And that time was last weekend. Wow! We looked forward to this event for months and months, stressed out about it for weeks, and then it came and went… now it’s over! It was my first time selling things, and also my first [and probably last] time having to “document” it for a school assignment. As a result, I have 612 photos. I won’t show them all on here but I’ll try and upload some, anyway.

I just want to say it was a looooot of fun! I can’t wait until next year, when I’ll hopefully have more things to sell [for lower prices] and a generally better plan, haha. Oh well. Maybe all the chaos was a part of all the fun I had. Thank you to all the people who were there, new friends I made and old friends who’ve now officially been my friends for a year! You all made my weekend a very great one!

Speaking of FACTS and the Belgian Cupcakes… Can’t believe it’s only been a year! One year ago [give or take a few days] I met Niek and Kate for the first time, and now it feels like we’ve known each other forever. Read last year’s entry on my LiveJournal. The Belgian Lolitas have grown so much, so many things have happened. Wow. Lots of love for all the girls ^_____^

But enough cheesyness. Let’s look at some photos!

[Pro-tip: if you click on a photo, you can see it in a bigger size and it will open a sort of 'gallery' ^_^]

DAY ONE

All-nighter-work

The night before day one, I decided to work deep into the night to finish a few more things to sell. Kate came to crash at our place [since she's from Antwerp and the convention was at Flanders Expo in Gent] and decided to work on her nail art as well. As a result, we only slept two hours! But it was fun having someone there to get me through the night, haha.

Kate on the tram

We took the tram to get there before everyone came in, because I still had to set up my stand.

long long line

The line was craaaaazy!

makeup time!

Getting ready for the long long day!

Stormtroopers!

These guys were AWESOME! They had voice-transformers, wooooow. ^____^

Kate's nail art

Niek

More customers for Niek

This is life behind the stands… we had a lot of fun ^_^
Yet I also went ‘away’ from time to time to document the rest of the event.

Lego man!

Happy lego man

This “Lego man” got a lot of attention, haha. I thought he was very cool for walking around with this huge suit!

Free hugs

New friends

More free hugs

Rebecca

Rebecca's tail

I also ran into people from the Belgian Cupcakes forum ^__^ Not in Lolita, but still cute!

Yaoi pride

Robocop

I don't know!

This was happening around the other stands. A lot of very friendly and creative people, I really liked the atmosphere at FACTS. Everyone was just happy and in a very good mood. Nobody said no to have their photo taken. I liked just walking around and looking at everything and everyone. Next was the cosplay competition, and I hung around there for a while.

Audience

Dino baby!

After the cosplay competition [I really liked baby Darth Vader and Jack Sparrow], I came back to the stand… I had sold something without even knowing!! Haha.

Niek

Cuteeee

This woman was really really sweet! And cute, haha.

Niek & Vief

Niek & Vief

Niek & Vief

Niek & Kami & Vief

Finally Muffin came!

Niek & Rob

Vief's stand

I went to walk around with Muffin a little bit more, to check out some of the stands and get some food [very important] even though it was pretttty expensive. It was also pretty needed! We just looked at a lot of very nice stands but I didn’t buy anything, he bought a print from the Marvel Zombies illustrator. There were quite a few artists. Normally I don’t know any of them, but this year it was alright even for a noob like me!

Free hugs couple

Awww

Posing

FACTS day one was coming to an end, there were more photographers than customers anymore.

Sweet lolita

Zombie Wolverine

After Muffin got his print and signature, I packed my stuff and it was time to go home!

pac man chair

[Check out DAY TWO]

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Finally, here it is. THE BIG UPDATE ON HOW I WENT TO SEE ANTI-FLAG TWICE. As you may or may not know, I am a huuuuuuuuuge fan of Anti-Flag. Maybe I can illustrate it best with my last.fm profile – as of this writing, Anti-Flag has been played 7,524 times on my computer. This does not include all the times I listen to them in the shower, or while doing the dishes in my old house, or when I used to be able to listen to music on my phone. So yes, I kind of dig their music

The first time I saw Anti-Flag was in 2006, I got into them kind of late. It was the birthday of a friend of mine, who didn’t even show up. Muffin already knew A-F because he was into lots of cool music way before I was, but had never seen them live, so we went to Waterfront in Rotterdam. I had only heard one song by them then, ever. That night… changed my life. 2006 was a very Anti-Flag-filled year. I got hooked on them, I went to all their shows in the neighbourhood and wanted to never miss them again if they ever got near. The bad part is, I’ve missed out on 3 shows [due to circumstances such as being broke, a gig being far away, not having a tent]. The good part is, apart from those 3 shows, I have seen Anti-Flag the eight times they got near me so far This year isn’t over: if all goes well I’m going to see them three more times! Whoooo.

So anyway, May 26th, 2009. Anti-Flag was playing in Brussels! I could NOT miss that for the life of me. I had decided I *had* to go, since it was very very near me, and I could get a press pass. It didn’t even matter that I had an exam the next day. “I rock at art history, I can study in the train,” I told myself life would sort itself out, I just HAD to go to this concert. And so I went. And it was magical.

I’m going to post the photos one by one on the next page, with text on how amazing it was, because I think that’s just the best way to look at photos. [I know, I keep changing my mind on how I want to do this blog! Aahh! haha.] Yet if you’re lazy, here’s some thumbnails that you can also click on to see the photos anyway. Enjoy

HALLO! I have been absent because exam-month was on and there was so much to do! Running around.. studying in between all the running… exams. And the jury. But I’ll talk more about that later, now I just want to make myself content with the knowledge that I got a new plugin in to work so that my photos are displayed nicely and it makes me a whole heap happier about this whole blog! WHOOOOOO!

Sweet Lolita BFFs

So here’s an update on the May meet for the Belgian Cupcakes [= our group of Lolitas]. We went to Brussels, checked out this new shop called Coco Japan. Guess what stuff they sell Lots of Japanese awesome goodies! It was awesome, the owner was realllly nice and told us about a Japanese Soirée that he was hosting in June. Oh and I got the cutest little apple ring!

After visiting the shop, we went to the Japanese Gardens and some museums that are there, like the Tower. It was sooo hot though, we all melted away. Yet it was really beautiful and the museums had some really cool pieces, plus the artwork inside the tower [the architecture, but also the objects] was gorgeous! It was really nice.

Too bad I couldn’t stay for sushi as I had an exam the next day.

[I uploaded 31 photos of the meetup, so the 'gallery' is after the jump!]

Too bad it was nothing like a musical! But it was kind of fun. It was a reunion, my school is OLD, like, 40 YEARS OLD! And so they decided to ask a lot of ex-students to come back and celebrate. I’m only ‘out of high school’ since 2007, so it didn’t really feel like reminiscing to me, just like an “oh yeah, that person!” and “hey, how are you doing?” kind of vibe.

I traveled all the way from Gent to Rotterdam, and spent the night walking into familiar faces and talking about what we’re doing nowadays, and how fancy the new toilets are! Yes, us girls really know what’s important in a school building Huge bathroom mirrors, automatic taps in the way more convenient sinks… Haha!

Me and my old locker

Apart from "why where the toilets never this good when *I* was in school?" I don’t really have much to tell. I am glad I left that place, and I am also glad it will take a few more years before I go back again! It was fun to see all those people again, but it’s really that kind of thing that take a while before it is fun again

Sooooo… old school… so you in a few years!

MAN! Why does this ALWAYS happen? I’ve even sunk so low… I have to write a stupid blog post about it.

Maybe you’re wondering what I am talking about? I am talking about Pupe, about Poupée Girl, or whatever else it is that is located at http://pupe.ameba.jp/. My profile is here, by the way, if you feel like taking a look.

So, you ask, what the hell is Pupe? [Pronounced as poo-paaay without the y actually, like the French word for "doll"]

I will tell you! Pupe is a ‘fashion community’ where you have your own closet, to which you upload photos of your favourite wardrobe items. Everytime you do this, you get a few ribbons. Ribbons are important, because they are Pupe Currency. They enable you to buy pixel clothes, for your pixel doll [your poupée]. It’s all fun and games. People can comment on your closet-items so you and them get more ribbons, etc. Originally, it was meant so that people would look at what clothes were from what brand, and what items got the most comment and whatnot. But we all know: everyone is there for the dolls!

So, in order to have fun with your doll, you need items [such as clothes, shoes, accessories, wallpapers, make up] and to get those items, you need ribbons. Of course you can buy ribbons, but where’s the fun in that? Nah, the cool way to get free ribbons is by making a snapshot. You just dress up your doll, click snapshot, and voilà! You get 10 free ribbons! You can only do this once a day, but the point is to do this every day, because if you do this for every day of the month, you get a bonus of 100 ribbons! FOR FREE!

How hard can it be, clicking that "snapshot" button everyday for a month? Well, apparently, for me it is DAMN HARD.
I succeeded to do it twice, in August and September of 2008. Ever since then, I have FAILED. I am pissed at myself, because every time I fail, I just feel like such a loser. I am pathetic, I shouldn’t feel like such a loser because of not clicking on a site where I could get fake money to dress up a fake doll… but I do, because I am an addict. I feel like poop [haha, poop-ay >_>] for a little while and then I just think "whatever, if I do it for the rest of the month, I still get 300 or 290 free ribbons anyway". Yet there’s still always this very point in time where I feel like "NOOOOOOOOOOO! WHYYYYY??"

My addiction goes to great lengths: whenever I am not home, and can’t access the internet, I call someone [read: Muffin] to take my snapshot for me. And most of the times the days that I FAILED was not because I wasn’t home, it was because I was home but FORGOT. Such as today. Today should be a fun day because Muffin and I have been together for 47 months, but all I can think about is how I missed my daily snapshot! How ridiculous!! It always happens around the 5th, or right at the end, after three weeks of stress and doing this routine daily, I somehow mess up on the 21st or 22nd!

Now, I was just laughing at myself for letting it happen AGAIN, and letting it get to me, again [of course], and so I took screenshots of the failure that is my daily snapshot. Haha. Enjoy. [click for the full-size image]

I FAIL at Poupee.

Of course the moral of this story is: I WILL NOT GIVE UP! I will get my month full again! One day! Ha! And when I do, I will update about it, because that’s just about how crazy I am.

Note: It kind of is hard, because the site is set in Japanese time. So you have to do it before 16:00 my time, or else it will be the next day. This is always where I go wrong: I used to do it before going to bed, but then sometimes I’d forget because I was too tired. Then I tried doing it everyday around 12, but on days like today I think "Well, I still have four more hours" and then I forget.. until it’s ironically past four, and the Japanese day has ended, together with the chance at the snapshot. Sigh.