Kingdom Hearts

I recently discovered Tradera, an auction site, part of eBay (it says), and now I’m addicted to auctioning! Actually, I didn’t just discover it recently, but I’ve never been a member and done auctions before. Anyway, I made some bids on a few items and now I have won Kingdom Hearts and Kingdom Hearts II for the PlayStation 2, a new PlayStation 2 (how can I else play? XD), a DVD of Kino’s Journey (キノの旅 -the Beautiful World-; kino no tabi -the beautiful world-) and the complete Tales of Phantasia series (based on the game Tales of Phantasia) on one DVD disc. All for very low prices, of course! Oh yeah, I also got my hands on Final Fantasy VII and I can’t wait to play it! The reason I decided to get the Kingdom Hearts games, really, was because I love Final Fantasy and Square/Square Enix so much – and, of course, ’cause everyone always says how great they are. I just hope I won’t immediately throw it away when Donald Duck or Mickey Mouse shows up… I really hate Disney! (Don’t get mad at that comment, I’m just being honest. If you dislike me disliking Disney, just ignore it or I will simply delete your comments. And who knows, maybe Kingdom Hearts may change my opinion. I don’t really think so, though…)

Kingdom Hearts cover

UppCon:09 aftermath

I’m home from UppCon:09 in Uppsala, Sweden, and I’ve got some stuff with me! Not that amazing stuff, maybe, but at least it’s something necessary in every home. Of course I have pictures of everything I purchased (actually no, I miss pictures of Busou Renkin volumes two through five and a Manga Techniques book about screen tone) and I have finally finished adding watermarks to them – this time without other watermarks as well (lol) – using my new blog watermark which states the new title 「夜風記」 rather than the old one 「夜風の所」. You can find a gallery with some of the pictures at the end of this post and you can visit konventbilder.se for pictures from the actual convention (just click the image with the title “UppCon:09” underneath it; I wonder if I’m in any pics). Now, time for my convention diary, or whatever I should call it – it’s not like I actually kept a diary or something…

Three more gunplas for my bookshelf. How will I have room for any more?

Last week: I packed a few necessary things like a sleeping bag and a pillow for extra comfort and let the days go by. January 15, my friend who was also going to attend her first convention ever (UppCon:09, just like me) bought tickets for several of us who were going to travel up to Uppsala together.

Day 1: The 16th January was here and I hadn’t slept a second the past night, and I still hadn’t packed non-necessary things such as a pad to draw on and my nearly empty iPod (which, of course, I forgot next to my computer when I left), so I got up (from the computer chair), grabbed my bag and added a few manga volumes, my white Nintendo DS Lite (I did not use it anything the entire weekend, though) and a few other things, put on some socks, and waited for when I had to leave, which wasn’t that far away by then.
The time to leave home for the weekend has arrived and, together with my father who was going to work at the same time, I went to the bus station and got on the bus to Slussen. After we got to Slussen I took the subway to T-Centralen, or Stockholm C, while my father went another way. Well at T-Centralen I met up with my friend who had gotten me my ticket the day before, paid her 70 SEK (the ticket cost 69 SEK but I let her keep the last 1 SEK which is about 0.12 USD – aren’t I generous?) and then we and several other people I had never met before in my life left for the platform, got on the train and about 40 minutes later we were at Uppsala C.
After a two or three minute walk from the train station we reached the Uppsala Koncert & Kongress, or the UKK, and it was time to stand in line… for four hours in minus 20 degrees, celcius! That’s cold, and as if it weren’t enough, the opening of the convention got delayed by almost an hour so we ended up standing there in the cold for almost five hours. About half an hour before we were supposed to be let in, they gave us free soda – warm; however, it did not warm as much as give us yet another problem to deal with – now we were not only cold, but we had to pee as well. I am never doing that again, standing in a still line for five hours in Uppsala in winter… Don’t try this at home (or anywhere at all), kids! You’ll freeze your not-yet-fully-developed butts off.
When we finally got into the convention are of UppCon:09, I was so tired there was not much fun to do that I could actually appreciate, half asleep as I was, so I mostly walked around the different floors, up and down, looked at items I thought about buying and items I would never in my life even want to receive as a gift, bought some pocky and even some pretz (pretz do not measure up to pocky, believe me), then I went to bed. Well, I kept walking around as a sleep-deprived zombie for a while and even watched episodes 1-4 of Tobaku Mokushiroku Kaiji (lit. Gambling Apocalypse Kaiji) which was, even though it’s very annoying style of anime and Yu-Gi-Oh!-like story, it was quite interesting and I found myself watching through all the episodes that were offered at the convention until it ended and then I went to bed.

Busou Renkin volume 1. I also got volumes 2 through 5 on the third day, but they aren't shown here.

Day 2: I can’t believe I have written so much and still have only covered the first day… of course, not much happened the second day but buying stuff I didn’t really need (see gallery below) and then I just went to bed again. Oh yeah, I also got some nendoroids that you can check out in the gallery below! My first figures besides the Keroro squad.

Day 3: Okay, that was a quick cover ofthe second day and I would like to keep this short as well, but if I say that it will probably go on and on forever, so I won’t say it… again. Actually, no, I’m too tired and I’m not feeling very good (I think I might be sick after the Friday morning, you probably understand why that might be), so I’m just going to end this right now with a short note that I ended up paying only 275 SEK instead 475 SEK due to some happenings that I will not go into detail now, mostly because I’m tired and feel bad, as I just said.

Extra: This actually happened on the third day, which is today, but it doesn’t really have anything to do with UppCon:09, so I added it as an “extra.” I registered to the eBay site Tradera earlier today or yesterday (not sure which) and there was this package I wanted to get my hands on: Kingdom Hearts and Kingdom Hearts II original version (meaning not platinum). I don’t really like Disney (actually I hate Disney), but as the rest of the game is Final Fantasy, I just have to check it out. Due to UppCon:09 I was not sure I was going to be able to lay my bid at the package right at the last second (a great tactic, really), but when I rushed home and opened up my computer I had five minutes left until the auction ended and I added ten SEK to the last bid which was 300 SEK (very cheap, considering a normal game would cost around 700 SEK and this is two games, one of which is not even being produced anymore or available for purchase like anywhere) and after clicking refresh like a maniac over and over for five minutes, the auction ended and I had won it for 310 SEK. The final price came to 336 SEK, and that’s less than half the price of one of the games I just purchased when it came out – I saved almost a thousand SEK on this purchase! It was a really great feeling when I realized I had actually won the auction, now let’s just hope the games are just as great as people say they are…

Three Mikurus…? Well, I guess you can’t have to many Mikurus, am I right?