Anime Evolution 2007 (3)

Official day 2 (not counting Thursday) started late. Set my alarm clock at 10:30, but my friend called me at 9. I tried to sleep some more after that, but just when I was struggling to get out of bed, the plummer came. So... couldn't use the bathroom. It was almost noon that I was finally up and running.

I never timed my trip until now. It took 1.5 hours. And that was without having to wait for the bus or the train. Oops! Forgot to take the parking time into account. (Time spent looking for parking near the Commercial Drive skytrain station.)

Comparing to yesterday, there were much fewer people on the ground when I arrived at 3:30. They were probably in the rooms. I managed to catch two-thirds of the Full Metal Alchemist movie. Watched it on download, but still wanted to see it on big screen. The sound was definitely better. Air quality was really bad, though. Plus there were no seats left, so I had to stand near the door for an hour. That was only the first thing I went to, but I was tired already. (Also the leftover exhaustion from yesterday, and the cold.)

Then I met up with a friend who had never been to SFU (or AE). Saw the vendor areas that I didn't get to see the previous day. Then we went to the History of Anime in Vancouver panel. I'm sorry, but the presentation had way too much room for improvement. I felt asleep. (Sorry again, but I was very tired.)

Caught a few Air Gear episodes afterwards. It was a lot better than I thought. Then I went to the From Yoi to Slash & Back Again Mature Content panel. It was in 3 segments going from 9:30 PM to 2:30 AM. I was going to attend the first one only, which was until 10:30. Unfortunately I was way too tired and left at 10:20. It was quite full and I sat way back and could hardly hear the professor anyway. Oh, what's "slash" by the way?

As a record of the day's activities, I've been trying to shoot pictures of whatever's happening in the stage area. Tonight, unaware that there was a professional band playing, I casually pointed my camera at them, from high up the main stairs. A security volunteer stopped me immediately with a tone of voice like a parent scolding a child. "This is copy righted material! No pictures allowed!" I said, "Oh? No Pictures? OK I didn't know that. Thank you!" But he kept on going! "Point your camera away! Put it away!"

You don't have to tell me 3 times!

Hey wait a minute! Why did I get the feeling that he was treating me like a criminal? No smile, no please, no thank you. He actually looked mad. Why was he mad at me? I'm just an ordinary attendee, hoping to shoot a souvenir picture with my pitiful 6-year-old 2 mega pix camera. Flashing spot lights and the back of the band was facing me, and the picture doesn't have audio. From that far away, it's probably gonna be faint tiny silhouettes of unidentifiable figures. What kind of photo did he think I'd get? Did he seriously think I was going to, or able to "infringe their copy right"? If I was holding a video camera, or a 2-foot long telephoto lens, than, that would be a different story. W H A T A J E R K!!

OK, he might be just "doing his job" (which may include exercising excessive unnecessary aggression), but he's still a jerk by putting me in such a bad mood. Before I left, I had to sneak one in. No apologies, though. Ha!