William Chow's Personal Web Page
The year is 2006.

Below I have some of the photos of great times that were had. Feel free to click on the thumbnail to enlarge it.

Anime Evolution 2006

This year my participation in AE is severly limited by my time table. I am running a dealer's table to liquidate my old stock from my anime store. Right after the dealer's room closes, I am running the late night karaoke room which runs until the people stop singing.

This is my story.
Friday, August 18
Tonight is our usual guys night out. So I had all the guys assemble at my place to pick up my stuff and haul it up to SFU mountain to unload it. It is best to do it today before the rush tomorrow. All my junk was stuffed into Paul's Nissan Sentra SER, Dylon's wife's Honda CRV, Jack's Suzuki Vitara, and Shawn's Nissan Infiniti QX4 SUV. After a few circling around SFU's confusing road network we got to the loading area to unload the goods. We headed to Boston Pizza afterwards for food. Probably the last good food and last good sleep I will have for the next few days...
Saturday, August 19
First day of the con. The dealer's room is opened at 10:00am for vendors and 11:00am for everyone else. I got some breakfast with Shawn and headed up the hill. When we arrived, the line up outside got insanely long. I hurried up and got my table arranged a bit and I was ready for business, sort of...

There were lots of people walking by even though I was placed in the side room where there was not as much direct traffic. But saying as much business was brisk, a lot of people got some awesome deals with my $10 DVDs, and how can you say "no" to $15 SMUT!!? Yes, SEX sells.

The room was warm and a bit stuffy but I had a big fan behind my back blowing cool and fresh air in so I was doing fine. I think I was the envy of many as they were suffering.
As 6:00pm rolled around, I secured down my table and brought out the karaoke stuff. We had to haul the stuff all the way across the campus. It was slow going but as soon as we got some volunteer help everything went much faster and smoother.
The schedule forgot to allow us time to set up and they labelled my "karaoke box" as an "open/mic". Oh well. Well, it was suppose to start at 8:00pm but I put a note that we would start at 8:30pm, but I think it was closer to 9:00pm before we actually were rolling.

One of the many duets.
The lineup to the computer.
The first in the battle of the high voices, with Debbie Gibson. Great Job!
Not to out done, he ups the ante by chosing the Bee Gees. Also superb job.
One of the many girls that came out to sing.
One of the few performances where they sang into a piece of a paper. I guess the paper is good to hide your face from the audience, cause you kinda look stupid reading your lyrics.
These gals did an awesome job making a FF X : Titus Parody song using Queen's Bohemein Rapsody.
Karaoke went till the queue ran out requests, at around 3:00am in the morning. Thank you for all those who came to perform and watch. I cleaned up the room with a little bit of help and before I knew it, the time was 6:00am. I managed to sit and sleep by the dealers room for almost an hour before it was opened up again to let the dealers set up. I am currently at 24 hours, with 2 hours of sleep, several bottles of water, a meat ball, a few forks of pasta, and half a can of Pringles chips.
Sunday, August 20
This morning started very early. I had only gotten maybe an hour of sleep sitting in a chair in the hallway by the dealer's room. I began to set up my booth again at 9:00am to get ready for the crowd at 10:00am. Today was busy! Twice as much sales today as yesterday.

I had to attend a hilarious panel with a flashback to the VJAS back in 1997. I also managed to find a comfortable couch in the AQ and passed out for two hours.

After the dealer's room closed again, I got some help to move the karaoke equipment back to the room for take 2. Today, I got set up a bit faster and almost on time. We started with a bunch of custom uploads which were kinda uninteresting visually. Then when the karaoke videos started to show, the performers started to come out.

He sang "Genie In A Bottle" while she sexied it up with a dance. Mr. Maid-san here was brave to cross-play but he also performed a Chinese Leon Song with no Pinyin. Very good.
Karaoke didn't run as late as it did yesterday. Probably because more people need to go to work on Monday. We finished about 1:00am. I got packed up and left the campus with the karaoke equipment with the help of Vince's car. I got to bed at around 4:00am. Rise and shine again at 9:00am for a quick breakfast and back up the hill to SFU for Monday. I am at 4 hours of sleep in the last 48 hours. I have drank lots of water, had a few pieces of watermelon, 2 cans of pop and a donut.
Monday, August 21
I figured today was going to be a dead day at the dealer's room. One reason is most people have gone back to work so they did their shopping Sunday. But Monday is the last ditch effort to sell stuff and it is the day for the bargain hunters.

So I cut my prices early and made out very well, actually just about as well as Saturday.

I finally got home around 6:00pm with Shawn's Infiniti SUV. Yes, I came up with 4 cars worth of stuff, I came back down with only 2. That is a lot of crap that I unloaded.
Summary
Well, all the running around and sweating and working up an adrenaline high, I managed to lose 5 lbs, as I weighed in at 190lbs. Yay! I got some good money to use for a wedding dinner. I also got a lot of my basement space back again.

I will definitely need to come back to the dealer's room again next year. I also know some improvements I can make to my karaoke server. I had fun I hope you did too.
News Flash!! TokyoPop Garbage Bags Invades SFU!
Back in 2003, I was at the San Deigo comic con, and TokyoPop introduced one of the largest and one of the strongest convention bags out there. Unfortunately, many people used this bag for garbage rather than keeping it for all their convention goodies. As a result, the bags were littered all over the streets and garbage cans of downtown San Deigo.

Well, in 2006, the Tokyopop invasion comes to Vancouver as it suckers the convention Anime Evolution to distribute their bags for free. They spread quickly all over the campus and before the weekend was over, the result was all too familar, the Tokyopop litter was already all over the SFU campus.
People in the dealer's room using Tokyopop bags to collect the garbage. Discarded TP bags. Tokyopop bags with the overflowing garbage cans. Tokyopop bags joing the overflowing garbage cans out side of the Maggie Benson building.