The main stage, don't it look amazing?
I woke up early for my 10:40 flight, all excited and eager for my trip to Singapore. While it could have been on a better time (the Christmas holidays would have been a nice break back home), the Asian Cyber Games, also known as The Asia, is something that I have looked forward to. This also happens to be second straight year that I am able to attend this tournament, and my travel woes from last year seem to have not left me.
I was almost not able to make it last year after I overlooked my passport's expiration date (the passport would expire 5 months, 27 days from the flight - you can't fly if your passport will expire within six months). While my passport was nowhere near its expiration date this time around, my carrier in Jetstar posed a different problem for me. You need to have the actual credit card on which the flight was booked under to be present either in Manila or Changi in any flight on that carrier bound Philippines-Singapore and vice-versa. It was eClub who booked my flight, and I have a copy of the ID and credit card - but they really need to see the actual card to let me fly.
It looks like that there is really no way to work around it. With the help of ReiNNNN, I was able to contact Colosseum and then eventually eClub. Long story short, the guy who booked my flight was able to get to verify the flight via flashing his credit card at Changi airport. My details were keyed into the system at 09:53, and I made the check-in by the skin of my teeth as it was only open until 0955. I missed the deadline last year by a few days, I beat it this time by a few minutes. I woke up early? Yup, I am thankful as I needed every second of it.
ReiNNNN kept bragging about this picture
The Changi Airport terminal 1 is very beautiful, much more so when I compare it to the Ninoy Aquino International Airport terminal 1 that I just came from. I was greeted by Colosseum's Marvin at the arrival area, and not long after I already am at the lobby of our hotel, Capri by Fraser. ReiNNNN arrived just five minutes after me, and he was obviously not very happy with how the immigration handled his entry to the neighbor country. We marvelled at how nice looking our hotel is both inside and the area around it, but we were never really able to take a lot of pictures because of the heavy rain. We waited for our local correspondents, winterequinox007 and Phase, and then we set off to the venue.
Two MRT rides and one taxi ride after, we found ourselves on the lobby of the Coasta Sands resort. This is where everyone else is staying (we are staying on a different hotel, more about the reason on that later), mainly because it is very near to the venue. The first agenda is to meet Mineski's BloodyMassacre to hand him off some shirts, and then go to the venue to snap some pictures. It took us around thirty minutes though as we turned out to be waiting on different lobbies. Both parties assumed that the other one was just late, and no one bothered trying to message. Sucks.
Front entrance to GE3. There's a giant Doraemon beside this picture.
D' Marquee, ACG's venue, is one big, well, marquee. The preparations on the place started as early as Monday this week, so we put high hopes on the interior. I am glad to say that we were not disappointed, as all things are pointing towards a big upgrade from that of last year's. The booths were still kind of empty, but most of the important things are already in place. Games were already being downloaded into the computers, and many of the people inside are busy on moving things left and right.
We spotted GoDz standing out, literally, on the far end of the marquee. We had a nice chat with him, and among of the topics we talked about was the Enchantress cosplay. He told us that the wig didn't make it in time, and he will not be able to proceed with the cosplay. We don't believe him. We are still hoping. Please do not break our hearts. Again.
GoDz may be disappointing us again.
By this time, most of the teams have already arrived in Singapore. TobiWan was set to arrive later on the night, and Titan was to arrive early Friday morning because they supposedly had a match on the Fengyun tournament. The four of us from GosuGamers spent the last minutes on the venue huddling up and planning for the next few days, until we were called out by the generous guys from eClub for the dinner.
We asked about the server issues that SEA is having the past day while waiting for the food. Dylan of eClub said that it was because of the massive influx of users and downloads on the servers of Left 4 Dead 2 which is free to download today. Then the plates came pouring in one after the other. I won't go through mentioning the whole order, but I could say that the food is very good. Like two bowls of rice good. With our tummies fully satisfied, we bid each other goodbye as we called it a night. GoDz and BloodyMassacre are both staying at athe Costa Sands, which is just a stone throw's away from D'Marquee. We have quite a bit of traveling to do though, as our hotel is located farther away. I'd say it wasn't too much of a trouble though - the MRT is very nice and there weren't many people around.
As we made our way back into our room, we spotted a curious room named 'Spin and Play' right across ours. Our room card worked like a charm, and to our surprise we saw an Xbox 360 at our disposal. Just right past the game room is a laundry area, hence the name of the room. If we are late for the tournament or if we are nowhere to be seen, you guys know where to find us.
XBOX 360 available for use anytime. Maybe... We won't go to the event tomorrow..
What actually brought us to this hotel is we were looking for one with a good Internet connection so we can upload our interviews and whatnot. To our disappointment though, we were only able to get 2mbps upload and download speed. It is probably a decent one by South East Asia's standards (at least from where I am from), but it is a far cry from the 60mbps the front desk promised us when we were inquiring a few weeks ago. We will make it work somehow, and we are now looking ahead to a long day tomorrow. Five of the nine teams will bid goodbye to their chances to the ACG title on the long first day of the tournament, and we will be sure to bring all the action to you.
You can also check out some of the pictures we have posted over on our day zero gallery here.
Everything you need to know about ACG
