Dreams

(;GM[1]FF[4]AP[Drago:4.21]SZ[19]CA[UTF-8]AB[pd][pe][qe][re][ob][nb][ne][qg]AW[pb][pa][qd][rd]C[White to live.])

Sorry this picture doesn't really have anything to do with the content of this post.

Do you have a dream?

Recently I have been asking myself this question.

What is my dream?

I remember when I was still in Japan, I was told to announce my dream to the whole class every once a year.

The first time I said I wanted to be a soccer player. Because it looked really cool.

The second year onwards I don't really remember.

Dream may not be what you want to be in the future.

It may simply be what you want to do.

What you want to achieve in life.

So, I tried to list down 100 things that I want to do if I had the time and money.

And I could only write 22.

Is that too little?

Maybe.

I'm not really an ambitious person, so I couldn't think of anymore.

I was even surprised that I could think of 22. It was too many to me.

But the problem is, why is that when I have so many things I want to do, I haven't been doing them?

Is it because I'm lazy?

Is it because I don't have time?

I'm not a person who plays a lot of games.

In fact I stopped playing computer games after NS.

So why is it that I haven't achieved anything that I want to achieve?

Of course laziness and procrastination plays a part too.

But I think, the most important thing is, I simply don't BELIEVE that I can achieve these stuffs.

Yes, the POWER to BELIEVE is important.

I must BELIEVE in myself.

I must BELIEVE that I can achieve those things.

If I don't BELIEVE in myself, nobody will.

BELIEVING yourself, is the first step to achieving all your dreams.

That is what I BELIEVE.

Doesn't mean all those problems like laziness, procrastination, and time management will go away if you BELIEVE.

But if you don't BELIEVE, you'll never be able to solve all those problems.

If you don't BELIEVE, all the negative thoughts will come in and you'll never get your stuff done.

Therefore, I think I want to start by BELIEVING myself.

New Stuffs

(;GM[1]FF[4]AP[Drago:4.20]SZ[19]CA[UTF-8]AB[nk][ok][pk][qk][rk][ql][qi][ml][mm][mn][mo][no][qn][rn][rp][rq] [qq][pq][oq][nq]AW[nl][ol][pl][pm][qm][rm][nn][on][oo][op][pp][qp][ro][qj]C[White to kill])

I went to a place called Marina Bay Financial Tower on Wednesday for a one-day part-time job.

It was a magnificent place with many high-rise buildings.

Everyone walking into the building looked like professionals.

I didn't expect that I would also walk in there one day.

Because it is simply too high-class for me.

As for the job itself, it was ok.

It was a very nice experience to walk-into such a high-class building to work in one of the offices.

I also had a chance to see how the other stuffs work, though not much.

The only problem is the food.

Maybe because all the people working there are so highly paid, I couldn't find a single food court or kopi tiam in that area.

It was just restaurants after restaurants.

And all looked very expensive.

After much hesitation, I decided to have my lunch in this restaurant called Cedele.

It looked like a healthy place, and I ordered Beef Aglio Olio Pasta (pic above).

Tasted pretty good, though the amount wasn't a lot.

Will probably be going back there in the next week or so.

Hope to find some nice and cheap food there next time.

Results

The first round of National Team Tournament ended on last Sunday. My result: 4 wins out of 7.

One loss was because I couldn't play the game. (As I had to go and watch Madagascar 3!)

So in total I lost 2 games.

One to JC, and one to YX.

I would say it's still a satisfiable result, given the fact that I wasn't in a good condition.

Somehow I felt better on the second Sunday than on the first.

I played both YX and JC on the first Sunday.

Against YX, my game was still ok until middle game but as the game progressed my big group was in danger, but I still had some chance even if I sacrifice the group. However I made a fatal mistake and got my keystones eaten and I couldn't even talk about sacrifice anymore. The game ended in less than 100 moves.

Against JC, I was actually leading until late in the middle game, but after that I don't know why I started playing strange moves that didn't make a single sense to me. Opponent's territory kept increasing while mine kept decreasing. It won't be overboard to say that I lost almost 30 points in end-game. It was really a badly played game.

I'm happy with the other games that I played. Maybe I'm slowing getting back my form!

I also played with a former Japanese Insei on Saturday. He was from the Insei C Group.

The game wasn't good for me at first as I encountered a joseki which I didn't know.

But as the game progressed, he suddenly had a weak group and I managed to bring the game to my advantage.

When end-game started I think I was leading my at least 10 points, but that's where the difference in strength started to appear.

I started making mistakes here and there, and lost about 5 points in end-game, even when I had enough time to think.

In the end I was only leading by 5 points on the board and I lost by  1.5 points.

It was really a pity.

End-game has always been a problem.

The fact that I didn't play my end-game well even when I had time to think shows that my basics are really not there.

If I have the time I would definitely want to properly train myself in end-game.

Maybe in the middle of learning, I would also make some posts on end-game here and there.


I think the key is really to play more games, and to have a clear mind.

A CLEAR MIND is really important.

I myself often let my thoughts run wild, and waste a lot of my time. (Both on the board and in life)

Therefore it is important to be CLEAR about what you want and what you need to do to achieve it (Both in life and on the board)

I guess I'll start working on that now.

To play or not to play?

(;GM[1]FF[4]AP[Drago:4.20]SZ[19]CA[UTF-8]AB[pa][pb][pc][pd][pe][pf][qf][rf][sf]AW[qa][qb][qc][qd][re]C[Black to kill.])

I remember last year sometime in October, when we were training for Thai U-Go under Xie Tang, after my game with him he told me something I will never forget.

(In Chinese) "Hey Zhang Xiang, you haven't really been playing recently, right? You seem easier to deal with than before!"

At that time, it was kind of a shock, and I didn't really know how to react, so I just said...

"Well yeah, maybe now I think much more than last time..."

Now that I think about it...

He was actually true.

It's true that I didn't play a lot of games.

And it's still that way until now.

I like to review professionals' kifus, so I tend to do that a lot.

I will also play casually with low dan players using my casual accounts.

But the number of serious training games I play, really seemed to decline over the years.

My ID, Sadaharu, on KGS, played less than one game per month last year.

Then I thought to myself, why is that so?

And then I realised, it's because I'm scared.

I'm scared of playing serious games.

I'm scared of not playing well.

I'm scared of losing.

After playing Go for so many years, I still get nervous every time I sit in front of a Go Board.

That's especially the case in front of strong players.

Maybe that's why, subconsciously, I avoided playing serious games even when I was free.

And that's how my level started going down.

I realised that playing a game yourself is really important.

Of course reviewing kifus is also important, as it allows you to understand how pros think and what they play.

However, what is more important is the way YOU think, and not the way others think.

Only by playing yourself, would you be able to find out the way YOU think.

And only through that way, you can improve.

That's my recent thought.


Tomorrow is the first National Team Tournament.

Against so many strong players, how will I, who "haven't really been playing", fare?

I shall see.

CHM Nightmare

Last weekend was Lanke Cup.

Qiuping cup was held together at the same place.

The venue was Toa Payoh East CC.

I remember back in my HwaChong days, when Lanke and Qiuping cup was held at NYP Sports Hall, the huge hall was just enough to fill all the participants.

And now, with both the competitions held in a small CC, there are still many empty spaces. This is really saddening. What has happened over the years?

I hear that the popularity of weiqi in Singapore is going up, and I also see many new faces in SWA everytime. But why is it that the number of people joining competitions has decreased?

I'm not an exco but I think this is something they should review...

Anyway, for this year's Lanke, our main opponents were NYP and HCI.

For some reason NUS didn't join this year.

HCI didn't have Jian Zhongfan already, so it was less of a threat.

Hence our main opponent was NYP.

And this year it was very dangerous because we didn't have Xiaojuhua and Wei Ran with us.

But we still wanted to do our best to keep the Lanke trophy.

However, on the first game of the 2nd day...

Shit happened...

I lost a game... to CHM...

...

......

.........

Ok, it was my fault.

I have totally no excuse for the loss.

Because loss means loss.

I only knew about the pairing on the morning itself.

I believed that I could win him.

But the game... turned out very terribly...

Looking back, I don't really know what I was thinking at that game.

I didn't play any strong moves, and I didn't try to increase my territory or attack.

In the end, when I realised that I was losing on territory, the opponent was already too thick and it was already too late.

Seriously, what the hell was I doing?

I don't demand that I play a wonderful game, but at least I want to play a game that I can be content with!

Is that so hard to achieve!?

Haiz, really must go and reflect...

In the end, CHM and Zhaozhen from NYP both got 6 wins.

But their 3rd person, Wen Kang, only got 4 wins.

As for NTU, I got 6 wins, Alvin and Teck Wei got 5 wins.

So, fortunately, we still managed to beat them in terms of score. 

If NYP had sent in another strong player, most likely we would have lost.

And it would be my fault...

...

I call this incident the CHM Nightmare.

And I declare that I will not let this happen again!!

P.S. Some photos:

NTU, Champion

SMU, 4th

NYP, 2nd

HCI, 3rd

NYP Open

Haven't blogged for a long time.


I actually like to blog, just that I don't know why I can't bring myself to do it sometimes.


Well...


Anyway, before I start...


Can anybody tell my why there are so much spam here!!?? ----------------------->


Seriously.

Went to NYP Mindsports Open to be their Chief Arbiter last weekend.

Yes, "Chief Arbiter".

It's not just an ordinary judge, it's "CHIEF Arbiter"! LOL

Well anyway, the job wasn't that much different from a normal judge.

House seemed to do it every year but this year he wasn't free so he asked me to do it.

And I accepted the job because it comes with money. :p

I've never been to this competition before, even though they seem to do it for many times already.

There weren't many teams joining the Weiqi section either. 3 teams from SP, 2 teams from NYP, 1 team from an ITE, and 2 teams from Junyuan Secondary school.

Quite surprising that Junyuan secondary school was the only secondary school that came. And none of the JCs came, including Hwachong and RI. Back in my Hwachong days I remember joining SP Chess Challenge but not this one. They say that they contacted every school and even called them personally. Well I don't really know the details and I'm not the organiser, so I can only guess that there must have been some kind of miscommunication somewhere... One most serious difficulty in organising an event...

It was nice to see Hwachong getting champion for both the Chinese Chess and International Chess team. Seriously, were our C-Chess and I-Chess teams so strong? A pity our Weiqi team wasn't here to clinch the champion as well. Not that they can definitely get champion though.

One thing I like about this competition is their venue. Like this picture above they have a very big space outside their competition area with the respective boards where the players can rest or review their games in between rounds. This is really a good idea to prevent the players who finished their games from crowding around the competition area and disturbing other players who are still in the middle of their games.

They didn't specifically say "please get out of the competition area once your games are done", but having such an area set-up will reduce the likelihood of players remaining in the competition hall. Usually most of the international competitions will have this area, but many local competitions I went didn't have this. I think this is one area to improve.

One thing I didn't like was the fact that they didn't announce the rules at the start of the event. I know there are 3 different games going on so it may be troublesome to announce the rules, but I still think it is necessary. Just because the rules are written very clearly in the invitations doesn't mean there's no need to announce them on the day of the competition itself. I think it is better to do so because it serves as a reminder to the participants. It is even more important in this kind of team events. In fact, many games had problems because they didn't follow the rules regarding the seating of the players. Well, just stating my opinions.

On the overall, it was really a nice event that was well organised. I can see that the people from the 3 different board games really cooperating with each other nicely and getting things done quickly. Jinkai(overall IC?) also did a great job in managing the teams.

If possible I would like to join them again. (Also for the money :p)

P.S. As for my personal updates, will post them on a later date.