OUSA Convention 2025

Finally made it to New York. I had a great time, and at the same time experienced the bizarreness of this megalopolis. This blog post starts by sharing my 2 days NY sightseeing experience, followed by the convention experience.

Convention planning

I was supposed to attend OUSA convention 2024, but did not make to NY. It was an ugly experience so the story will be limited to this paragraph. On the day of the flight, a global IT outage caused by Crowdstrike bug messed up most flights in the country. My flight was with Delta Airlines, and they flew me from San Jose to Minneapolis with 2 hours of delay causing the connecting flight to NY be missed. All of the rebooked flight were also cancelled, and finally they offered me a rebook to fly on the day after the convention ends. There was no point in visiting NY without convention, and there was no guarantee that Delta would have recovered by then. So I abandoned the vacation plan and stayed in Minneapolis until my flight back to San Jose with Alaska Airlines, who weren't affected by the outage. Delta Airlines only reimbursed part of the expenses because of their crappy refund policy, and I lost $1000 for nothing but misery.

Anyway once again I attempted to attend OUSA convention in 2025. I will never fly with Delta (and will never forgive them), so I bought a direct flight ticket from San Francisco to New York with Jetblue, set to arrive in NY 3 days before the convention. This way if there would be another act of god which messed up the flight -- say hurricane, thunder storm, flash flood, forest fire, another software malfunction, airline got bankrupt (no joke, this happened to me few months before), or Colossus Liberty Statue powered by Zeus fighting Kratos -- I still have 3 days of buffer. The plan was to stay on cheaper hotel and do touristy things on those buffer days.

My convention goal was standard: participate in exhibition, teach a class, and hangout in the late night folding. There will be oversized folding, which would be the perfect opportunity to fold life sized halibut. Other than that the touristy goal was to visit Statue of Liberty, Central Park, American Museum of Natural History, and probably some landmarks I've seen on GTA4's Liberty City.

Departure

After work, I immediately went to Sunnyvale Caltrain station and took a train to SFO. Caltrain was surprisingly fast and comfortable. My flight was overnight, departed at 22.00 and would arrive in NY at 07.00. It was delayed by 1 hour because the arriving plane was late, but I appreciate the clear communication. Everything went well and I slept on the plane.

The JFK airport was huge and crowded. I had to walk a long way to the baggage claim carousel, then another long walk to airtrain station, and finally take a long ride to train station that integrates with NYC's subway/train. I was skeptical at first but we really can just use debit/credit card to tap the train's entry gate, and it will immediately charge $2.9 and allows us to enter. No need to buy ticket from machine or top up money to a card.

NYC was hot (>30° C), humid, and the vegetation has broad leaves. It has a somewhat narrow road which was often congested. So it feels like my hometown, Jakarta. The train was air conditioned and clean, until I switched to another line in Manhattan to reach the cheap hotel in Lower Manhattan. The underground station was hot as hell (probably 35° C down there), dirty, dank, smells funny, and loud. Almost all of the time there will be rumbling sound made by the arriving/leaving train. It's no wonder, this subway system is more than 100 years old.

New York City as seen from train (more accurately, Queens).

The system is quite messy. Station platform can be multilevel, the train doors inconsitently open on the left side or right side, some trains aren't air conditioned, and some platforms are used by multiple lines of train. However, the train frequency was amazing, with average wait time no longer than 5 minutes. I felt awe despite the dark and gritty atmosphere, and should not complain on this marvel of urban commute engineering.

Anyway, made it to the cheap hotel at 10. Normally check-in time is 15.00 - 23.00, but I had called the staffs that I would arrive the next day morning despite having paid the fee for the night before. Fortunately did so because otherwise they would think I was a no-show and cancelled the whole booking.

I had ferry ticket to visit Statue of Liberty which would depart at 11.30. No time to waste, just drop my luggage, do morning routine, buy sandwich, and immediately hit the subway to Battery Park. Knowing how sunny and hot it would be, I wore my usual hiking attire, with long sleeved sun shirt and long pants. Big mistake. NYC is much more humid than San Jose so I sweat constantly under those cover. Plus I looked like dork since everyone else wore T-shirt and shorts.

The ferry was crowded. Embarkment took 10 minutes, and so was disembarkment. The Statue of Liberty is farther than I thought from Manhattan, so it looks small. However once on the island, we can really be amazed by its size.

The statue as seen from ferry.

I walked around the island, and go up to the pedestal with pre-bought special ticket. It wasn't worth the effort, as the pedestal was just a tiny balcony that barely allowed us to see anything interesting. Under the statue, there is a museum that documents the statue's history. There was a section that described how iconic the statue is, causing countless reproduction in various medium such as clay/wood/stone statue. I wondered if they had paper, and turns out at the end of the gallery there was an origami model.

By David Shall.

Not much to do in the Liberty statue's island. To head back, we got to line up for the ferry like lining up for bus. It arrives every 25 minutes, and each arrival is followed by 10 minutes of disembarkment, and 10 minutes of embarkment. The line was so long and wasn't shaded. My mind almost lost it and I chug down cold soda. At least the wide hiking hat worked well to prevent the sun baking my head.

It took me 40 minutes of queueing to get into the ferry. Its destination before reaching Manhattan is Ellis island, where the Museum of Immigration is. Doesn't sound too interesting, and if I had to wait for another 40 minutes to get from Ellis island to Manhattan, probably this extra trip wouldn't worth it. However it was included in the ferry ticket and no more money need to be spent. I noticed the queue line to board ferry from Ellis island wasn't long, so perhaps I'll just try to visit it.

Well, surprisingly the museum was interesting. The free audioguide explained how the European mass immigration happened back in the early 20th century. I also had a proper late lunch there, the first time eating New York style pizza. 

Museum of Immigration, with audioguide.

The Ellis island visit finished around 16.00, and the sun wasn't that hot anymore. The ferry line was much shorter. I took ferry back to Manhattan, and went to visit the Grand Army Plaza to compare it against "Soldier's Plaza" in GTA4. This city actually looks "cultured". These statues and plazas looked beautiful, and somewhat reminded me of the time I worked in France. At the same time, I can feel the city's urban blight. Some spots in the plaza smells like piss, stressed people randomly yell, people don't seem to be happy, etc.

Grand Army Plaza.

I made it back to hotel around 18.00, took a shower, and drop dead for sleep.

Day at Museum and Dan Dinner

Second day of sightseeing. I bought the ticket for American Museum of Natural History, which opens at 10.00. In the morning I walked around Central Park. It is similar to San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, apart from the type of vegetation and the plentiful statue in New York's park. I learned my lesson to wear short sleeved t-shirt and short pants, so the heat and humidity didn't bother me.

This is why I like random walk in the park, we can be surprised to see generated structure like this castle.

I immediately entered the museum once opened, and damn, this museum is amazing. The amount of knowledge stored was so dense. I spent 2 hours on a single section about creature adaptation for survival, and there are more than 20 other sections. The world's animal diorama looks so realistic, and we can feel how "alive" the taxidermy is.

Probably the best taxidermy animal in the museum

The outer space part was awesome as well. It explains the concept of black hole, the composition of this observable universe (universe, galaxy, star, planet), unobservable invisible things (but known to exist since the calculation proved so), and other complicated topics. I wished to spend more time here but there was so many other sections to look for. I also needed a lunch. The cafetaria had some hot food priced at $8 per quarter pound. Not sure how much a quarter pound is so I simply get the normal amount of food to eliminate hunger, which ended up costing $22. Kind of pricy but the quality was surprisingly great.

The most popular section was on the top floor, with prehistoric animal skeletons. What's amazing was it doesn't just show the skeleton for "wow" factor, but they actually arranged the sections in a way that you can trace the evolutionary history. It started from the formation of jaw in vertebrate, then quadrupedal, then water tight egg (this is where the dinosaur skeletons are), then finally primitive and prehistoric mammals (where the dimetrodon and mammoth skeletons are).

T-rex (also known as Rexy in Night at Museum movie)

My personal favorite was the biodiversity and ocean life section. The ocean life section has a massive life sized blue whale model, masterfully crafted and mounted without visible support. There was also evolutionary tree chart that makes me think this country had no restraint in allowing people to believe in Darwinian evolutionary biology, unlike less secular countries. 

The life sized blue whale, supported by invisible rod from the ceiling.

Evolutionary tree of sea vertebrate.

King of Saxony Bird of Paradise taxidermy, I realized how off my fold is.

I was in that museum for its entire opening hour, and had to leave at 17.30 when it closed. Even so I haven't seen everything. It has been a while since I felt warm and fuzzy, as if my inner child took over and explore the museum.

That night I took subway to Sheraton New York Times Square hotel for informal meet up. Boice organized an Origami Dan dinner in Urban Hawker, which serves Southeast Asian food that I am familiar with (mostly Singaporean, Malaysian, Indonesian). I met various members of Dan there (Ani, Dex, Neel, Ogreboi, Greg, Boice) and we had a good time chatting. We went to the convention venue and Boice walked us through the exhibition space, as most of us will help him setup exhibition space the next day.

I walked around Times Square with Ani on the way home. It was a horrible and dreadful scene. Extremely crowded, giant ads monitor flickering lights, loud ass music playing, and the street smelled like a mix of gasoline, sweat, garbage, grilled sausage, dank subway vent, and ganja. Pretty sure most of these people were tourists. I will do my best to not go there anymore.

Day 0: Convention Registration

The third day of sightseeing. Actually I didn't do much sightseeing. Even though the convention classes started the next day, the registration, exhibition setup, and opening ceremony was this day. Me and other Dan members helped on setting up exhibition space, and I learned some consideration of the setup from Ruthanne (the OUSA exhibit coordinator for the past 18 years). We got to pay attention on table positioning and lightning, the expected eye movement of the visitor, and also the placement of model. Models that must be seen from the side to be understood (e.g mammals) better be put higher, close to eye level. Other models that should be seen from above (e.g insects) can be put without platform. She also gave advice to reduce clutter in my exhibition, i.e to remove useless ornaments.

Exhibit setup.

Once the setup was done, we had 3 more hours before registration. I walked around Manhattan while avoiding Times Square, had lunch, and chill in coffee shop while preparing my class.

The special guests were introduced on the opening ceremony: Nicolas Terry and Maria Sinayskaya. Maria taught us a modular star model, which was the first time I folded something like that. I still haven't fully understood the charm of this origami genre, but I can see how a simple module gave rise to much more complex pattern and the clever locking mechanism. Next, Nicolas (which I prefer to refer as Terry) taught us how to utilize white side of paper to create negative space on animal legs. The concept was first issued by Jeremy Shafer, with his "10 seconds giraffe". Giraffe origami is notoriously difficult given how long and skinny its parts are, but by harnessing white color as negative space, a recognizable giraffe can be made in seconds. Terry then applied this concept and developed it for his elephant. He showed us some more advanced and realistic looking models with this concept, which probably will appear in future Origami Shop book,

From left to right: Terry's elephant, Jeremy Shafer's 10 seconds giraffe, and Maria's modular.

I spent the time hanging out in the "Origami Dan's table". Butterfingers printed us Origami Dan attributes to be worn in our name tag, and to be put in our exhibition. Some attendants were curious and ended up asking what is Origami Dan. In fact the whole purpose of this attribute is to promote our existence and highlight how big its members are as part of the convention. More than half of the exhibition were by Dan members.

The "Dan Corner". Actually there are a lot more exhibits by Dan member on other tables.

At 17.00, the sale area (called "The Source") opened. My main mission is to buy Cabbage paper (handmade by Matt LaBoone) while it lasts. Coming early gave me the advantage of choosing any available color. I picked 2 sheets for myself, and will buy some more unsold sheets near the end of the sale -- don't want to hoard it and upset other buyers. I also bought some hard to find books, which was surprisingly priced fairly. An Origami House book such as Works of Satoshi Kamiya was sold at $60, which is comparable to buying it directly from Origami House plus delivery and other junk fees (such as tariff). On Ebay, that book costs at least $90.

While hanging out in the community room, I saw John Montroll. Through unexpected chain of events he ended up sitting on Origami Dan's table and chatted with us. He is very friendly, kind, and chill. He went "I am working on gnomes. Do you want to see it?", then proceeded to enthusiastically grab a densely packed shoebox containing numerous grocery plastic bags, each containing many models, and showcased it to us one by one. There was probably more than 50 variations of gnomes; some with long hat, some with bushy facial hair, others with longer limbs, the female gnomes, etc. There were also flora fungi and fauna associated with gnome such as edible mushrooms, poisonous mushrooms (with spots), squirrels, little birds, etc

One thing I noticed about Montroll is, many of his diagrams are considered short for the given complexity of the results. He briefly described that short number of steps is one of his priority when designing. He also mentioned a state called "deep thought" that occurs when he designs. I think it is equivalent to what psychology books describe as "flow state", a state where someone is so engaged and fully focused on a task, that flow of time or external stimuli are no longer felt. Being able to enter flow state is greatly beneficial for creative work.

Day 1: Taking and Teaching Class

Finally, the first day for convention classes. I checked out from the cheap hotel, carry around my luggage, then arrived at Sheraton.

I took Terry's class for his fox, made out of blintzed fish base. He gave us ~30 cm "Luminous Thai" paper which is basically a white paper backed to a colored paper. The white part is not too white, so it exposes a bit of the colored side, hence called luminous. Not sure what kind of paper it is, but most likely mulberry pulp based. This paper might be too precious for origami class, so I pocketed it and used regular 15 cm kami for the class. At the end of the class he also gave us "Shadow Thai", which is similar paper but instead of white, it used black sheet. After the class I took picture with him, and expressed how I liked the e-book format of his publications, as I move frequently and do not wish to carry heavy books. Hopefully he kept publishing the e-book versions depite the constant threat of piracy. Btw he is very friendly.

The yellow one will be unfolded for study.

Later that day I would teach a class, and it would be the only class I taught. The more I teach a folding class, the less I want to do it. Most people will just forget about how to fold it after leaving the class. So I prefer to give lecture. This time the topic was reference finding, which was also presented on EBOC 2023. I surveyed the room to ensure it has projector, and the connection to my laptop works. Once confirmed, I head out to get lunch on Pret a Manger.

While hanging around the exhibition room, I met William Hartman, who would teach the hyena and turkey model I signed up for. A month ago during class sign up, I was surprised to see a very well designed model, by designer whose name I have never heard before. So I greeted him with "Hi William, I'm William" joke that used with my other friend whose name is William. Turns out he doesn't really have internet presence, so no wonder I have never seen his works before.

Anyway I had to skip a 1 hour class for exhibition watch duty. Every exhibitors were expected to volunteer at least an hour. So I just stood motionless in the corner, menacingly mad-dogging the visitors to ensure they don't touch anything or carry spill-able food/drinks. The visitors were pretty obedient though. They didn't even touch the table. I was surprised that my less stable models (e.g 1 legged pukeko) were still standing until the end of exhibition. Some even asked if they can take picture of the models. We have come a long way since Yoshizawa's era, where his exhibition items were pocketed by ignoramus.

The exhibition watch duty made me late to the next class because it was very far away from the exhibition room. I just took a vase class taught by Kathy Stevick who generously gave us hexagon papers, one of which had been precreased with hex grid for the model. Fortunately the grid made it easy to catch up with the rest of the class. I was told that she is the expert in paper cutting, so I asked her method. She explained her cutting method of choice with rotary cutter (colloquially known as "the pizza cutter"), paired with thick edge (ruler/acrylic template) so the rotary cutter doesn't wobble while rolling. Rotary cutter blade will get dull, so it requires replacement. In the old days there was sharpener but she wasn't sure if it is still sold.

Geometric vase, designed by Michal Kosmulski. 

At 16.00, my lecture started. Fortunately the class was full, and most attendants were adults. With some improved deliveries, the class went smoother than back in EBOC 2023. People laughed at jokes, and asked good questions. Even after the class ended, people lined up to ask me further questions and I had to email some of the answer. I am satisfied and relieved that the class went well.

Finally at 17.00 I can start check in and drop my luggages in the room. The hotel check in guy asked "so you're with the origami convention? Can you make me something?" and proceed to said something something "poor dew" and "boiler kettle". No idea what he was talking about, but finally he clarified that it is a college's sports team mascot, called Purdue. It is a guy with muscular upper body, wearing hard hat and shirt with letter "P" in it, black trousers, carrying a mallet, and "hardboiled" expression. Doesn't look too hard so I'll make it happen.

The night activity was The Amazing Race Origami Style (TAROS). I had participated in such event back in PCOC 2023, so I just spent the rest of the day in the community folding room to design Purdue which should be doable with grafted bird base. William Hartman came and we had an interesting chat, starting from our views in design, diagramming, reference finding, analyzing crease patterns, and all the way to discussing ideas that might have never been done before. It was the most interesting origami discussion I have ever had.

Test fold for Purdue. Not fully shaped.

I went back to hotel room at 23.30, given that there will be oversized folding on the next day and I anticipated sleepless night. The hotel room was kind of... disappointing ? For the amount that we pay, it is underwhelming. For a starter, there is no boiler kettle. Then the sound insulation is poor, we can hear gushing sound in the pipe when the neighbors are using shower. Similarly for the outdoor construction which still happens at midnight. The light from Times Square billboards leaked through the window. While we can easily close the window and block it, the next day's morning sunlight to ease waking up will also be blocked. 

Day 2: Oversize Folding

I started the day with recruiting team members for the night's oversized folding. We will form a team of 4 people to fold 9 feet paper (2.7 m) into a life sized halibut, and take a picture like proud anglers.

The morning class was Winston Lee's thresher shark. I noticed that his model often has ways to rearrange layers to distribute the thickness of the model. Some steps did not affect how the model looked like from outside, and it is used for minimizing the maximum thickness in the model. The class had only 2 sessions allocated, and we ended up having 45 minutes overtime. The pace was slowed down on complicated maneuver on small parts. Plus there was smartass in the class that interupted the teacher on several occasions, slowing all of us down. No big deal, as the next 2 hours were lunch break.

Winston Lee's thresher shark.

The next class was Will Hartman's hyena, for 3 sessions that spans through the end of the day's class. The pace was also good, and was also occasionally disrupted by smartasses. I respected that he did something about it, by personally talking to the perpetrator and kindly requesting them to keep the class productive. Keeping class quiet and attentive is something teachers are expected to do, according to Origami USA teaching tips. The model can be folded well with regular paper, and he baked in some closed sink/layer distribution techniques to prevent the legs from splaying apart. The sequence had a dramatic reveal because it was collapsed from the middle part, from inside. So when the inside is finally covered with the outer layer, we can see what had we been working on from outside. The class took exactly 2 hours 45 minutes as scheduled.

The hyena's base, which sort of looking like a fish.

William hartman's hyena, without shaping.

Whenever not in class or community room, I would wander around exhibition to take pictures and look into the model details. Taking reference on how people neatly fold insect legs (Brian Chan's are awesome), or wet fold certain parts. That day Winston Lee gave me a pack of kami from Muji, a Japanese chain general store. The paper's quality rivals Toyo's, where it's pretty strong and beautifully colored. That was kind of him to gift me something every time we meet.

Brian Chan's crabs.

On my way to room, I met the hotel receptionist guy who asked me for Purdue. I gave him the finished model made from 24 cm kami, and he happily accepted it and offered a handshake. Unfortunately I forgot to the take the picture of the finished model.

I joined other Dan members for dinner in Shake Shack. Outside of the store there were a guy screaming to another guy for "ruining the country", and the guy being screamed at just sit lopsidedly. What a bizarre scene. During dinner we talked about the existence of "Class Smart-ass and How to Deal with Them", the strangeness of New York City, and bunch of random stuffs.

Around 19.50, we gather in the big class room for oversized folding. My team had me, Lucas, Bush, and Glyptodont (these are their Discord names). Lucas suggested our team name to be "BIG ASS FISH" (which I later learned "big-ass" is something you shouldn't say in front of kids), and made a great call that we all should carry bone folder. The big paper was quite easy to crease by hand, but making a sharp crease was hard. Swiping the crease with bone folder made the folding much faster and cleaner. I had many brain fart moment where I forgot the next step, despite having folded the halibut so many times in the past year. The big size really messed up my visual memory. We started with many steps that can be parallelized, so four pair of hands can work together. Unfortunately the head and tail can't be paralelized, as folding the head needs to be done from colored sized up, and folding the tail is white side up. So there were few moments that only 1 or 2 people can work at the same time. I felt bad for the others.

We completed the model in time, and were able to realize the goal of taking picture like proud angler. It was tiring to shout the folding sequences and performing the folds. The proper angler picture should be available in Origami USA website later. Once available, I'll update this post.

Me and the big-ass fish (I'm 170 cm)

All participants paraded their model in front of the room. It was spectacular. Many interesting models were made, such as wearable spinosaurus (actually Montroll's spinosaurus), huge action model, another big fish (Ogreboi's team made his sailfish), dragon with string attached to its head so it is movable like puppet, or sufficiently complex model like Lang's ant. There were some leftover large paper rolls, which people took away to be folded into the night.

I finish the day by joining others to have gelato in nearby shops. They're mostly college students, so I discussed with them about how did they run their club. We headed back to community room around 23.00, and I saw some people have started folding the leftover giant paper. I stayed there until the room closure at midnight, then head back to sleep. 

Joisel's dwarf and Miyamoto's reaper, finished on the next day. Not made by me

Day 3: Farewells

Last day of convention and also my last day in New York. The tiredness had started to seep in. I don't have many plans apart from taking classes as usual, and head to JFK around 16.00. My flight is at 20.00, so going out 4 hours before the flight sounds excessive. Given how crowded and massive JFK is I don't want to risk it though. Who knows, maybe I had to walk far away or the security check line is so damn long.

My first class was Lang's $2 models. Basically folding 2 $1 bills into modules, which if one is put inside another, we'll get something like a bird base. Followed by Will Hartman's turkey class, that spans only 1 session. It was a simple and well designed model, with well thought sequences that has few initial precreasing which pay off in the long run. He generously gave us the diagram printout, and offered cotton balls to stuff the model for volume.

Lang's $2 lily and crane.

William Hartman's turkey.

Before the afternoon class started, I collected some "unwanted" paper left on the "Origami to Go" section. Basically during the convention we can put or take anything there. It fosters trading, but looks to me some people used it to dump their junk. There was a stack of thin tracing paper, which were crispy and big, but has a suspicious brown stain through the entire stack, that also slightly warp that area. It doesn't smell funny though, and if we're to cut square out of it, the stained part will be removed. There were also extremely crumpled duo kraft (blue/silver) which Dan people dubbed as "blue shit". My contribution to this activity was leaving some leather keychains with Javanese shadow puppet motifs, which I bought back in 2013 for international event. Surprisingly all of them were taken. 

It was also the last opportunity to say goodbyes, as many of us will fly back after the last class. Including me, who planned to left midway through the last class at 16.00. So I went to find the others and gave farewells. Why farewell instead of goodbye? Because I doubt that I can meet these people again, given this convention is just my once in a lifetime thing. 

I took Maria Sinayskaya's Diamond Edge Box class next. We were given thick octagonal paper which looks similar to Terry's tissue foil (colloquially called "Terry Foil"). Had I known we'd be given that, I won't carry my crappy and poorly cut octagonal kraft paper. The class pace was good. We just need to make various precreasing with correct orientation (mountain or valley), then the collapse happened all at once. This would be a nice box for a gift.

The left one is made from kraft paper, to be unfolded for study

My last class was Windeggo Spinner and Stand, taught by Mary Jane Kettler. The spinner is an action model mounted on a stick, and able to spin upon blown. The stick is mounted on the stand to finish. She gave us crease pattern, and a nice thick patterned paper for the stand. It will be useful for my future exhibition to mount models.

I left her class midway (and told her why so she didn't think I rage quit). The travel time from hotel to JFK was surprisingly fast. It took no longer than 1 hour to travel such distance with E line train, plus air train from Jamaica station to JFK. The total price was around $7.5, what a great value. In the end I arrived in JFK around 17.00, but the walking, checkin, security check, and dinner queue was awfully long that I had only 10 minutes before boarding starts at 19.40. It was a good call to leave 4 hours before the flight.

Jetblue started the flight to San Francisco according to the planned schedule, but we ended up arriving 40 minutes early. Went back home, shower, sleep, and be ready to work for the next day.

Remarks

Took me few days later to fully process this convention experience. I definitely had a great time with everything the event had to offer: exhibitions, classes, sales, activities, and especially hanging out in community room. With around 15 parallel classes at any time, it is the biggest origami event in the country (for comparison, PCOC had 10). Hanging out with fellow folders, exchanging ideas, and learning from each other was the best part of the experience. Those are memories to be cherished for a lifetime.

Despite that, I will (very likely) not attend Origami USA convention in the future. Part of it is due to how much it costs, and the other part is my dislike of traveling in general. NYC was expensive, even more than San Francisco. The hotel fee was $270 per night (including all junk fees), event fee was $360 (barebone, not including convention book/shirt), and flight can be $400+ (including checked-in baggage). My trip costs nearly $2000, if not more. It includes the sightseeing and 4 nights cheap hotel's price though. This trip was more or less "once in a lifetime" thing especially while I still live in USA.

The price will only go up year by year. Unless we find ourselves ways making money doing origami, or getting some fees waived, it is a large expense. If you haven't attended such event, by all means attend it. Whether it is a one time thing or annual thing, you can decide. My tips are:

1. Just go all out. Attend all 4 days (including day 0) especially if you are from outside of NYC.
2. Stay in the venue hotel if possible to save commute time and comfortably fold until midnight, even though it is overpriced. Find roommate to split the fee.
3. Prepare late night snack, something not too sweet or salty. Hanging out in the cold community room will eventually cause hunger to creep in. I usually buy bread for this purpose and it doubles as breakfast.
4. Make friends by reaching out to people you recognize and talk to them. Normally I don't bother being social, but convention is sad if we're by ourselves. Hanging out with others made the experience much more exciting and productive.
5. Bring paper tube so you can carry any paper bought back home safely. Mine is from Daisho which costs $5, extendable up to 1.2 meter, and around 12 cm in diameter.
6. Bring books whose author you might find in the convention, if you want to get their autograph. Keep in mind they may not always give autographs.
7. If you bring exhibition items, carry it in a way to prevent damage. Follow this packing guide by Bernie Peyton if you can afford multiple boxes to be checked in, or use the poorman's method by securing the model inside shoebox with strips of taped papers.

Battle tested, these models survived the NY trip.

I will still opportunistically attend any convention, such as the upcoming PCOC 2025 in Sacramento which would be just 3 hours train ride from San Jose.