Scotland 1995 Journal (Part 5)
Aug. 24th, 1995 12:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
annathepiperAdded as a backdated Livejournal entry 5/15/03 -- herein, the description of day 1 of Worldcon
Thursday, August 24, 1995: WorldCon Begins, or, The Fannish Horde Descends on the Convention Center
This morning we were awakened very early, around 5:30, by an odd noise that sounded like the shower gushing, and an even odder smell that smelled like an electrical fire. We could see something like smoke down in the street, and a vehicle with flashing lights, but a stand of trees was in the way so we couldn't see what was going on down there. When we called the front desk, the man on duty seemed to think someone was trying to strip something off the street.
At breakfast - which was a lot more crowded than it had been earlier in the week, since fen had started arriving in droves the night before - we found out that we should not have been paying for our morning meals. This was because we'd gotten our reservations through an agency at a much higher rate than the hotel would have charged, so the hotel had decided to give us breakfast for free. But we hadn't known this, so we went to ask about getting reimbursed for the money we'd spent so far on breakfasts. The desk clerks didn't know what to do, but promised to consult the manager and keep us posted.
Off to the con, then: the weather was grey and rainy, so my socks got wet. Upon arriving at the convention center, we bought passes for the con shuttle - which cost us seven pounds! - and left a message for Janne Torklep on the voodoo board, hoping to catch her. As we waited for the first panels we wanted to see and for the Dealer's Room to open, we hung around in the Fanfair, the wide area which contained the Dealer's Room, the Art Show, all the tables of upcoming WorldCon bids and other fannish organizations, and booths at which you could buy food. Browsing the pocket program, Dar was mightily impressed by the programming track, which had seven to ten things going on at once; Dar hadn't had so many simultaneous panels she wanted to attend in years.
While waiting there, we ran into Benoit Girard from Quebec, the editor of The Frozen Frog, a Canadian fanzine. And we chatted with him for a bit, which was pleasant.
Not long after we met up with Janne, at a panel which actually turned out to be cancelled due to lack of a speaker - which was a shame, since the panel was supposed to be about "30 Years of Thunderbirds." But it was good to run into her - obligatory snapshots were taken so we could all remember what we looked like afterward. Janne was taller than I expected, unlike her small and dainty Two Moons character Dawn, though she had similar short red hair. Her Norwegian accent was new to my ears, as it didn't sound quite like any other accent I'd encountered before.
Dar and Janne and I wandered the con, splitting up at one point when we wanted to go to different panels. Janne and I became annoyed when we discovered that it was impossible to hear what was going on at several of the panels, either due to bad acoustics, lots of surrounding noise, the lack of any microphones, and failure on the part of the panelists to realize that they needed to speak up in order to be heard.
We made the obligatory initial sweep of the huckster room, which was credibly large. The amount of X-Files merchandise was quite impressive, and included copies of the same episode videos I'd noticed at HMV before, and many t-shirts and other items.
I discovered a chocolate seller with a wonderful assortment of chocolate animals of different flavors and shapes. The best ones were the goldfish - made out of white chocolate but with orange flavoring - and the white chocolate hedgehogs with chocolate sprinkles. The fellow at the stand started making jokes about buying new shoes for his child based on the amount of chocolate I kept buying from him. :)
Janne and I went to the opening ceremonies for the con around 4pm, and once more caught up with Dar - who didn't spot us at first, so Janne had to go down and get her. The ceremonies were reasonably fun, though. The two most memorable things about them for me were the formal welcome to the city by a couple of Glasgow's civic leaders - which I found to be very cool - and the performance by a bagpipe-and-drum corps - which was also quite cool. Ten bagpipes make a very impressive amount of noise. Also at the opening ceremonies was the first occurrence of what became a running gag throughout the con: the Safety Announcement, which involved a lady informing us that in the event of an evacuation of Hall 5, everyone should leave the Hall in an orderly and fast manner, and that we did NOT have to go out the same exit we came in.
After the opening ceremonies Janne and I were rather amused to discover that back in the Fanfair, probably because of the con's opening and the presence of the civic leaders, there had been set up a long table with lots of glasses of red and white wine, mineral water, and water. I'd never seen so much alcohol at a con in America. Janne and I sampled the wine, and later wandered down to a small bar elsewhere in the convention center at which we sampled a kind of cider: Cider Dry Blackthorn. I don't think I liked it nearly as much as a good hot cider with cinnamon in it.
Janne and I caught up with Dar again in a panel which had run overtime, the panel on virtual communities. One of the speakers for the panel, though, was Malcolm Campbell, another net.friend we'd never met, and after the panel broke up we all went back down to the little bar Janne and I had visited before. Malcolm bought us drinks, but then had to vanish. He promised to catch up with us again on Saturday.
After Malcolm left our company, Janne spotted a couple of her friends - Catherine from Norway and Anders from Sweden - and the five of us decided to go out for dinner. We decided to go to Sannino's again; getting there was somewhat adventuresome since the cab driver mistook where we were going, and also didn't take corrections to his driving until after two or three attempts on our parts to clarify where we were going. We finally made him drop us at the Charing Cross, and we walked to Sannino's from there.
This time Sannino's wasn't quite as cool - the service was slower, and the food was a little less wonderfully cooked. But we had a pretty good conversation going once it got off the ground: we talked about science fiction (at an SF con, who'da thunk it?), school, and other things. For dessert I did the Coppa Alla Menta again, though this time it came in a tall glass instead of a dish.
After that, we went back to the hotel long enough to Anders to change clothes into a hall costume, and then we went off to parties.
The Bothell Suite in the Forte Crest Hotel had a combined party, the Baltimore, Boston, and Atlanta bid parties for '98. Boston was the most lavish, with the most money spent on alcohol and other attractions, though Baltimore's pirate theme was rather more cleverly done. (Although I will give Boston points for their party poster, which read "Remember the Boston Massacre? We forgive you - come back!") I tried a rum drink at the Baltimore table, and it was shortly after that that we finally ran into Niall Hosking.
Niall and I chatted for a while about his TM character Starchaser, and about the Scattered Tribe in general, hanging out first from the hallway outside the Bothell Suite and then up in the hotel lobby on the ground floor, where we were later found by Janne and Dar. And eventually, we wandered off to bed.
Thursday, August 24, 1995: WorldCon Begins, or, The Fannish Horde Descends on the Convention Center
This morning we were awakened very early, around 5:30, by an odd noise that sounded like the shower gushing, and an even odder smell that smelled like an electrical fire. We could see something like smoke down in the street, and a vehicle with flashing lights, but a stand of trees was in the way so we couldn't see what was going on down there. When we called the front desk, the man on duty seemed to think someone was trying to strip something off the street.
At breakfast - which was a lot more crowded than it had been earlier in the week, since fen had started arriving in droves the night before - we found out that we should not have been paying for our morning meals. This was because we'd gotten our reservations through an agency at a much higher rate than the hotel would have charged, so the hotel had decided to give us breakfast for free. But we hadn't known this, so we went to ask about getting reimbursed for the money we'd spent so far on breakfasts. The desk clerks didn't know what to do, but promised to consult the manager and keep us posted.
Off to the con, then: the weather was grey and rainy, so my socks got wet. Upon arriving at the convention center, we bought passes for the con shuttle - which cost us seven pounds! - and left a message for Janne Torklep on the voodoo board, hoping to catch her. As we waited for the first panels we wanted to see and for the Dealer's Room to open, we hung around in the Fanfair, the wide area which contained the Dealer's Room, the Art Show, all the tables of upcoming WorldCon bids and other fannish organizations, and booths at which you could buy food. Browsing the pocket program, Dar was mightily impressed by the programming track, which had seven to ten things going on at once; Dar hadn't had so many simultaneous panels she wanted to attend in years.
While waiting there, we ran into Benoit Girard from Quebec, the editor of The Frozen Frog, a Canadian fanzine. And we chatted with him for a bit, which was pleasant.
Not long after we met up with Janne, at a panel which actually turned out to be cancelled due to lack of a speaker - which was a shame, since the panel was supposed to be about "30 Years of Thunderbirds." But it was good to run into her - obligatory snapshots were taken so we could all remember what we looked like afterward. Janne was taller than I expected, unlike her small and dainty Two Moons character Dawn, though she had similar short red hair. Her Norwegian accent was new to my ears, as it didn't sound quite like any other accent I'd encountered before.
Dar and Janne and I wandered the con, splitting up at one point when we wanted to go to different panels. Janne and I became annoyed when we discovered that it was impossible to hear what was going on at several of the panels, either due to bad acoustics, lots of surrounding noise, the lack of any microphones, and failure on the part of the panelists to realize that they needed to speak up in order to be heard.
We made the obligatory initial sweep of the huckster room, which was credibly large. The amount of X-Files merchandise was quite impressive, and included copies of the same episode videos I'd noticed at HMV before, and many t-shirts and other items.
I discovered a chocolate seller with a wonderful assortment of chocolate animals of different flavors and shapes. The best ones were the goldfish - made out of white chocolate but with orange flavoring - and the white chocolate hedgehogs with chocolate sprinkles. The fellow at the stand started making jokes about buying new shoes for his child based on the amount of chocolate I kept buying from him. :)
Janne and I went to the opening ceremonies for the con around 4pm, and once more caught up with Dar - who didn't spot us at first, so Janne had to go down and get her. The ceremonies were reasonably fun, though. The two most memorable things about them for me were the formal welcome to the city by a couple of Glasgow's civic leaders - which I found to be very cool - and the performance by a bagpipe-and-drum corps - which was also quite cool. Ten bagpipes make a very impressive amount of noise. Also at the opening ceremonies was the first occurrence of what became a running gag throughout the con: the Safety Announcement, which involved a lady informing us that in the event of an evacuation of Hall 5, everyone should leave the Hall in an orderly and fast manner, and that we did NOT have to go out the same exit we came in.
After the opening ceremonies Janne and I were rather amused to discover that back in the Fanfair, probably because of the con's opening and the presence of the civic leaders, there had been set up a long table with lots of glasses of red and white wine, mineral water, and water. I'd never seen so much alcohol at a con in America. Janne and I sampled the wine, and later wandered down to a small bar elsewhere in the convention center at which we sampled a kind of cider: Cider Dry Blackthorn. I don't think I liked it nearly as much as a good hot cider with cinnamon in it.
Janne and I caught up with Dar again in a panel which had run overtime, the panel on virtual communities. One of the speakers for the panel, though, was Malcolm Campbell, another net.friend we'd never met, and after the panel broke up we all went back down to the little bar Janne and I had visited before. Malcolm bought us drinks, but then had to vanish. He promised to catch up with us again on Saturday.
After Malcolm left our company, Janne spotted a couple of her friends - Catherine from Norway and Anders from Sweden - and the five of us decided to go out for dinner. We decided to go to Sannino's again; getting there was somewhat adventuresome since the cab driver mistook where we were going, and also didn't take corrections to his driving until after two or three attempts on our parts to clarify where we were going. We finally made him drop us at the Charing Cross, and we walked to Sannino's from there.
This time Sannino's wasn't quite as cool - the service was slower, and the food was a little less wonderfully cooked. But we had a pretty good conversation going once it got off the ground: we talked about science fiction (at an SF con, who'da thunk it?), school, and other things. For dessert I did the Coppa Alla Menta again, though this time it came in a tall glass instead of a dish.
After that, we went back to the hotel long enough to Anders to change clothes into a hall costume, and then we went off to parties.
The Bothell Suite in the Forte Crest Hotel had a combined party, the Baltimore, Boston, and Atlanta bid parties for '98. Boston was the most lavish, with the most money spent on alcohol and other attractions, though Baltimore's pirate theme was rather more cleverly done. (Although I will give Boston points for their party poster, which read "Remember the Boston Massacre? We forgive you - come back!") I tried a rum drink at the Baltimore table, and it was shortly after that that we finally ran into Niall Hosking.
Niall and I chatted for a while about his TM character Starchaser, and about the Scattered Tribe in general, hanging out first from the hallway outside the Bothell Suite and then up in the hotel lobby on the ground floor, where we were later found by Janne and Dar. And eventually, we wandered off to bed.