2011: Part 4 - A true test

Part 4, proof that while life was going to change, things were going to be pushed and tested, a new life had to be earned and not gifted.

Temporarily New Life
Susannah came over in April, while the first trips had been pure fun, drama ensued which meant that we were going to be having quite an uphill battle while we were here in Perth.  To make matter worse I was still adjusting to a brutal schedule which saw a full time work load balanced with day work on my days off and working every weeknight for a few hours. Somewhere in there was squeezing in Susannah and all the study away from uni as well.

So there was drama and things were only half fixed by the time Susannah was about to leave, she made the decision to stay, despite a lot of her time spent sitting on my bed waiting for me to return home from days where I would be out for over 12 hours and feeling dead or about to crash on the way home.  While there was a lot of young love and amazing times, this was what reality was going to be like.

The Struggle
Despite ditching Hairlucination, university was still proving to be a nightmare and a challenge and a half, I faced an assignment that I honestly thought was proving to be near impossible and something I couldn't completely understand.  My grades were slipping and I was struggling to keep up, it was scary, 2009 I was worshipped as the top student in my class, 2010 saw me lead the way even though my gap was reduced to many other students, while this year, I was in the midfield for once which was very scary for me to deal with.  Dealing with tests especially after returning from Adelaide was a nightmare and somehow I just kept holding on even though my commitment was obviously reducing and reducing with more and more on my plate.

Rockstars

Despite how dull my life had been, I did my best to at least have a night free so we could party and my god did we party like rockstars, ok, less the excessive hard drug usage or anything illegal but we had a lot of crazy dress-ups and stories from our time in Perth.  There's a lot of NSFW stuff that's best to leave out here but it was the last month we really partied hard, made some pretty insane and crazy outfits for some pretty amazing nights.

The Forest of Dreams
At one point me and Susannah decided to walk through a peaceful forest near a lake around Perth.  We talked about Susannah's need to move onto the next project and her wanting to find a new business as while Saccharine Desolation just wasn't doing it for her.  We discussed that Susannah would be good at running a clothing store but she wanted to do something unique, it was there that lolita was mentioned and Tokyo Hardcore was born, well albeit 6 months later.

2011: Part 3 - New Places

Part 3 - Saw a lot of new adventures and places

Adelaide

I made a promise to Susannah after she left Perth that I would be going to her fashion parade for her latest label Saccharine Desolation, I had a sneak preview in Perth and was quite excited to get to see it in person plus get a chance to go back to Adelaide.  Two years later, I was back in Adelaide, although this time longer for 12 hours.

After 6 weeks of me and Susannah not being able to see each other, it was probably one of the most emotional days of my life to finally see her at the airport as the long distance relationship was killing us both but we both persisted and we were still strongly in love by the time we met at the airport.  We were just so glad and happy to see each other on Friday night and it was such an amazing and happy night that we could spend together where I finally got to see where she lived.

The next day it was off for her last minute work for Saccharine Desolation and then off to the show which was spectacular to see in real life, I got to meet her friends, probably not the best chance to meet them since most of them were keen to congratulate Susannah and I looked like shit since Susannah wanted to do my hair and makeup which didn't happen that day in the end.  We celebrated by raving and having a nice relaxing day together, although it was short lived due to an incredible job opportunity.

A Foot (slammed) in the Door

In year 2 of the accounting degree, the main goal is to get vacation work, since 90% of hires after graduation are via vacation work.  After a lot of applications including one company who kept crapping on about work and work experience and barely giving any space to show any of it off, only one said yes, which was strange despite my background in finance and top grades I thought I would get more but either way I had one which meant I had to leave early for.

Anyways, had the first test, which were 3 tests, a super speedy maths, logic and english test, I think I had it nailed, saw around 5000 applications, whittled down to 100 for these tests then I qualified to the last round of around 20 applicants.  Took part in a group challenge which I felt I dominated and lead the way and then a final interviewed which I think went against me a bit with a few questions which I felt put me on the spot, in the end, I didn't get work, when I asked why, they said a points decision saying I was close and we had a lot of talent but we decided but points and you just missed out.  This was a hugely depressing and I was seriously starting to question if I really was going to get work out of this degree.

Hairlucination - A Final Fairwell

For those who knew me before 2011, I was known a bit in the alternative scene for my work with Hairlucination, making dreadfalls, cyberlox and the like.  I had an interesting opportunity to work with Antonio Sorgiovanni, world championship hairdresser who wanted to work with me on Australia's Got Talent.  Huge opportunity that went quite immensely well and he was quite an awesome guy who saw a lot of potential and interest in me and wanted to help me out where possible.

I went to the show and was pretty amazed, you had a show virtually filled with dancers and singers and you have this guy pulling a hairdressing act, it actually worked and I was quite impressed with what he did.  He got through the next round and while getting on TV was a good experience it didn't add too much in the end.

As it turns out, later in the year, big name Rivet Licker quit making dreads, well known as the best dread maker in all of Australia, when I found out she was struggling and couldn't sell dreads and quit, I feel like I made the right decision, especially when I had too much on my plate with uni and all my other jobs plus Neko Nation.

2011: Part 2 - Time to Start

Part 2 - The year begins with the start to Neko Nation, university and new love.

Neko Nation Purrth
The debut show in Perth was a long shot from the last epic Neko Nation Adelaide show that took place at the end of December 2011.  We're talking about only 4 DJ's, 2 catgirls, a pretty small venue and most of the sponsors prizes were just bought from J-List, still nonetheless at that point in time it was an epic feat to get this show done.  The opening days were interesting, as this was when I was DJing 3 hours, simply due to difficulties finding DJ's!

Nonetheless we had anime music finally hit the clubs, catgirls with free sushi that people went crazy for and despite trying to manage a club while behind the decks, it made for a fun night, which was probably one of the best nights I had held for a while.  Things went epicly well that Susannah wanted to chat to me the next day about holding a Neko Nation in Adelaide.

University
Neko Nation was fun but it was back to the serious business in University and my god this year was going to be horrible, I was hitting the second half of my Commerce degree and studying majors in accounting and entrepreneurship and these units this year were brutal featuring units in advanced corporate accounting, systems management, management of innovation, on the plus side there was entrepreneurship, which made up for it.

Basically it was the hardest semester yet and I just wasn't getting these units and that's saying something considering the previous semester I received a letter of commendation for being one of the top students in my degree.  So it was going to be tricky and I struggled to get the hang of it but hung on and managed to hold at least distinctions in everything, however it was only going to get worse.

Love
The time me and Susannah spent together was short lived in Perth but we started to fall for each other pretty quickly in within the few days.  There was a drama involved in regards to leaving my last relationship and to go with Susannah was a brutal decision that was going to hurt my ex, destroy a lot of friendships and the reality was that my ex was a great partner and quite stable and I honestly couldn't see us breaking apart anytime soon.  So to go with Susannah someone I barely knew and only spent a bit of time with, who was in another city was a gigantic leap of faith but I decided to risk it since I saw quite a lot in her and it was only going to be a matter of time to see if things would work, (ok, it does because we're still together at the time of writing this).

However it was a very difficult period, as I said the fallout caused a lot of strain on friendships and I lost a lot of friends in the short-term.  There was me and Susannah trying to maintain our relationship despite the long distance and time between each other but we tried out best to survive till the next month.

Work Upgraded
I was moving up a bit in the work world, I moved up from my bar work to a Cash manager, managing the tills rather then the drunken people behind the bar, which was quite awesome, I was more and more in demand at my temp work, ANZ were keen to hang onto me for as long as possible as people were leaving and I had high typing speeds meaning that they wanted to hang onto me.

Name change
I changed my Facebook name from my real name to a pseudonym.  The main reason was due to an accounting company blatant saying on one of their first few pages on their recruitment tips that your Facebook would be checked.  I had the option to either clean up my act but I decided that I didn't want to change my personality too much so I changed to "Neko Catalystic", plus it kind of blended it well with my partner "Saccharine Darling"

2011: Part 1 - Things are going to change

First post of a wrap up of my crazy 2011 year, this could end up with quite a lot of parts, rather then trying to do one huge massive blog post, it's about time I actually updated this thing!


I entered the start of 2011 with some interesting expectations, I knew I was going to get further with either university, work, business or just some sort of new things to happen in life as I probably got a bit more laid back and was open towards experimenting more and just getting out there and trying new things.

Neko Nation - The Birth
I like how some small experiment dreamt up late last year ended up taking over most of my life, anyways as for what Neko Nation was back then.  Simply an experiment, an attempt to get into event promotion, after having spent years working numerous jobs in the nightclub/entertainment industry for years, I thought it would be worth a shot to make the dive into actually putting an event on.  Despite my experience and most of my interest was with industrial events and raves at the time, I decided it would be easier to work my way with something a bit different and new rather than to take on the big players in those fields who were doing quite a good enough job at the time.

I had another idea and that was my interest in Japanese and anime culture, so I decided to look for a similar event happening in Australia and bring it to Perth, I have to admit I was quite surprised to find out such an event hadn't existed in Australia, no matter how hard I researched, I decided that in the university holidays, as a new side project, I was going to do something about it.

I came up with the final concept through a hybrid of inspirations, the con after parties that happen in America, the Tokyo Electro Invasion Show which was my first trip to Adelaide and the first time I met Susannah, my work as PA for Outbreed which did lots of really strange and unique events in Perth, plus a local J-Pop night called Japanite in Perth, a night dedicated towards the Japanese crowd.  I meshed a few elements from all these things and more.

Susannah came down for the first show, who heavily believed in my concept and wanted to help out, little did I know what would happen in regards to her arrival at the airport.

To be continued.....

You've come a long way baby

I seriously can not thank everyone enough last night, and I mean everyone who came down or was involved since this was one epic show to pull off and I personally believe this was a combination of everyone's efforts, every put in so much whether they were DJing, serving sushi, dancing the night away, taking photos, hanging out with friends and hyping up the show, serious thank you.

You may have noticed that I hyped up the show claiming to be the biggest one yet and I hope it did turn out that way, since I had a pretty huge vision for this one and I think it ended up working out, behind the scenes there was a lot of nerves in regards to so many things needing to fall into place and it did and honestly there were some lots of amazing surprises from people I wasn't expecting which made the night fall into plan well.

When I meant the biggest show yet it proved to be a big challenge, thankfully Susannah was there since managing 30 staff was a huge new test for me but we also had an amazing team too.  It's scary from a personal view to see how far we've come, take a look at a few of the pics and a bit of a brief description at the first Neko Nation in comparison.

The first Neko Nation only had 4 DJ's, I ended up DJing half the night, not due to talent, simply because I could not find anyone to play J-Rock or any sort of Japanese electronic music at all!  The attendance was only round 100 and at best we only saw 10 people dancing at one time.  We only had two catgirls, Kae-chan and a friend fly over Saccharine, the rest between the two of us was history.

To say we've grown is an understatement and I can only see more happening next year especially with some massive new plans.  Although for now, it's time for a well rested break after trying to pull this show off with an insane work schedule outside of Neko Nation.  Then it's time for Christmas and some wonderful and awesome new projects.  ^^

Perth +++

The plans are to head back to Perth and I have to admit I'm pretty excited to do so.  Yes there may be a lot of pro-Adelaide posts on my page (you know, it does help being a bit of a popular well known figure in their animu scene, even if quite a few people don't know my real name, XD).  Anyways, here's some stuff I'm looking forward to returning back too and have actually really missed about Perth.

It should be noted that this is not a Perth vs Adelaide post, just things I'm looking forward to seeing again in Perth.  XP

Events
It's kind of bizarre, I think the one thing that made me fall for Adelaide was Tokyo Electro Invasion.  I saw Adelaide people knew how to do events right in 2009.  Fast forward to 2011 and to be honest, I haven't really gotten into any event in Adelaide.  I guess it's a lot harder for me this year since I'm often going to events after 50-60 hour working weeks so exhaustion heavily kicks in insanely but without Susannah by my side I probably wouldn't have had too much fun out at various nights and events.  In particular Perth used to have some pretty fun and amazing raves and I had a blast at Sin and Unknown and just haven't enjoyed Adelaide events as much.

Speed
It's actually nice to be able to drive faster than 60km/h and not being fined $300+ for going less than 10kms over the speed limits.  I can't say I'm a massive hoon but it's kind of frustrating to be slowed down quite a bit over here.  XD


Game City
Seriously, I love the fact that there's this insane In The Groove and dancing games community in Perth and some of the most amazing dancing machines in Australia here if not the best by far.  There's a lot of amazing ITG players in Perth and not just terms of talent but also with their creativity their urge to push each other without any bitchiness or arrogance, it's  amazing.  In comparison, all the arcade communities in Adelaide don't want to know me.  XP

Economy
I miss living in a city with a good economy where it was easy to get jobs, it was pretty interesting to have so many god damn jobs in Perth and it's kind of sad I could barely find anything.  Let's ignore the fact I'm not pretty much now insanely busy with both Neko Nation and Tokyo Hardcore to care these days.  XP

Kings Park
Seriously, I miss the view up there, plus it's an immensely signficant place in my life, since it's where I proposed to Susannah.

Friends
I actually am a bit bummed just as I was making a fair few good friendships in Perth I had to leave for good and unfortunately my last trip and my next trip will be brief due to business (although story of all my travelling).  There's a fair few to name and while obviously the Neko Nation crew always get seen I'm working far too intensely on the show to really properly hang out with many people but I'm hoping there's plenty to see in regards to Wai-Con later this year.

Wai-Con Cosplay Competition
While the best city for cosplay is debatable I believe Perth has an amazing competition just due to the location, it's really nice to be able to rock up in the massive theatre and see the cosplay competition on stage.  Wai-Con is always fun and I'm looking forward to checking it out next month.

Work Updates

Totally failed at this whole updating the behind the scenes blog post a while back, things just went into absolutely Marisa stole the precious overdrive mode the previous week but then again that's pretty much my life in general.

Anyways, been having an interesting week, watching Tokyo Hardcore grow significantly after we went through the "Skyrim Slump" (jk, most of our customers were just at uni).  Been working hard on the website to get it up and running hopefully by this week if all goes really well.

However I guess most of the news that's been quite exciting on my end has been around Neko Nation, with lots of huge and exciting news such as making it down to Perth soon, exciting new decorations being worked on plus some pretty awesome super secret stuff that I'm hoping to reveal later this month.  Basically, I'm starting to get the work noticed, which is pretty epicly awesome and very exciting.  ^^

More different posts on different things soon.  ^^