones that I used to enjoy with Mom while munching on some popcorn. Anime has become a part of my lifestyle, just like how deeply my precious books have taken root.

We met at the metro station at nine o’clock, and in the metro, Cathy warned me that it would be a total chaos in the convention center; ‘It has always been like this,’ Cathy had said.

Barely out of the metro station, there were people so eager to get to the convention center faster by taking two flights upstairs at a time when they could've taken the escalator.

That was no exaggeration. The exhibit opened at exactly ten o’clock, and we got there at 9:30 but it took us about twenty minutes to get into the approximately football-court-sized indoor square when there are eight entrances!

Where do we even start lining up?

It was a crazy sight, inside and out of the exhibit. If inside an ant hole leads to a lot of ants lined up and scattered around, going into this area and another, carrying things that looked heavier than themselves, yes. I would say the whole exhibit was like a live show on ant society.

Due to the large flow of people traversing the convention, the exhibition organizers came up with systems to control the people in different sections. I assumed they had a system; Maybe they really did, but I just couldn’t see it. The place was so crowded that it would need a solid five minutes to find the end of the waiting line and another ten minutes and above to actually gain entrance. Sometimes you would walk into a section after a long wait, but to your disappointment, you didn’t find anything that strikes your fancy, so all you could do was walking out of the area in resignation.

Cathy and her younger brother browsing the goods from Pokemon.

I ended up getting a file that has Conan characters printed on it (it is a detective manga in which a high school kid was turned into a seven-year-old for getting the wrong effects when was fed an experimental poison in an attempted murder) and two metal-material bookmarks of Yuri! on Ice, a sport manga featuring figure ice skating, one which Allison and I both love, and apparently, one of the bookmarks was for her.

Full-sized plastic figures of characters from a girls' game; there are some of the things they selled I wanted to get, but there was just no time lining up.

I indeed had other things in mind I wanted to buy, but it was either too out of my league in terms of the price or I just didn’t have the time to wait in line, for I had just another thing to attend to.

At around twelve-thirty, I left the convention early to meet with my aunt and uncle.

Remember about the IKEA story in which we had trouble getting the two glass doors for Billy? Today was the day to fix the problem.

The IKEA we went to was much smaller than the one we went to last week because they have a separated storage unit for all the bulkier furniture that are larger in volume that is in Taoyuan. It worked for us because we were going to have Billy and my desk delivered either way.

Still, having the need-to-buy in our minds didn’t explain why we got home with two extra cutting boards, a wooden spatula, a writing board for desk protection, and an average-sized floor mat.

Wait. We do know why we bought the mat! It was so fluffy that you would hate to find out they do not sell blankets in this material. It was so fluffy that if felt like it was sucking you in. Do not take just my words; take a look at this:

 

Mom. I need in to get my T-shirt!

My mother, first to spot the mats for sale, had been standing on it for more than two minutes, wriggling her toes to feel the softness.

The order of Billy, as well as my new desk, would arrive tomorrow. I couldn’t wait!

This is all for today.