My PAX Weekend
That’s right, another PAX has come and gone leaving only good memories and swine flu!?
(I was sitting in the Hand Held Lounge on Sunday afternoon and a guy lying on the bean bag not too far away kept coughing, all phlegmy. Gross! I remember thinking “I need to get outta here”. He must have been the patient 0)
Missed Day One
My PAX adventure started a little late this year. To begin with, I had planned to drive down, but due to the car being in an accident and only finding out about it a few days before PAX, plans were changed. I decided I’d get a ride with another PAX-goer but then those plans fell through. To make a long story short, instead of getting there Friday in time for the concerts, I ended up arriving Sat morning instead, taking the first bus out of Vancouver to get to PAX just in time for the Tetris DS Tournament.
Day Two
Only sleeping for a few hours the night before and sitting on a bus for almost 5 hours with nothing to eat or drink, I wasn’t in the best frame of mind when I first got to the convention center. To my dismay he tournament rules were different this year. Everyone was paired off instead of having an 8 player game. I did terrible and lost in the first round. Embarrassing. I do remember some guy saying that the winner from last year was from Canada and how awesome he was at Tetris..hmm I wonder if I know this guy.
After that, I met up with some friends (Rez, Bryan & Neil) to check out the exhibits. Thanks to all the tweets from Friday, it wasn’t a surprise to see that they had expanded the exhibit hall. On the left side of the floor were the Indie games, and inside the actual hall were the other companies. The 1UP booth was located around the same area from what I remembered but they were missing their orange tent and they weren’t taking luggage tag photos this year :/
Inside the Expo Hall…At the NCSoft booth we took photos with the Wings. Mine turned out pretty cool! I complained to the Aion staff about not getting Aion to work on my Vista machine due to the Game guard 114 error. They were well aware of the error and gave me a few suggestions, I have yet to try, but hopefully their suggestions will be the solution I need to get the game to run on my machine.
The Star Trek Online booth was busy. I was waiting in line to try the game but everyone ahead of me was taking so long. Maybe it was the controls, or maybe the confusion about what they were supposed to do. Regardless, the game looked great! I love that it’s Star Trek, but I’m not entirely convinced it will be to my liking. I signed up for the Beta to get my free Klingon T-shirt, and met a girl who asked me to join her women only squad. I told her I’d look them up when I started playing.
The Expo hall was packed with lots to see, some free swag here and there and even free ‘blood’ soda. It’s amazing how hungry one gets walking around at a convention. It was great to run into people I knew(old co-workers and 1UPpers like David,Jen and Kevin) and even those who knew of me (like Davin).
I was glad when it was finally Lunchtime! Link was hungry too 
We hung out in the PC Freeplay area where we played everything from Left 4 Dead to Call of Duty. Playing as a zombie in Left for Dead is so much harder than playing as one of the human characters!
OMG sooo many people!
After playing in there for a couple hours, I decided to head back to the hotel for a brief nap. 30min into my nap, a friend called to tell me she just got engaged and invited me to come meet them to celebrate. I bumped into her earlier that day and she said that she suspected her bf might propose, but now it was confirmed. Yes that’s right. My two friends GOT ENGAGED at PAX. He had been waiting to propose to her there, and really wanted to do it in-front of a large audience but he kept getting the run around from the PAX staff on who to talk to to have this announcement made at a panel. So he ended up proposing once the night before and then again during the day at the expo!! No photo of the happy couple though, need to check with them if it’s okay to post it first.
*edit* My friend got back to me and said it would be cool to post a pic, so here it is:
AND to get the details right here’s how the proposal(s) story went: “I had already proposed to Alex on the Friday night, but I wanted to see if I could still propose in front of a large crowd of people (for my ego’s sake) on Saturday. Realizing it was in vain, I proposed in the middle of the song booth/entrance to the queue room which still had a decent 500 people I’d say.”
I stopped by the 1UP meetup later that night but only briefly as another group of my friends and I were headed to dinner. It’s too bad the restaurant was closed to the public or I could have stayed a bit to hangout and meet more 1UPPERs.
The night ended with the Paul and storm and neverending Johnathon Coulton concert. He came back for an encore 3 times!!! I was sooo tired at this point I wanted to pass out…like this guy…
That was one loooonnng day.
Day Three
It was pouring rain when I got up, luckily our hotel was just a few steps from the convention center. We started the day with a Sith smoothie at the Star Wars Cantina. It was a little watery yet refreshing and headed to the Indie games area. I played a few games and bought a few things…although I didn’t get a chance to buy a Castle crashers figurine (they were sold out :/)
Met up with some friends, Jen, Kevin, Philippy next to the 1UP booth where they were handing out free stuff to members. Met Tina and Mike Cruz there and got a Gears of War Xbox 360 faceplate. It’s on my 360 now 
Afterwards we headed to the Harmonix booth to play some Beatles Rockband. Philippy as the vocalist was awesome! He even had the perfect english accent (Garden = “Gahden”).
Lunch was at Fox Grill where we reminisced about having drinks there in ‘07 with SuperJenn. We miss you Jenn! The lunch menu included Tetris gaming. Just like old times, except some people were a tad bit rusty it seemed…
Jon and Mike patiently waiting for their food.
Yay! Food has arrived Here’s Jen, Kevin, and Philippy.
I hung out in the Handheld lounge after lunch played some Tetris and Mario Kart, but there was quite a bit of Lag. Most people used the bean bags to take a quick nap. This is where that sickly guy was coughing, spreading his germs…
After the Handheld lounge I played in the console freeplay. I didn’t have patience to wait in the extremely long Omegathon line and figured that my friends would just let me know what the last game would be so I headed to console freeplay to end the expo.
Got together with Jen, Kevin, Philippy, Jon, Mike and others for TMNT 2, drinks and pizza afterwards. That movie is so cheesy! Especially when Vanilla Ice appeared…HAHAHAHA! It was a long and exhausting couple of days.
Random bathroom signs
A few things I ended up with from PAX
Although PAX had a different feel for me this year (there were more crowds, I missed Day One, so many different friends groups were among the attendees and my bro Ryo couldn’t be there), my PAX experience still included some of my favorite parts about the expo – meeting new and old friends, playing games (Console, PC Freeplay and handheld lounge) and concerts! Being surrounded by other people who share the same interests and just having fun is what I’ll remember PAX for. Good times! Hopefully I’ll see you all next year!
