Temporal Paralysis

My apologies for the 2 week hiatus. As gordon mentioned, I hit that quarter-life crisis. I’m out of work due to contract positions being as they are; I lost 1 week’s worth of efforts due to computer reformats (as part of my computer maintenance) held back by real life commitments; and I am uncertain on where to go next. (I’ve applied for a university course, which you can find out in my introductory post. Pray that I get a spot.)

So, that out of the way, I’ll present to you my (very late) SOYA 2009 pictures. No copyright watermark needed: you can take a look at my blog footer to see where my permission lies. This is my only time I post up a lot of pictures in one post: I am usually very tired to do such things after attending an event.

A note of caution: Over 50 pictures, so again, dial-up and volume-based subscribers, caveat.

Insert same banner you might have probably seen 1000 times elsewhere here.

SOYA ‘09. Finally, I managed to go down to the one event where I failed to do so previously. It’s also a whiff of nostalgia: Ngee Ann Polytechnic was where I studied. I can still remember Canteen 1, and the bloody hawt Accountancy chicks, the dour of a certain Engineering Canteen where it’s tucked at God knows where, and Lecture Halls 20 & 28, where I usually had my lectures.

I arrived around 11:00 a.m. so I hang around to check out on who’s who in the crowd. I spotted my good ol’ friend from my Yishun JC times (during the 3-month orientation), now an NTU undergraduate. I also spotted one friend of mine whom I used to work with for one of my cross-disciplinary module. (S)he’s now having good business selling cosplay items and accessories.

Of course, I hang around just a little bit to find onii-chan Fariz and nii-chan Fuzzy arriving at the area. Blurmage  and the gang arrived soon after. Feidamu, currently studying in Ngee Ann Polytechnic (押す、後輩！), is tasked with security, so we were informed of the rules and regulation, and of the schedule that’s ahead of us.

Evidently the opening act is to start soon, so I grab the seat in Lecture Hall 26 to witness the opening ceremony.

The Japanese Shiro Tsubasa Club have really outdone themselves. Previously, this club was exclusively a Japanese club for the enthusiasts of Japanese culture, but ever since the anime phenomenon exploded back in 2004, they took on newer roles of incorporating the anime subculture as part of their club repertoire. Nevertheless, promoting Japanese culture is essentially Shiro Tsubasa’s primary objective, and they showed.

My apologies for not knowing the head honcho of the club, but the man behind the club activities made its presence known.

My apologies again, but I can only remember one female character from the Final Fantasy series, and I have problems attaching which name is to which costumes. Anyway, these two lovely co-hosts were sweet and sporting in their emceeing of performances scheduled for the event ♥.

The individual cosplay competition came next. So I decided to take some pictures of the individual cosplayers.

Her medal isn’t to be trifled with!

Sasuke in… OK, I forgot what mode he was in. Nice large shuriken, though.

OK, I might be wrong here, but her name is Freya, no, from Chobits? Oh, by the way, the dress looks to kill, in my opinion.

Simca from Air Gear, correct? Also, zettai ryouiki.

After a while, I decided to go out for some breath of fresh air, in the hopes of probably getting some good pictures out of that day’s event.

Large crowd is large.

The day is lively in the afternoon. However, I heard from the Kyodai guys that there was another cosplay event held at Singapore Discovery Centre. The fact that I did not know about this made me _|¯|° . Anyway, I resolved to stay in SOYA ‘09 because I have committed my free time to this event, and shuttling to Boon Lay isn’t my kind of taste.

The people over at Naka-Dashi brought this game (with grace from CDS) to introduce the people of the game of Weirß Schwarz, a trading card game where you can pit anime characters against one another.

Interested parties are encouraged to leave a note at Naka-dashi or Collateral Damage Studios for requests and enquiries about the game.

Whoever made this picture is pure genius! Like a savant!

I guess I should stop my talking. Cosplay pictures ahoy!

Watch out! Shana’s gonna cut someone up!

It’s Simca!

What are you doing, Mage?! This is a public area!

Interestingly enough, there’s one booth in the event itself, that sells replica of weapons.

In which some people take this opportunity to test out their marksmanship.

On your position!

Ready… Aim…

…FIRE!

OK, enough of manly men for you sissies. Let’s move on.

Oh, please. NO!

Now’’s the time for figurine makers to start making this pose…

OMG! REVERSE YAOI! XD

After much mucking around, I decided to take a break from all the madness, and had a lunch at this newfangled eating area next to the Mass Communications faculty on the hills beyond the Convention Centre. No picture, because I am lazy.

So I returned back to see the madness descending onto another level.

I met him when I got distracted – and in the process, lost my fellow friends – in the photo ops. He’s a common feature in Clubsnap, a local photography enthusiast water hole. I was thinking he was MrMayat, because he did left a comment a while back that he’d be attending this event. He was not, alas. However, with this new meeting I was able to know more about photography in the process, and enriched my learning experience. Too bad, Pentaxians in Singapore are a rare breed.

Time to visit the graffiti wall and more booths one last time.

A graffiti artist in action.

Dollfies! <3

The dollfies are having a conversation with their master. Apparently somebody left a note, but I decided not to eavesdrop further, for I fear retribution…

Aww… sleeping nicely…♥

I returned back to the lecture hall for there was a group cosplay competition. Apparently I missed most of it, so I wind up with the remaining two (or was it three..?) teams vying for the winner-bragging rights.

Gundam 00 vs Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Haruhi. Or rather, STOP TOYING WITH US, KYOANI! NO 2ND SEASON, NON!

Suddenly I am GAR for Tieria, and this is confusing me.

I have aversions to magical girl shows, so I cannot explain fully why Haruhi and her gang decided to go mahou on me.

Unfortunately, I did not stayed further to find out the winners of either the solo or group cosplay competition. You’re welcome to tell me the winners.

For the rest of the pictures, I decided to take on the role of an event photographer, taking pictures as it happens. This is different from the usual cosplay events photography, where everyone hogs to one cosplayer to get good shots of the said person.

Events photography is like this:

WTF?! Why are you taking pictures of a tree?

I may never know who this person is…

An amateur photographer learning her ways to become a great photographer.

This person carries a full-frame digital SLR, meaning he’s got way better optics than the rest of us DSLR GWCs can afford.

Hola! Three Amigos!

For some black and white picture attempts (I did some post-processing for the three pictures below):

“Please support Collateral Damage Studios. Their artworks are very top notch.”

A massive queue for that merchandises you always wanted to buy.

That is a Canon EOS 300. Whether it has a ‘D’ suffix at the end is unknown, because I rarely come across white/grey sets of the low-end DSLRs series.

But of course, this is the picture of the moment I want to keep:

NICE PIC!

Hailing from my alma mater, I’m kicking myself in the butt for not attending last year’s SOY 2008. (That’s because NS stints are… well, stink.) So, in not missing the anticipation of attending the first cosplay event in the year 2009, I’m preparing myself for it.

Unfortunately, contract positions have the undesired ability to kill off your employment terms, so I had no chance in investing in a better flash unit. I’m considering bringing in my 18-55mm kit lens, because what the heck am I shooting long-range for?

This is my preparatory post, so yes, I’m expected to be there soon. A couple of famous figures may also be there. If you are looking for me, I’ll be wearing the infamous HDMW’s NS=Sinkies T-shirt. (Many thanks to winsonkoh.)