Anime Festival Asia - Malaysia - recap 1

I will probably write a fuller, more detailed post sometime this week.  I just got back after a pretty eventful trip so am a little tired and am hoping to get to bed early so that I can go back to work refresh and energized tomorrow.

For some reason, I just could not get Blogger-Droid to post from my Samsung Galaxy S2 which kind of sucks because it meant that I had to use Bloggeroid which isn't a bad app but it did mean that I had no control over the size of the photos being uploaded to the blog.  I guess since I was mobile blogging, it would help me save on cost but since I had a cap on the per day data roaming charges on my phone, uploading large sized photos was actually not such a big deal for me.

Anyway, I think I will just upload the photos of the AFAMY Festival shirts as well as the AFAMY Kalafina shirts and also re-upload the larger size photos of the autographed poster and the autographed CD.

Okay... a bit more about my experience at the AFA.

Autograph session:

We were kind of lucky during the AFAMY this year.  Before we left for Malaysia, all we knew was that we had won 2 autographed posters but after the concert we found out that Kalafina was also going to be signing CDs of the After Eden album that were bought at the AFA itself.  I hesitated for a while since I already own the After Eden album but then I caved and bought the CD so that I could get it autographed.  I'm really happy I decided to do that because I was able to meet Kalafina twice because during the happy confusion, I ended up queuing up to get my CD signed and then queuing up again to collect the poster.  I didn't realise then that I could have gotten my CD signed at the same time as I got my pre-signed poster from them.  I am definitely NOT complaining because that meant that I got to meet them up-close twice in the space of 15 minutes.  Pretty awesome. :)

This time I managed a lot more than two words.  Instead of just "konnichiwa" and "arigatou", I managed to splutter out several sentences in horrible Japanese. :)  It's all a blur but I managed to say stuff like how much I really liked Kalafina and that I was from Singapore and that I had seen them at AFA 2011 in Singapore and that I hoped that they would come to Singapore again.  I seriously don't remember a lot of the details... it was all very overwhelming for me.  I'm really not very good at these things at all. :)

I was actually really lucky and I really have to thank Jessie.  I was in an excited blur after the awesome live performance from Kalafina and I did not have a clue that Kalafina was going to be signing CDs.  We had not gone to the Sony booth earlier in the day and hence, didn't get that bit of information on the brochure.  It was also not very well publicized and was not on the AFA website or on their twitter feed, at least I didn't see it in either.

We had won 2 autographed posters and everyone decided that it would be Jessie who would accompany me for the signing session.  Jessie noticed that our queue was not moving at all but that people were walking away with autographed CDs.  I was initially skeptical because I remembered that the AFA website had said that the artists will only sign the posters.  Jessie decided to go up and ask the organizers if Kalafina was signing CDs and they told Jessie that they were indeed signing CDs that were purchased at the festival.  Initially, I was hesitant to purchase a copy of an album I already own but as they walked by with the CDs, I caved and decided to buy it and then several people around me decided to purchase them too.  As we were waiting, both Jessie and I got worried and asked one of the staff on duty if I had to stand in a separate line if I wanted my CD signed.  He replied yes, I think you had better stand in that line over there and then come back and re-join the queue for the posters.  So I ran over since that line was getting really short and I got worried that they were going to close the CD autograph session because there was a sense of urgency in the staff member's voice.  Several people around me also left the poster line to join the CD line and we all got to meet Kalafina twice... pretty awesome. :)

I was on an adrenaline rush and actually started chatting quite animatedly to two rather nice Kalafina fans from Malaysia. that were standing in the CD line behind me.  I'm usually not terribly sociable and rarely strike up conversations with strangers but the adrenaline was really pumping through my system and I think I must have looked like I was intoxicated or something. :)

Another thing that was really unexpectedly lucky for me was that I was wearing a t-shirt with a goofy message in Japanese.  The t-shirt basically said "I love money" in Japanese and it actually caught Keiko's attention and she was really tickled by it.  So was Wakana who also noticed it after Keiko made a comment about it.  I really don't quite remember what they said since by that time I was in fan-girl heaven so it was pretty much a blur to me by then.  Hahahaha... gosh, I'm really bad at stuff like that.... hahaha...



After that very heady moment in my life, I returned to the queue to re-join Jessie who also started to get excited as we approached the table to collect our posters.  These posters were pre-signed and all Kalafina did was present them to us.  This time there wasn't much time to chat but they did recognise me again because of my shirt and I managed to thank them again.  And before I knew it, the minders had ushered us all away.



It was a pretty awesome night for me and I really don't know if I would ever be lucky enough to experience this again.  I know that I am already very fortunate and I am really grateful that I've been able to experience so many great moments in my life. :)

After Jessie and I re-joined the other 4 people who had attended the anisong concert with us, we walked back across the bridge that joined Hall 1 and Hall 2 to the rest of the PWTC and we noticed that some people had stolen all three Kalafina posters that had been hanging on the ceiling.  They were the only artist, at least at that point in time, who's posters had all been stolen.  I guess that must really say something about how popular they are. :)

Des, Danielle and Jessie wanted to have supper and so we headed out to have some pretty good Malaysian Indian food.  I was exhausted by then.  I had only 3 hours of sleep that day and the excitement of the anisong live plus the autographed session was being to really tire me out.  I sampled all the food, which was all really good, but I didn't eat much because as the adrenaline drained itself from my body, I started to crash and I slept in the car all the way back to Danielle's house after supper. :)

Here are the photos of the t-shirts.  I wish I shot better photos but am too tired to re-try tonight.  Maybe I'll shoot better ones and post them up later.  For now... here you go. :)



I really wanted the black Kalafina shirts because I really don't like white shirts very much.  But all sizes of the black shirts sold out by 11am on Day 1 of the festival and we weren't able to get there till about 1pm that day so... yeah... I was a little bummed about that.  But since I'm already fortunate enough to be able to attend the Live and win the autograph posters, I really can't complain. :)

That's it for now.  Will write more about anisong Day 1 in a later post and also write about Day 2 and then my overall impressions of AFAMY in another post and maybe post up some photos of the food I ate during this trip..  For now... time to go to bed. :) Oyasuminasai!! :)