William Chow's Personal Web Page

The year is 1996.

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

Outings

One of the things we did as a gang group was go out to do play laser tag. We tried to grab the full up limit of 20 people so we would have the entire floor to ourselves, we came close many times.

Now, on the first game we got the entire place to ourselves.

Now, on this game, I kicked ass. I scored more hits on everyone with the exception of Dan (Pys-D) and Jeremy (Satome).

Boy, that was a lot of fun!!

This was a good game for the most part. There were 3 losers who joined in the game after we started, they were part of the tournement players, and obviously a little better than most of us. But I still got a number of good hits on them. I did pretty miserable overall. However,m I did hit Dan (Pys-D) more times than he hit me, and I did hit that Jedi Knight loser twice as many times as he hit me. The other funny thing that happened here was Jeremy (RamASS), initially had his name written as Ranma, but Chad made the spelling correction... ahem...

 

Other memorable moments at Laser Tag including one time we brought our own anime/J-pop CD in with music including the "Aniki Train", and "City Hunter" and "Namie Amuro".

I also remember a time we were waiting outside for everyone to come out. For some reason Jeremy got restless and started to jump up and down on the back bed of his red truck. We thought he was having sex.

 

San Diego / San Fransico / Los Angeles

 

This year was a interesting crew of people for the convention run, and was the first time we had a female on the run. This year, we decided to rent a large van from Budget Rent A Car and drive it down to the con. Our passengers this year were: Lysle, Micheal, Barry, Anna, William, Felix, and Rob.

This is a detailed but rough iternary of the Los Angeles and San Deigo Trip.  Information and numbers are as follows for reference.

June 27, 1996 :  Thursday

The trip will start for most of our troops very early in the morning. The first flight waves out are at  7:16am in the morning.  Thus, you will need to be checked in at 5:15am in the morning at the Vancouver International Airport, New Terminal. 

Wave 1:  Lysle, Micheal, Barry, Anna, William, Felix, and Rob.

Wave 2:  Ed

Wave 3:  Todd, David

Wave 4:  Chris, Andrew

 

Wave 1 will leave Vancouver 7:16am and arrive about 10:07am in SD.  At which time a rental vehicle will take them to LA for an approximate arrival time of 1:00pm at the Marriott hotel. 

Wave 2 leaves Vancouver 8:30am and arrives about noon in LA and will rendezvous with Wave 1 at the Marriott.

Wave 3 leaves Vancouver July 2 to rendezvous with the group in SD.

Wave 4 will take the land route and rendezvous with the others in LA on June 27th.

 

Arrival at the Marriott Hotel, troops will organize and settle in after the travelling time.  The primary objective is to pre-register for the Anime Expo convention by pre-paying for passes and/or picking up passes.

 

Individual activities are totally up to the person.  A wide variety of choices ranges from food (Denny's), fast food (McDonalds's), Disneyland (across the street),  Knott's Berry Farm, Universal Studios, Battletech Centre, Pony Toys, Yaohan Centre and etc...

 

June 28, 1996 :  Friday

The convention officially begins today!!   SHOPPING!!!!

Buy all those good things that you don't think will last till Sunday!!

Gaming, movies, shopping, panels, interviews, autographs and concerts.  Individual activities.

 

June 29, 1996 :  Saturday

The convention continues.  A little more shopping as some dealers add a bit more stock.  Maybe something new??   Maybe not...

More individual activities.

 

June 30, 1996 :  Sunday

Last day of the convention!  Go and haggle all those dealers for those

things that they didn't sell!!  More individual activities.

 

July 1st, 1996 :  Monday

Ok, no convention.  The large part of the group will plan to go into town for things like games or shopping or movies or sightseeing.

More individual activities.

 

July 2nd, 1996 : Tuesday

Leaving LA around noon with the rental vehicle and taking it back to San Deigo.  This group will arrive and rendezvous with Wave 3 at the Embassy Suites Hotel.  Again, primary activities will be still up to the individual but settling in and a bit shopping will probably be the most likely choices.

 

July 3rd, 1996 :  Wednesday

Today is the pre-registration day for the San Deigo Convention.  Again, time to pre-pay and pick up any passes and/or badges for entrance into the convention tomorrow.  Individual activites but Yohan Centre and Battletech are pretty likely choices.

 

July 4th, 1996 : Thursday

San Deigo Convention Starts.  Join the line ups and wait!

 

July 5th, 1996 : Friday

San Deigo Con continues

 

July 6th, 1996 : Saturday

San Deigo Con Continues.  Those troops from Wave 2, Wave 3 and Wave 4 will need to depart late today in order to arrive back in Canada by Monday.  (Back to work, oh boy!)

 

 

July 7th, 1996 : Sunday

Last day of the con.  Haggle and grab those late deals.

 

 

July 8th, 1996

Early in the morning, 1:45pm, remaining troops will leave SD for Vancouver.  Arrival time is estimated around 4:35pm.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Numbers and Address

-  Anime Jyanai, 2545 Renfrew Street, Vancouver, BC, V5M3M3

phone: (604)253-7831,  open 12noon  to 7:00pm.

call here for any updates to information concerning the trip.

Also use this as an emergency contact number in the event of accidents or disasters or acts of god.

 

-  Hotel Marriott,  phone: 1-714-750-8000

reservations under William Chow, #81780997 & #81782938

cost $99us per night per room

 

-  Hotel Embassy Suites,  phone:  1-619-239-2400

reservations under William Chow, #853-96482

cost $165us per night per room

Wave one went as a group in a rental mini-van. Our trip probably has a little more action and excitment than most.

Wave two was just Ed who had airline tickets. His itenitery is a little shorter than ours. He will catch up with us later.

Wave three, is made of Todd and David who chose a shorter itenenary and chose to use airline tickets to shorten the travel time.

Wave four consists of Chris and Andrew. They were only going for the first part of the trip and decided to do a road tour by car as well.

 

On this trip we have a little more description on our half. We started off with out too much problems. Everyone was in one vehicle as opposed to have a chain of cars like we did in a previous year.

First night of the convention, it was quite late, I am guessing 2am. Most of the guys are checked in except for a few of the guys like Michael and Todd who were doing all night gaming and Anna who was doing what ever.

Anyway, she wanders in and everyone is sleeping. She notices that there is an empty slot on the bed. The beds are king size and easily sleeps 2 people, She crawls into that bed. Now of course, the reason there was a second slot open on that bed was that Felix was sleeping there. Felix, who like Anna, is an personal hygene challenged otaku from a remote town called Sechelt. Apparently, in the middle of the night, a part of his body (other than the smell) was touching a part of her body.

From then on, she slept in the bed with Rob, who at the time had a girlfriend, by using the extra sheet the hotel supplied the rooms as a divider.

Now, Anna is a slightly strange person. Living in more or less society isolation in a little town called Gibsons, she lacked social contact and much common sense. She was the centre of a couple of really funny stories, on this trip.

Everyone always complains that Disneyland has horribly long lines everywhere. Not true. They have long lines in many attractions but not all day long. You just got to be at the right place at the right time. If not, yes, you will be stuck for a while...

First day we were at Anahiem, we were at the hotel which is located at one end of the Disneyland parking lot. Now, as you may or may not know, the area around Disneyland is nice and clean and pretty free of various bad elements like druggies and bums and prositiutes. However, just outside the perimeter, it is a whole different world. Kinda like how, Gastown district all of a sudden turns into Main & Hastings.

Well, the story begins when at around 10pm at night, and Anna feels like a snack. Of course, nothing around the Disney district is cheap and there is no convience store or 7-11 or even anything cheap like McDonalds. So she decides, she wants to walk out in the middle of the night looking for a 7-11, Of course, Barry and Michael try to tell her, this is not Gibsons. Walking around alone in scum district at 10pm was not a good idea, but she left anyway. Barry and Michael followed to her dismay. People might think she was being stalked. They never did end up leaving the Disney district.

At Anime Expo con, one of the hotel rooms was on the ground floor. Not a bad deal, unless you are an otaku like Felix. The story begins with him spotting the hotel food menu and realizing that the kid's hamburger platter was kinda cheap. I suppose since you are in the Disney district, yea, it was kinda cheap. So he ordered room service and got those. Which is sort of fine, because by the time you pay for room service and tip, it isn't cheap anymore but that was Felix for ya.

Anyway, Felix stayed in the hotel room for long parts of the con, most notably during the times the maids came to the rooms to clean it up. He would just wave them away. This of course proved to troublesome in that we had to manually get new towels but by day two, we had a stack of dirty dishes sitting in the room from all the room service orders. Well, being on the ground floor, ants got attracted to the room due the left over food. The hotel evacutated us to another room in the hotel outside of the con block, while they dealt with the ant infestation.