Happy New Year!

I woke up today at 1.30pm. I guess it’s not that bad considering I slept at 5am. Gao. So anyway, here’s how I spent my last day of 2006. (Yet another year closer to my eventual death.)

I woke up on the 31st at 9.00am and left home at 9.30am. かったるい。Arrived at Funan at around 10.20am to help out with Urban Attic’s sale. Tj han was late because his new $80 School Rumble alarm clock failed to wake up him. lol.

LianYL and I left just before the sale started to give out flyers at a certain other location. I told Weiye, the owner of Urban Attic, to reserve a 1/7 Kanu Unchou PVC figure for me because I knew that it’d be gone by the time I returned. We gave out flyers until almost 3pm and returned to Funan. The Kanu was sold out! Apparently Weiye thought I asked for Ryofu instead of Kanu. Gao. But at least I got $50 for my work. Kind of sad that I ended up buying nothing at the sale.

By now the otaku gathering is getting quite big. The group of us walked to Sunshine Plaza where I proceeded to spend nearly 4/5 of my income for the day at KKnM‘s 50% sale.

GalgreaseGalgrease

Two hard plastic posters from Shirow Masamune‘s Galgrease illustration series. They are pretty big. They are almost as tall as the backrest of my living room couch. Still trying to decide on where to stick them…

After the usual otaku chit-chat, we wasted away remaining two hours till dinnertime by lanning Counterstrike. It’s been some time since I last played that game. Then we had dinner at Raffles City. At around 9.00pm, we arrived at the Cosafe Maid Cafe, Singapore’s first maid cafe, where we spent the rest of the night.

It was actually the first time I patronized Cosafe since their opening two weeks ago. I’ve been to maid and cosplay cafes a few times in Japan and I must say that Cosafe felt very different, not in the good or bad sense but just different. It’s an intangible thing.

Other than maid costumes, there were also seifuku, Misa from Death Note and some other character cosplays I couldn’t identify.

Cosafe

I ordered a Milky Vanilla milkshake, but they ran out of vanilla ice-cream, so I became the first customer ever to have a vanilla milkshake made using chocolate ice-cream. Wee.

Cosafe
The tropical penguin

I thought the service was pretty okay, but then again some of the guys in our group were regulars there who knew every girl by name (we got our table without having to wait), so my experience may not be a very accurate gauge. Still, it’s a far cry from all the negative reviews that have been floating round the net. Perhaps the service has improved a lot since the cafe’s opening.

Cosafe
Who’s that Pokemon?

The price is pretty scary — my milkshake was S$7.80 + service charge, though it’s expected since CHIJMES is a pretty posh area with a large number of tourists and expats. On an interesting note, if you look at the current exchange rate, food in Japanese maid cafes actually cost less, but the difference isn’t great.

Cosafe
It’s Tripeman!

Cosafe
2007 started off with a lot of party spray strings and popping balloons
The maids were well-armed

Cosafe
Just look at all the cups

Cosafe
A balloon fight was soon under way. Many died

Cosafe
Lelouch survived

I only drank half a cup of beer because I’m still below the legal drinking age (犯罪ですよ。) so I was still pretty awake at 1.30am when we finally decided to make a move.

I missed the last train home by 4 minutes or so. At least 30 police officers were clearing out the City Hall train station and securing the entrances after the last train. There were a lot of people still on the streets. Some were queuing for taxis at the taxi stand, but queue was so long that a lot of people just gave up.

I took a NightRider Bus home. It took one entire hour to circle around every part of the city district, from City Hall to Chinatown to Clarke Quay to Orchard Road, before travelling the rest of the way to my house within 20 minutes. Worst bus right ever, but it’s better than being stranded until the first train at 5am. The bus stop was about 2 km away from my house (5 km for tj han apparently) because NightRider bus routes are pretty limited (considering you have less than 10 NR service routes for the whole of Singapore), but I somehow managed to find my way home at 3.30am in a semi-conscious state. Bought a cup noodle from 7-Eleven on the way because I was really hungry. May Haruhi bless whoever invented 24/7 convenience stores.

All in all a pretty interesting New Year’s Eve. At least compared to how I usually spend them. (Asleep and in my bed.)

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