Cosplay Experience Retrospective

As we come to the end of another year and enter a new one, I feel it would be appropriate to look back on my time in the geeky community and why this year is particularly important to myself, especially from an emotional standpoint.

I had been watching Anime during my early childhood, mostly through video tape cassette recordings sent from relatives in the spiritual Motherland that is Hong Kong, and after a long gap, got back into watching it when I started attending University. I am not sure what encouraged me to return to Anime, but it happened. Until then, however, I felt like I was only just scratching the surfance of the fandom. At some point, I caught wind of certain events where fellow Otaku would congregate, so-called “Anime Conventions”, where geeks would actually be able to see and speak to each other about various geeky topics in the same place. It was only after I attended my first Anime Convention about 12 years ago where I felt I had finally felt like I was a full blown Anime geek. But there was one thing I felt I was missing out on but didn’t have the confidence to try.

That being Cosplay.

Laughter through (Web Video) Cruelty

About a month ago, I started watching videos of people from various places around the world traumatising themselves via a horror video game called "Amnesia", developed by Frictional Games. It is a, now possibly infamous title that revolves around some poor sod stumbling around various rooms and corridors of a castle trying to avoid getting torn to shreds by monsters and his own nerves. The amusement for me comes from these people panicking over said monsters when they are being chased by them (And occasionally by their own friends trying to trick them into thinking a monster is chasing them). That and the fact that when faced with something extremely scary in said video game, even the toughest of males is reduced to screaming and blubbing like a 10 year old girl...

Of Racism, Freedom of Speech and Top Gear hosts...

Earlier this evening, at the time of writing this entry, a relative fell ill. I will not mention this relatives identity for privacy reasons but suffice to say, s/he was feeling rather poorly and we had to help him/her to the doctors out of hours clinic.

After some waiting, the doctor came out and was immediately concerned about both the condition of the family member and whether or not we could communicate with her, asking "Do any of you speak English?" which was understandable given we all looked like foreigners. Although the situation was pretty serious with said relative unable to walk over to the doctors office easily, I ended up replying, albeit humourously, "Well, I certainly hope so! We have been living in the area for several years!"

To be fair, the poor doctor was rather embarrassed at that faux pas...