Sunday, November 30, 2008

The Next Step

All things will come to an end eventually. That also applies to Whompoa Cup 2008. This year's Whompoa was quite disastrous. The number of people in Group A was only about 34, and Jerry actually lost in the first round. The final result was Xie Tang 1st and I got a mere 3rd. Initially I was going for 2nd but I lost to this guy called Lu Yong in the final round. He played for Hua Yuan Team in the Singapore Weiqi League and is quite strong, since he only lost to Xie Tang. However, I had the confidence to win him and I was also kind of leading in the game. But suddenly I made a series of bad moves and resulted in the situation being overturned. In the end I missed an exchange and one piece got killed. Game Over. Luckily my SOS was quite high, allowing me to get a 3rd, but who would be happy after playing such a bad game?

The fact now is very obvious. I still have A LOT to improve. I'm lacking in all areas, and to make it to World Amateur next year this level is not enough. From now on, I will do Tsumego everyday even when in camp, and when I'm at home I'll play at least one game on KGS. This competition has made me realise how numb I have become when playing weiqi. The worst thing a player can do is to stop calculating, and that's what I always do. This must be overcome.

In the meantime, since Whompoa Cup is over, I will also devote some of my time to other committments. Not reading manga and stuff, but playing piano. I haven't been playing for a while, and forgot a lot of scores already. Firstly I need to get a tuner to tune my piano, and after that I need to get my piano teacher back. The schedule will be a bit messy, but hopefully everything will go smoothly.

Let's see some of the photos taken during this year's Whompoa Cup:


Xie Tang, famous for winning everyone in his way.

Yurika playing Wang Chuan. This game had an interesting ending.

Alvin and Yurika

Yurika and Xie Tang

Yurika with specs look like Obaasan...

With me inside
Hehe

HELLO, XING WEI!!

Gambling in public!!

NSF also involved!!!

And this pre-enlistee!!

I'm so sad about my game that I cried... ToT

And Yurika also cried because she got a lower rank than me... =D

Yurika

Big Mo

Wang Jing, PRC studying in SP

FCC, 4th

Me

Lu Yong, 2nd

And the notorious Xie Tang!

Group A prize winners

Xing Wei's big mouth (and face...)

Yurika and Gabriel


The key chain I got as a prize for doing the Tsumego given. Those lucky draw winners got much better items... "-_-

My prize coupons. Gotta go NTUC buy stuff again.

And the trophy... Looks elegant, but it's still plastic...

Saturday, November 29, 2008

Whompoa Cup

Finally the Whompoa Cup has started. The wait seemed very long, yet it arrived so fast. Too fast that I haven't fully prepared for it. Honestly speaking I haven't been playing recently even on the internet. My laziness has been acting up a lot, and I was busy reading ONE PIECE manga the past few days... If I didn't get into the top 4 because of this, I think I will be very sad...

Played the first 3 games today. They weren't so bad, except the 2nd game which I played against a PRC studying in SP. Made quite a few mistakes but was still leading. But into yose, my lead became more and more less, and only at the end did I realise that I only won by one and a half moku. It was so close! My time management was bad, and that's why I made a lot of losses in yose. I guess it's still the concentration problem. It's hard to keep my focus and keep calculating, and that's where I need to train more.

There was an interesting incident today. I've never seen such incident happening anywhere before. There was this guy playing Yurika, and Yurika seemed to be losing. And she didn't have much time left. But in the end it turned out that Yurika killed two of the opponent's pieces, and she was winning already. But she didn't have enough time to complete the game, and the opponent obviously had more time than her. Then her opponent just started playing randomly and even played into her territory, just to make her lose by time. Kanglaoshi saw this stopped the game, saying it's against the rules and he announced Yurika win. The guy wasn't happy. He kept arguing, saying he can still play and he thought he'd won by time so he played like that. But Kanglaoshi still didn't change his decision, and in the end the guy had to accept the defeat.

Well, I find it kind of ridiculous if you PLAN to win by time. Weiqi is a game played on a board, and not through a clock. The clock is only there to make sure that the game doesn't take too long. If you are winning your opponent by time and you are also leading in the game, why would you want to give up the lead and try to win by time? I think he was kind of anxious also lah, 'cos he didn't expect things to turn out like that. But since he has more time, he could've used that time to think properly and find a move that wouldn't lead to his loss.

Got another four more games tomorrow. The number of people going for this year's Whompoa Group A is so little... It's less than 40 people, you know? At this rate I would play against Xie Tang very soon... Let's hope I can make it.

Sunday, November 23, 2008

Anime Festival Asia

Luckily this weekend was a stand-by weekend, or else I would not have been able to make it for the Anime Festival Asia (AFA) held at Suntec City. Remember that I got no leaves left. I already left my leaves for Whompoa Cup next week...

So I went to Suntec City at around 11.30 am on Sunday, and waited for Linxi until about 12. After that we went for lunch and proceeded to Level 4 for AFA. Surprising there wasn't any queue, and we obtained our tickets smoothly. It also wasn't as crowed as I had expected. There were still a lot of space to move about. Maybe it's because it was still very early.

Already saw a lot of cosplays even before stepping inside the exihibition hall. It was kind of interesting to see anime characters using escalators, LOL. This is actually the first time I'm seeing people cosplay, other than on TV. Sadly to say it was quite disappointing. Many people were either too tall, short, fat, or skin, and their hair length also didn't match the original character. A lot of combinations when posing for photos were also weird. The props and costume were nice, but maybe more effort could be put in, at least for those characters that I know of. But then, it is impossible to cosplay until you look exactly like the anime character. Maybe my expectations are too high, haha. =D

Some pics of cosplays:

I don't know what this anime is...

But this girl is quite cute. =)

Zabuza and Haku, from NARUTO. This is one of the more decent combinations.

A robot from Code Geass.

Don't know this one either...

But the girl on the left looks like Otsuka Ai from this angle... LOL

Unknown.

Unknown.

Naruto and Sakura. But for god's sake why are they fighting an Anbu??

Bankai Ichigo and Hinamori, lietenant of 5th Squadron fighting a mere Hollow?? Since when did hollows become so strong...



A rather cute Byakuya, from BLEACH...



Yah, cute... LOL



And a very cute Mario! =D

Why is Sasuke fighting an Anbu...



Resting cosplay personnels.

Unknown, but interesting.

Unknown.

Oh my god!! A HOLLOW!!!!! =P
He was standing very still...

Renji.

Were Byakuya and Gin so friendly? I don't think so...

This robot again.

Buahahahahahaha!!!!!!

O.o, what a great combination.



In the afternoon there was a cosplay competition. People took turns to go onto stage to perform a skit they composed which can be a short clip from the anime. To my dismay, there wasn't any NARUTO or BLEACH cosplays on stage. And many of the performances were quite ridiculous. Like, why would anime characters be singing disney songs?? In the Code Geass performance the robot took ages to climb up the stairs onto the stage. It was hilarious to see the robot doing that, 'cos usually it flies (in the anime). And furthermore some parts of the robot broke off after it went onto the stage, but they still carried on with the performance and completed it.

I took some videos of the cosplay competition. Will post them after I've uploaded them to youtube. Some screen shots:





Noticed this guy in interesting uniform...

But realised he was playing PSP. LOL

Yup, this is the robot.

Finally it's on stage...







Other than cosplays the main highlight of AFA was figurines. Yes, lots and lots of figurines. I heard that some figurines were so popular that they were sold out in the first hour. Looks like there's been a lot of competition here on Saturday... For me I'm not really particularly interested in figurines, unless I really like the design. I still feel that DVDs are more worth it than the some stationary figures.

Here's a look at some of the figurines:

Gundam.

Miscellaneous

Miscellaneous.

Miscellaneous.

Dragonball!! I used to watch this a lot.

More Dragonball heroes and villaines.

Interesting change of costume. Felt like buying this but it was too expensive...

Goku in Super Saiyajin 4!!

Mini L. If this was available I would definitely buy this. LOL

Mini Ryuk.

Batman.

FF VII.

More superheroes.

FF VII.

I believe this is Cloud (I don't play FF VII...)


This was quite interesting, I didn't know they have figurines for movies as well...

"I WANT TO PLAY A GAME." LOL




Some other interesting exhibits:

Toys.

D.Gray Man poster.

Code Geass poster.

...>< Code Geass with live person.

Interesting drawing of Deidara, and the words... LOL For those who can't see it's written "nice drawing, buy my hair covers my left eye, uh". Haha=)

Itachi. Very well drawn.

People drawing.




At 7.15 pm, the event everyone has been waiting for started: live performance by May'n. I didn't really know May'n very well. I only knew that she sang songs for this anime called Macross Frontier. But her songs were quite nice, and she gave quite a good performance. It was amazing how she carried out all her dance and stuff while maintaining her voice. This is also the first time I've seen a concert in live, and I was very excited. Now I've got another singer to support. And you know what, she's younger than me!! Born in the same year, but her birthday is in October. Haha, maybe I stand a chance?

Photographs and video taking were prohibited during the concert. And I actually FOLLOWED the rules. What a fool of me, I could have just snapped a few pics. After the concert there was this hand-shaking session with May'n for those Diamond VIP pass holders. They will also get a signature of May'n each. I wish I will also get such a chance in the future.

Took some photos during the hand-shaking session, but not very clear as I was quite far from the stage. She's quite cute, isn't she? And lively too. She shakes hands not using one, but both hands.











Good luck to May'n in her future career. Fight on!


That's the end of my AFA report. I had a thought when attending this event. Would there be such thing called J-POP festival? If there is I would be the first one to buy the ticket, and if there's a concert by ayu or ai-chan I would buy first row ticket no matter how much it costs. =D