GACC2008: Day One

Currently listening to nothing
Currently not feeling genki

Oh Edo. How could you? You suck. You said you wanted to post this by Tuesday. BUT IT’S THURSDAY NOW! Oh Edo. Oh well, here it goes, the first day of GACC2008.

After a quick bath, I left home somewhere around 8pm. I had a 10 minutes nap while waiting for the bathroom to be available. Off straight to MMU.
Oh, my phone’s battery died for nearly a day. Life would be easy if my phone charger is still functioning ( I’ve been using other’s phone charger until now ). Phone’s out of credit too.

I arrived in campus and a lot of committees in their striking red committee shirt flooding the ‘Command Centre’. Command Centre? Oh, that’s what we call the “Information Counter” is. Coolness is an important factor to keep the committees’ morale up. I can see that everybody’s busy with their own stuff when I arrived there ( including the ones who’s busy taking pictures of themselves here and there ).
Including this.

That’s the cool figurine display inside no so cool looking room with totally uncool glass. Sorry guys, there’s nothing the figurine team can do about the glass. You’re not expecting us to “remove” part of the exam hall’s fixed asset, rite? Oh, here the owners of the figurines…

I would be in the picture… if it’s a “plushie display”.

The gates officially opened at 10am sharp. Yes. Sharp. We have this “countdown” tradition since GACC2007. Blame World of Warcraft’s Burning Crusade’s launch for that. We let booth owners to enter one hour earlier so they can set up their booth and make themselves feel comfortable before being raided by the anxious crowd. Of course, the committees were inside the hall for hours but they can never feel comfortable knowing that chaos is going to be unleashed in hours time.

Sharp at 11, yes SHARP, the opening ceremony starts. Ops, I did a mistake. The opening video starts sharp at 11 instead of the band. My explanation to the Noise Station crew wasn’t clear and they’re just following my…”orders”. Darn.

The opening video was supposed to be event officiating media. Our director of Student Activities Division supposed to officiate it. Gah, I felt lame over it. When the countdown hits zero the band supposed to play not the video. Remind me to give me precise and detailed explanation next time, sigh.

That the crowd trying to see what’s on the screen. It’s the opening video guys. It’s just the opening video. Oh, I still haven’t uploaded the opening video. There’s 2 reasons now why I haven’t uploaded the video. One, the video file is not optimized yet ( meaning not yet encoded properly yet ). Two, my host bandwidth usage is currently at dangerous level. So, wait till I make the video file’s smaller. No, no youtube.

How was the opening video’s reaction? I… don’t know. I wasn’t paying attention to the crowd at that time because I was busy planning to fix the event execution error.

That’s me and Hisashi, the lousy emcees of the day. Please ignore Hisashi’s “piercing” looks. I tried to explain to him that his “fashion” is not suitable for the event but he insisted. Well, as long as he’s comfortable with it, it’s good. I look tired, aren’t I? Yes, I still haven’t got a good sleep since the time I stated in my previous blog post. Also, I have billions of thing running inside my head now about the plan execution. Yes, I panic easily, especially when I don’t have the time to think properly.

The opening ceremony goes on with speeches by some top peoples.

From the left, Yeow Li Sa. Remember her? She was the director of GACC2007, and also EMiNA Melaka’s session 2005/06’s President. Next to her is Mr Syukor, the cool Director of Student Activities Division. He’s also the reason why MMU Melaka’s club activities r0xx0rz compared to MMU Cyberjaya >:D. Dr. Goh Pek Chen, the club’s advisor. She’s into Japanese stuffs and I heard that she goes to Japan nearly every year. And of course, next to her is the Director of GACC2008, Thiah Shin Dee. You can rarely see the director around because she’s really busy and runs around a lot.

So, the opening speeches. First, mine. In the midst of “OMG-WHAT-HAVE-I’VE-DONE”, I lost all of the content that I’m supposed to present inside the speech. Including the most important contents too, like thanking the sponsors. In the end, my speech was pointless and a complete waste of time. Next was Shin Dee’s but I totally didn’t pay attention to it because I was busy preparing with the band.

Yes, I was busy with the band… because I’m singing. Yes, I’m supposed to sing. You guys thought I sang because you guys demanded? Heh, NOT! I’m supposed to sing. I’m supposed to open GACC2008 like last year.

Originally I wanted to sing, but I cancelled it off because I don’t feel like humiliating myself again in front of public like last year T_T. But the band demanded me to sing again 4 days before event day. Of course, I didn’t tell anyone about it other than the band itself and the director. If such info leaks out, they’re gonna go “ZOMG, NOES! EDO’S GOING TO KILL SOME EARDRUMS AGAIN!”. Bitch.

Fine fine. My horrible voice kills eardrums.

Here’s the crowd during the opening ceremony, and here’s the official videographer from Student Publication Board Melaka Campus. We’ll release the edited footage to the public soon.

Oh. Some might be confused with my appearance on the stage. Most of the time, I’m on the stage as the emcee but at times, I’m on the stage as the president of the club. Confusing, yes. What to do? Multitasking.

Ok. The event goes on. This is GACC. We have a lot of stuffs. That’s our policy of making sure that everyone’s is busy and trying to keep the idle times short. You have no excuse of saying there’s nothing to do when there’s nothing going on stage. We have the reading corner to make sure the visitors waste their time there after they checked through all other interesting contents in the hall. Of course, there’s the non-electronic games area. A lot of board games that I’m pretty sure that you guys never heard of are there. Of course, this is something that no other ACG event offers >:)

Gotta thanks Care Club MMU Melaka for that. Yes, we MMU Melaka students have a club specialized in non-electronic gaming. Don’t ask me why it’s called Care Club because it’s LOOOONNG story.

One of Day 1’s highlight was Cosplay Group Performance. This year, some of the groups put up a really good show. It’s really awarding for those who actually came for Day 1. The team who won the competition nearly make me fell down from my chair.

Judges. We have the KiDChan, Dai and another EMiNA ex-President, Shu Yin. Interesting bunch of judges. I really like it when they interacted with the cosplayers and emcees.

One of the group performers. Support Domino’s Pizza, biiiittch. Oh, sorry. There’s no Dominos Pizza in Melaka. Sad.

Of course, ACG wouldn’t be complete without booth of artists. What you see in the picture is all the artists’ booth we have in GACC. Sad, but there’s nothing we can do about it since our event hall is small T_T.

Poor Edo. He’s taking illegal short naps at noise station. Edo’s quite deep unconscious at that moment till he didn’t realize someone painted one of his fingernail black.
Throughout Day 1, I spend most of my time at the Noise Station with my Noise Masters team. At times, walk around to check out stuffs. Emcee-ing with depleted body energy is a tough thing to do. I know that Hisashi were tired too because he didn’t had a good sleep also. Basically, nearly all the committees were stressed out during first day. Same thing happened last year.

What other interesting happened in day 1. Hmm. Oh yeah. Of course, the controversial Hard Gay Razor Ramon. The high committees had a hard time trying to approve his appearance. I’m one of those who opposed. Of course, I did it in a reverse phycho method. I actually told to go ahead with his plan hoping that he will cancel it himself. But sucks that CF people gave him morale boost. Darn. Oh well, since his pants is not as short as the real one is OK I guess.

So yeah. He did appear. Original “agreement” was only to appear on first day, but since he actually “saved” Day 1 idle time, we agreed to let him appear on the second day too with tighter ethic control. Ethic control as in “behave” more because we have VIP around. Oh yeah, HG only appeared after all the VIPs are gone.

When he appeared, everyone was literally screaming and cheering. He was surrounded in an instant along with his popularity too. Yeah, he became GACC’s celebrity in seconds.
By the way. That HG is GACC2008’s assistant director, if you don’t know. >:D

People got too hyped later and they wanted to dance, so.. dance! Need to fulfill their happy feet needs.

They were dancing to Caramelldansen, Yatta and the like. They even invaded the stage O_O. It was a good method to kill idle time also while waiting for the judge to finish their tasks in the Operation Room.

Oh, here’s the group cosplay winner. They were so sood and they really deserve it. Pst, there’s GACC2008 limited edition cap inside there. :)

Overall, day 1 was ok. It was better than GACC2007’s day 1, definitely. Yes, again, the tshirts were sold out. They really loved the design. Can’t believe I didn’t manage to buy the orange one T_T. Oh well, at least I won my bet ( refer to previous post ).

The event hall was locked down at 7 and there was a quick post-mortem/briefing for the comms after that. Of course, nearly everyone looked DEAD. It’s like we are commanding an army of zombies. Some went back home to go sleep straight away while some, need to prepare for the big day tomorrow, especially the security team.

The security team had been running “simulations” to make sure that everything goes smooth on the next day. Here’s one of the interesting “simulations”

Here, we were timing the approximate time per person allowed to see the seiyuu. Of course, testing the stage flow also. Yes, looks cool and necessary too. The simulation was good but in the end the plan was scrapped and replaced with a different method. Oh well. At least it was fun. They did other sims also like crowd control and human barrier.

After that, it’s time for me to ABUSE the next gen console. The first thing I was dying to try was Ace Combat 6. ZOMG! Finally I get to play it. Of course, get to abuse the latest installment of ‘Rachet and Clank’ too. The performance team testing out their dramas and Gan’s band doing their sound check. From the way they perform that night, I can’t wait to see the real thing. XD

Then, go home, and sleep till next morning. Will continue more in the next blog post.

PS: The bed is nice…