Nora and Christine's Hello Kitty Dance PHHHOTO

Nora and I debated heavily on what we would be doing for our short gif. The group in front of us was blowing kisses into the camera, one guy was scrubbing his eyes and pretend crying. Their moves were awesome, but our moves are pretty classic to us!

Hello Kitty Con and Hello Frustration

I attended Hello Kitty Con on Saturday with my friend, Nora.

The day following the announcement in June, I purchased tickets purposefully for Saturday, November 1, thinking booking the day of Hello Kitty's birthday would prove to special - especially since it's Hello Kitty's BIG 40th ANNIVERSARY Birthday! After taking off of work early in San Francisco on Friday after the World Series Parade, I flew into Los Angeles in the late evening to celebrate a light Halloween so that I could attend Hello Kitty Con the following day. Oops, we went to bed at 5 am.


After wrestling myself out of bed in the morning, Nora and I rolled into Little Tokyo. Nora asked me to explain my love for Hello Kitty on our walk to the Convention.  It's not easy to put into words. My love for Hello Kitty is ingrained - my love for HK is like my love for reading.

We got our IDs, we got our little booklets, and it was the beginning of the end.

I thought that Hello Kitty Con would be a quest in acquiring cute Hello Kitty stickers. Instead, Nora and I found ourselves trapped in a Sisaphean cycle of lines. We waited in line to get inside the overhang. In order to get inside the convention center, we got into another line. Inside, the space was a display of knick-knacks, many of which I owned. Raised about the convention center was the merchandise store, which to my and Nora's dismay was only able to reached after three to four hours of lines. Nora and I walked around looking at each exhibit, taking photos with random Hello Kitties.

We had to stand in line in order to take this picture:

Nora and I trapped in the extra large replica of the Hello Kitty coin purse that started it all

Here are some other photos of Nora and me posing next to random Hello Kitties, that we had to wait in line for:

Click to Enlarge!

After about three hours of waiting in lines, Hello Kitty Con shut down the merchandise acquisition (store!) line at 3 pm. With no notice in the program, my one day access to sold out Hello Kitty Con was pretty much over.

For a convention that's all about a kitty that got its start from being on a coin purse, the lack of access for someone who flew to Los Angeles for 24 hours to attend the convention where I would be able to add to my lifetime collection of Hello Kitty thing was disappointing. 

If Sanrio is going to be putting a piece of merch on display like the Hope Diamond, I'd hope that you would focus the convention on the attendees, those superfans who are present to acquire more merchandise. 

Hope Diamond? Pretty much!

It's my personal opinion as a lifetime lover of Hello Kitty that the whole convention was overbooked, and the ratio of museum style exhibit to store and purchase availability should have been flipped. Side note: when Hello Kitty Con said Marketplace, I thought Supermarket Place - just like in Asia, where you can get Hello Kitty anything inside a Supermarket. Silly me.

My favorite photo other than the first photo I posted, is this one, which is actually from the Japanese Heritage Museum!

Kawaii!

At the Japanese Heritage Museum, Nora and I discovered how many apples tall we are. I discovered that I'm the same height in apples as I am in beers. We saw more merch that I own, including backpacks from 2000-2014, and delicious and yummy bubble gum. The only thing that I would love to be able to rent is a Hello Kitty robot.

Farewell, Hello Kitty Con. You were so cute but so frustrating. I left Hello Kitty Con with a Loungefly HK pencil case and a Loungefly Hello Kitty lunch box. Other than a birthday gift with purchase at Sephora, no special events were held for Hello Kitty's birthday. All the activities that required tickets were out of tickets.

I left Hello Kitty Con with no stickers, no official merch and many disappointments. Like a paper with a poor thesis, Hello Kitty started with a good idea, but had no legs to stand on. Improve, please!

 #hellokittycon #hkcon #hellokitty

Hello Kitty SWEETS

First of all, let me preface, I don't even like to eat sweets and yet all I've been taking pictures of are sweets. They are cuter. No one likes to look at a curry. But the culminating sweets experience that I've been meaning to have is the Hello Kitty Sweets experience. It's an authorized Hello Kitty resto!

AH! I've been fantasizing about this moment for a long time.. and yet, I couldn't. First of all, all the Shin Yeh buffet eating prohibited me from stuffing my face with sweets and when you're not in the mood, there's no use trying to force it. Fortunately, as my aunt was distracting the hostess, I managed to snip snap a ton of pics.

the exterior.

the sumptious interior.

Hello Kitty prints on marble? CLASS.

.. You've seen the HK bit, now the Sweets.

 I love my college roommate Whitney for humoring my love for HK and baking me all those Hello Kitty cakes two years ago. Now that I've seen the authorized cakes, I love my homemade ones even more! It's scary how delighted I was to see these cakes! SO freaking cute!

 It's off of the Zhongxiao Fuxing MRT exit, in case you were wondering.

(123/365) Minna no Tabo

Yes, I still use thumbtacks that I was given in 1992. Sorry for the intense posting, I'm caught up again and.. yes. Gossip Girl has started back up.

(102/365) JUST the tickets

 

Instead of having these posted in my room, maybe I should practice keeping these handy in my wallet, so I can stop having metro cards with $2 on them. I think the Charlie ticket is the cutest (from Boston!)!

Gaga for Kitty!

 

Ga

Ga

Oh

La La!

THIS IS WRONG, I know it.

First of all, I am in full lusty kitty mode. I went to the Sanrio website and now I am in a feeding frenzy!!! MUST BUY, MUST BUY, MUST BUY! LUUUUSTY Cat, LUUUUUSTY cat!

AIYA!! It started with a small blurb in my Google alert a few days ago. It's Sanrio's 50th anniversary... how nice. I screen shot this just so I could perhaps bring it up at a later blog. 50! That's a big deal. Then, today at work, an email came delivering an exclusive offer! 30% off all Tokidoki for Hello Kitty things.

 

 I WANT THIS

and 

 

THIS

then... somehow I ended up this... with many many more things than I had originally bargained for and... still NO WATCH TO SHOW FOR IT.

I have yet to click to check out. I'm waiting for rational thought to hit me, my heart rate to slow. Maybe I'll pop in the shower, cool off a bit before I check out.

Happy Chinese New Year!

It's the year of the Tiger! Le Tigreeeeee. I've spent about 30 mins thinking about how to soundly write a post on Chinese New Year.... culturally, I've never been able to take this holiday off at school, but I've wanted to every year. I thought about posting fortunes that you could look up on the internet, but I realized that I looked up mine quite a while ago and all I know is that THIS year is MY year. Therefore, it's not yours, so there's no point in showing off, really.

Hello Kitty is celebrating the CNY as well, as can be seen here:

 

and here!

Yes! This year, my habits of making RAWR noises is totally legit. I contemplated buying Le Tigre polo shirts, but polo shirts make my boobs look weird!

The TimesUK had a photo slide show of Chinese New Year in Beijing; I stared at it longingly.

 

click to enlarge!

I remember only 3 years ago when I was in Beijing during the New Year, buying random pig paraphernalia and going to large crowded festivals where a ton of Beijing-rs hung out. Little children wearing backless emperor costumes, the unnecessary need to buy things with pigs on them, including headbands and stuffed animals.... Meanwhile, the mass exodus of non-native Chinese people leaving the city making Beijing a ghost town of services. Chinese New Year began the month where I ate out of the grocery store for a month because no restaurants were open. I climbed to the rooftop of the library on the Capital University of Economics and Business campus and watched the fireworks explode from every surface for hours on end. Lawlessness concerning cheap fireworks = scarily amazing dangerous fireworks display! 

新年发财！ 红包拿来！

Happy Chinese New Year, everyone! Wear red to scare away evil spirits and bad fortune! Feel free to mail me a red envelope stuffed with cash! Sorry this post isn't more edifying, but here's a wiki on Chinese New Year in case you wanted to learn more!

(79/365) KITTIES

These Hello Kitties exist together somewhere, perhaps in a collection of someone I know...

Cheese head!

Speaking of Hello Kitty, I screenshot this image a few days ago and I love it. I love mac n cheese and I love Hello Kitty, whoever thought to combine the two = GENIUS. So, if this is your image, I'm sorry I've completely forgot where I got this from - but I am posting it because I enjoy it. We should be friends.

Hello Kitty's Furry Tale Theater

I was clicking through Hulu and I just happened to glance down in the right and OMFG.

Hulu now has Hello Kitty's Furry Tale Theater in their collections that they've acquired. This one is from 1987 and gloriously toned down to be fit for the eyes of children.It's fairy tales that have been Kittified.

I need to stop using the big font, but I can't. I'm so excited. I remember being young, standing inside Purrfect Place (my local Sanrio store) and seeing these VHS tapes playing. Coveting them, but being unsure about that damn mouth. Now I don't have to be sure, I can watch the blasphemy that is this mouth for free! :

Thanks Hulu.com. I took this image as a screenshot!

It's quite sick, I can't believe I devoted close to 30 mins to watching this child's cartoon, but I think it's quality programming compared to that of the Bachelor, which I also committed two 40 mins episodes to last night. Yikes. If I can't be crazy at work, I like to see others become uninhibitedly nuts. I'm throwing my hat in the ring and I'm going to devote 30 mins to this show everyday for the next 13 days. I need to see everything.

Hello Kitty and the Wizard of Paws, in this episode HK plays Hello Dorothy.

Walking through the dark forest... it is scary! Instead of flying monkeys, they are flying dogs!

Encore! This image would have been cuter if HK had no mouth...

There's another episode following the Wizard of Paws, but it was Tuxedo Sam as the main character and an adaptation of Pinocchio, which was cute but, I was tired of screen shooting. Anyway, enjoy it as I'm doing.... or don't but love me, love Hello Kitty.

09!09!09!

I love the repetition! Nine nine, oh nine! If I were good, I would wait until 09:09p on 09.09.09 to post.. but.... I'm a nerd for even thinking of it!

I've always loved the month of September because simply, it's a good month! Good things happen this month, namely, my birthday and the birthdays of many of my friends! Sadly, this year, I will not be in the same town as Stepperoo so I don't know I will be cutting into Hello Kitty this year.

Cake 1

Cake 2!

It's delicious slaughter!

9.24 - I cannot wait!

Why not honeymoon forever?

In honor of all of my friends that have gotten married in the past few years and for all those kids that plan on getting married in the near future, I have an idea I have been reluctant to share, but feel compelled to do so.



Immediately after you get married, don't you try and tell every customer service representative that you encounter that it is your honeymoon?

Airline counter: It's our honeymoon.

Gate agent: It's our honeymoon.

Hotel check-in: It's our honeymoon.

Restaurant hostess: It's our honeymoon.

Concierge anywhere: It's our honeymoon.

...and when you do, sometimes there are perks. My question is, why use that only once? Obvi, any vacation you take should be met with a "It's our honeymoon." Why not? Many a person that I've met have not taken their honeymoon immediately post-wedding. Why not use it, say... 3 years, 2 months and 1 day, post-wedding? or... 5 years, 4 months, and 3 days, post-wedding?

What an amazing way to put yourself in the honeymood by announcing to the world that it's your honeymoon? Why shouldn't it be?

Sick Love

I love this dress. Damn you, Paris Hilton. I hate myself for loving this dress. I couldn't imagine wearing this dress, but it's incredible. This is the only time Paris Hilton will ever be in my blog. ...unless she wears more Hello Kitty stuff.